CORAL EEEFS. 357 



to the wants or luxuries of his new life. It is not, however, 

 colonisation alone which has peopled and given fortune to 

 this new continent. The rush to the Californian gold region 

 was still going on, when the discovery of still more prolific 

 gold-fields on the flanks of the eastern mountain-chain of 

 Australia a discovery sagaciously anticipated by Sir R. 

 Murchison, but actually made by Count Strzelecki directed 

 a sudden stream of migration towards these distant lands, 

 which three months of ocean voyage could not check, and 

 which is still going on to enlarge their population and wealth. 

 This topic however, wonderful though it be in every way, is 

 now too familiar to need our dwelling upon it here. De- 

 scription has almost exhausted itself in the narrative of 

 Australian progress; and there are parts even of our own 

 island less known to us than the country around Sydney and 

 Melbourne, or the gold-fields of Ballarat and Bendigo. 



Still what we thus familiarly know cannot be called more 

 than the margin of the Antarctic continent. From its eastern 

 coast discovery has been extended to distances of 700 or 800 

 miles from the sea ; but this in scanty lines and at the cost 

 of much suffering to the adventurers. The larger portion of 

 the coasts is known only by maritime survey, and the vast 

 interior is still in great part a void in our geography. In 

 several respects, either proved or presumed, Australia has 

 much resemblance to Africa in its physical features ; a circuit 

 of coast, with very few inlets or gulfs ; the highest mountain 

 ranges on its eastern side; an arid saline desert within, 

 touching in parts on the sea, particularly on that long and 

 dreary line of southern coast, which Mr. Eyre with singular 

 powers of endurance successfully explored. The existence 

 of some great central desert (resembling those which Hum- 

 boldt has so well classed and described in his ( Essay on the 

 Steppes and Deserts of the Globe ' ), though not proved by 

 actual passage across it, is attested to us in every way short 



