374 AUSTRALIA : 



In the latter part of Mr. Jukes's first volume we. find 

 narrated the proceedings of the expedition on the southern 

 coast of New Guinea; which coast, with its widely spread 

 banks of shoal-soundings, was surveyed for a length of 140 

 miles. It is a small section indeed of the shores of this vast 

 island, but important as the northern boundary of Torres 

 Strait; and further interesting as some slight index to a 

 country less known perhaps than any other of equal size in 

 the habitable world. Notwithstanding its great extent, equal 

 to that of Great Britain and France conj ointly its remark- 

 able position in the Eastern Archipelago its proximity to 

 islands long visited or colonised, and to channels of great 

 and increasing commerce the outline of Papua, or New 

 Guinea, still remains to be completed in our maps, and we 

 have no certain assurance whether it be a single island or 

 several. Of its interior we are yet almost wholly ignorant ; 

 discovery having never advanced more than a few miles from 

 the coast, and this more as a passing adventure than on any 

 deliberate plan of survey. But enough has been seen, or 

 learnt through indirect channels, to indicate a region of 

 luxuriant tropical vegetation ; profuse in its various forms 

 of animal life ; abounding in water, large rivers, and moun- 

 tain-chains ; a striking contrast, in short, in all physical 

 conditions to the adjacent continent of Australia. Such 

 features as these, occurring close upon the Equator, and in a 

 country 1,200 miles in length, give promise of an exuberant 

 harvest to the naturalists who may hereafter find access to 

 the Fauna arid Flora of this unknown land. No long time 

 can now elapse before this access is found. 



The channel of Torres Strait, remarkable in so many ways, 

 is not least so in the sudden line of demarcation it thus draws 

 between two kinds of vegetation, two groups of lower animals, 

 and two varieties of the human race. Those strange anoma- 

 lies which designate all that belongs to Australian landscape 



