CHAPTER XXI 



INDUSTRIAL PIONEERS 



THE coming of the white man to this conti- 

 nent of the Southern Seas is an oft-told 

 tale, but not without its constituents of romantic 

 and heroic interest. Any close examination of 

 the details of Australian discovery would be out 

 of place in a book concerned with the past only 

 so far as it affects the present. The outlines of 

 Australian history, however, compel some atten- 

 tion, since the means by which the country was 

 populated is largely responsible for the character 

 and distribution of the Australian people to-day. 

 The beginning of Australia was a legend, due no 

 doubt to an unrecorded discovery made by some 

 long-forgotten adventurer. Certain it is that 

 early in the sixteenth century, the geographers of 

 the time agreed that somewhere in the Southern 

 Seas there was a great unknown land of mystery. 

 The map-makers of those days dotted this great 

 South Land on their maps of the world, varying 

 its outline and dimensions, each according to his 

 own fancy. In 1598, we find the Dutch historian 

 Cornelius Wytfliet writing of it: " The Terra 

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