352 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Southern land is the vast continent, that must exist further 

 South, though only " Capes " have hitherto been seen. 

 It must exist because it has to balance the land in the 

 North. The laws of physics show that, but for this unknown 

 Southern continent, the earth would rotate by the Poles, 

 instead of rotating by the Equator. It centres in the 

 South Pole, and its promontories project far northwards 

 in various places, and especially between New Zealand 

 and America. 



Like And how inconceivably great must be the interest of 



planet*^ these Southern lands, known and unknown, which occupy 

 one-third of the Globe ! How can one doubt that they 

 will furnish objects of curiosity, and opportunities of profit, 

 equal to all that has been furnished by America ? How 

 many peoples, differing amongst themselves, and greatly 

 differing from ourselves, in figure, in manners, in usages, 

 in ideas, in religion! How many animals, insects, fishes, 

 plants, trees, fruits, drugs, precious stones, fossils, and 

 metals ! And, no doubt, in all these genera there are 

 millions of species of which we have not even a notion, 

 since this world has never had communication with ours, 

 and is to us, so to say, almost as strange as would be 

 another planet. What branches of trade in skins, silks, 

 spices, medicines, dye-woods, gold and jewels ! And, again, 

 what a chance of selling our coloured glass-beads, our 

 brandy, our sixpenny mirrors, at a profit as enormous 

 as that gained in the first voyage to the East Indies ! 

 Business and And it will be a trade profitable to both sides. The 

 thromr natives want iron as much as we want gold. ' The 



combined. Australian " will make profit by giving anything he has 

 for a pair of scissors ; and, in addition to the pair of scissors 

 he will gain French culture, and those will become men 

 who have now nothing human but their figures. As 

 the Phoenicians discovered and civilized the Europeans, 

 so will the French discover and civilize the Australians, 

 who after all are not likely to be much more brutal than 

 were the Europeans. True, the coast-people seem " com- 

 pletely barbarous," but this in no way proves that one 

 who penetrates this prodigious extent of country will 



