438 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
chapter headed ‘Some Account of that part of New Holland now called New 
South Wales.’ New Holland he thought ‘in every respect the most barren 
country I have seen’; ‘the fertile soil bears no kind of proportion to that which 
seems by nature doomed to everlasting barrenness.’ ‘In the whole length of 
coast which we sailed along there was a very unusual sameness to be observed 
in the face of the country. Barren it may justly be called, and in a very high 
degree, so far, at least, as we saw.’ It is true that he only saw the land by the 
sea, but it was the richer eastern side of Australia, the outer edge of New 
South Wales and Queensland. What animals did he find in Australia? He 
‘saw an animal as large as a greyhound, of a mouse colour, and very swift.’ 
‘He was not only like a greyhound in size and running, but had a tail as long 
as any greyhound’s. What to liken him to I could not tell.’ Banks had a grey- 
hound with him, which chased this animal. ‘We observed, much to our surprise, 
that, instead of going upon all fours, this animal went only on two legs, making 
vast bounds.’ He found out that the natives called it kangooroo, and it was ‘as 
large as a middling lamb.’ He found ‘this immense tract of land,’ which he 
said was considerably larger than all Europe, ‘thinly inhabited, even to admira- 
tion, ab least that part of it that we saw.’ He noted the Indians, as he called 
them, whom he thought ‘a very pusillanimous people.’ They ‘seemed to have 
no idea of traffic’; they had ‘a wooden weapon made like a short scimitar.’ 
Suppose a new Sir Joseph Banks came down from the planet Mars to visit 
Australia at this moment, what account would he give of it in a geographical 
handbook for the children of Mars? He would modify the views about barren- 
ness, if he saw the cornfields and flocks and herds; if he visited Adelaide, he 
would change his opinion as to scanty population, though not so, perhaps, if he 
went to the back blocks. He would record that the population was almost 
entirely white, apparently akin to a certain race in the North Sea, from which, 
by tradition, they had come; that their worst enemies could not call them 
pusillanimous; that they had some ideas of traffic, and used other weapons than 
a wooden scimitar; and he would probably give the first place in animal life not 
to the animal like a greyhound on two legs, but to the middling lamb, or 
perhaps to the ubiquitous rabbit. Australia is the same island continent that 
it always was; there are the same indentations of coast, the same mountains 
and rivers, but the face of the land is different. In past years there was no 
town, and the country was wilderness; on the surface of the wilderness many of 
the living things were different; and from under the earth has come water and 
mineral, the existence of which was not suspected. A century hence it will be 
different again, and I want to see sets of maps illustrating more clearly than is 
now the case the changes which successive generations of men have made and 
are making in the face of Australia and of the whole earth. 
More than half a century ago Buckle, in his ‘ History of Civilisation,’ wrote : 
‘ Formerly the richest countries were those in which Nature was most bountiful ; 
now the richest countries are those in which man is most active. For in our age 
of the world, if Nature is parsimonious we know how to compensate her 
deficiencies. If a river is difficult to navigate, or a country difficult to traverse, 
an engineer can correct the error and remedy the evil. If we have no rivers 
we make canals; if we have no natural harbours we make artificial ones.’ 
These words have a double force at the present day and in the present sur- 
roundings, for nowhere has man been more active as a geographical agency than 
in Australia; and not inside Australia only, but also in regard to the relations 
of Australia to the outside world. 
An island continent Australia is still, and always will be, on the maps. It 
always will be the same number of miles distant from other lands; but will 
these maps represent practical everyday facts? What do miles mean when 
it takes a perpetually diminishing time to cover them? Is it not truer to 
facts to measure distances, as do Swiss guides, in Stunden (hours)? What, 
once more, will an island continent mean if the sea is to be overlooked and 
overflown? The tendency is for the world to become one; and we know 
perfectly well that, as far as distance is concerned, for practical purposes 
the geographical position of Australia has changed through the agency of 
scientific man. If you come to think of it, what geography has been more 
concerned with than anything else, directly or indirectly, is distance. It is 
