370 Revieics — Prof. J. W. Gregori/s Dead Heart of Australia. 



(189G) will enjoy the perusal of this new book with even greater 

 pleasure than the last. 



The Australian Continent may be not unfitly compared to the 

 trunk of one of those ' Giant trees ' of the Sierra Nevada, or the 

 equally colossal ' Australian gum-trees,' whose age may be reckoned 

 by at least twenty centuries, their centre dense and almost inanimate, 

 but the periphery alive and growing still, receiving beneath its bark 

 a ring of new tissue year by year. 



Once the centre of the great Australian Continent throbbed with 

 the vigorous circulation of youth ; animals abounded over its vast 

 and well-wooded plains : now all is arid and apparently waterless ; 

 ov\y along its external border do we find that energetic display 

 of vitality which marks the living world. Its heart, like that 

 of the great Sequoia or the giant Encnli/ptiis, has, seemingly, 

 almost ceased to pulsate ; but down, deep down, beneath the surface 

 of its dried-up plains, vast springs of sweet waters exist, and may 

 still be reached, like the invisible sap-flow of the 'big trees,' rich 

 in stored-up supplies of life-giving energy, which need only to be 

 touched, as was the stony rock of old — not by the magic rod of 

 any modern water-finding Moses, but by the practical, intelligent 

 'artesian well-borer' — to make it overflow at the surface, and 

 bring back again abundant vegetation and animal life to its now arid 

 and deserted plains. 



Let us, however, make way for the author, and he will tell us in 

 his own words " how the ' Kadimakara ' came down from the skies." 

 The story is delightful, and has all the freshness of novelty to 

 recommend it : — 



*' According to the traditions of some Australian aborigines, the 

 deserts of Central Australia were once fertile, well-watered plains. 

 Instead of the present brazen sky. the heavens were covered by 

 a vault of clouds, so dense that it appeared solid ; where to-day the 

 only vegetation is a thin scrub, there were once giant gum-trees, 

 which formed pillars to support the sky ; the air, now laden with 

 blinding, salt-coated dust, was washed by soft cooling rains, and the 

 present deserts around Lake Eyre were one continuous garden. 



" The rich soil of the country, watered by abundant rain, supported 

 a luxuriant vegetation, which spread from the lake-shores and the 

 river-banks far out across the plains. The trunks of lofty gum-trees 

 rose through the dense undergrowth, and upheld a canopy of 

 vegetation, that protected the countr}' beneath from the direct rays 

 of the sun. In this roof of vegetation dwelt the strange monsters 

 known as ' Kadimakara ' or ' Kadinierkera.' 



" Now and again the scent of the succulent herbage rose to the 

 roof-laud, and tempted the inhabitants to climb down the gum-trees 

 to the pastures below. Once, while many Kadimakara were revelling 

 in the rich foods of the lower world, their retreat was cut ofl' by the 

 destruction of the three gum-trees which were the pillars of the sky. 

 They wei'e obliged to roam on earth, and wallow in the marshes of 

 Lake Eyre, till they died, and to this day their bones lie where they 

 fell. After the destruction of the gum-trees the small holes iu the 



