AUSTRALIA. 353 



alluvial plains, deep marine inlets penetrating far into tlie interior, and those 

 other diversified features which impart to Europe the aspect of an organised body 

 with proper adjustment of parts. 



Nevertheless, civilised man is able by science and industry to make himself 

 more and more independent of his inconvenient surroundings, and to turn their 

 limited resources to the best account. The underground reservoirs of water are 

 brought to the surface by simple mechanical appliances ; scrubby tracts are 

 continually brought under cultivation ; artificial highways supply the want of 

 navigable routes. Habitable regions are steadily encroaching on the wildei-ness, 

 and become daily more accessible. 



The Australian continent has thus rapidly assumed a position in the com- 

 mercial world which it could never have acquired before the age of railways and 

 steam navigation. In many respects it has become the first of British colonies, 

 and from the political standpoint, even without fleets and armies, its immense 

 reserve of growing strength contributes greatly to consolidate the vast colonial 

 empire of Great Britain. The great navigable highway connecting England, 

 through the Mediterranean and Eed Sea, with her immense Asiatic possessions is 

 continued south-eastwards across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, until, at about an 

 equal distance, it meets the Australian continent, which has for ever become the 

 exclusive appanage of the Anglo-Saxon race. The longer maritime route from 

 London, round the Cape, to Melbourne and Sydney, has also, for intermediate 

 station, the British South- African colonies. Thus, during his long voyage of nearly 

 16,000 miles across half the circumference of the globe, the civis Britannicus 

 touches English territory alone ; everywhere he sees his social and political insti- 

 tutions firmly established, everywhere he hears the familiar sounds of his 

 mother tongue ; he moves from hemisphere to hemisphere, but scarcely feels that 

 he has quitted his native land. 



To appreciate at its full value the influence exercised, if not by England, at 

 least by the English element, in the history of mankind, the United States must 

 be added to Great Britain with its innumerable colonies and boundless possessions. 

 "With this large section of the terrestrial surface inhabited by over one hundred 

 millions of his kindred, the Englishman may look forward with full confidence in 

 the destiny of his race. The Russian continental world, embracing half of 

 Europe and of Asia, is more than balanced by the British Oceanic world, which 

 sweeps round the whole periphery of the globe. 



Progress of Discovery. 



The first voyages of discovery extended by the Portuguese to the Australian 

 Seas remained unknown, or, at most, left nothing behind except vague rumours 

 indelibly traced on a few cartographic documents. That island of " Great Java," 

 already figuring on the maps dating from the first half of the sixteenth century,* 

 presents such accurate contours as to leave no doubt of the presence of some 



* R. H. Major: Early Voyages to Terra Australis, now called Australia. 

 23— o 



