270 
AN APOSTROPHE TO AUSTRALIA. 
by three young kangaroo dogs, which had alread}^ killed several 
dingos, or bush turkeys, but had never hunted the emeu. All at 
once they quitted me, sprang into a small thicket of acacias, and began 
to bark, — a certain sign that they were face to face with an enemy 
whom they feared to attack. I spurred my horse, and soon found 
myself in the presence of a great emeu, which was evidently greatly 
terrified. His body and long neck formed an almost vertical line, 
and his plumes stood erect at right angles. My horse recoiled before 
so extraordinary a spectacle. The emeu fled into the plain, but 
was so disordered by the barking of the dogs that he could not 
find his route. For a considerable time he turned round and round 
in the middle of the pack, which was not less terrified than himself, 
while I could not force my young horse to approach within a distance 
of fifty yards. Eventually, one of my dogs leapt on tlie emeu's neck, 
and tore him to the ground." 
Does the reader remember Lord Lytton's apostrophe to Australia 
towards the end of " The Caxtons," the hero of which admirable novel 
he carries thither to make his fortune ? " Thou beautiful land ' " — 
it is thus he addresses this Greater Britain of the South, — " Canaan 
of the exiles, and Ararat to many a shattered ark ! Fair cradle 
of a race for whom the unbounded heritage of a future, that no 
sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies also in the golden promise- 
light of Time !— destined, perchance, from the sins and sorrows of 
' a civilization struggling with its own elements of decay, to renew 
the youth of the world, and transmit the great .soul of England 
through the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that can best 
ripen the products of earth, or form into various character and temper 
the difierent fiimilies of man, 'rain influences' from the heaven 
that smiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged, from 
the wind, or scorched in the thankless sun. Here, the hardy air of 
the chill Mother Isle; there, the mild warmth of Italian autumns, 
or the breathless glow of the Tropics." In a region so vast and so 
diverse, the forms of animal-life are necessarily numerous ; and while 
we meet with some familiar to us in the temperate West, and others 
