AUSTRALIA. 
83 
no record in the pages of history, can be imagined by the student of mankind—and the 
present, with its abundant proofs of the inexhaustible energy of civilised man, and its promise 
of still greater achievements in the future. On one side the pathless forest, erstwhile the 
abode of the savage, whose only home was some temporary shelter in the bush; on the other, 
the lately cleared and fenced-in fields, the high-roads and spacious streets of projected towns, 
the paddocks on the hill-side slopes, the wooden farm-houses and the trim-looking villas, the 
church waiting for its steeple—for funds for which absent adornment, doubtless, a fervent 
appeal is annually made from the pulpit within—the railway station, the sound of the steam- 
whistle echoing through the forest and drowning the "war-whoop of the conquered savage— 
everywhere the signs of a new life, the beginnings of a great nation of the future. 
