Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Company edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Contents:
Introduction
Pelsart
Tasman
Dampier
In the days of Plato, imagination found its way, before the mariners,to a new world across the Atlantic, and fabled an Atlantis where Americanow stands. In the days of Francis Bacon, imagination of the Englishfound its way to the great Southern Continent before the Portugueseor Dutch sailors had sight of it, and it was the home of those wisestudents of God and nature to whom Bacon gave his New Atlantis. The discoveries of America date from the close of the fifteenth century. The discoveries of Australia date only from the beginning of the seventeenth. The discoveries of the Dutch were little known in England before thetime of Dampier’s voyage, at the close of the seventeenth century,with which this volume ends. The name of New Holland, first givenby the Dutch to the land they discovered on the north-west coast, thenextended to the continent and was since changed to Australia.
During the eighteenth century exploration was continued by the English. The good report of Captain Cook caused the first British settlementto be made at Port Jackson, in 1788, not quite a hundred years ago,and the foundations were then laid of the settlement of New South Wales,or Sydney. It was at first a penal colony, and its Botany Baywas a name of terror to offenders. Western Australia, or SwanRiver, was first settled as a free colony in 1829, but afterwards usedalso as a penal settlement; South Australia, which has Adelaide forits capital, was first established in 1834, and colonised in 1836; Victoria,with Melbourne for its capital, known until 1851 as the Port PhilipDistrict, and a dependency of New South Wales, was first colonised in1835. It received in 1851 its present name. Queensland,formerly known as the Moreton Bay District, was established as lateas 1859. A settlement of North Australia was tried in 1838, andhas since been abandoned. On the other side of Bass’s Straits,the island of Van Diemen’s Land, was named Tasmania, and establishedas a penal colony in 1803.
Advance, Australia! The scattered handfuls of people have becomea nation, one with us in race, and character, and worthiness of aim. These little volumes will, in course of time, include many aids to aknowledge of the shaping of the nations. There will be later recordsof Australia than these which tell of the old Dutch explorers, and ofthe first real awakening of England to a knowledge of Australia by Dampier’svoyage.
The great Australian continent is 2,500 miles long from east to west,and 1,960 miles in its greatest breadth. Its climates are thereforevarious. The northern half lies chiefly within the tropics, andat Melbourne snow is seldom seen except upon the hills. The separationof Australia by wide seas from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, givesit animals and plants peculiarly its own. It has been said thatof 5,710 plants discovered, 5,440 are peculiar to that continent. The kangaroo also is proper to Australia, and there are other animalsof like kind. Of 58 species of quadruped found in Australia, 46were peculiar to it. Sheep and cattle that abound there now wereintroduced from Europe. From eight merino sheep introduced in1793 by a settler named McArthur, there has been multiplication intomillions, and the food-store of the Old World begins to be replenishedby Australian mutton.
The unexplored interior has given a happy hunting-ground to satisfythe British spirit of adventure and research; but large waterless tracts,that baffle man’s ingenuity, have put man’s powers of enduranceto sore trial.
The mountains of Aus