hardly be expected that such works would become immediately popular; the characters, the motives of action, and the plot itself were too ordinary, one may say too commonplace, to appeal strongly to the sympathies of the general mass of readers. Her colors were not showy enough to strike the vulgar eye. It is probable, indeed, that her admirers will always be few in number; for not only does it require a somewhat cultivated taste to appreciate the rare skill with which the scanty materials of her tales are handled, but the author's experience of life was so limited that her works are entirely wanting in certain elementssuch as depth of feeling and breadth of sympathy-which | are indispensable before a work of fiction can exercise any ronsiderable influence on the public mind. tinent, as the state of his health hardly permitted him to reside in England. The Revolution of 1848 drove him from Paris, and on his return to England he settled at Weybridge, in Surrey, where he remained till his death in December, 1859. Austin wrote one or two pamphlets, but the chief work he published was his Province of Jurispru dence Determined (1832), a treatise on the relation between ethics and law, which gives a clear analysis of the notion of obligation, and an admirable statement of utilitarianism, the ethical theory adopted by the author. After his death, his widow, Mrs. Sarah Austin, published his Lectures on Jurisprudence; or, The Philosophy of Positive Law. These, combined with the Province, have been edited, under the same title, by Mr. R. Campbell, and reached in 1875 a fifth edition. The framework in nearly all Miss Austen's novels is the same, taken as they are from ordinary English middle-class AUSTIN, SARAH TAYLOR, translator and miscellaneous life; her characters are in no way distinguished by any writer, was born in 1793. She was one of the Taylor remarkable qualities, they are such persons as one would family of Norwich, several of whose members had distinreadily expect to meet in every-day life; the plot is exceed-guished themselves in the fields of literature and science. ingly simple, and the incidents, never rising above the level She was the youngest child of her family, received a liberal of the most common-place occurrences, flow naturally from and solid education at home, chiefly from her mother, and the characters of the actors. In the hands of most writers had the advantage, too, of enjoying in her father's house such materials would infallibly become monotonous and much intellectual society. She grew up a beautiful and tiresome; but from any danger of this Miss Austen is com- cultivated woman, and in 1820 became the wife of John pletely freed by her wonderful power of exciting interest Austin, noticed above. They settled in London, and in the "involvements and feelings of ordinary life," and among the familiar visitors of their house were Bentham, the skill with which, by a series of imperceptible but the Mills (father and son), the Grotes, Romilly, Buller, effective touches, she discriminates her characters, rounds Sydney Smith, and other eminent men. She accompanied them off, and makes them stand out from the canvas real her husband in 1827 to Bonn, where they spent some and living personages. Her gallery of portraits is certainly months, and made acquaintance with Niebuhr, Schlegel, small, and the same character appears over and over again, | Arndt, and other distinguished Germans. She afterwards but each figure is so distinctly drawn, and has such marked lived some years in Germany and France, and was left a individuality, that one is never struck with a sense of widow in December, 1859. Mrs. Austin is best known as repetition. A warm admirer of her works, Archbishop a singularly skilful translator of German and French Whately, has compared them to the carefully-executed works. In 1832 appeared her version of the Travels of pictures of the Dutch school; perhaps the analogy of Prince Puckler Muskau. This was followed by Characterminiature painting, suggested by the author herself, is more istics of Goethe from the German of Falk, History of happy and expressive. the Reformation in Germany and History of the Popes from the German of Ranke, and Dr. Carove's Story without an End. She contributed "Travelling Letters" and critical and obituary notices to the Atheneum, edited the Memoir of Sydney Smith and her daughter Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt, and for some years of her widowhood was occupied in arranging for publication her husband's Lectures on Jurisprudence. She was also author of Germany from 1760 to 1814, National Education, and Letters on Girls' Schools. Mrs. Austin died at Weybridge in Surrey, 8th August, 1867. Miss Austen's life has been written by her nephew, Rev. J. Austen-Leigh (1870, 2d ed., 1871), who has also published some extracts from her papers, including a short tale, Lady Susan, written in the form of letters; a fragment of a larger work called The Watsons; the first draft of a chapter in Persuasion; and the beginning of a novel, on which she was engaged at the time of her death. AUSTERLITZ, a small town of Moravia, 12 miles E.S.E. of Brünn, containing a magnificent palace belonging to the prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg, and a beautiful church. It has been rendered memorable by the great victory obtained in its vicinity, on the 2d December, 1805, by the French under Napoleon, over the united forces of Austria and Russia under their emperors. Population, 3450. AUSTRALASIA, one of the six great geographical divisions of the globe, is situated, as its name indicates, south of Asia, between the equator and 50° S. lat., and 110° and 180° E. long. It comprises the island-continents of New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, and the conterminous archipelagoes of New Britannia, Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, and New Cale donia, which will be treated of under special headings. AUSTRALIA, or NEW HOLLAND, the largest Plate II. 10° 47′ and 39° 11′ S. lat., and 113° and 153° 30′ E. long. It measures 2500 miles in length from west to east, by 1950 miles in breadth from north to south, and contains an area of about 3,000,000 square miles-nearly the same as that of the United States of America, exclusive of Alaska. It is surrounded on the west by the Indian Ocean, and on the east by the South Pacific. In the north it is separated from New Guinea by Torres Strait, which is 80 miles broad, and from the Eastern Archipelago by Arafura Se1; while on the south Bass Strait, 140 miles wide, separates it from Tasmania. The neighboring colony of New Zealand lies 1200 miles opposite its south-east coast. AUSTIN, JOHN, one of the ablest English writers on jurisprudence, was born on the 3d March, 1790. At an early age he entered the army, and passed five years in military service. He then retired, applied himself to the study of law, and was called to the bar in 1814. His powers, though admirably adapted for grasping the funda-island-continent of Australasia, is situated within mental principles of law, were not of a nature to render him successful in legal practice. His health, too, was delicate, and in 1825 he resigned active employment at the bar. In the following year, however, he was appointed to the chair of jurisprudence in the newly-founded London university. He immediately crossed over to Germany to prepare himself for his new duties, and at Bonn became acquainted with some of the most eminent German jurists. His lectures were at first attended by a number and a class of students quite beyond his anticipations. Among his hearers were such men as Lord Romilly, Sir G. C. Lewis, and J. S. Mill. From Mill's notes some of the lectures were afterwards published, and he has given an admirable account of Austin in his Dissertations (vol. iii.). But it soon became apparent that there would be no steady demand for training in the science of law, which, though useful, was not of immediate utility in practice. Under these circumstances Austin, who was almost too conscientious in regard to his own work, thought it right to resign the chair The ancients were somehow impressed with the idea of in 1832. An attempt to institute lectures at the Inner a Terra Australis which was one day to be revealed. The Temple also failed, and, as his health was delicate, he Phoenician mariners had pushed through the outlet of the retired to Boulogne, where he remained for nearly two Red Sea to eastern Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the coasts years. In 1837 he acted as royal commissioner in Malta, of India and Sumatra. But the geographer Ptolemy, in and discharged the duties of that office most efficiently. the 2d century, still conceived the Indian Ocean to be an The next ten years were spent in travelling on the Con- inland sea, bounded on the south by an unknown land, [By convention of April, 1891, sitting at Sydney, the Australian colonies confederated under a constitution similar to that of the United States, but the governor-general is to be a crown appointment.-AM. ED.] Owing to its position at the antipodes of the civilized world, Australia has been longer a terra incognita than any other region of the same extent. Its first discovery is involved in considerable doubt, from confusion of the names which were applied by the earlier navigators and geographers to the Australasian coasts. which connected the Chersonesus Aurea (Malay Peninsula)| east. By taking this latter course he reached the island with the promontory of Prasum in eastern Africa. This erroneous notion prevailed in medieval Europe, although some travellers like Marco Polo heard rumors in China of large insular countries to the south-east. The investigations of Mr. R. H. Major make it appear probable that the Australian mainland was known as "Great Java" to the Portuguese early in the 16th century; and the following passage in the Descriptionis Ptolemaica Augmentum of Cornelius Wytfliet, printed at Louvain in 1598, is perhaps the first distinct account that occurs of the country: "The Australis Terra is the most southern of all lands, and is separated from New Guinea by a narrow strait. Its shores are hitherto but little known, since, after one voyage and another, that route has been deserted, and seldom is the country visited, unless when sailors are driven there by storms. The Australis Terra begins at one or two degrees from the equator, and is ascertained by some to be of so great an extent, that if it were thoroughly explored it would be regarded as a fifth part of the world." which now bears his name, but which he called Van Diemen's Land, after the Dutch governor of Batavia. In 1644 Tasman made another attempt, when he explored the north-west coast of Australia, from Arnhem Land to the 22d degree of latitude, approaching the locality of Dirk Hartog's discoveries of 1616. He seems to have landed at Cape Ford, near Victoria River, also in Roebuck Bay, and again near Dampier's Archipelago. But the hostile attitude of the natives, whom he denounced as a malicious and miserable race of savages, prevented his seeing much of the new country; and for half a century after this no fresh discoveries were made. It was in 1606 that Torres, with a ship commissioned by the Spanish Government of Peru, parted from his companion Quiros (after their discovery of Espiritu Santo and the New Hebrides), and sailed from east to west through the strait which bears his name; while in the same year the peninsula of Cape York was touched at by a vessel called the "Duyfhen" or "Dove" from the Dutch colony of Bantam in Java, but this was understood at the time to form a part of the neighboring island of New Guinea. The Dutch continued their attempts to explore the unknown land, sending out in 1616 the ship "Endraght," commanded by Dirk Hartog, which sailed along the west coast of Australia from lat. 26° 30′ to 23° S. This expedition left on an islet near Shark's Bay a record of its visit engraved on a tin plate, which was found there in 1801. The "Pera" and ". Arnhem," Dutch vessels from Amboyna, in 1618 explored the Gulf of Carpentaria, giving to its westward peninsula, on the side opposite to Cape York, the name of Arnhem Land. The name of Carpentaria was also bestowed on this vast gulf in compliment to Peter Carpenter, then governor of the Dutch East India Company. In 1627 the "Guldene Zeepard," carrying Peter Nuyts to the embassy in Japan, sailed along the south coast from Cape Leeuwin, and sighted the whole shore of the Great Bight. But alike on the northern and southern sea-board, the aspect of New Holland, as it was then called, presented an uninviting appearance. An important era of discovery began with Tasman's voyage of 1642. He, too, sailed from Batavia; but, first crossing the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius, he descended to the 44th parallel of S. lat., recrossing that ocean to the 10 20 The English made their first appearance on the Australian coast in 1688, when the north-western shores were visited by the famous buccaneer Captain William Dampier, who spent five weeks ashore near Roebuck Bay. A few years later (1697) the Dutch organized another expedition under Vlamingh, who, first touching at Swan River on the west coast, sailed northward to Shark's Bay, where Hartog had been in 1616. Dampier, two years later, visited the same place, not now as a roving adventurer, but with a commission from the English Admiralty to pursue his Australian researches. This enterprising navigator, in the narrative of his voyages, gives an account of the trees, birds, and reptiles he observed, and of his encounters with the natives. But he found nothing to invite a long stay. There was yet another Dutch exploring squadron on that coast in 1705, but the results were of little importance. It was Captain Cook, in his voyages from 1769 to 1777, who communicated the most important discoveries, and first opened to European enterprise and settlement the Australasian coasts. In command of the 10 bark "Endeavor," 370 tons burden, and carrying 85 persons, amongst whom were Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander, returning from the Royal Society's expedition to observe the transit of Venus, Cook visited both New Zealand and New South Wales. He came upon the Australian mainland in April, 1770, at a point named after Lieutenant Hicks, who first sighted it, on the shore of Gipps' Land, Victoria, S. lat. 38°, E. long. 148° 53'. From this point, in a coasting voyage not without peril when entangled in the barrier reefs of coral, the little vessel made its way up the whole length of the eastern side of Australia, rounding Cape York, and crossing Torres Strait to New Guinea. In his second expedition of Australasian discovery, which was sent out in 1773, Cook's ship, the "Resolute," started in company with the "Adventure," commanded by Captain Furneaux. The two vessels separated, and Cook went to New Zealand, while Furneaux examined some parts of Tasmania and Bass Strait. The third voyage of Cook brought him, in 1777, both to Tasmania and to New Zealand. Next to Cook, twenty or thirty years after his time, the names of Bass and Flinders are justly honored for continuing the work of maritime discovery he had so well begun. To their courageous and persevering efforts, begun at their private risk, is due the correct determination of the shape both of Tasmania and the neighboring continent. The French admiral Entrecasteaux, in 1792, had made a careful examination of the inlets at the south of Tasmania, and in his opinion the opening between Tasmania and Australia was only a deep bay. It was Bass who discovered it to be a broad strait, with numerous small islands. Captain Flinders survived his friend Bass, having been associated with him in 1798 in this and other useful adventures. Flinders afterwards made a complete survey in detail of all the Australian coasts, except the west and north-west. He was captured, however, by the French during the war, and detained a prisoner in Mauritius for seven years. The shores of what is now the province of Victoria were explored in 1800 by Captain Grant, and in 1802 by Lieutenant Murray, when the spacious land-locked bay of Port Phillip was discovered. New South Wales had already been colonized, and the town of Sydney founded at Port Jackson in 1788. West Australia had long remained neglected, but in 1837, after the settlement at Swan River, a series of coast surveys was commenced in H.M.S. Beagle." These were continued from 1839 to 1843 by Mr. Stokes, and furnished an exact knowledge of the western, north-western, and northern shores, including four | large rivers flowing north-west and south-west into the large rivers. Inland Exploration.-The geographical position of the Australian continent had now been sufficiently determined, and what remained for discovery was sought, not as hitherto by coasting along its shores and bays, but by striking into the vast tract of terra incognita that occupied the interior. The colony of New South Wales had been founded in 1788, but for twenty-five years its settlers were acquainted only with a strip of country 50 miles wide, between the Blue Mountains and the sea-coast, for they scarcely ever ventured far inland from the inlets of Port Jackson and Botany Bay. Mr. Bass, indeed, once while waiting for his vessel, made an attempt to cross the Blue Mountains, and succeeded in discovering the river Grove, a tributary of the Hawkesbury, but did not proceed further. An expedition was also conducted by Governor Hunter along the Nepean River west of the settlement, while Lieutenant Bareiller, in 1802, and Mr. Caley, a year or two later, failed in their endeavor to surmount the Blue Mountain range. This formidable ridge attains a height of 3400 feet, and being intersected with precipitous ravines 1500 feet deep, presented a bar to these explorers' passage inland. At last, in 1813, when a summer of severe drought had made it of vital importance to find new pastures, three of the colonists, Messrs. Wentworth and Blaxland and Lieutenant Lawson, crossing the Nepean at Emu Plains, gained sight of an entrance, and ascending the summit of a dividing_ridge, obtained a view of the grassy valley of the Fish River. This stream runs westward into the Macquarie, which was discovered a few months afterwards by Mr. Evans, who followed its course across the fertile plains of Bathurst. In 1816 Lieutenant Oxley, R.N., accompanied by Mr. Evans and Mr. Cunningham the botanist, conducted an expedition of great interest down the Lachlan River, 300 miles to the north-west, reaching a point 34° S. lat., and 144° 30′ E. long. On his return journey Oxley again struck the Macquarie River at a place he called Welling ton, and from this place in the following year he organized a second expedition in hopes of discovering an inland sea. He was, however, disappointed in this, as after descending the course of the Macquarie below Mount Harris, he found that the river ended in an immense swamp overgrown with reeds. Oxley now turned aside-led by Mr. Evans's report of the country eastward-crossed the Arbuthnot range, and traversing the Liverpool plains, and ascending the Peel and Cockburn Rivers to the Blue Mountains, gained sight of the open sea, which he reached at Port Macquarie. A valuable extension of geographical knowledge had been gained by this circuitous journey of more than 800 miles. Yet its result was a disappointment to those who had looked for means of inland navigation by the Macquarie River, and by its supposed issue in a Medi terranean sea. interior was still unsolved. With a view to determine this question, Governor Sir Ralph Darling, in the year 1828. sent out the expedition under Captain Charles Sturt, who proceeding first to the marshes at the end of the Macquarie River, found his progress checked by the dense mass of reeds in that quarter. He therefore turned westward, and struck a large river, with many affluents, to which he gave the name of the Darling. This river, flowing from north-east to south-west, drains the marshes in which the Macquarie and other streams from the south appeared to be lost. The course of the Murrumbidgee, a deep and rapid river, was followed by the same eminent explorer in his second expedition in 1831 with a more satisfactory result. He travelled on this occasion nearly 2000 miles, and discovered that both the Murrumbidgee, carrying with it the waters of the Lachlan morass, and likewise the Darling, from a more northerly region, finally joined another and larger river. This stream, the Murray, in the upper part of its course, runs in a north-westerly direction, but afterwards turning southwards, almost at a right angle, expands into Lake Alexandrina on the south coast, about 60 miles S.E. of the town of Adelaide, and finally enters the sea at Encounter Bay in E. long. 139°. After gaining a practical solution of the problem of the destination of the westward-flowing rivers, Sir Thomas Mitchell, in 1835, led an expedition northward to the upper branches of the Darling; but the party meeting with a sad disaster in the death of Mr. Cunningham, the eminent botanist, who was murdered by the natives on the Bogan River, further exploration of that region was left to be undertaken by Dr. Leichardt, nine years later, and by the son of Sir Thomas Mitchell. Meantime, from the new colony of Adelaide, South Australia, on the shores of Gulf St. Vincent, a series of adventurous journeys to the north and to the west was commenced by Mr. Eyre, who explored a country much more difficult of access, and more forbidding in aspect, than the "Riverina" of the eastern provinces. He performed in 1840 a feat of extraordinary personal daring, travelling all the way along the barren seacoast of the Great Australian Bight, from Spencer Gulf to King George's Sound. Mr. Eyre also explored the interior north of the head of Spencer Gulf, where he was misled, however, by appearances to form an erroneous theory about the water-surfaces named Lake Torrens. It was left to the veteran explorer, Sturt, to achieve the arduous enterprise of penetrating from the Darling northward to the very centre of the continent. This was in 1845, the route lying for the most part over a stony desert, where the heat (reaching 131° Fahr.), with scorching winds, caused much suffering to the party. The most northerly point reached by Sturt on this occasion was about S. lat. 24° 25'. His unfortunate successors, Burke and Wills, travelled through the same district sixteen years later; and other expeditions were organized, both from the north and from the south, which aimed at learning the fate of these travellers, as well as that of Dr. Leichardt. These efforts completed our knowledge of different routes across the entire breadth of Australia, in the longitude of the Gulf of Carpentaria; while the enterprising journeys of MacDouall Stuart, a companion of Sturt, obtained in 1862 a direct passage from South Australia northward to the shores of the Malayan Sea. This route has been utilized by the construction of an overland telegraph from Adelaide to the northern coast. During the next two or three years public attention was occupied with Captain King's1 maritime explorations of the north-west coast in three successive voyages, and by explorations of West Australia in 1821. These steps were followed by the foundation of a settlement on Melville Island, in the extreme north, which, however, was soon abandoned. In 1823 Lieutenant Oxley proceeded to Moreton Bay and Port Curtis, the first place 7° north of Sydney, the other 10°, to choose the site of a new penal establishment. From a shipwrecked English sailor he met with, who had lived with the savages, he heard of A military station having been fixed by the British Govthe river Brisbane. About the same time, in the opposite ernment at Port Victoria, on the coast of Arnhem Land, direction, south-west of Sydney, a large extent of the in- for the protection of shipwrecked mariners on the north terior was revealed. The river Murrumbidgee-which coast, it was thought desirable to find an overland route unites with the Lachlan to join the great river Murray-between this settlement and Moreton Bay, in what then was traced by Mr. Hamilton Hume and Mr. Hovell into the country lying north of the province of Victoria, through which they made their way to Port Phillip. In 1827 and the two following years, Mr. Cunningham prosecuted his instructive explorations on both sides of the Liverpool range, between the upper waters of the Hunter and those of the Peel and other tributaries of the Brisbane north of New South Wales. Some of his discoveries, including those of Pandora's Pass and the Darling Downs, were of great practical utility. was the northern portion of New South Wales, now called Queensland. This was the object of Dr. Leichardt's expedition in 1844, which proceeded first along the banks of the Dawson and the Mackenzie, tributaries of the Fitzroy River, in Queensland. It thence passed farther north to the Burdekin, ascending to the source of that river, and turned westward across a table-land, from which there was an easy descent to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Skirting the low shores of this gulf, all the way round its upper half to the Roper, Leichardt crossed Arnhem Land to the AlliBy this time much had thus been done to obtain an gator River, which he descended to the western shore of acquaintance with the eastern parts of the Australian con- the peninsula, and arrived at Port Victoria, otherwise Port tinent, although the problem of what could become of the Essington, after a journey of 3000 miles, performed within 1[Philip Parker King (1791- 1856), born on Norfolk Island, entered the navy, employed in exploration of Australian, Patagonian, and Terra del Fuegan coasts. Died in sydney.-AM. ED.] a year and three months. In 1847 Leichardt undertook a much more formidable task, that of crossing the entire continent from east to west. His starting point was on the Fitzroy Downs, north of the River Condamine, in Queensland, between the 26th and 27th degrees of S. latitude. But this eminent explorer had not proceeded far into the interior before he met his death, his last despatch dating from the Cogoon, April 3, 1848. In the same region, from 1845 to 1847, Sir Thomas Mitchell and Mr. E. B. Kennedy explored the northern tributaries of the Darling, and a river in S. lat. 24°, named the Barcoo or Victoria, which flows to the south-west. This river was more thoroughly examined by Mr. A. C. Gregory in 1858. Mr. Kennedy lost his life in 1848, being killed by the natives while attempting to explore the peninsula of Cape York, from Rockingham Bay to Weymouth Bay. Among the performances of less renown, but of much practical utility in surveying and opening new paths through the country, we may mention that of Captain Banister, showing the way across the southern part of West Australia, from Swan River to King George's Sound, and that of Messrs. Robinson and G. H. Haydon in 1844, making good the route from Port Phillip to Gipps' Land with loaded drays, through a dense tangled scrub, which had been described by Strzelecki as his worst obstacle. Again, in West Australia there were the explorations of the Arrowsmith, the Murchison, the Gascoyne, and the Ashburton Rivers, by Captain Grey, Mr. Roe, Governor Fitzgerald, Mr. R. Austin, and the brothers Gregory, whose discoveries have great importance from a geographical point of view. to the east. The leading men of the party were Mr. Robert O'Hara Burke, an officer of police, and Mr. William John Wills, of the Melbourne observatory. Messrs. Burke and Wills, with two men named Gray and King. left the others behind at the Barcoo on the 16th December, 1860, and proceeded, with a horse and six camels, over the desert traversed by Sturt fifteen years before. They got on in spite of great difficulties, past the M'Kinlay range of mountains, S. lat. 21° and 22°, and then reached the Flinders River, which flows into the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Here, without actually standing on the seabeach of the northern shore, they met the tidal waters of the sea. On February 23, 1861, they commenced the return journey, having in effect accomplished the feat of crossing the Australian continent. Unhappily, three of the party perished on the road home. Gray, who had fallen ill, died on the 16th of April. Five days later, Burke, Wills, and King had repassed the desert to the place on Cooper Creek (the Barcoo, S. lat. 27° 40', E. long. 140° 30′), where they had left the dépôt, with the rest of the expedition. Here they experienced a cruel disappointment. The dépôt was abandoned; the men in charge had quitted the place the same day, believing that Burke and those with him were lost. The main body of the expedition, which should have been led up by a Mr. Wright, from Menindie, on the Darling, was misconducted and fatally delayed. Burke, Wills, and King, when they found themselves so fearfully left alone and unprovided in the wilderness, wandered about in that district till near the end of June. They subsisted miserably on the bounty of some natives, and partly by feeding on the seeds of a plant called nardoo. At last both Wills and Burke died of starvation. King, the sole survivor, was saved by meeting the friendly blacks, and was found alive in September by Mr. A. W. Howitt's party, sent on purpose to find and relieve that of Burke. These local researches, and the more comprehensive attempts of Leichardt and Mitchell to solve the chief problems of Australian geography, must yield in importance to the grand achievement of Mr. Stuart in 1862. The first of his tours independently performed, in 1858 and 1859, were around the South Australian lakes, namely Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, and Lake Gairdner. These waters had been erroneously taken for parts of one vast horseshoe or sickle-shaped lake, only some twenty miles broad, believed to encircle a large portion of the inland country, with drainage at one end by a marsh into Spencer Gulf. The mistake, shown in all the old maps of Australia, had originated in a curious optical illusion. When Mr. Eyre viewed the country from Mount Deception in 1840, look-means, the unknown region of Mid Australia was simultaing between Lake Torrens and the lake which now bears his own name, the refraction of light from the glittering crust of salt that covers a large space of stony or sandy ground produced an appearance of water. The error was discovered, after eighteen years, by the explorations of Mr. Babbage and Major Warburton in 1858, while Mr. Stuart, about the same time, gained a more complete knowledge of the same district. A reward of £10,000 having been offered by the Legislature of South Australia to the first man who should traverse the whole continent from south to north, starting from the city of Adelaide, Mr. Stuart resolved to make the attempt. He started in March, 1860, passing Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre, beyond which he found a pleasant, fertile country till he crossed the M Donnell range of mountains, just under the line of the tropic of Capricorn. On the 23d of April he reached a mountain in S. lat. nearly 22°, and E. long. nearly 134°, which is the most central marked point of the Australian continent, and has been named Central Mount Stuart. Mr. Stuart did not finish his task on this occasion, on account of indisposition and other causes. But the 18th degree of latitude had been reached, where the watershed divided the rivers of the Gulf of Carpentaria | from the Victoria River, flowing towards the north-west coast. He had also proved that the interior of Australia was not a stony desert, like the region visited by Sturt in 1845. On the first day of the next year, 1861, Mr. Stuart again started for a second attempt to cross the continent, which occupied him eight months. He failed, however, to advance further than one geographical degree north of the point reached in 1860, his progress being arrested by dense scrubs and the want of water. Meanwhile, in the province of Victoria, by means of a fund subscribed among the colonists and a grant by the Legislature, the ill-fated expedition of Messrs. Burke and Wills was started. It made for the Barcoo, with a view to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria by a northerly course midway between Sturt's track to the west and Leichardt's Four other parties, besides Howitt's, were sent out that year from different Australian provinces. Three of them, respectively commanded by Mr. Walker, Mr. Landsborough, and Mr. Norman, sailed to the north, where the latter two landed on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, while Mr. Walker marched inland from Rockhampton. The fourth party, under Mr. J. M'Kinlay, from Adelaide, made for the Barcoo by way of Lake Torrens. By these neously entered from the north, south, east, and west, and important additions were made to geographical knowledge. Landsborough crossed the entire continent from north to south, between February and June, 1862; and M'Kinlay, from south to north, before the end of August in that year. The interior of New South Wales and Queensland, all that lies east of the 140th degree of longitude, was examined. The Barcoo and its tributary streams were traced from the Queensland mountains, holding a south-westerly course to Lake Eyre in South Australia; the Flinders, the Gilbert, the Gregory, and other northern rivers watering the country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria were also explored. These valuable additions to Australian geogra phy were gained through the humane efforts to relieve the lost explorers. The bodies of Burke and Wills were recovered and brought to Melbourne for a solemn public funeral, and a noble monument has been erected to their honor. Mr. Stuart, in 1862, made his third and final attempt to traverse the continent from Adelaide along a central line, which, inclining a little westward, reaches the north coast of Arnhem Land, opposite Melville Island. He started in January, and on April 7 reached the farthest northern point, near S. lat. 17°, where he had turned back in May of the preceding year. He then pushed on, through a very thick forest, with scarcely any water, till he came to the streams which supply the Roper, a river flowing into the western part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Having crossed a table-land of sandstone which divides these streams from those running to the western shores of Arnhem Land, Mr. Stuart, in the month of July, passed down what is called the Adelaide River of North Australia. Thus he came at length to stand on the verge of the Indian Ocean; "gazing upon it," a writer has said, "with as much delight as Balboa, when he had crossed the Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific." The line crossing Australia which was thus explored has since been occupied by the electric telegraph connecting Adelaide. Melbourne, Sydney, and other Australian cities with London. A third part, at least, of the interior of the whole continent, between the central line of Stuart and the known parts of West Australia, from about 120° to 134° E. long., an extent of half a million square miles, still remained a blank in the map. But the two expeditions of 1873, conducted by Mr. Gosse and Colonel Egerton Warburton, have made a beginning in the exploration of this terra incognita west of the central telegraph route. That line of more than 1800 miles, having its southern extremity at the head of Spencer Gulf, its northern at Port Darwin, in Arnhem Land, passes Central Mount Stuart, in the middle of the continent, S. lat. 22°, E. long. 134°. Mr. Gosse, with men and horses provided by the South Australian Government, started on April 21 from the telegraph station fifty miles south of Central Mount Stuart, to strike into West Australia. He passed the Reynolds range and Lake Amadeus in that direction, but was compelled to turn south, where he found a tract of well-watered grassy land. A singular rock of conglomerate, 2 miles long, 1 mile wide, and 1100 feet high, with a spring of water in its centre, struck his attention. The country was mostly poor and barren, sandy hillocks, with scanty growth of spinifex. Mr. Gosse, having travelled above 600 miles, and getting to 26° 32′ S. lat. and 127° E. long., two degrees within the West Australian boundary, was forced to return. Meantime a more successful attempt to reach the western coast from the centre of Australia has been made by Colonel Warburton, with thirty camels, provided by Mr. T. Elder, M.L.C., of South Australia. Leaving the telegraph line at Alice Springs (23° 40′ S. lat., 133° 14′ E. long.), 1120 miles north of Adelaide city, Warburton succeeded in making his way to the De Grey River, West Australia. Overland routes have now been found possible, though scarcely convenient for traffic, between all the widely separated Australian provinces. In Northern Queensland, also, there have been several recent explorations, with results of some interest. That performed by Mr. W. Hann, with Messrs. Warner, Tate, and Taylor, in 1873, related to the country north of the Kirchner range, watered by the Lynd, the Mitchell, the Walsh, and the Palmer Rivers, on the east side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The coasting expedition of Mr. G. Elphinstone Dalrymple, with Messrs. Hill and Johnstone, finishing in December, 1873, effected a valuable survey of the inlets and navigable rivers in the Cape York peninsula. The Endeavor River in S. lat. 16°, which was visited by Captain Cook a hundred years ago, seems capable of being used for communication with the country inland. A newly discovered river, the Johnstone or Gladys, is said to flow through a very rich land, producing the finest cedars, with groves of bananas, nutmeg, ginger, and other tropical plants. The colonial geologists predict that the north-east corner of Australia will be found to possess great mineral treasures. At the opposite extremity of the continent, its south-west corner, a tour lately made by Mr. A. Forrest, Government surveyor, from the Swan River eastward, and thence down to the south coast, has shown the poorness of that region. The vast superiority of eastern Australia to all the rest is the most important practical lesson taught by the land-exploring labors of the last half century. | ton Bay, Hervey Bay, and Broad Sound, in the east, the coast line is singularly uniform. The conformation of the interior of Australia is very peculiar, and may perhaps be explained by the theory of the land having been, at a comparatively recent period, the bed of an ocean. The mountain ranges parallel to the east and west coasts would then have existed as the cliffs and uplands of many groups of islands, in widely scattered archipelagoes resembling those of the Pacific. The singular positions and courses of some of the rivers lend force to this supposition. The Murray and its tributaries, the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, and the Darling, rising from the mountains on the east coast, flow inwards so far that they were at one time supposed to issue in a central sea. They do, in fact, spend their waters in a large shallow lake; but this is not far from the south coast, and is provided with an outlet to the ocean. The Macquarie and the Lachlan merge in extensive swamps, and their beds in the dry season become a mere chain of ponds. This agrees with the idea that the whole country was a sea-bottom, which has scarcely yet assumed the character of permanent dry land, while another proof consists in the thinness and sterility of the soil in the lowlands. Along the entire line of the east coast there extends a succession of mountain ranges from Portland, in Victoria, to Cape York in the extreme north, called in different parts the Australian Grampians, the Australian Alps, the Blue Mountains, the Liverpool Range, and other names. These constitute, like the Andes of South America, a regular Cordillera, stretching from north to south 1700 miles in length, with an average height of 1500 feet above the sea. The rivers flowing down the eastern slope, having but short courses before they reach the sea, are of a more determined character than those which take a westerly and inland direction. They cut their way through the sandstone rocks in deep ravines; but from their tortuous and violent course, and from the insufficient volume of water, they are unfit for navigation. Very few of them traverse more than 200 miles, inclusive of windings, or pass through any district extending more than 50 miles inland. It is different with the Murray, flowing westward, which has a course of 1100 miles, traversing a space from east to west measuring 8° of longitude. The Murray is navigable during eight months of the year along a great part of its course. This great river, with its tributaries, drains a basin the area of which is reckoned at half a million of square miles. Yet it has no proper outlet to the sea, debouching into a lagoon called Lake Alexandrina, on the sea-coast of Encounter Bay. On the opposite or north-western part of the continent there are several important water-courses. One river, the Victoria, which rises somewhere about 18° or 19° S. lat. and 131° E. long., flows northward to 15° 30′ S. lat., where it turns westward. Its bed forms a deep channel through the sandstone table-land, with cliffs 300 feet high, while in width it sometimes extends to half a mile, its depth varying from 50 feet to as many fathoms. The Victoria debouches into Cambridge Gulf, 14° 14′ S. lat. and 129° 30' E. long., an estuary 20 miles broad, with a depth of 8 or 10 fathoms. To the westward of this district run two other large rivers, the Prince Regent and the Glenelg, the latter being navigable, with a fertile country on its banks. The Roper, a navigable stream in Arnhem Land, has a width of 500 to 800 yards 40 or 50 miles from its mouth, which is at the Limmen Bight in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the more settled and inhabited provinces of Australia there are the Brisbane, the Fitzroy, and the Burdekin, rivers of Queensland; the Glenelg River, of Victoria; and the Swan River, of West Australia. But this continent cannot boast of a Nile, an Indus, or a Mississippi, and the interior suffers from the want of water communication. Physical Description. The continent of Australia, with a circumference of nearly 8000 miles, presents a contour wonderfully devoid of inlets from the sea, except upon its northern shores, where the coast line is largely indented. The Gulf of Carpentaria, situated in the north, is enclosed on the east by the projection of Cape York, and on the west by Arnhem Land, and forms the principal bay on the whole coast, measuring about 6° of long. by 6° of lat. Further to the west, Van Diemen's Gulf, though much smaller, forms Geology. The interior plain of Australia, enclosed by a better protected bay, having Melville Island between it the coast mountain ranges, is a vast concave table of sandand the ocean; while beyond this Queen's Channel and stone, with a surface area of 1,500,000 square miles. The Cambridge Gulf form inlets about S. lat. 14° 50'. On the sedimentary rock, in some parts, has been washed away or north-west of the continent the coast line is much broken, scooped out; but in the opinion of Mr. W. H. L. Ranken the chief indentations being Admiralty Gulf, Collier Bay, (Dominion of Australia, 1874), the edges of the plateau, and King Sound, on the shores of Tasman Land. West- where highest and least reduced by denudation, are actually ern Australia, again, is not favored with many inlets-Ex- formed of this sediment. While the southern margin of mouth Gulf and Shark Bay being the only bays of any size. the plain consists of walls of sandstone cliffs, extending The same remark may be made of the rest of the sea- along the sea-coast, the plateau on the east, south-east, the board; for, with the exception of Spencer Gulf, the Gulf west, and partly on the north, is bordered by terraced ramof St. Vincent, and Port Phillip, on the south, and More-parts of mountains. These elevations consist of granite |