OUR AUSTRALIAN COLONIES. This is a blank page OUR AUSTRALIAN COLONIES: THEIR gisrotag, fyisstarg, Nt5ff nuts Vroputs. SAMUEL MOSSMAN, AUTHOR OF THE 'ARTICLES "AUSTRALIA" AND "AUSTRALASIA" IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNIC!, ETC. WITH MAP AND PLANS LONDON : THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY. DEFOSITORIES: 56, PATERNOSTER Row ; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD ; AND 164, PICCADILLY. SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS. This is a blank page PREFACE. THE rapidity with which Australia has risen into im- portance is without parallel in the history of the world. Eighty years ago the Great South Land was a terra incognita, whose outline was uncertain and whose interior was unexplored. Within the memory of persons now living the first detachment of European settlers landed upon its shores. Yet the colonies then founded probably surpass, in wealth and population, England in the days of the Tudors. In the course of a single generation Australia has reached a position which few nations have attained by the slow growth of centuries. From the vastness of its resources, the energy of its settlers, and its commanding position, it is impossible to prescribe limits to its future. Every English village, almost every family, has helped to people its towns, cultivqe its soil, cover its pastures with flocks, or explore its mineral treas.• res. Some of our most important manufactures depend for their prosperity upon the raw material which it supplies. Its yield of gold affects the money-markets of the world. The design of the present volume is to trace the history of this progress, to describe the soil and climate, the flora and fauna—so strange to English eyes—of its different Vi PREFACE. colonies, and to give exact information upon the points likely to interest persons about to emigrate. It is believed that in no other work on Australia are the statistics so recent and so full. Statistical returns are indeed somewhat uninteresting to the general reader, yet in no other mode can the progress of the colonies be so clearly traced, or their present position be so accurately defined. The Author writes from long and familiar acquaintance with the country and the people. He has visited all the colonies, has resided in most of them, and has enjoyed special advantages for arriving at a just estimate of their history and prospects. Differences of opinion will, of course, exist as to many of the questions discussed : he does not pre- tend to infallibility ; but he claims to have spared no pains in his investigation of the facts, and sedulously to have aimed at impartiality in his judgment of them. For all the statements made and opinions offered he alone is per- sonally responsible. The plans of towns and harbours add greatly to the value of the volume. For these acknowledgments are due to Messrs. BLACKIE AND SONS. CONTENTS. PAGES CHAPTER I. DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 1-32 CHAPTER IL EXPLORATION OF THE INTERIOR 33-58 CHAPTER III NATURAL HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA 59-7G CHAPTER IV. NEW SOUTH WALES 77-127 CHAPTER V. TASMANIA 128-171 CHAPTER VI. Vic Tom.A. 172-240 CHAPTER VII. SOUTH AUSTRALIA 241-282 CHAPTER VIII. WEST AUSTRAL 983-315 VIII CONTENTS. PAGES CHAPTER IX. QUEENSLAND 316-332 CHAPTER X. PROSPECTIVE AND RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY 333-341 INDEX 342 MAPS AND PLANS. GENERAL MAP OF AUSTRALIA Frontispiece SYDNEY AND PORT JACKSON 126 HOBART TOWN 132 MELBOURNE AND PORT PHILLIP 238 BRISBANE AND MORETON BAY 318 CIIAPTER I. DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA. Theory of a Great Southern Continent—Claims of First Discovery— Portuguese Charts of 1512—Dutch Yacht Du yf ken in 1606—Spanish Discoverer Torres, in 1606—Claims of De Quires in 1609—Dirck Hartog, 1616—Zeachen, 1618—John Van Edels, 1619—Leeuwin Land seen in 1622—Nuyt's Land, 1627—Commodore De Witt, 1625—Commodore Pelsart, 1629—Wretchedness of the country and Inhabitants—Tasman discovers Van Diemen's Land in 1642, and the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1641— Dampier visits the West Coast in 1688—He returns in 1699 as Captain of the Roebuck—Portuguese Penalties for Publishing New Discoveries- Dampier's exaggerated Accounts—The Dingo—Cook discovers the East Coast in 1770—Cape Howe—Botany Bay—Flora and Fauna of the Country —Port Jackson seen—Moreton Bay and Tropical Coast—Bustards—Dan- gers of the Coral Sea—The Endeavour Strikes upon a Beef—Aspect of the Country—Friendliness of the Inhabitants—Objects of Natural History first seen and described by Sir Joseph Banks—Extraordinary character of the Trees, Shrubs, and Grasses—Cook names the country New SOUTH WALES. FOR upwards of a century before the actual con- figuration of Australia was ascertained, the most dis- tinguished European astronomers, geographers, and navigators entertained the theory that there must be a continent in the southern hemisphere equal in extent to those of Asia and Europe in the northern. They argued, that in order to preserve the equilibrium of the globe, the land of the southern division must extend through the tropical and temperate zones into thq antarctic circle, in the same manner, and in corres- ponding meridians to what was then either known, or supposed on good grounds, to extend from the equator into the arctic regions, They presumed that 2 DISCOVERY OT AUSTRALIA. the world could not revolve equably upon its axis, unless there was an area of land, above the ocean, between the south pole and the equator, equal to that in the northern hemisphere. A glance at the terrestrial globe will show to what a small extent this theory has been carried out by facts. Australia will be seen to counterbalance scarcely the area of Europe, while the vast Asiatic continent has no other equivalent than the boundless ocean. It was in the pursuit of this imagi- nary continent that the navigators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and probably before these periods, discovered the coast of Australia. As the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Dutch in those days were the most enterprising seamen, always in search of new lands to conquer and colonize, they were the most assiduous in endeavouring to solve this great geo- graphical problem. Since the extent and nature of the country has been ascertained, the honour of first discovery has become a subject of much enquiry and discussion. First, it was considered that the Dutch were entitled to that honour, then the Spaniards, but the most recent investigations tend to yield the priority of the discovery to the Portuguese. The various claims are impartially considered in a volume published by the Hakluyt Society, under the editorship of Mr. R. H. Major of the British Museum, who clearly shows, from charts in the library of that institution, that the coast line of Australia from the north-west round by the east to the southern shore, was known to the Portuguese as far back as 1542, and there is reason for concluding that it may have been explored between 1511 and 1529. There are no accounts, however, handed down to show who were the navigators that constructed those charts, FIRST DISCOVERERS. 3 so that it rests on the testimony of the charts alone. In the absence of such accounts, the first authentic narrative of discovery of the mainland rests with the Dutch ; but the name of the discoverer has not been handed down to posterity. He was the master of the yacht _Duyfien (Dove), and when sent out by the Dutch Government at Bantam to explore the island of New Guinea, he sighted Cape York, which was previously supposed to be the southern part of that island. This was in March, 1606. About the close of that year a Spanish navigator named Luis Vaez de Torres appears to have been in the same waters, with his ship the Almiranta and a tender, and to have sailed through the strait between New Guinea and Australia ; which has since been named Torres Strait by our countryman Dalrymple, who found the account of this voyage in the archives of Manilla, when that city surrendered to the British. Torres visited this part of Australasia with the sole view of discovering a southern continent, under the auspices of the Spanish Government at Callao. With him was a pilot named Don Pedro de Quiros, experienced in the navigation of the South Seas, who was on board another vessel, called the Capitana. The two vessels reached an island of the Australasian group in latitude 10° S., and anchored in a bay, naming the land Tierra del Espiritu Santo. Here they separated, Torres sailing west through the strait, and Quiros returning to Spanish America. It would appear that this pilot formed most exaggerated notions of the small discovery this expedition had made, for we read of his arrival in Spain, in 1609, and reporting that he had discovered a tract, of land equal in extent to the aggregate area of the whole of Europe and Asia Minor combined. He 4 DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA. presented several memorials on the subject to the Court of Madrid, desiring assistance for the conquest of the country and its settlement, giving it the name of Aus- tralia del Espiritu Santo. Apparently, his suit was rejected, as we hear nothing more of him afterwards. It is worthy of notice that he was the first navigator who named this country appropriately, and by the name which it now bears. Its derivation is from Austral Asia, or Southern Asia. Hence it was used by the Spaniards in their discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and this usage Quiros adopted when he gave his supposed continent the above designation. These first discoveries of Australia were made by navigators approaching the mainland from the north and north-east.