Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/100

 introduce it in Northern Australia, and then it will be found whether the purer and drier air of the south can repel it absolutely.

The mountain chain, which qualifies the climate and the soil, yields also the minerals which make Australia famous. Iron was found in Tasmania by early voyagers. It was long known to exist in rich ore in New South Wales. Coal was found in the earliest days at the Hunter river. The Hunter river coalfield is estimated to exceed 8000 square miles, and New South Wales is deemed to possess 24,000 square miles of coalfields. In Queensland other large fields exist, but no important seams have yet been found except near the east coast cordillera. Gold is found in its flanks. In New South Wales at Bathurst and elsewhere, throughout Victoria, and in many parts of Queensland, the "yellow slave that puts odds among the rout of nations" has been found and exported by the ton. In 1892, after much search, the great granite tract of Western Australia was found to yield on its flanks rich stores of gold, and attracted speculators and scrapers from all parts of the world. Copper made South Australia rich, and abounds in New South Wales and Queensland. Tin crops up in the cordillera between New England and Darling Downs.

The cost of production, the measure of which is mainly the price of labour, has alone prevented the extension of iron-smelting and tin and copper mining. Diamonds, small, but of good quality, have been procured in the cordillera, and precious stones of many kinds.

Timber, hard and durable, and excellent for the carpenter's craft, grows in vast forests on the flanks of the cordillera, and various forms of eucalyptus are scattered over the whole island. The jarrah of Western Australia (Eucalyptus marginata) has a peculiar reputation for its power to defy decay when submerged and exposed to the attacks of the dreaded teredo, and has been largely exported to India. The iron-bark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) became from its durability a synonym for toughness. The fragrant-wooded