Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/347

Rh believe that good pasture-land and habitable country will yet be found in the interior, where the few explorers who have been there report only a desert unfit to sustain human life and impracticable for settlement. Artesian wells have been bored in many places, and a fair proportion of them have succeeded in finding water. There is so much territory in Australia that it is not likely the capabilities or disadvantages of all parts of it will be thoroughly known for many years to come.

"And now," he continued, as he glanced at a book he held in his hand, "let us read what an English author has written concerning this strange country:

"'Almost everything in nature is, in Australia, the reverse of what it is in England. When we have winter they have summer; when we have day they have night; we have our feet pressing nearly opposite to their feet. There the compass points to the south, the sun travels along the northern heavens, the barometer rises with a southerly and falls with a northerly wind. The animals are disproportionately large in their lower extremities, and carry their young in a pouch; the plumage of the birds is beautiful, their notes are harsh and strange; the swans are black, the owls screech and hoot only in the daytime; the cuckoo's song is heard only in the night. The valleys are cool, the mountain-tops are