Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/60

 Landsborough's account of his expedition, a list of the plants known to exist at the Gulf of Carpentaria, remarks upon the general similarity of these intra-tropical productions to those of the extra-tropical part of Australia. He says, "that a vast predominance of phyllodinous acaciæ, and especially of eucalypti (gum-trees) impress on the vegetation a character by no means dissimilar to that of the extra-tropical tracts of Australia; that plants indicating a high mountainous character of the country are absent; and that amongst grasses and other herbaceous plants, very many occur of nutritious property, and of perennial growth, readily renewed by judicious farming, when, after the rains of the summer months, a fresh pastoral green will be desired for the future herds and flocks of the gulf country during the cool and drier season of the year."

Mr. Landsborough's successful journey, more, perhaps, than that of any other before him, will stimulate pastoral colonization, already advancing with a wonderful progress from the southern settlements towards the north and west, into that vast and vacant expanse of a pastoral empire through which the explorer passed. The herbage and the climate are found suited to the sheep even in these low latitudes; nor is the Australian squatter much disturbed by the assertions of scientific theory that the close fine warm fleece cannot continue