From Eight Merino Sheep
Introduced In 1793 By A Settler Named McArthur, There Has Been
Multiplication Into Millions, And The Food-Store Of The Old World
Begins To Be Replenished By Australian Mutton.
The unexplored interior has given a happy hunting-ground to satisfy
the British spirit of adventure and research; but large waterless
tracts, that baffle man's ingenuity, have put man's powers of
endurance to sore trial.
The mountains of Australia are all of the oldest rocks, in which
there are either no fossil traces of past life, or the traces are of
life in the most ancient forms. Resemblance of the Australian
cordilleras to the Ural range, which he had especially been
studying, caused Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1844, to predict that
gold would be found in Australia. The first finding of gold--the
beginning of the history of the Australian gold-fields--was in
February, 1851, near Bathurst and Wellington, and to-day looks back
to the morning of yesterday in the name of Ophir, given to the
Bathurst gold-diggings.
Gold, wool, mutton, wine, fruits, and what more Australia can now
add to the commonwealth of the English-speaking people, Englishmen
at home have been learning this year in the great Indian and
Colonial Exhibition, which is to stand always as evidence of the
numerous resources of the Empire, as aid to the full knowledge of
them, and through that to their wide diffusion. We are a long way
now from the wrecked ship of Captain Francis Pelsart, with which the
histories in this volume begin.
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