Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia Part 14

c.o.c.katoos, Parrots, and Parroquets, are innumerable, and of great variety.

The Nonpareil Parrot is perhaps the most beautiful bird of the parrot tribe in the whole world.

The Mountain Eagle is a magnificent creature; but the Emu, or New Holland Ca.s.sowary, is perhaps the tallest and loftiest bird that exists.

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The capital of the colony, and the seat of the colonial Government is Sydney. The Town of Sydney is beautifully situated in Sydney Cove, which I told you is one of the romantic inlets of Port Jackson, about seven miles from the entrance of the harbour. The headlands at the mouth of the harbour form one of the grandest features in the natural scenery of the country.

It is not, however, a distant or cursory glance that will give you a just idea of the importance of this busy capital.

In order to form a just estimation of it, you should take a boat and proceed from Sydney Cove to Darling Harbour, you will then see the whole extent of the eastern sh.o.r.e of the latter capacious basin equally crowded with warehouses, stores, dock-yards, mills, and wharfs; the store-houses built on the most magnificent scale, and with the best and most substantial materials. The population of Sydney is supposed now to exceed 10,000 persons.

The second town in the colony is Paramatta. It is distant about fourteen miles from Sydney, being pleasantly situated at the head of one of the navigable arms of Port Jackson. It contains nearly 5,000 inhabitants.

The other towns in the colony, are Windsor, Liverpool, Campbell Town, Newcastle and Maitland. The last will doubtless ere long be the second in the colony, as it is situated at the head of the navigation of Hunter's river.

Very fine roads have been formed in Australia, particularly one leading across the Blue mountains to Bathurst, on the western side of that range, which is 180 miles from Sydney.

The openness of the country around Bathurst is more favourable for hunting and shooting than most other parts of the colony.

The Kangaroo and the Emu are both hunted with dogs; they are both feeble animals, but they are not altogether dest.i.tute of the means of defence.

In addition to swiftness of foot, the Emu has a great muscular power in his long iron limbs, and can give an awkward blow to his pursuer, by striking out at him behind, like a young horse, while the Kangaroo, when brought to bay by the dogs, rests himself on his strong muscular tail, seizes the dog with his little hands or fore-feet, and thrusts at him with one of his hind feet, which is armed for that purpose with a single sharp-pointed hoof, and perhaps lay his side completely open.

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When hotly pursued, the kangaroo sometimes takes to the water, where, if he happen to be followed by a dog, he has a singular advantage over all other quadrupeds of his own size, from his being able to stand erect in pretty deep water.

In this position he waits for the dog, and when the latter comes close up to him, he seizes him with his fore-feet and presses him under water till he is drowned.

The Bustard, or native turkey, is occasionally shot in the Bathurst country. It sometimes weighs eighteen pounds, and is different from the common turkey, in the flesh of the legs being white, while that of the breast is dark-coloured.

Among the natives the old men have alone the privilege of eating the Emu, and married people only are permitted to eat ducks.

The natives suffer no animal, however small, to escape them.

One of the blacks being anxious to get an Opossum out of a dead tree, every branch of which was hollow, asked for a tomahawk, with which he cut a hole in the trunk above where he thought the animal lay concealed.

He found, however, that he had cut too low, and that it had run higher up. This made it necessary to smoke it out; he accordingly got some dry gra.s.s, and having set fire to it, stuffed it into the hole he had cut.

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A raging fire soon kindled in the tree, where the current of air was great, and dense columns of smoke issued from the end of each branch as thick as that from the chimney of a steam-engine.

The sh.e.l.l of the tree was so thin, that I thought it would soon be burnt through, and that the tree would fall; but the black had no such fears, and, ascending to the highest branch, he waited anxiously for the poor little wretch he had thus surrounded with dangers, and devoted to destruction; and no sooner did it appear half singed and half roasted, than he seized upon it and threw it down to us with an air of triumph.

The effect of the scene, in so lonely a forest, was very fine. The roaring of the fire in the tree, the fearless att.i.tude of the savage, and the a.s.sociations which his colour and appearance called up, enveloped as he was in smoke, were singular, and still dwell in my recollection. He had not long left the tree, when it fell with a tremendous crash, and was, when we next pa.s.sed that way, a mere heap of ashes.

The territory of the colony has been divided into ten counties, named as follows:--c.u.mberland, Camden, Argyll, Westmoreland, Londonderry, Boxburgh, Northumberland, Durham, Ayr, and Cambridge.

I will now give you a short account of Van Diemen's Land.

This fair and fertile island lies, as I have told you, at the southern extremity of New Holland, from which it is separated by Ba.s.s' Straits.

Its medial length from north to south is about 185 miles, and its breadth from east to west is 166 miles.

Its surface possesses every variety of mountain, hill, and dale; of forests and open meadows; of inland lakes, rivers and inlets of the sea, forming safe and commodious harbours; and every natural requisite that can render a country valuable or agreeable.

It enjoys a temperate climate, which is perhaps not very different from that of England, though less subject to violent changes.

The island is intersected by two fine rivers, rising near the centre; the one named the Tamar, falling into Ba.s.s' Straits, on the north, and forming Port Dalrymple; the other the Derwent, which discharges itself into the sea, on the south-eastern extremity. Hobart Town, the capital, is situated on the right bank of the Derwent, about five miles from the sea.

The natives of Van Diemen's Land are described by all the navigators, as a mild, affable, good-humoured and inoffensive race.

Though they are obviously the same race of people as those of New Holland, and go entirely naked, both men and women, yet their language is altogether different.

The British settlements in Australia are both numerous and important.

The oldest, most extensive, and valuable, was founded, as we have shewn already, at Sydney. The island of Tasmania was next occupied; within the last few years we have established the colonies of Port Phillip, Melbourne, Victoria, Cooksland, and others. The progress of these settlements has been rapid.

An extraordinary increase to emigration to Australia was given by the discovery of the Gold Regions.

For many years reports had been current that the Australian Alps and the Snowy Mountains were full of gold, but it was not till after the Californian discoveries that any was found in Australia.

Two shepherds were the first persons who found any gold, and for a long time they successfully concealed the source from which they obtained it; but being watched, their secret was discovered, and the news spread like wild-fire over the colony. Everybody was mad to go gold hunting; shepherds forsook their flocks; traders closed their stores; sailors ran away from their s.h.i.+ps; servants threw up their situations; everybody was mad to visit this newly-discovered Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up gold and silver. A groom informed his master, in one instance, that he would stop with him, as he had been in the family for five years, for a guinea a day, if it would be any convenience to him. Another family was left with only a boy of sixteen to attend them, and his stipulations were--two pounds a week, and wine to his dinner! In one year the population of Melbourne rose from 23,000 to 85,000 inhabitants; the town of Geelong trebled its numbers; perhaps never in the whole history of the world had there been so extraordinary an emigration.

As a monument of the golden wealth of Australia, there is in the International Exhibition a wooden obelisk dead gilt on the outside. This column is nearly seventy feet high, and some ten feet square at the base. It represents exactly the bulk of gold which Australia has sent to this country since 1851, and which in all amounts to nearly 800 tons.

Valuing the precious metal at its ascertainable worth, it appears that gold to the value of upwards of 15,000 sterling was dug from the bowels of the earth, washed from the sand of the rivers, or discovered by fortunate diggers in various parts of Australia in a single year.

The interior of Australia is still comparatively unknown. Last year an expedition was undertaken to discover a way across the Continent, and entrusted to a vigilant and enterprising commander named Burke. Although a certain amount of success attended the object of the expedition, the fate of Burke and his immediate companions was most deplorable. They perished by starvation!

CONCLUSION.

I have now told you all that my present limits will admit, of those interesting portions of the globe, called America and Australia, and I wish you to read again all that I have said, and I wish you also to view the inhuman conduct of the first discoverers of the former with proper feelings of aversion. If you have read an account of William Penn's first colony of Pennsylvania, you will see that his was the only just way of establis.h.i.+ng himself among the Indians. You must rejoice within yourselves on this occasion, that they were not Englishmen who practised these acts of cruelty and treachery towards the unoffending Mexicans and Peruvians. The workings of Providence are full of mystery, and I cannot help thinking that the state of anarchy and civil war in which Spain and Portugal are now and ever have been engaged, is an act of retribution awarded to their barbarity in the great scheme of G.o.d's providence.

It makes one blush for the sake of Christianity, to think that the perpetrators of the outrages upon the original possessors of the Americas were persons professing that sublime religion,--and that in the midst of their slaughter and plunder, they impiously held forth the cross of Christ. The confiding but dignified nature of the idolatrous Mexicans, did much more honour to the purity of the Christian religion than did the base treachery of their invaders, who professed Christ but knew him not.

Had they by mildness, perseverance, and reason convinced the inhabitants of the truth of the Christian religion, they might have become faithful converts, but it was unreasonable to expect that they should cast off the religion which their forefathers had professed, for a religion which they knew not at all, and the professors of which came with the sword to deprive them of their lives and their property.

I wish you, my young friends, to weigh all these circ.u.mstances whenever you read. It will impress the different subjects more thoroughly upon your memory; and if your minds be properly const.i.tuted, it will cultivate the good and eradicate the bad. I will again ask you to read this book a second time, and refer occasionally to the maps. And now good-bye!

THE END.