The history of Australia illustrates in broad outlines how a continent inhabited by a most primitive race of men becomes known to the Europeans, how the latter colonise the country and drive the natives before them, and how the new community is organised and developed. Thus the subject may be divided into three chapters—(1) The condition before the discovery; (2) the story of the discovery; and (3) the story of the colonisation.

The Condition before the European Discovery

The degree of culture attained by the Australian aborigines when they first came in contact with the Europeans was not a high one. We find a race living in small tribes, without any social organisation, always moving from one place to another, living in huts hurriedly made of leaves or bark; almost naked; destitute of implements of metal, destitute of perforated stone implements, destitute of bows and arrows; having miserable boats, or none at all; having no other domestic animals than the semi-wild dingo, and having no knowledge of agriculture. The development which preceded this stage of civilisation must be looked for in the very infancy of human culture, where we have but little light to show the way. Nor is any special value to be attached to peculiar customs which this people may have in common with other races similarly situated. Circumcision, tattooing, exogamy, and sorcery are found in every part of the globe, but for none of these have we been able to show a common origin. Nor has the science of philology hitherto been able to connect the prehistoric ages of Australia with the culture of the rest of the world, though efforts have been made to show linguistic resemblances both with the Dekkan races and more recently with the negroes of Africa. The archæological investigations are confined to enormous “middens” or refuse heaps. One science remains, viz. comparative anthropology; but even this is not able to give a satisfactory answer, for the Australian aborigines form a group by themselves without any marked similarity to any other races. A few anthropological correspondences have led to comparisons with the Papuans, who geographically are their nearest neighbours.

There are in like manner faint traces pointing to the north and north-east, when we seek the source of the earliest culture of Australia. A later current from north-east to south-west has been suggested, but cannot be made to serve as the basis of any reliable hypothesis. It has been shown that weapons (the bow), and boats, and houses, and physical development reveal progress as the York peninsula is approached, and the influence of Malays and Papuans can be definitely pointed out. But all this bears the stamp of modern times, and must be the result of communications in a very recent period. The one thing certain is that the Australian race must have originated ages ago.

Investigation, which shows how completely Australia has been cut off from external influence, gives the best answer to the question why the development of the blacks has made so little progress, for the development of the world is found to be dependent on the intercourse between different races, on the conflicts between them, and on the struggle for existence thus caused.

The very nature of the country has helped to keep the people from making progress. In the first place there are but few inlets of the sea, and in the next place there are two other circumstances which only need to be pointed out to be appreciated. There are no ruminating animals, and grain is very rare. The transition from the most primitive life to that of the herdsman was therefore impossible, and this common door to a higher culture was closed. On the other hand, there was but little inducement to become agricultural, though the wild rice found in the northern part of South Australia has been used as food. Besides the climatic conditions, the long droughts—sometimes lasting for years in the interior of the country—were a decided obstacle to agriculture, even if there had been grain that could bear them better than rice. Finally, it should be added that the natural products are usually so abundant that it is comparatively easy to subsist without labour.

The fact is, at all events, that the great discovery on which all higher civilisation is based, viz. agriculture, had not been made in Australia at the time when it was colonised by Europeans.

There could be no doubt about the result when the aborigines and the Europeans met. The difference was so great that assimilation was impossible. The only vocations open to the aborigines in the new Australian community were those of the herdsman and policeman. The latter of these was of no advantage to the natives. The first English colonists were mainly banished criminals, reckless people a fact that gave the conflict between the two races the character of a war of extermination from the very outset, and in this warfare the native police has contributed much toward the destruction of the aborigines.

It is difficult to estimate the number of aborigines in Australia at the time when the European colonisation began. Natives, or traces of them, were met everywhere. Sturt relates that he met about 4000 in the course of a few days. We probably are not wide of the mark when we assume that fifty years ago there were about 200,000 natives in Australia; their number is now estimated at about 60,000.

The world is familiar with the systematic cruelty with which the Tasmanians were exterminated. In 1872 occurred the death of the last representative of a people which numbered about 5000 souls at the time of the founding of the colony in 1803. Many were killed in wars, many were even hunted out of the woods and destroyed. A large number of them were transported to the islands in Bass Strait, where death and ruin soon overtook them. The regular hunting and shooting of the natives in the early days of Queensland suggests the question, whether the coming of the new settlers deserved the name of the “advent of civilisation.”

History of the Discovery

Australia was the last continent discovered by the European, a fact easily explained by its situation. In the age of the great discoveries, navigators were seeking a way to India, and whether they chose to go by the way of the Cape of Good Hope or by the Straits of Magellan, in either case the route was far to the north of Australia. The navigators also seem to have kept as far to the north as possible. Still, a very long time cannot have passed ere sailors came in sight of the Australian coast. Strange to say, it is not known with certainty who was the first discoverer of this great continent. Some old maps seem to show that the Portuguese were aware of the existence of a large country south of Java before the year 1545, viz. “Great Java.” On these maps are found coral reefs, rivers, promontories, etc., and a number of names. It is, however, difficult to determine how far these maps may be based on the old purely theoretical assumption that there was a large terra australis incognita, to give equilibrium to the earth and balance the northern hemisphere.

Ere long the Spanish, the chief rivals of the Portuguese, also presented their claims. By the decision of Pope Alexander II, who acted as arbitrator, the Spanish were permitted to develop their sway only westward of Europe, while all to the east was left to the Portuguese. The conflict which then arose in regard to the Moluccas may explain why both parties were silent in regard to the great country they may have discovered south of the boundary.

At all events, the first Australian discoveries of which we have perfectly reliable accounts were not made before the beginning of the seventeenth century. We first come across the Dutch, who during their war of independence attempted to conquer the rich colonies of their enemies—the Spanish and the Portuguese. In connection with this we obtain the following reliable dates: in 1601 the Portuguese De Eridia landed on the north-west coast from the west; in 1606 the Spaniard Torres passed from the east through the straits named after him; and subsequently a Dutch ship called Duyfhen sailed along the coast toward Cape York. From this time the Dutch carry on nearly all the explorations. It would take us beyond our present limits to present the details of this gradual discovery, from the Dutch headquarters in Java, or on their route to East India, a route which they had to lay south of that of the Portuguese. In 1627 Peter Nuyts entered the great Australian bay from the west. In 1642 Tasman gained the south point of that country, which he called Van Diemen’s Land. It is not easy now to decide whether his reasons for regarding the latter as the southern point of a large continent were based on old theories or on more recent observations.

The English, the nation which was destined to control the development of Australia, did not make their appearance before 1688, when the freebooter Dampier explored the west coast. This happened one hundred years before the first colonies—the centenary of which has been recently celebrated—were planted, in 1788.

It was a long time before anybody made any decided effort to take possession of the country, and for this delay there were many reasons. The power of the Spanish was exhausted, and so was that of Portugal, while the victorious Dutch were fully occupied with their new rich provinces. To this must be added that all descriptions of Australia represented the continent as barren and without water to drink, and its natives as poor and savage. Nor did the coasts that had been seen present any very inviting aspect. There are but few harbours on the west and south coasts, and on the north-east side are dangerous coral reefs. The wrong side of Australia had been seen, and it was absurd to prefer this country to the Spice Island or America.

It is interesting to note that it was a scientific expedition which first led to the colonisation of the country. In 1768 Captain Cook carried an astronomer and one or two other scientists to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, and to make some other researches on their home voyage. This was the beginning of the present phase of scientific expeditions. In 1770 he touched Australia at Botany Bay, and made a chart of the coast to the north as far as Torres Straits, the importance of which he was the first to point out.

At this time England was greatly puzzled as to what it should do with all such criminals as it had heretofore sent to America. The declaration of independence on the part of the United States had put an end to the transportation of criminals to that country, and the favourable report made by Cook in regard to Botany Bay led Sydney to make up his mind to try Australia. The first transportation was made in 1788, but the colony was soon moved to the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson, where the city of Sydney was gradually built up.

The opening up of the continent was continued with this solitary colony as the base of exploration. Flinders and Bass commenced their expeditions in the year 1795 in a small open boat to both sides of the coast. In 1797 Bass called attention to the strait between Tasmania and the continent, and the next year he circumnavigated the island with Flinders. At the expense of the Government Flinders made charts of a large part of the coast of Australia, and this coast survey was continued from time to time almost to the present day.

During the most recent years attention has been chiefly given to the exploration of the interior.

How difficult it must have been to penetrate the Blue Mountains separating Sydney from the plains in the interior is evident from the fact that men like Bass attempted it in vain. It took twenty-five years to advance the first fifty miles, and thus to find a way between the steep rocks to the open country beyond. The first passage was effected in 1813, and from that time the explorations have progressed rapidly. Oxley, Cunningham, Mitchell, Sturt, and others explored the whole country along the rivers toward Victoria. The German naturalist Dr. L. Leichhardt began his explorations along the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1835, and made most valuable reports. In 1847 he undertook his last expedition, a bold attempt to penetrate to the west coast. Not a word was heard of him after April 3, 1848.

From Adelaide, settled about the same time, a series of attempts were begun in 1839 to penetrate the country from the south to the north. Heroic efforts were made in this direction by Eyre, who afterwards suffered untold hardships in travelling 1200 miles along the coast to King George’s Sound. O’Hara Burke and Wills were the first to reach the north coast in 1861, but both perished from hunger on their way back. The following year M‘Donald Stuart, after having made two abortive attempts, succeeded in getting through, and from that time onwards the route was open. In 1872 a telegraph line was laid, amid great difficulties, across the whole continent. It followed Stuart’s route, and this enterprise became the basis of a series of explorations all the way to the west coast, and thus the main features of the geography of Australia have become established. Prominent names in connection with this are Giles, Forrest, Warburton, and Gregory.

Most of these expeditions into the interior have been undertaken amid the greatest privations, such as a constant lack of water and terrible heat, even up to 127° F., so that it has at times been necessary to bury one’s self in the ground in order to endure it. Add to this the almost impassable spinifex-scrubs, the salt lakes, the sand-storms, etc., and we can form some idea of what the explorer had to suffer. The bright sunlight destroyed Sturt’s eyes, and many a life has been lost in the conflict with these similar impediments. But a large territory has been opened to civilisation by these martyrs.

History of the Colonies

On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip landed at Sydney with his first company of prisoners, and in a solemn manner took possession of a whole continent in the name of the inhabitants of a small island on the opposite side of the globe. Had the French expedition under La Perouse come earlier than it did to this place, the whole development of Australia might have taken a different direction. As it was, the ruling power of the British nation got an opportunity of expanding, and a new world was added to the dominion of the Anglo-Saxon race.

The beginning was made by about 1000 deported criminals, about one-fourth part of these being women. Now, one hundred years later, the population of the Australian colonies, leaving New Zealand out of consideration, is nearly 3,000,000. The first means of subsistence had to be produced by agriculture, but as few of the new settlers had any knowledge of this art, there was much suffering in the beginning, and in order to escape death from starvation, the domestic animals which had been brought had to be slaughtered. One hundred years later Australia contains 80,000,000 sheep and almost 8,000,000 head of cattle, and it sends annually to the mother country beef, mutton, wool, tallow, wheat, and metals to the value of about £40,000,000 sterling. A most remarkable progress!

The story of the early days of the colonies is chiefly a history of the deportation of criminals. The first colony received, from 1788 until the importation was stopped in 1839 by the energetic protest of the “free immigrants,” in all 60,000 criminals. The next colony of criminals was Tasmania, or as the island was then called, Van Diemen’s Land (1803). The deportation of criminals to the latter place ceased in 1853, when 68,000 prisoners had been sent there. What the condition was during the early days of these colonies, guarded by rough soldiers, we can judge from the fact that there occurred in 1835 in New South Wales, among 28,000 prisoners, 22,000 disciplinary punishments (3000 floggings) and 100 executions. In Tasmania, with a population of 37,000, about 15,000 were punished in 1834, including one-seventh part of the free citizens arrested for intemperance.

The last colony to which convicts were regularly deported was West Australia, founded in 1829. In 1849 this colony sent a petition to the Government asking for criminals to be sent thither, in order to promote the development of the colony. Under pressure from the other colonies, which finally on their own account resisted by force the landing of such immigrants, West Australia had to abandon this traffic in 1868, having then received about 10,000.

Scarcely a flora is to be found with so many peculiarities as the Australian. Still this does not imply that the things which appear so remarkable to the traveller are of equal interest to the botanist, though often they are more so. It is often stated as a curiosity that the Australian “cherry-trees” have the stone outside of the berry, and not inside, as with us in Europe. As a matter of fact this is nothing remarkable, the explanation being simply that what we call the fruit is merely an enlarged berry-like stalk, while the fruit proper is an unsavoury nut, hard as stone, growing at the extreme end of this stalk. Hence the tree is called Exocarpus (“outside fruit”). Similar phenomena are found in other parts of the world.^[23] The Australian “pear” grows with the large end nearest the stalk; but it is not a pear, just an inedible fruit, hard as wood, of a Proteacea called Xylomelum pyriforme.

This is not uncommon near Port Jackson. Another species of the same genus inhabits Queensland, and two others Western Australia; all bearing similar woody fruits or seed-vessels.

The arboreous and shrubby vegetation of Australia is almost exclusively evergreen, or rather one might say the leaves are persistent, for the beautiful shades of green characterising the forests and fields of the northern hemisphere are wanting, and are replaced by a monotony of olive-green or bluish-green. On the other hand, brilliantly coloured flowers abound, the natural orders Leguminosæ, Myrtaceæ, and Proteaceæ being especially numerous, diversified, and generally dispersed over the whole country.

Although large areas in the interior have not been botanically explored, the flora of the country is almost as well known as that of Europe, not in its minutest details, but in general character and composition. Robert Brown the eminent English botanist, facile princeps among botanists of his time, was the first real investigator of the exceedingly rich Australian flora. He accompanied Flinders on his voyage of discovery in Australian seas during the first years of the present century, and made very extensive collections of dried plants, which he elaborated after his return home. Noteworthy among subsequent botanists who have turned their attention to the vegetation of that part of the world are Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, and the late Mr. George Bentham. Assisted by the extensive collections and notes accumulated by Mueller, combined with the numerous earlier collections preserved in England, Bentham wrote a descriptive account of all the plants known to inhabit Australia. This work is in English, and it is a monument of industry and learning, consisting of seven octavo volumes with an aggregate of 4000 pages.

Sir Ferdinand von Mueller has since largely supplemented this work, besides publishing a number of highly important, fully illustrated monographs of the more important genera, such as Eucalyptus and Acacia. According to Mueller’s latest census of the flora, the number of species of flowering plants and ferns known to inhabit the country at the end of 1888 was 8909, belonging to 1394 genera and 149 natural orders.

These are large numbers, but, what is more remarkable, something like 7700 of these species are endemic, or peculiar to Australia. The endemic element in a flora is nowhere in the world higher, if even so high, in so large an area, as in Western Australia, where eighty-five per cent of the species are peculiar, and of the remaining fifteen per cent few species extend beyond Australia.

Several genera are very numerous in species, notably Acacia, of which there are upwards of 300, and Eucalyptus, of which there are 150; and Grevillea (Proteaceæ) is represented by 150, and Melaleuca (Myrtaceæ) by 100 species.

Foremost in utility and most prominent in the scenery all over Australia are the species of Eucalyptus, locally named blue gum, green gum, iron-bark, stringy-bark, etc. etc. They vary in stature from dwarf bushes to the tallest tree in the world, one species, E. amygdalina (p. 370), considerably overtopping the “big trees” (Wellingtonia) of California. In some parts of Victoria there are groves of this tree averaging upwards of 300 feet in height, and several, as recorded in Mueller’s useful Eucalyptographia, have been found to measure more than 400 feet, and the tallest of all 471 feet.

In addition to being the largest and most durable timber of the country, the gum-trees yield a variety of useful products. Most of them exude a valuable gum resin; the bark of others is employed in tanning, and the oil of Eucalyptus is now extracted to the extent of 2000 gallons annually in one factory. Several of them periodically shed their barks in large sheets, after the manner of our planes and birches, but more thoroughly. The leaves, like those of many other Australian trees, are vertical instead of horizontal, so that they afford comparatively little shade. Unlike our forest trees, too, they have more or less conspicuous flowers—some of the western species especially large and highly coloured flowers, followed by woody seed-vessels varying in different species from less than a quarter of an inch to three inches in diameter, and containing numerous very small seeds.

The genus Eucalyptus belongs to a tribe of the Myrtaceæ characterised by having a dry instead of a fleshy fruit. To the same group belongs the large genus Melaleuca, which is likewise almost peculiar to Australia and spread all over it. Conspicuous among the species of Melaleuca is M. Leucadendron, which inhabits all except the south-eastern region. It is called tea-tree, paper-bark tree, and milkwood in the different colonies. The wood of this tree is very beautiful and durable, and valuable for shipbuilding and other purposes; and the papery bark is said to be impervious to water and remains sound after the wood has decayed. The accompanying woodcut (p. 373) will give an idea of the aspect of the tree.

Next to the Eucalypti, the Proteaceæ and Acaciæ are almost everywhere prominent features in the landscape. The numerous species of Banksia, honeysuckles of the colonists, are generally dispersed, and easily recognised by their large dense heads of showy flowers, succeeded by large, gaping, woody seed-vessels.

With few exceptions, the species of Acacia differ from those of other parts of the world (except two or three in the Mascarene and Sandwich Islands) in the feathery pinnate leaves being reduced to vertically flattened, rounded, and variously shaped organs corresponding to the leaf-stalk, and termed phyllodes. Occasionally, and especially in young seedling-plants, the ordinary pinnate blade is born at the end of the phyllode, thus giving a clue to its true nature.