A “Sleeping Beauty” land—The coming of the English—Early explorations—The resourceful Australian. The fairy-story of the Sleeping Beauty might have been thought out by someone having Australia in his mind. She was the Sleeping Beauty among the lands of the earth—a great continent, delicately beautiful in her natural features, wonderfully rich in wealth of soil and of mine, left for many, many centuries hidden away from the life of civilization, finally to be wakened to happiness by the courage a

The diggings—The Government at Melbourne—The sheep-runs—The rabbits—The delights of Sydney. If , by good luck, you were to have a trip to Australia now, you would find, probably, the sea voyage, which takes up five weeks as a rule, a little irksome. But fancy that over, and imagine yourself safely into Australia of to-day. Fremantle will be the first place of call. It is the port of Perth, which is the capital of West Australia. That great State occupies nearly a quarter of the continent; but it

A dwindling race; their curious weapons—The Papuan tree-dwellers—The cunning witch-doctors. The natives of Australia were always few in number. The conditions of the country secured that Australia, kept from civilization for so long, is yet the one land of the world which, whilst capable of great production with the aid of man’s skill, is in its natural state hopelessly sterile. Australia produced no grain of any sort naturally; neither wheat, oats, barley nor maize. It produced practically no e

The kangaroo—The koala—The bulldog ant—Some quaint and delightful birds—The kookaburra—Cunning crows and cockatoo. Australia has most curious animals, birds, and flowers. This is due to the fact that it is such an old, old place, and has been cut off so long from the rest of the world. The types of animals that lived in Europe long before Rome was built, before the days, indeed, of the Egyptian civilization, animals of which we find traces in the fossils of very remote periods—those are the type

An introduction to an Australian home—Off to a picnic—The wattle, the gum, the waratah—The joys of the forest. The Australian child wakens very often to the fact that “to-day is a holiday.” The people of the sunny southern continent work very hard indeed, but they know that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”; and Jill a dull girl too. So they have very frequent holidays—far more frequent than in Great Britain. The Australian child, rising on a holiday morning, and finding it fine and b

His school and his games—“Bobbies and bushrangers”—Riding to school. Australia is the child among civilized nations, and her life throughout is a good deal like that of a child in some regards—more gay and free, less weighed down with conventions and thoughts of rules than the life of an older community. So Australia is a very happy place for children. There is not so much of the “clean pinny” in life—and what wholesome child ever really enjoyed the clean pinny and the tidied hair part of life?