Chapter XVII: Part 17

Although Austin had failed to attain success at the bar it was not long before he had an opportunity of exercising his abilities and in a manner peculiarly suited to his particular turn of mind. In 1826 a number of eminent men were engaged in the foundation of University College, and it was determined to establish in it a chair of jurisprudence. This chair was offered to Austin and he agreed to accept it. As he was not called upon to begin his lectures immediately, he resolved to proceed to Germany in order to prepare himself for his duties by studying the method of legal teaching pursued at German universities. He resided first at Heidelberg, and afterwards at Bonn, where he lived on terms of intimacy with such distinguished lawyers as Savigny and K.J.A. Mittermaier; and such eminent men of letters as Niebuhr, Brandis, Schlegel and A.W. Heffter. He began lecturing in 1828, and at first was not without encouragement. His class was a peculiarly brilliant one. It included a number of men who afterwards became eminent in law, politics and philosophy--Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Charles Buller, Charles Villiers, Sir Samuel Romilly and his brother Lord Romilly, Edward Strutt afterwards Lord Belper, Sir William Erie and John Stuart Mill were all members of his class. All of these have left on record expressions of the profound admiration which the lectures excited in the minds of those who heard them. But the members of his class, though exceptional in quality, were few in number, and as there was no fixed salary attached to the professorship, Austin could not afford to remain in London, and in 1832 he resigned. In that year he published his _Province of Jurisprudence determined_, being the first ten of his delivered lectures compressed into six.

There is ample testimony that Austin's lectures were very highly appreciated by those who heard them. Their one fault was that they were over-elaborated. In his desire to avoid ambiguity, he repeats his explanations and qualifications to an extent which must have tired his hearers. Nevertheless the lectures excited an admiration which almost amounted to enthusiasm. Nor was Austin's influence confined to his lectures. Sir William Erle says in a letter written to him in 1844, "The interchange of mind with you in the days of Lincoln's Inn I regard as a deeply important event in my life, and I ever remember your friendship with thankfulness and affection." John Stuart Mill, whose views on political subjects were entirely opposed to those of Austin, spoke of him after his death as the man "to whom he (Mill) had been intellectually and morally most indebted," and he expressed the opinion "that few men had contributed more by their individual influence, and their conversation, to the formation and growth of the most active minds of the generation."

In 1833 a royal commission was issued to draw up a digest of criminal law and procedure. Of this commission Austin was a member. The first report was signed by all the commissioners, and was presented in June 1834. Nevertheless it appears from some notes made at the time that Austin, though he thought it his duty to sign the report, strongly objected to some passages which it contained. It is pretty obvious from the nature of these objections that nothing would have satisfied him short of a complete recasting of the criminal law, whereas what the commissioners were ordered to produce was not a code but a digest. Probably Austin felt, as Mr Justice Wills felt some years later, that the anomalies which a code would remove would "choke a digest."

In 1834 the benchers of the Inner Temple appointed Austin to give lectures on the "General Principles of Jurisprudence and International Law." He delivered a few lectures in the spring of that year, but in June the course was by order of the benchers suspended on account of the smallness of the attendance, and it was never resumed. He then went to live with his wife and only child Lucie (afterwards Lady Duff-Gordon) at Boulogne. Here he remained for about a year and a half. He then accepted an appointment offered him by Sir James Stephen to go as royal commissioner to Malta in conjunction with Mr (afterward Sir George) Cornewall Lewis, to inquire into the nature and extent of the grievances of which the natives of that island complained.

The Austins remained in Malta until July 1838. After their return they lived a good deal abroad, and in 1844 they settled in Paris, where they remained until driven out of France by the revolution of 1848. They then took a house at Weybridge, and there Austin remained until his death in December 1859. He was urged by his friends to publish a second edition of the _Province of Jurisprudence_, which was then out of print, and he went so far as to allow a prospectus to be issued by Mr Murray of an extended work on "The Principles and Relations of Jurisprudence and Ethics." But nothing came of it.

In 1842 Austin published in the _Edinburgh Review_ an attack upon Friedrich List's system of trade protection (_Das nationale System der politischen Okonomie_). And in 1859 he published a pamphlet entitled "A Plea for the Constitution." This was occasioned by the publication of Lord Grey's essay on "Parliamentary Government." Its main object was to show that the consequences to be anticipated from Parliamentary Reform were all of them either impossible of realization or mischievous. He thought any attempt on the part of the poorer classes to improve their position was barred by the inexorable laws of political economy; and that if they obtained power they would only use it to plunder the rich; whilst, on the other hand, he seems not to have had any suspicion that the "proprietary class" were likely to disregard the interests of the poor. He thinks that political power is safest in the hands of those possessed of hereditary or acquired property; and that without property even intelligence and knowledge afford no presumption of political capacity. Undoubtedly Austin was a utilitarian in the Benthamite sense, and remained so to the end of his life. It must be remembered that Bentham's sole and immutable test of human action was the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This is a principle which an aristocrat may adopt if he chooses, no less than a democrat; an individualist no less than a socialist; and there is nothing in the "Plea for the Constitution" which contravenes this. But Austin thought, and in this no doubt he differed from Bentham, that the mass of the people did not know their own interests so well as "an aristocracy of independent gentlemen" who might be trusted to provide for the wants of all classes alike.

Austin's position as a jurist is much more difficult to estimate. Twice his influence appeared likely to produce some impression upon English law, but upon both occasions it lasted only a short time, and never extended very far. The men whom he influenced were very eminent, but in numbers they were few. As a rule, students for the bar never at any time paid any attention to his teaching. The first published lectures were almost forgotten when Mr (afterwards Sir Henry) Maine was appointed to lecture on jurisprudence at the Inner Temple. Both in his private and public lectures Maine constantly urged upon his hearers the importance of Austin's analytical inquiries into the meaning of legal terms. He used to say that it was Austin's inquiries which had made a philosophy of law possible. Undoubtedly Maine's influence revived for a short time the interest in Austin's teaching. Maine was lecturing about the time of Austin's death, and in 1861 Mrs Austin published a second edition of the _Province of Jurisprudence_, and this was followed soon after by two volumes which contained in addition in a fragmentary form the remaining lectures delivered at University College and other notes (_Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law_).

It cannot be said that Austin's views of jurisprudence have had, as yet, any visible influence whatever on the study of English law. But if we consider what it was that Austin endeavoured to teach, it can hardly be said that the subject is one which a lawyer can with impunity neglect. He proposes to distinguish law from morals; to explain the notions which have been entertained of duty, right, liberty, injury, punishment and redress; and their connexion with, and relations to, sovereignty; to examine the distinction between rights _in rem_ and rights _in personam_, and between rights _ex contractu_ and rights _ex delicto_; and further to determine the meaning of such terms as right, obligation, injury, sanction, person, thing, act and forbearance. These are some of the terms, notions and distinctions which Austin endeavoured to explain. They are daily in the mouth of every practising lawyer. The only portion of Austin's work which has attracted much attention of recent years is his conception of sovereignty, and his dictum that all laws properly so called must be considered as sanctioned expressly or tacitly by the sovereign. This has been indignantly denied. It has been considered enough to justify this denial to point out that there are in existence states where the seat of sovereignty, and the ultimate source of law, cannot be accurately indicated. But this criticism is entirely misplaced; for as pointed out by Maine (_Early History of Institutions_, Lecture xii.), in an elaborate discussion of Austin's views, which in the main he accepts, what Austin was engaged upon was not an inquiry into the nature of sovereignty as it is found to exist, but an inquiry into what was the connexion between the various forms of political superiority. And this inquiry was undertaken in order to enable him to distinguish the province of jurisprudence properly so called from the province of morality; an inquiry which was hopeless unless the connexion just stated was clearly conceived. Austin's views of sovereignty, therefore, was an abstraction, useless it is true for some purposes, but by no means useless for others. "There is," as Maine says, "not the smallest necessity for accepting all the conclusions of these great writers (i.e. Bentham and Austin) with implicit deference, but there is the strongest necessity for knowing what these conclusions are. They are indispensable, if for no other object, for the purpose of clearing the head." These last words exactly express the work which Austin set himself to do. It was to clear his own head, and the heads of his hearers, that he laboured so hard. As Austin once said of himself, his special vocation was that of untying intellectual knots. The disentangling of classifications and distinctions, the separation of real from accidental distinctions, the analysis of ideas confusedly apprehended, these (as has been truly said) were the characteristics of Austin's work which specially distinguished him. Austin thought that this somewhat irksome task was a necessary preliminary both to the study of law as a science, and to the production of a code. It is a curious reflection that whilst the lectures in which these inquiries were begun (though not completed) excited the admiration of his contemporaries, hardly any one now thinks such inquiries worth pursuing.

The _Lectures on Jurisprudence_ were reviewed by J.S. Mill in the
_Edinburgh Review_ of October 1863, and this review is republished in
Mill's _Dissertations and Discussions_, vol. 3, p. 206. Professor
Jethro Brown has published (1906) an edition of Austin's earlier
lectures, in which they are stated in an abbreviated form. There is a
sketch of his life by his widow in the preface to the _Lectures on
Jurisprudence_, which she published after his death. (W. Ma.)

AUSTIN, SARAH (1793-1867), English author, was born in 1793, the daughter of John Taylor (d. 1826), a wool-stapler and a member of the well-known Taylor family of Norwich. Her great grandfather, Dr John Taylor (1694-1761), had been pastor of the Presbyterian church there, and wrote a once famous polemical work on _The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin_ (1738), which called forth celebrated treatises by Jonathan Edwards on _Original Sin_. Her mother, Susannah Cook, was an exceedingly clever woman who transmitted both her beauty and her talent to her daughter. Their friends included Dr Alderson and his daughter Mrs Opie, Henry Crabbe Robinson, the Gurneys and Sir James Mackintosh. Sarah Taylor married in 1820 John Austin (q.v.). They lived in Queen Square, Westminster, where Mrs. Austin, whose tastes, unlike her husband's, were extremely sociable, gathered round her a large circle, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and the Grotes being especially intimate. She received many Italian exiles, who found a real friend in her. In 1821 was born her only child, Lucie, afterwards Lady Duff-Gordon. Mrs. Austin never attempted any considerable original work, contenting herself chiefly with translations, of which the most important are the _History of the Reformation in Germany_ and the _History of the Popes_ (1840), from the German of Leopold von Ranke, _Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia_ (1834) from the French of V. Cousin, and F.W. Carove's _The Story without an End_ (1864). After her husband's death in 1859 she edited his _Lectures on Jurisprudence_. She also edited the _Memoirs of Sydney Smith_ (1855) and Lady Duff-Gordon's _Letters from Egypt_ (1865). She died at Weybridge on the 8th of August 1867.

See _Three Generations of Englishwomen_ (1888), by her grand-daughter,
Mrs Janet Ross.

AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER (1793-1836), American pioneer, was born in Austinville, Wythe county, Virginia, on the 3rd of November 1793. He was the son of Moses Austin (1767-1821), a native of Durham, Connecticut, who in 1820 obtained from Mexico a grant of land for an American colony in Texas, but died before he could carry out his project. The son was educated in New London, Connecticut, and at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, and settled in Missouri, where he was a member of the territorial legislature from 1813 to 1819. In 1819 he removed to Arkansas Territory, where he was appointed a circuit judge. After his father's death he obtained a confirmation of the Texas grants from the newly established Mexican government, and in 1821-1823 he established a colony of several hundred American families on the Brazos river, the principal town being named, in his honour, San Felipe de Austin. He was a firm defender of the rights of the Americans in Texas, and in 1833 he was sent to the city of Mexico to present a petition from a convention in Texas praying for the erection of a separate state government. While there, despairing of success for his petition, he wrote home recommending the organization of a state without waiting for the consent of the Mexican congress. This letter falling into the hands of the Mexican government, Austin, while returning home, was arrested at Saltillo, carried as a prisoner back to Mexico, and imprisoned for a year without trial. Returning to Texas in 1835, he found the Texans in armed revolt against Mexican rule, and was chosen commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces, but after failing to take San Antonio he resigned the command, for which he had never considered himself fitted, and in November 1835 went to the United States as a commissioner to secure loans and supplies, and to learn the position the United States authorities would be likely to take in the event of a declaration of Texan independence. He succeeded in raising large sums, and received assurances that satisfied him that Americans would look with great favour on an independent Texas. Returning to Texas in the summer of 1836, he became a candidate, rather reluctantly, for the presidency of the newly established republic of Texas, but was defeated by Samuel Houston, under whom he was secretary of state until his sudden death on the 7th of December 1836.

See _A Comprehensive History of Texas_, edited by D.G. Wooten (2
vols., Dallas, 1898).

AUSTIN, a city and the county-seat of Mower county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Red Cedar river and Turtle creek, (by rail) 105 m. S. of Minneapolis and 100 m. from St Paul. Pop. (1900) 5474; (1905, state census) 6489 (913 foreign-born); (1910, U.S. census) 6960. It is served by the Chicago Great Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways. Austin is the seat of the Southern Minnesota Normal College and Austin School of Commerce (1896), and has a Carnegie library, court house and city hall. It is a market for livestock, and for dairy and farm products, and has slaughtering and packing establishments, flour mills, creameries and cheese factories, canning and preserving factories, carriage works, a flax fibre mill and grain elevators. Brick, tile, sewer-pipe, and hydraulic cement are manufactured, and there are railway repair shops. A valuable water-power is utilized for manufacturing purposes. Fresh-water pearls of considerable value and beauty are found in the Red Cedar river. The city owns and operates its own water-supply system and electric-lighting plant. Austin was settled in 1855, was incorporated as a village in 1868, and was chartered as a city in 1873.

AUSTIN, the capital of Texas, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Travis county, on the N. bank of the Colorado river, near the centre of the state and about 145 m. W.N.W. of Houston. Pop. (1890) 14,575; (1900) 22,258, of whom 5822 were negroes; (1910 census) 29,860. Austin is served by the Houston & Texas Central, the International & Great Northern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. The city is built on high bluffs 40-120 ft. above the river, which is spanned here by a bridge, built in 1874. The Texas State Capitol, a handsome building of red Texas granite, with a dome 318 ft. high, cost more than $3,500,000, and stands in a square in the centre of the city. It was built (1881-1888) by Chicago capitalists in exchange for a land grant of 3,000,000 acres. It is in the form of a Greek cross, with an extreme length of 556.5 ft. and an extreme width of 288.8 ft. Next to the National Capitol at Washington, it is the largest capitol building in the United States, and it is said to be one of the ten largest buildings in the world. Austin is the seat of the University of Texas (opened in 1883; co-educational); the medical department of the state university is at Galveston, and the departments in Austin are the college of arts, department of education, department of engineering, department of law, school of pharmacy, and school of nursing. The government of the university is vested in a board of eight regents nominated by the governor and appointed with the advice and consent of the state senate. At Austin are also state institutions and asylums for the insane, the blind, the coloured deaf and blind; the state school for the deaf and dumb; the state Confederate home; the Confederate woman's home (1907; for wives and widows of Confederate soldiers and sailors), maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy; St Mary's Academy (Roman Catholic, under the supervision of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, founded 1875, chartered 1886); St Edward's College (Roman Catholic, chartered 1885); the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church, South), opened in 1902 by the Synod of Texas, and after 1905 partly controlled by the Synod of Arkansas; Tillotson College (a negro school under Congregational control, founded by the American Missionary Association, chartered in 1877, and opened in 1881), and Samuel Huston College (for negroes; Methodist Episcopal; opened in 1900 and named in honour of an Iowan benefactor). The principal newspapers of Austin are the _Statesman_ (Democratic, established in 1871), a morning paper, and the _Tribune_ (Democratic, established in 1891), an evening paper. The _Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Society_ is published here. Austin is the principal trade and jobbing centre for central and western Texas, is an important market for livestock, cotton, grain and wool, and has extensive manufactories of flour, cotton-seed oil, leather goods, lumber and wooden ware; the value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,569,353, being 105.2% more than in 1900. The city owns and operates its water-supply system. In 1890-1893 one of the largest dams in the world, an immense structure of granite masonry, 1200 ft. long. 60-70 ft. high, and 18 to 66 ft. thick, was constructed across the Colorado river 2 m. above the city for the purpose of supplying water and power, creating a reservoir (Lake M'Donald) about 30 m. long. Freshets in the spring of 1900, however, undermined the wall, and on the 7th of April the dam broke with a resulting loss of several lives and about $1,000,000 worth of property. The rebuilding of the dam was projected in 1907. Austin was first settled in 1838 and was named Waterloo, but in 1839, when it was chosen as the site of the capital of the Republic of Texas, it was renamed in honour of Stephen F. Austin, one of its founders. Under the influence of General Sam Houston the capital was for a time in 1842-1845 removed from Austin to Houston, but in 1845 an ordinance was passed making Austin the capital, and it remained the state capital after Texas entered the Union, although Huntsville and Tehuacana Springs in 1850 and Houston in 1872 attempted in popular elections to be chosen in its place. The first Anglo-American settlement in Texas, established on the Brazos river in 1823 by members of the Austin colony, was San Felipe de Austin now San Felipe. In 1909 Austin adopted a commission form of government.

AUSTRALASIA, a term used by English geographers in a sense nearly synonymous with the Oceania of continental writers. It thus comprises all the insular groups which extend almost continuously from the south-eastern extremity of Asia to more than half-way across the Pacific. Its chief divisions are Malaysia with the Philippines; Australia with Tasmania and New Zealand; Melanesia, that is, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty, the Solomons, New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, Fiji, Loyalties and New Caledonia; Micronesia, that is, the Ladrones, Pelew and Carolines, with the Marshall and Gilbert groups; lastly, Polynesia, that is, Samoa, Tonga, Cook, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Ellice, Hawaii and all intervening clusters. The term is so far justified in that it harmonizes better than Oceania did with the names of the other continents, and also embodies the two essential facts that it is a south-eastern extension of Asia, and that its central and most important division is the great island-continent of Australia. In a more restricted sense the term Australasia corresponds to the large division including Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand.

See _Australasia_, 2 vols. Stanford Compendium Series, new issue
(London, 1907-1908).

AUSTRALIA, the only continent entirely in the southern hemisphere. It lies between 10 deg. 39' and 39 deg. 11-1/2' S., and between 113 deg. 5' and 153 deg. 16' E. Its greatest length is 2400 m. from east to west, and the greatest breadth 1971 m. from north to south. The area is, approximately, 2,946,691 sq. m., with a coast line measuring about 8850 m. This is equal to 1 m. to each 333 sq. m. of land, the smallest proportion of coast shown by any of the continents.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

General character.

_Physiography._--The salient features of the Australian continent are its compact outline, the absence of navigable rivers communicating with the interior, the absence of active volcanoes or snow-capped mountains, its isolation from other lands, and its antiquity. Some of the most profound changes that have taken place on this globe occurred in Mesozoic times, and a great portion of Australia was already dry land when vast tracts of Europe and Asia were submerged; in this sense, therefore, Australia has been rightly referred to as one of the oldest existing land surfaces. It has been described as at once the largest island and the smallest continent on the globe. The general contours exemplify the law of geographers in regard to continents, viz. as to their having a high border around a depressed interior, and the highest mountains on the side of the greatest ocean. On the N. Australia is bounded by the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait; on the E. by the Pacific Ocean; on the S. by Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean; and on the W. by the Indian Ocean. It stands up from the ocean depths in three fairly well-marked terraces. The basal plain of these terraces is the bed of the ocean, which on the Pacific side has an average depth of 15,000 ft. From this profound foundation rise Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia, in varying slopes. The first ledge rising from the ocean floor has a depth averaging 8000 ft. below sea-level. The outer edge of this ledge is roughly parallel to the coast of Western Australia, and more than 150 m. from the land. Round the Australian Bight it continues parallel to the coast, until south of Spencer Gulf (the basal ledge still averaging 8000 ft. in depth) it sweeps southwards to lat. 55 deg., and forms a submarine promontory 1000 m. long. The edge of the abysmal area comes close to the eastern coasts of Tasmania and New South Wales, approaching to within 60 m. of Cape Howe. The terrace closest to the land, known as the continental shelf, has an average depth of 600 ft., and connects Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania in one unbroken sweep. Compared with other continents, the Australian continental shelf is extremely narrow, and there are points on the eastern coast where the land plunges down to oceanic depths with an abruptness rarely paralleled. Off the Queensland coast the shelf broadens, its outer edge being lined by the seaward face of the Great Barrier Reef. From Torres Strait to Dampier Land the shelf spreads out, and connects Australia with New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago. An elongation of the shelf to the south joins Tasmania with the mainland. The vertical relief of the land above the ocean is a very important factor in determining the climate as well as the distribution of the fauna and flora of a continent.

The land mass of Australia rises to a mean height much less than that
of any other continent; and the chief mountain systems are parallel
to, and not far from, the coast-line. Thus, taking the continent as a
whole, it may be described as a plateau, fringed by a low-lying
well-watered coast, with a depressed, and for the most part arid,
interior. A great plain, covering quite 500,000 sq. m., occupies a
position a little to the east of a meridional line bisecting the
continent, and south of the 22nd degree, but portions of it stretch
upwards to the low-lying country south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The
contour of the continent in latitude 30 deg. 5' is as follows:--a short
strip of coastal plain; then a sharp incline rising to a mountain
range 4000 ft. above sea-level, at a distance of 40 m. from the coast.
From this a gently-sloping plateau extends to almost due north of
Spencer Gulf, at which point its height has fallen almost to
sea-level. Then there is a gentle rise to the low steppes, 500 to 1000
ft. above sea-level. A further gentle rise in the high steppes leads
to the mountains of the West Australian coast, and another strip of
low-lying coastal land to the sea.

With a circumference of 8000 m. Australia presents a contour
wonderfully devoid of inlets from the sea except on its northern
shores, where the coast-line is largely indented. The Gulf of
Carpentaria, situated in the north, is enclosed on the east by the
projection of Cape York, and on the west by Arnheim Land, and forms
the principal bay on the whole coast, measuring about 6 deg. of long.
by 6 deg. of lat. Farther to the west, Van Diemen's Gulf, though much
smaller, forms a better-protected bay, having Melville Island between
it and the ocean; while beyond this, Queen's Channel and Cambridge
Gulf form inlets about 14 deg. 50' S. On the north-west of the
continent the coast-line is much broken, the chief indentations being
Admiralty Gulf, Collier Bay and King Sound, on the shores of Tasman
Land. Western Australia, again, is not favoured with many inlets,
Exmouth Gulf and Shark's Bay being the only bays of any size. The same
remark may be made of the rest of the sea-board; for, with the
exception of Spencer Gulf, the Gulf of St Vincent and Port Phillip on
the south, and Moreton Bay, Hervey Bay and Broad Sound on the east,
the coast-line is singularly uniform. There are, however, numerous
spacious harbours, especially on the eastern coast, which are referred
to in the detailed articles dealing with the different states. The
Great Barrier Reef forms the prominent feature off the north-east
coast of Australia; its extent from north to south is 1200 m., and it
is therefore the greatest of all coral reefs. The channel between the
reef and the coast is in places 70 m. wide and 400 ft. deep. There are
a few clear openings in the outer rampart which the reef presents to
the ocean. These are opposite to the large estuaries of the Queensland
rivers, and might be thought to have been caused by fresh water from
the land. The breaks are, however, some 30 to 90 m. away from land and
more probably were caused by subsidence; the old river-channels known
to exist below sea-level, as well as the former land connexion with
New Guinea, seem to point to the conditions assumed in Darwin's
well-known subsidence theory, and any facts that appear to be
inconsistent with the theory of a steady and prolonged subsidence are
explainable by the assumption of a slight upheaval.

With the exception of Tasmania there are no important islands
belonging geographically to Australia, for New Guinea, Timor and other
islands of the East Indian archipelago, though not removed any great
distance from the continent, do not belong to its system. On the east
coast there are a few small and unimportant islands. In Bass Strait
are Flinders Island, about 800 sq. m. in area, Clarke Island, and a
few other small islands. Kangaroo Island, at the entrance of St
Vincent Gulf, is one of the largest islands on the Australian coast,
measuring 80 m. from east to west with an average width of 20 m.
Numerous small islands lie off the western coast, but none has any
commercial importance. On the north coast are Melville and Bathurst
Islands; the former, which is 75 m. long and 38 m. broad, is fertile
and well watered. These islands are opposite Port Darwin, and to the
westward of the large inlet known as Van Diemen's Gulf. In the Gulf of
Carpentaria are numerous islands, the largest bearing the Dutch name
of Groote Eylandt.

Mountains.

Along the full length of the eastern coast extends a succession of
mountain chains. The vast Cordillera of the Great Dividing Range
originates in the south-eastern corner of the continent, and runs
parallel with and close to the eastern shore, through the states of
Victoria and New South Wales, right up to the far-distant York
Peninsula in Queensland. In Victoria the greatest elevation is reached
in the peaks of Mount Bogong (6508 ft.) and Mount Feathertop (6303
ft.), both of which lie north of the Dividing Range; in the main range
Mount Hotham (6100 ft.) and Mount Cobberas (6025 ft.) are the highest
summits. In New South Wales, but close to the Victorian border, are
found the loftiest peaks of Australia, Mount Kosciusco and Mount
Townsend, rising to heights of 7328 and 7260 ft. respectively. The
range is here called the Muniong, but farther north it receives the
name of Monaro Range; the latter has a much reduced altitude, its
average being only about 2000 ft. As the tableland runs northward it
decreases both in height and width, until it narrows to a few miles
only, with an elevation of scarcely 1500 ft.; under the name of the
Blue Mountains the plateau widens again and increases in altitude, the
chief peaks being Mount Clarence (4000 ft.), Mount Victoria (3525
ft.), and Mount Hay (3270 ft.). The Dividing Range decreases north of
the Blue Mountains, until as a mere ridge it divides the waters of the
coastal rivers from those flowing to the Darling. The mass widens out
once more in the Liverpool Range, where the highest peak, Mount Oxley,
reaches 4500 ft., and farther north, in the New England Range, Ben
Lomond reaches an elevation of 5000 ft. Near the Queensland border,
Mount Lindsay, in the Macpherson Range, rises to a height of 5500 ft.
In the latitude of Brisbane the chain swerves inland; no other peak
north of this reaches higher than Mount Bartle Frere in the Bellenden
Ker Range (5438 ft.). The Southern Ocean system of the Victorian
Dividing Range hardly attains to the dignity of high mountains. An
eastern system in South Australia touches at a few points a height of
3000 ft.; and the Stirling Range, belonging to the south-western
system of South Australia, reaches to 2340 ft. There are no mountains
behind the Great Australian Bight. On the west the Darling Range faces
the Indian Ocean, and extends from Point D'Entrecasteaux to the
Murchison river. North of the Murchison, Mount Augustus and Mount
Bruce, with their connecting highlands, cut off the coastal drainage
from the interior; but no point on the north-west coast reaches a
greater altitude than 4000 ft. Several minor ranges, the topography of
which is little known, extend from Cambridge Gulf, behind a very much
broken coast-line, to Limmen Bight on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Nothing
is more remarkable than the contrast between the aspect of the coastal
ranges on the north-east and on the south-east of the continent. The
higher Australian peaks in the south-east look just what they are, the
worn and denuded stumps of mountains, standing for untold ages above
the sea. Their shoulders are lifted high above the tree-line. Their
summits stand out gaunt and lonely in an unbroken solitude. Having
left the tree-line far behind him, nothing is visible to the traveller
for miles around but barren peaks and torn crags in indescribable
confusion. A verdure of herbage clothes the valleys that have been
scooped from the summits downwards. But there are no perpetual
snow-fields, no glaciers creep down these valleys, and no alpine
hamlets ever appear to break the monotony. The mountains of the
north-east, on the contrary, are clothed to their summits with a rich
and varied flora. Naked crags, when they do appear, lift themselves
from a sea of green, and a tropical vegetation, quite Malaysian in
character, covers everything.

The absence of active volcanoes in Australia is a state of things, in
a geological sense, quite new to the continent. Some of the volcanoes
of the western districts of Victoria have been in eruption probably
subsequent to the advent of the black-fellow. In some instances the
cones are quite intact, and the beds of ash and scoriae are as yet
almost unaffected by denuding agencies. Late in the Tertiary period
vast sheets of lava poured from many points of the Great Dividing
Range of eastern Australia. But it is notable that all recent volcanic
action was confined to a wide belt parallel to the coast. No evidences
of recent lava flows can be found in the interior over the great
alluvial plain, the Lower, or the Higher Steppes. Nor has the
continent, as a whole, in recent times been subjected to any violent
earth tremors; though in 1873, to the north of Lake Amadeus, in
central Australia, Ernest Giles records the occurrence of earthquake
shocks violent enough to dislodge considerable rock masses.

Australia possesses one mountain which, though not a volcano, is a
"burning mountain." This is Mount Wingen, situated in a spur of the
Liverpool Range and close to the town of Scone. Its fires are not
volcanic, but result from the combustion of coal some distance
underground, giving off much smoke and steam; geologists estimate that
the burning has been going on for at least 800 years.

Rivers.

The coastal belt of Australia is everywhere well watered, with the
exception of the country around the Great Australian Bight and Spencer
Gulf. Flowing into the Pacific Ocean on the east coast there are some
fine rivers, but the majority have short and rapid courses. In
Queensland a succession of rivers falls into the Pacific from Cape
York to the southern boundary of the state. The Burdekin is the finest
of these, draining an area of 53,500 sq. m., and emptying into Upstart
Bay; it receives numerous tributaries in its course, and carries a
large body of fresh water even in the driest seasons. The Fitzroy
river is the second in point of size; it drains an area of 55,600 sq.
m., and receives several tributary streams during its course to Keppel
Bay. The Brisbane river, falling into Moreton Bay, is important
chiefly from the fact that the city of Brisbane is situated on its
banks. In New South Wales there are several important rivers, the
largest of which is the Hunter, draining 11,000 sq. m., and having a
course of 200 m. Taking them from north to south, the principal rivers
are the Richmond, Clarence, Macleay, Hastings, Manning, Hunter,
Hawkesbury and Shoalhaven. The Snowy river has the greater part of its
course in New South Wales, but its mouth and the last 120 m. are in
Victoria. The other rivers worth mentioning are the Yarra, entering
the sea at Port Phillip, Hopkins and Glenelg. The Murray (q.v.), the
greatest river of Australia, debouches into Lake Alexandrina, and
thence into the sea at Encounter Bay in South Australia. There are no
other rivers of importance in South Australia, but the Torrens and the
Gawler may be mentioned. Westward of South Australia, on the shores of
the Australian Bight, there is a stretch of country 300 m. in length
unpierced by any streams, large or small, but west of the bight,
towards Cape Leeuwin, some small rivers enter the sea. The south-west
coast is watered by a few streams, but none of any size; amongst these
is the Swan, upon which Perth, the capital of Western Australia, is
built. Between the Swan and North-West Cape the principal rivers are
the Greenough, Murchison and Gascoyne; on the north-west coast, the
Ashburton, Fortescue and De Grey; and in the Kimberley district, the
Fitzroy, Panton, Prince Regent and the Ord. In the Northern Territory
are several fine rivers. The Victoria river is navigable for large
vessels for a distance of about 43 m. from the sea, and small vessels
may ascend for another 80 m. The Fitzmaurice, discharging into the
estuary of the Victoria, is also a large stream. The Daly, which in
its upper course is called the Katherine, is navigable for a
considerable distance, and small vessels are able to ascend over 100
m. The Adelaide, discharging into Adam Bay, has been navigated by
large vessels for about 38 m., and small vessels ascend still farther.
The South Alligator river, flowing into Van Diemen's Gulf, is also a
fine stream, navigable for over 30 m. by large vessels; the East
Alligator river, falling into the same gulf, has been navigated for 40
m. Besides those mentioned, there are a number of smaller rivers
discharging on the north coast, and on the west shore of the Gulf of
Carpentaria the Roper river discharges itself into Limmen Bight. The
Roper is a magnificent stream, navigable for about 75 or 80 m. by
vessels of the largest tonnage, and light draught vessels can ascend
20 m. farther. Along the portion of the south shore of the Gulf of
Carpentaria which belongs to Queensland and the east coast, many large
rivers discharge their waters, amongst them the Norman, Flinders,
Leichhardt, Albert and Gregory on the southern shore, and the Batavia,
Archer, Coleman, Mitchell, Staaten and Gilbert on the eastern shore.
The rivers flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as those in
the Northern Territory, drain country which is subject to regular
monsoonal rains, and have the general characteristics of sub-tropical
rivers.

The network of streams forming the tributaries of the Darling and
Murray system give an idea of a well-watered country. The so-called
rivers have a strong flow only after heavy rains, and some of them do
not ever reach the main drainage line. Flood waters disappear often
within a distance of a few miles, being absorbed by porous soil,
stretches of sand, and sometimes by the underlying bed-rocks. In many
cases the rivers as they approach the main stream break up into
numerous branches, or spread their waters over vast flats. This is
especially the case with the tributaries of the Darling on its left
bank, where in seasons of great rains these rivers overspread their
banks and flood the flat country for miles around and thus reach the
main stream. Lieutenant John Oxley went down the Lachlan (1817) during
one of these periods of flood, and the great plains appeared to him to
be the fringe of a vast inland sea. As a matter of fact, they are an
alluvial deposit spread out by the same flood waters. The great rivers
of Australia, draining inland, carve out valleys, dissolve limestone,
and spread out their deposit over the plains when the waters become
too sluggish to bear their burden farther. From a geological
standpoint, the Great Australian Plain and the fertile valley of the
Nile have had a similar origin. Taking the Lachlan as one type of
Australian river, we find it takes its rise amongst the precipitous
and almost unexplored valleys of the Great Dividing Range. With the
help of its tributaries it acts as a denuding agent for 14,000 sq. m.
of country, and carries its burden of sediment westwards. A point is
reached about 200 m. from the Dividing Range, where the river ceases
to act as a denuding agent, and the area of deposition begins, at a
level of 250 ft. above the sea, but before the waters can reach the
ocean they have still to travel about 1000 m.

The Darling is reckoned amongst the longest rivers in the world, for
it is navigable, part of the year, from Walgett to its confluence with
the Murray, 1758 m., and then to the sea, a further distance of 587
m.--making in all 2345 m. of navigable water. But this gives no
correct idea of the true character of the Darling, for it can hardly
be said to drain its own watershed. From the sources of its various
tributaries to the town of Bourke, the river may be described as
draining a watershed. But from Bourke to the sea, 550 m. in a direct
line, the river gives rather than receives water from the country it
flows through.

The annual rainfall and the area of the catchment afford no measure
whatever as to the size of a river in the interior of Australia. The
discharge of the Darling river at Bourke does not amount to more than
10% of the rainfall over the country which it drains. It was this
remarkable fact which first led to the idea that, as the rainfall
could not be accounted for either by evaporation or by the river
discharge, much of the 90% unaccounted for must sink into the ground,
and in part be absorbed by some underlying bed-rock. All Australian
rivers, except the Murray and the Murrumbidgee, depend entirely and
directly on the rainfall. They are flooded after rain, and in seasons
of drought many of them, especially the tributaries of the Darling,
become chains of ponds. Springs which would equalize the discharge of
rivers by continuing to pour water into their beds after the rainy
season has passed seem entirely absent in the interior. Nor are there
any snowfields to feed rivers, as in the other continents. More
remarkable still, over large tracts of country the water seems
disposed to flow away from, rather than to, the river-beds. As the
low-lying plains are altogether an alluvial deposit, the coarser
sediments accumulate in the regions where the river first overflows
its banks to spread out over the plains. The country nearest the river
receiving the heaviest deposit becomes in this way the highest ground,
and so continues until a "break-away" occurs, when a new river-bed is
formed, and the same process of deposition and accumulation is
repeated. As the general level of the country is raised by successive
alluvial deposits, the more ancient river-beds become buried, but
being still connected with the newer rivers at some point or other,
they continue to absorb water. This underground network of old
river-beds underlying the great alluvial plains must be filled to
repletion before flood waters will flow over the surface. It is not
surprising, therefore, that comparatively little of the rainfall over
the vast extent of the great central plain ever reaches the sea by way
of the river systems; indeed these systems as usually shown on the
maps leave a false impression as to the actual condition of things.

Steppes.

Lakes.

The great alluvial plain is one of Australia's most notable inland
features; its extent is upwards of 500,000 sq. m., lying east of 135
deg. W. and extending right across the continent from the Gulf of
Carpentaria to the Murray river. The interior of the continent west of
135 deg. and north of the Musgrave ranges is usually termed by
geographers the Australian Steppes. It is entirely different in all
essential features from the great alluvial plains. Its prevailing
aspect is characterized by flat and terraced hills, capped by desert
sandstone, with stone-covered flats stretching over long distances.
The country round Lake Eyre, where some of the land is actually below
sea-level, comes under this heading. The higher steppes, as far as
they are known, consist of Ordovician and Cambrian rocks, with an
average elevation of 1500 to 3000 ft. above sea-level. Over this
country water-courses are shown on maps. These run in wet seasons, but
in every instance for a short distance only, and sooner or later they
are lost in sand-hills, where their waters disappear and a line of
stunted gum-trees (_Eucalyptus rostrata_) is all that is present to
indicate that there may be even a soakage to mark the abandoned
course. The steppes cover a surface of 400,000 sq. m., and from this
vast expanse not a drop of the scanty rainfall reaches the sea; there
is no leading drainage system and there are no rivers. Another notable
feature of the interior is the so-called lake area, a district
stretching to the north of Spencer Gulf. These lakes are expanses of
brackish waters that spread or contract as the season is one of
drought or rain. In seasons of drought they are hardly more than
swamps and mud flats, which for a time may become a grassy plain, or
desolate coast encrusted with salt. The country around is the
dreariest imaginable, the surface is a dead level, there is no heavy
timber and practically no settlement. Lake Torrens, the largest of
these depressions, sometimes forms a sheet of water 100 m. in length.
To the north again stretches Lake Eyre, and to the west Lake Gairdner.
Some of these lake-beds are at or slightly below sea-level, so that a
very slight depression of the land to the south of them would connect
much of the interior with the Southern Ocean. (T. A. C.)

_Geology._--The states of Australia are divided by natural boundaries,
which separate geographical areas having different characters, owing,
mainly, to their different geological structures. Hence the general
stratigraphical geology can be most conveniently summarized for each
state separately, dealing here with the geological history of
Australia as a whole. Australia is essentially the fragment of a great
plateau land of Archean rocks. It consists in the main of an Archean
block or "coign," which still occupies nearly the whole of the western
half of the continent, outcrops in north-eastern Queensland, forms the
foundation of southern New South Wales and eastern Victoria, and is
exposed in western Victoria, in Tasmania, and in the western flank of
the Southern Alps of New Zealand. These areas of Archean rocks were
doubtless once continuous. But they have been separated by the
foundering of the Coral Sea and the Tasman Sea, which divided the
continent of Australia from the islands of the Australasian festoon;
and the foundering of the band across Australia, from the Gulf of
Carpentaria, through western Queensland and western New South Wales,
to the lower basin of the Murray, has separated the Archean areas of
eastern and western Australia. The breaking up of the old Archean
foundation block began in Cambrian and Ordovician times. A narrow
Cambrian sea must have extended across central Australia from the
Kimberley Goldfield in the north-west, through Tempe Downs and the
Macdonnell chain in central Australia, to the South Australian
highlands, central Victoria at Mansfield, and northern Tasmania.
Cambrian rocks occur in each of these districts, and they are best
developed in the South Australian highlands, where they include a long
belt of contemporary glacial deposits. Marine Ordovician rocks were
deposited along the same general course. They are best developed in
the Macdonnell chain in central Australia and in Victoria, where the
fullest sequence is known; while they also extended north-eastward
from Victoria into New South Wales, where, as yet, no Cambrian rocks
have been found. The Silurian system was marked by the retreat of the
sea from central Australia; but the sea still covered a band across
Victoria, from the coast to the Murray basin, passing to the east of
Melbourne. This Silurian sea was less extensive than the Ordovician in
Victoria; but it appears to have been wider in New South Wales and in
Queensland. The best Silurian sequence is in New South Wales. Silurian
rocks are well developed in western Tasmania, and the Silurian sea
must have washed the south-western corner of the continent, if the
rocks of the Stirling Range be rightly identified as of this age.

The Devonian system includes a complex series of deposits, which are
of most interest in eastern Australia. This period was marked by
intense earth movements, which affected the whole of the east
Australian highlands. The Lower Devonian beds are in the main
terrestrial, or coarse littoral deposits, and volcanic rocks. The
Middle Devonian was marked by the same great transgression as in
Europe and America; it produced inland seas, extending into Victoria,
New South Wales and Queensland, in which were deposited limestones
with a rich coral fauna. The Upper Devonian was a period of marine
retreat; the crustal disturbances of the Lower Devonian were renewed
and great quartz-pebble beaches were formed on the rising shore lines,
producing the West Coast Range conglomerates of Tasmania, and the
similar rocks to the south-east of Mansfield in Victoria. Intrusions
of granitic _massifs_ in the Devonian period formed the primitive
mountain axis of Victoria, which extends east and west across the
state and forms the nucleus of the Victorian highlands. Similar
granitic intrusions occurred in New South Wales and Queensland, and
built up a mountain chain, which ran north and south across the
continent; its worn-down stumps now form the east Australian
highlands.

The Carboniferous period began with a marine transgression, enabling
limestones to form in Tasmania and New South Wales; and at the same
time the sea first got in along the western edge of the western
plateau, depositing the Carboniferous rocks of the Gascoyne basin and
the coastal plain of north-western Australia. The Upper Carboniferous
period was in the main terrestrial, and during it were laid down the
coal-seams of New South Wales; they are best developed in the basin of
the Hunter river, and they extend southward, covered by Mesozoic
deposits, beyond Sydney. The Coal Measures become narrower in the
south, until, owing to the eastward projection of the highlands, the
Lower Palaeozoic rocks reach the coast. The coal-seams must have been
formed in well-watered, lowland forests, at the foot of a high
mountain range, built up by the Devonian earth movements. The
mountains both in Victoria and New South Wales were snow-capped, and
glaciers flowed down their flanks and laid down Carboniferous glacial
deposits, which are still preserved in basins that flank the mountain
ranges, such as the famous conglomerates of Bacchus Marsh, Heathcote
and the Loddon valley in Victoria, and of Branxton and other
localities in New South Wales. The age of the glacial deposits is
later than the _Glossopteris_ flora and occurs early in the time of
the _Gangamopteris_ flora. Kitson's work in Tasmania shows that there
also the glacial beds may be correlated with the lower or Greta Coal
Measures of New South Wales.

The Permian deposits are best developed in New South Wales and
Tasmania, where their characters show the continuation of the
Carboniferous conditions. The Mesozoic begins with a Triassic land
period in the mainland of Australia; while the islands of the
Australasian festoon contain the Triassic marine limestones, which
fringe the whole of the Pacific. The Triassic beds are best known in
New South Wales, where round Sydney they include a series of
sandstones and shales. They also occur in northern Tasmania.