A Glance at Australia in 1880

Excerpt from A Glance at Australia in 1880 or Food From the South. The year 1880 promises to constitute what may be called an epochal year in the history of the Australian colonies. We shall be greatly dis appointed if it does not mark a new departure in the industrial develop ment in all or in the greater part of them. The International Exhibition in Sydney closed and that in Melbourne Opened during the currency Of that period. Both are events of no Ordinary importance to the inhabitants of this part of the world and are calculated to exercise no inconsiderable in?uence upon our future welfare. It is not alone that they have fur nished the best of all evidences Of what we are capable of producing it is not alone that they have shown us the progress of other nations in the arts and sciences in manufactures and in the useful pursuits Of daily life; but that they have had the effect Of making these colonies known to the rest of the world. Hitherto the word Australia has been little more than an unmeaning sound to millions of people in Europe and America. They knew that it was a large island situated somewhere in the South Pacific; that some portion Of it had been a penal settlement; that gold was being or had been found there in large quantities; that there were quantities Of sheep and cattle roaming over the face of the country; and that people sometimes went out there and returned in the course Of a few years with large fortunes. But beyond this the sum Of popular information on the subject was extremely limited. Ask a college don who could tell you all about the Troad and the Amphictyonic Council and the Achaian League and the route Of Xenophon what he knows concerning Australia and he would probably quote Sydney Smith's description of it as a region in which nature has been so capricious that she makes cherries with the....