2400 miles a distance equal to the length of the Mediterranean Sea. The breadth from north to south, is from 1700 to 1900 miles-about equal to the length of Hindostan. The area is nearly 3,000,000 of square miles. 3. It is compact in shape; the sea has made few deep inroads upon the land. Two great bights or bends in the coast, the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, and the Australian Bight in the south, tend rather to preserve the appearance of regularity of form than to give the appearance of irregularity. 4. York Peninsula, pointing like an unshapely finger northward, is the most marked feature in the outline of Australia. Its appearance is far more bold than that of Arnhem Land, the peninsula upon the western side of the gulf. 5. Torres Strait, a sandy shallow channel 90 miles wide, flows between York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. Due south, a wider channel, Bass Strait, containing dangerous rocky islets, separates Australia from Tasmania. 6. Port Phillip is an important harbour upon Bass Strait, but the only great openings along the south coast in addition to the Australian Bight are Vincent Gulf and Spencer Gulf. 7. The western coast is more broken and contains more harbours than the eastern. Along the western shores are numerous small islands and coral islets, which are visited for pearl and tortoise shells. 8. A line of coral rock extends parallel with the east coast from Cape York southward for 1200 miles. It is seventy miles wide in the south and a hundred miles from the shore; but in many places it is only a few hundred yards across, and in the north the channel between it and the shore is only ten miles wide. 9. It rises to the level of the ocean and forms a barrier to ships, across which they cannot pass except at a few openings. Its name is the Great Barrier Reef. On the side towards the ocean the reef presents a perpendicular face a thousand feet deep; towards the land it slopes gradually, forming a comparatively shallow, but safe roadstead. 10. This enormous mass consists of coral, a substance formed of the limy skeletons built up by creatures belonging to the lowest forms of animal life. Indeed it is not many years since people thought both sponges and corals to be plants, and not animals as they are now known to be. The coral animals cannot live in cold seas. The fresh water and sand brought down by rivers are also injurious to them; hence there is always a break in a coral reef opposite the mouth of a stream. 11. As the water in the depths of the sea is nearly always cold, too cold for corals to live in, it is thought that when they began to build the reef, its foundations were in shallow water near the coast. If that is so, then the land must have since sunk, the Barrier Reef marks the ancient line of coast, and Australia was once much larger than it is now. LESSON 62.-THE SURFACE.-I. THE MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS OF THE BORDER. 1. Australia is a vast plain, having a border of high lands almost surrounding it. It is like a dish tilted up on the east side; its rim of coast ranges is especially high eastwards; portions of the centre of the island are but a few yards above the level of the sea. 2. In the east a series of ranges divides the east coast districts from the settlements of the plain, and is sometimes called the Great Dividing Range. Its height varies from 3000 to 5000 feet, it consists mostly of granite, and is auriferous (that is, gold-bearing). 3. The local names for the principal parts of this Great Dividing Range are the Pyrenees and Australian Alps in the south, and the Blue Mountains and Liverpool Range northwards. The Australian Alps have one or two peaks over 7000 feet high, which are the greatest elevations in Australia. The Blue Mountains receive their name from the peculiar hue which their wooded and rocky sides appear to have when viewed at a distance through the bright clear air. 4. The Liverpool range widens northward into the wooded pasture-lands of the Liverpool Plains and the treeless Darling Downs. The advantages for grazing purposes of the open downs over the timbered uplands led the early settlers to give to the former the pet name of Darling Downs. 5. The coast ranges which extend along the north and west borders are less known. With wide stretches of elevated pasture-land, ravines, and valleys covered with luxuriant vegetation, there appear to be also many heights of bare barren rock. In the south-west the mountains are very near the coast; the principal range is known as the Darling Mountains. 6. The prevailing winds blow from the east and deposit the greater part of their moisture upon the Great Dividing Range. Hence it is that most of the rivers rise there, that the eastern coast streams are numerous but short, that Australia possesses few long rivers, and that the greater part of the continent suffers from droughts. 7. Australian rivers are subject to great fluctuations by |