Part 15 (1/2)
”'Preliminary surveys have been overnrand scale The govern the water to private landholders in the same way that water is sold in California, New Mexico, and other parts of the United States I ae in full operation in Australia before many years'”
While on the subject of rainfall, Harry asked Ned if he knehere the heaviest annual rainfall in the world was
Ned said he did not know, but he thought that Dr Whitney ht be able to inform them
The question was appealed to the doctor, who paused a ht be considered a heavy rain in one place would be a light one in another In Great Britain, if an inch of rain fell in a day it was considered a heavy rain; but in hlands of Scotland three inches not infrequently fall in one day Once in the isle of Skye twelve inches of rain fell in thirteen hours, and rainfalls of five and seven inches are not uncommon Thirty inches of rain fell in twenty-four hours at Geneva, in Switzerland, thirty-three inches at Gibraltar in twenty-six hours, and twenty-four inches in a single night on the hills near Bolobe,” continued the doctor, ”was on the Khasia Hills, in India, where six hundred inches, or fifty feet, fell in a twelvemonth Just think of it; a depth of fifty feet of water yearly, and of this a the southwest monsoons”
”How do they account for such heavy rains?” Ned asked
”It is accounted for,” the doctor replied, ”by the abruptness of the al, from which they are separated by loa the hills heavily charged with the vapor they have absorbed from the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean When they strike the hills and are forced up to a higher elevation, they give out their reat rapidity, and the rain falls in torrents As soon as the clouds have crossed the mountains the rain diminishes very much Twenty miles further inland it drops from six hundred to two hundred inches annually, and thirty miles further inland it is only one hundred inches The same conditions prevail to a certain extent in Australia The mountain chains are near the coast On the side next the ocean there is a liberal rainfall, but on the other side, towards the interior, the rainfall is light As the clouds charged with vapor come from the sea to the mountains they yield theirthe mountains, they have little left to yield”
The burster died away along in the evening, and, though the streets et intheir walk their attention was naturally drawn to the sky, which was now bright with stars Naturally, their conversation turned to the difference between the night skies of the Northern and Southern He their voyage from the east coast of Africa down to the Equator, and thence in the Southern Ocean
On this subject Harry wrote at one time in his journal as follows:--
”We found the faood deal of a disappointment In the first place, it requires a considerable aination to make a cross out of it; very much more than is needed to make 'The Great Dipper' out of the constellation so called in the Northern Hemisphere
The Southern Cross consists of three stars of the first nitude, and three of the fifth, and, look at them whichever way you may, you can't make a real cross out of theated the subject, I thought the Southern Cross was over the south pole, but found it is not so The constellations of the Southern Heether are not as brilliant as those in the northern one If the principal object of a traveler in this region is to see the heavens, he had better stay at ho feature of the southern heavens is 'The Magellan Clouds,' thite spots in the sky like thick nebulae of stars They are nearer to the pole than the Southern Cross is, and areobservations Quite near the pole is a star of the fifth nitude, called 'Octantis,' and this also is used for observation purposes It isn't so brilliant, by any means, as the pole star of the north, which is of the second nitude; and, by the way, that reminds me of what Dr Whitney told me in the desert of Sahara, that e called the polar star in the north is not directly over the pole, but nearly a degree away The real polar star is a much smaller one and stands, as we look at it, to the left of the star, which I had always believed to be the proper one”
Melbourne has a Chinese quarter like San Francisco and New York, and our friends embraced an opportunity to visit it They found the shops closely crowded together and apparently doing an active business There were teood oodly size The sidewalks were thronged with people, mostly Chinese, and they hardly raised their eyes to look at the strangers who had co theuide, and found that they had acted wisely in doing so The guide took them into places where they would have been unable to make their way alone, and where, doubtless, they would have found the doors closed against them
The Chinese are very unpopular in Australia and in all the colonies The laws against theolian point of view
Every China in Victoriaso, and after getting safe on the soil he finds himself restricted in a business way, and subject to vexatious regulations John is satisfied with very little and he usually et it He is a keen trader and always an inveterate s the custom house, and as soon as one trick is discovered he invents another and his ingenuity seems to be boundless
One of the industries in which the Chinese excel is that ofin the suburbs of Melbourne, our friends observed nuardens cultivated by Chinese, and in every instance they remarked that the cultivation was of the arden than anybody else He pays a high rental for his ground, but unless soet it back again, with a large profit in addition
In some of the colonies the restrictions are more severe than in others
In New South Wales the laboring class of white islature, and have enacted anti-Chinese laws of great severity The tax upon i, or five hundred dollars The naturalization of Chinese is absolutely prohibited, and shi+ps can only bring into the ports of New South Wales one Chinese passenger for every three hundred tons of ard to residence and trading are very severe The country is laid out into districts, and in each district notChinese are allowed to live and transact business Stea Chinese stewards or sailors on board are subject to seizure and fines on their arrival at Sydney, and so great have been the annoyances to this class of vessels, that they have been co to Australia, all their Chinese employees
The hostility to Chinese labor in Australia is similar to that on the Pacific coast of the United States, and in the States of the Rocky Mountain region It will doubtless increase as tioes on, as it increased in the United States, until it culo Eventually, the Chinese in Australia will be shut out from all occupations, and expelled or excluded froent Australians deprecate the hostility to the Chinese, but when it co, this class of citizens is in the reat numbers of Chinese found their way to the mines, where they were perfectly contented to work in abandoned mines and wash the earth, which had already been washed by the white ainst them and the likelihood of interference, they rarely took up fresh claims, but contented themselves hat the white man had left Even this form of as considered an encroacholians and drove them out at the point of the pistol Many of these attacks were acco ritten in full, it would contain many a story of oppression, accompanied with violence
Our friends made a visit to the famous lake district of Victoria, where they found some very pretty scenery, and from the summit of one hill counted no fewer than fifteen lakes, soest measured ninety miles in circuest lake was called the Dead Sea It is said to be not as salt as the fareat deal salter than the ocean, and no fish of any kind lives in it
”I asked a resident of the neighborhood,” said Harry, ”if they had ever tried the plan of putting fish from the ocean into this Australian Dead Sea They said they had done so, but the fish thus transported always died in a few hours, and the experio
”A curious thing that we found regarding the lakes in this part of Victoria,” Harry continued, ”is that some of them are salt and some fresh, and sometimes the salt lakes and the fresh ones are quite close to each other, and on the same level We were puzzled how to account for the peculiarity and tried to learn about it How the circumstances happened, nobody knows exactly, but the theory is that the salt in the salt lakes coe of the rocks, and as the lakes have no outlets, the superfluous waters are carried off by evaporation They told us that in suood deal below the level of other tiround left dry was thickly encrusted with salt, which the people gathered in large quantities The market of Melbourne is supplied with salt from these lakes, and you can readily understand that it is very cheap
”Another peculiarity of this part of Victoria is the large quantities of potatoes that are grown there The land often yields from twenty to thirty tons of potatoes to the acre, and an acre of ground for raising potatoes will frequently sell for four hundred dollars, while it will rent for twenty-five dollars yearly Most of the coast ports of Australia, including the great ones of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney, are supplied with potatoes fro the finest we ever saw They are large, rich, and mealy, and when properly cooked they are simply delicious No other part of Australia can compete with this district in potato cultivation
The excellence of this vegetable is supposed to come from the volcanic nature of the soil All the country round here was once in a high state of ebullition, and the lakes I have mentioned are the craters of extinct volcanoes”