Evening star., 1901-07-20

uiSlIlCt VI VI per cent Oh lHe Sueep
other districts even more. 1t Is said that
the drought in 1896 lightened the wool clip
almost II per cent, and 1t decreased the
lamb crop in New South Wales to about
5000. 600 head.
Hundreds of Artesian Wells.
Within the past few years the govern
ments Of Australia have been preparing to
resist these droughts. They have been sink
ing numbers Of artesian wells, making
dams and putting up water works. The
droughts in many parts of the country are
such that for nine months the sheep can
feed on the dry grasses if they can only
get water. and of late the water in many
places has come from artesian wells. The
chief danger has been in overstocking, SO
that the sheep eat all the grass and. not
withstanding the drinking water, die of
starvation.
There are in Queensland alone $50 arte-
sian wells and number more are being
put down. Already more than 81, GOO 600
have been spent upon them, and the ag-
gregate depth of the wells is in the neigh
borhood of 500 to 1,oo0 feet. Some of the
wells are very deep. There is one at VIM
struck water, and there are many down
5000 and more. One well flows 5 600 600
gallons day, another 100000. and an
other 100000. In New South Wales a
large number of bores, as they are called,
have been sunk, and several of them are
moving from one to two million gallons a
day.
A singular thing about the wells is that
the water which comes from them is very
not AS one of the Squatters says, it is
not enough to scald dog, and, indeed a
dog that fell into the stream of one of
them the other day was killed. The water
is slightly salt, and it contains some soda,
but the sheep drink and thrive upon it. 1t
cools, of course, as it runs off, being con-
Quoted In bitches and pipes over the pas
lures.
Australia is the Eottest country on rec
ord. l have ridden for miles astride the
equator, but l have never found heat to
compare with this. Out in the country In
the dry times there appears to be little
more than sheet of brown paper between
you and the lower regions, and the people
facetiOuSly say that they have to feed
their hens cracked ice to keep them from
laying boiled eggs. The dry lands are hot
ter than Sahara. Much of them is desert
and the sun beats vertically down upon the
continent during the hottest part Of the
year, three hours every day, in travelling
across it,
Australia is as long from one side to the
other as from New York to Salt Lake City,
and the greater part of it is covered with
granite sand 1t has no cooling winds to
speak of, and the sand and rock bottle
up the heat and give It out again. Captain
Sturt, who crossed the Australian desert
some years ago, RECORDS that he once hung
his thermometer graduated to 127 degrees
in the shade, and that the mercury rose
and broke the tube. The temperature must
have been at least 12S degrees in the open
air outside. which IS said to be the highest
temperature recorded In any part of the
world.
Desert Continent.
There Is no continent which has so much
dry land as Australia. 1t is a great dry
heart with few pf oil
the edges. On the east side facing the Pa
cific is a long range of mountains, roughly
speaking running north and south, and the
most of the good land lies between those
mountains and the sea. West of the noun
tains vast plateaus begin and extend on and
on and on. spotted here with low rocky
ranges for more than 1000 miles. The
land falls slightly 1t goes toward the
west. but at the end 1t is still 1000 feet
high. 1t is 1000 feet high at the east, and
in the Australian Alps or the Eastern
range 1t rises to more than 1000 feet. There
Is a general slope toward the south in some
places so great that the continent falls to
the level of the sea. but in others it keeps
an altitude of 800 and 600 feet, ending in
cliffs at that height which line the Aus
tralian Blight for hundreds of miles.
All the rivers flow toward the coast. The
most of them are short and unnavigable.
There Is, In fact. only one big river sys-
tenn In the country-that of the Murray,
which flows out the southeast end of Aus
tralia. The Murray is 1.4OO or 1900 miles
long. 1t has extensive branches something
like the sissippi-Missouri, by which 1t
waters vast BASIN in which are some Of
the best sheep farms of Australia. Nearly
all Of Its basin is taken up by squatterS.
The greater part of 1t is fenced and in GER
tain sections the lands are worth as much
as good farming lands in the United States.
The Australian Lakes.
Australia has no fresh-water lakes to
speak of. Its biggest lakes are salt, and
there are very few of these. The most Of
them lie in South Australia, in what Is
called the lake district. a region about
1000 miles long. At the bottom of this is
Lake Torrens, about 100 miles long, with
Lake Gardiner to the west of 1t. North of
Lake Torrens is Lake Eyre, which Is larger
and to the northwest Lake Amadeus, which
is also of good size. All these lakes
salt. They are surrounded by flats Of
treacherous mud crusted with salt. Some
parts of them are dry for years at time,
when a wet season will fill them and cause
grass to sprout up all about them
Most of the land north and west of the
lakes Is desert If you will draw a line
across the continent from the lakes to the
mouth of the Victoria river you will block
off one of the biggest deserts of the world.
The desert block will be one-sixth as big as
the whole United States, and 1t will contain
no water and no vegetation Of any kind ex-
cept thorny scrub and thorny grasses. This
is the case with nearly all western Aus
tralla with the exception or the small set
tied portion at the southwest.
Queer Vegetation.
The scrubs are peculiar to Australia. They
are a sort of dwarf eucalyptus trees, or
dwarf acacias. The most common are the
malice scrubs and the mulga scrubs The
malice scrubs look like willow or reeds.
The bushes grow close together, so that
there are often ten on square foot Of
ground. They grow twice as high as your
head without branch and you look
over them you see nothing but a mass Of
dark brown bushes reaching on and on for
miles. Here and there roads and paths are
cut through them which look like avenues
or alsles.
They make the country gloomy In the
extreme, and added to the dreary eucalyp-
tus trees the vast deserts and the lack Of
variety in the scenery have given 1t the
title of the "Never, Never Country" or the
land Of despair. The extent of the malice
scrub is enormous. In South Australia
there is an unbroken tract about twice the
size of the state of New York which is