Australia,—the actual Australia,—the Australia of the Australians,—is a largely differing place from the average English conception of it.

Imagine a bulging convex sea-coast, running for some two thousand five hundred miles from north to south—from Lat. 10° to Lat. 42° S.—from the tropics to the regions of frost and snow.

The extreme northern portion of it is a Cape Horn—York Peninsula by name—a low-lying tableland of mud, covered with undergrowth vegetation.

The southern portion was also, comparatively recently, a Cape Horn, but the base has been broken through by the sea, and the apex is now an island—Tasmania, once Van Diemen's Land.

From York Peninsula right down the whole length of the sea-coast runs a range of hills.

Its average height is a thousand feet or so above the sea—its average distance from the sea is fifty or sixty miles.

When it reaches the southern corner of the continent it sweeps away four hundred miles or so to the west,—another branch of it reappearing still further south in Tasmania.

Geologists tell us that the oldest parts of Australia are the two long thin strips of elevated land of which this—the Pacific Slope—formed one and a similar but smaller slope, the Indian Slope (which remains in the shape of the coastal range of Western Australia), formed the other.