pth
of any on the globe.

Queensland is as liable to serious droughts as the rest of Australia on
the slopes of the mountain range of the interior. As we have already
shown, nearer the coast the land is well watered. There are few lakes in
the colony,--indeed, none worthy of the name; and the one river which is
the Mississippi of the country, known as the Murray,--navigable for over
a thousand miles of its course,--is not at all times to be relied upon.
This is an evil which could easily be remedied by skilful engineering.
This river has no proper outlet to the sea, but debouches into a shallow
marsh called Lake Alexandrina. "Sir," said an individual to us at
Sydney, with piscatorial dogmatic emphasis, "No country can be great
without trout or salmon." As Australia has no available rivers for these
fish to swim in, the inference as to her possible greatness was obvious.

We have said that the Murray is the Mississippi of Australia, but it is
no more like that great Father of Waters than Tom Thumb is like
Hercules. Like the Mississippi, however, it has a greater, or at least
longer, tributary than itself. As the American river is the receptacle
of the Missouri, so the Murray obtains its greatest volume by means of
its principal branch and feeder, the Darling. This river extends over
twelve degrees of latitude, and by its winding course would measure
three thousand miles. It is mostly supplied by the snow-clad Australian
Alps. The fitful nature of this watercourse may be judged by the fact
that although it is often in places a torrent, and in others expands
into lake-like proportions over low-lying country, at certain seasons it
may be crossed on foot where it joins the Murray. Below this junction
the latter river frequently expands to three hundred yards and more in
width, with a depth of from ten to twenty feet. For fifteen hundred
miles of its course it is called a navigable river, though it is not to
be relied upon as such,--small river steamers being not infrequently
caught upon shoals, where they are left high and dry for months
together. So with regard to the Darling; notwithstanding its erratic
character, it has often been ascended by light-draught steamers nearly a
thousand miles above its junction with the Murray.

It is singular that in a country where irrigation is so much needed, and
where enterprise is so general in all other directions, this matter does
not receive more attention. To the stranger, irrigat