affording a shelter in winter for
domestic animals, while at the north we had not seen such a structure in
the entire country from Brisbane to Adelaide.

We pass up the Tamar River through its winding channel for a distance of
forty miles before coming in sight of the harbor and town of Launceston.
The many tall, smoking chimney-shafts which meet the eye indicate that
the town is busy smelting ores dug from the contiguous mineral hills and
valleys. Approaching it in the same manner in which we first came to
Parametta, at the head of river navigation, it was natural to compare
the aspect of that drowsy though picturesque place with this vigorous,
wide-awake community. Launceston is no Sleepy Hollow, but is a pleasant
and thrifty little city, slightly addicted to earthquakes and their
attendant inconveniencies. The place is named for a town in Cornwall,
England, and the Tamar from a river of the same name also in that
country. At our hotel numerous cracks in the walls and ceilings were
silent but significant tokens of what might be expected to occur at
almost any moment; but it was observed that the residents do not give
this subject a second thought.

We have left Australia proper far behind, but the Bass Strait which
separates that country from Tasmania is evidently of comparatively
modern formation. The similarity of the vegetation, minerals, fauna, and
flora of the two countries shows that this island must at some time in
the long-past ages have been connected with the mainland. And yet the
aborigines of Tasmania were a race quite distinct from those of
Australia,--so different, indeed, as only to resemble them in color.
They were a well-formed, athletic people, with brilliant eyes, curly
hair, flat noses, and elaborately tattooed bodies. This ingenious and
barbaric ornamentation of the body, practised by isolated savage races,
seems to have been universal among the inhabitants of the Pacific
Islands, though the great distances which separate them, as well as the
lack of all ordinary means of intercommunication, would lead to the
belief that they could not have borrowed the idea from one another. We
are also reminded that singularly enough the rite of circumcision has
been found to exist among some of the most completely isolated tribes of
the Pacific, which causes the ethnologist to exclaim in wonder whence
these savages could have got the idea. The isolation of the Samoans is
so complete that one is half inclined t