little
more than a dry bed of sand, and one of the inhabitants told Harry that
sprinkling-carts were driven through the bed of the river every morning
and evening to keep down the dust. The city is supplied with water from
this river; it is taken from a stream several miles above Adelaide, and
brought through heavy iron pipes.

Harry wished to know the population of the city, and was told that it
was not far from sixty thousand. There is a considerable suburban
population, and the man from whom Harry obtained his information said he
thought there was fully another sixty thousand people living within a
radius of ten miles from City Hall. He said the whole population of the
colony of South Australia was not far from one hundred and thirty
thousand including about five thousand aboriginals.

When the country was first settled it was thought that the aboriginals
numbered twelve or fourteen thousand, but contact with civilization had
reduced the figures very materially here, as in other parts of the
world. Where white men and aboriginals have come in contact, the latter
have suffered all over Australia; their relations have not changed in
New Zealand and Tasmania, and this is especially the case in the
last-named colony. Not a single aboriginal Tasmanian is now alive, the
last one having died in 1876. When the island was first occupied by the
English, the number of aboriginals was estimated at four or five
thousand. The story goes that when the British landed there the natives
made signs of peace, but the officer who was in charge of the landing
thought the signals were hostile instead of friendly. He ordered the
soldiers to fire upon the blacks, and thus began a war which lasted for
several years, and when it terminated only a few hundreds of the blacks
remained alive. In 1854, there were only fifteen of them left, and the
number gradually diminished, until the last one died as related.

CHAPTER V.

ACROSS AUSTRALIA--TALLEST TREES IN THE WORLD.

Our friends were invited to visit a large wheat farm twenty or thirty
miles north of Adelaide, and accepted the invitation with great
pleasure. Leaving the city early in the morning, the railway train took
them to a station a few miles from the farm, and there the owner met
them in his carriage. After a substantial breakfast at the owner's
residence, they were driven to the field, or, rather, to one of the
fields, where the work of harvesting was going on.

It roused