in
being partially intertropical and wholly south of the equator--no part
of continental Asia or Europe coming under these conditions. But it
differs from Polynesia in being continental rather than insular in
climate; from South America in the absence of great rivers and vast
alluvial tracts; and from Africa in being wholly isolated from the
Northern Hemisphere. It is with South Africa, however, that its closest
analogies exist. Both have but small water-systems; both vast tracts of
elevated barren country; and both a distinctive vegetation. The animal
kingdoms, however, of the two areas have next to nothing in common. The
comparative non-existence of Australian mammalia, higher in rank than
the marsupials, is a subject for the zoologist. Ethnology only indicates
its bearing upon the sustenance of man. Poor in the vegetable elements
of food, and beggarly in respect to the animal, the vast continental
expanse of Australia supports the scantiest aboriginal population of the
world, and nourishes it worst. The steppes of Asia feed the horse; the
_tundras_, the reindeer; the circumpolar icebergs, the seal; and each of
these comparatively inhospitable tracts is more kindly towards its
Mongolian, its Samoeid, and its Eskimo occupant, than Australia with its
intertropical climate, but wide and isolated deserts.

Except that his hair (which is often either straight, or only crisp or
wavy) has not attained its _maximum_ of frizziness, and has seldom or
never been called _woolly_, the Australian is a Semang under a South
African climate, on a South African soil, and with more than a South
African isolation.

Few Australians count as far as five, and fewer still beyond it. This
paucity of numerals is South American as well--the Brazilian and Carib,
and other systems of numeration being equally limited.

The sound of _s_ is wanting in the majority of Australian languages. So
it is in many of the Polynesian.

The social constitution is of extreme simplicity. Many degrees removed
from the industrial, almost as far from the agricultural state, the
Australian is hardly even a hunter--except so far as the kangaroo or
wombat are beasts of chase. Families--scarcely large enough to be called
tribes or clans--wander over wide but allotted areas. Nowhere is the
approach to an organized polity so imperfect.

This makes the differences between section and section of the Australian
population, both broad and numerous. Nevertheless, the fun