es, had no such animals, so the marsupials survived
there whilst vanishing from all other parts of the earth.

When Australia was sundered from Asia, probably by some great volcanic
outburst (the East Indies are to this day much subject to terrible
earthquakes and volcanic outbreaks, and not so many years ago a whole
island was destroyed in the Straits of Sunda), the new continent
probably was in the shape somewhat of a ring, with very high mountains
facing the sea, and, where now is the great central plain, a lake or
inland sea. As time wore on, the great mountains were ground down by the
action of the snow and the rain and the wind. The soil which was thus
made was in part carried towards the centre of the ring, and in time the
sea or lake vanished, and Australia took its present form of a great
flat plain, through which flow sluggish rivers--a plain surrounded by a
tableland and a chain of coastal mountains. The natives and the animals
and plants of Australia, when it first became a continent, were very
much the same, in all likelihood, as now.

Thus separated in some sudden and dramatic way, Australia was quite
forgotten by the rest of the world. In Asia, near by, the Chinese built
up a curious civilization, and discovered, among other things, the use
of the mariner's compass, but they do not seem to have ever attempted to
sail south to what is now known as Australasia. The Japanese, borrowing
culture from the Chinese, framed their beautiful and romantic social
system, and, having a brave and enterprising spirit, became seafarers,
and are known to have reached as far as the Hawaiian Islands, more than
halfway across the Pacific Ocean to America; but they did not come to
Australia. The Indian Empire rose to magnificent greatness; the Empires
of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Persia, came and went. The Greeks, and the
Romans later, penetrated to Hindustan. The Christian era came, and later
the opening up of trade with the East Indies and with China.

But still Australia slept, in her out-of-the-way corner, apart from the
great streams of human traffic, a rich and beautiful land waiting for
her Fairy Prince to waken her to greatness. There had been, though, some
vague rumours of a great island in the Southern Seas. A writer of Chios
(Greece) 300 years before the Christian era mentions that there existed
an island of immense extent beyond the seas washing Europe, Asia, and
Africa. It is thought that Greek soldiers who had acc