If we failed of finding Spanish or other seaward riches, there would still be compensations. We would not lack for adventure; nor the good fare that should go with it. Of a surety, there would be much provender and creature comforts on this voyage of adventure to Northern Seas. With the ports of Bowen, Townsville, Cairns, Cooktown, and Thursday Island to fall back upon when the ship"s stores ran low, there would be little risk of starvation.
Furthermore, we would have fresh coconuts, turtle and beche-de-mer soups in abundance, luscious fruits, stewed pigeons, fresh fish, oysters, and tropical dainties won by our own hands from sea or shore. At low tide we would land onexposed reefs to gather food, curiosities, pearls, and coral.
Of the latter there is a variety enough to keep a collector"s heart in constant ecstasy. These reefs are, in fact, vast natural marine gardens, filled with brilliant flowers of the sea. No earthly growths present such a diversity of form and colour. We have (all moulded in the same medium by the hand of the Great Artist) stag-horns, organ-pipes, cup corals, mushrooms, bouquets, stars, brain-corals, and labyrinths.
Coloration spreads over all gradations and shades. There are violets, magentas, browns, bronzes, lemons, mauves, whites, pinks, greens, lilacs, purples, turquoises, peacock blues-all the shades of the palettes of a Royal Academy and a Paris Salon, and more.
Every growth, from the most delicate and fragile of those beautiful branched corals one sees under glass covers to 19-foot specimens described by W. Seville Kent, had its beginning in the dead body of a single polyp, a microscopic insect! Think of the countless myriads of deaths in the uncountable years to build up a reef 1,500 miles in length along the coast of Queensland. One learns with satisfaction that the world is much older than the scientists thought it.
Wonder and admiration are not lessened by knowledge that the coral insect is, in scientific eyes, no insect at all, but a "simple polyp resembling a sea-anemone, possessing the property of secreting a calcareous skeleton out of thelime held abundantly in suspension in probably every sea!" It is this simple property which enables the reef-building Barrier corals to live and die, from low water mark to a depthof 20 or 30 fathoms in the warm East sea.
It is this simple property which has been a highly impor- tant factor in the making of geography, and has added to the anxieties of navigators, particularly of those who tread a careful course from Lion Island to Bligh"s Entrance down the Eastern coast of Queensland.
E. J. Brady, in The Land of the Sun.
Author.-Edwin James Brady, a living Australian poet and journalist, was born in Carcoar, N.S.W., and educated in that State and in America. Engaged in various occupations for some years in New South Wales. Was editor of The Worker and The Australian Workman. Contributed as a free lance to many papers and magazines. Author of The Ways of Many Waters (verse), The Earthen Floor (verse), Bushland Ballads, The King"s Caravan (prose), River Rovers (prose), Bells and Hobbles (verse), Australia Unlimited (prose), The House of the Winds (nautical verse), The Land of the Sun, and The Prince"s Highway (prose).
General Notes.-See the Great Barrier Reef on a map of Australia. Where are pearls and gold found in Queensland? Flotsam and jetsam- chance findings; literally, flotsam is floating wreckage; jetsam, what is cast on the shore. When did Spanish galleons sail the sea? Name any Spanish sailors connected with early Australian maritime exploration. What English monarch was reigning in 1587? Peso (payso) was aSpanish dollar, also called " piece of eight " (think of Treasure Island). Beche-de-mer, or sea snail, a kind of large marine slug, which is dried and used for soup. A polyp is not an insect, but a boneless creature with a cylindrical body closed and attached at one end and opening at the other by a central mouth, furnished with tentacles. Write an essay on " Creatures that Wear their Bones outside. " Beche-de-mer is a French name, meaning sea spade.
LESSON 17
A SylVAN SOlITuDE
Here the magpie loves to croon From the dawn to rise of moon; Flutes the sweet harmonious thrush In the early morning hush;Shyly sings the oriole;
All the day the bell-birds toll.
Frank S. Willamson. in Purple and Gold.
Author.-Frank S. Williamson (1865-1936), Australian poet, author of Purple and Gold (Lothian). Mr. Williamson was for many years a teacher in the Education Department of Victoria.
General Notes.-Note the musical flow of the verse. Describe the birds mentioned. Note. the verbs used; do they suit each bird"s song? Do you know another bird poem by the same author?
LESSON 18
THE pIED pIpER OF HAmElIN
IHamelin Town"s in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city;The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on the southern side, A pleasanter spot you never spied;But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer soFrom vermin, was a pity.
Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles,And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks" own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats,Made nests inside men"s Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women"s chatsBy drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeakingIn fifty different sharps and flats.
At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
" "Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor"s a noddy; And as for our Corporation-shockingTo think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can"t or won"t determine What"s best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you"re old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we"re lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we"ll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation.
An hour they sat in council,