GEOGRAPHICAL INSTRUCTORS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TH " SPECTATOR:1
SI " I love a ballad in print a' my life," cries Mopsa, in the " Winter's Talc," "for then we are sure they are true." In the above little speech, Shakespeare amusingly shows the popular deference for everything bearing the stamp of typographical -authority. In like manlier, it may be that many of your readers will respect an extraordinary piece of Australian information vouchsafed to them in a new and revised (especially _revised) edition of Brookes's " General Gazetteer, and Geo- graphical Dictionary of the World," the title-page bringing us down to 1876. Under the head of "Melbourne," we are informed that " it is a city of South Australia, the capital of the district of Victoria, in New South Wales." We are kindly further told that it is "quite of modern origin, as its site twelve years ago—therefore in 1861—was a wilderness ! only tenanted by the tribes of savages, and the kangaroo, emu, and wild dog .that it now has a population of more than 1,200,000. and that the city is supplied with tolerably pure water from the Yarns Yarra, which has a dam below the wharf to keep the water fresh.
In the above extraordinary account there are almost as many blunders as can be well packed into so many words. Melbourne is not a city of South Australia, but is—as Macattlay'a school-boy knew many years ago—the capital of the colony of Victoria. The ingenious gazetteer has even contrived, in one short sentence, to give Melbourne the proud distinction of being in three different colonies at once. First, it is a city of South Australia, being colony No. 1 ; secondly, the capital of the district .of Victoria (meaning colony of Victoria, for there is not, and there never has been, a district of Victoria).; thirdly, Melbourne is described as in New South \Vales, colony No. 3. Thus, in a very wonderful manner, these three different colonies are enclosed within each other, something like the ingenious carved Chinese balls we have seen, which are such puzzles to childre n. South Australia is put into Victoria, and then both these colonies are put carefully into New South \Vales. Again, the reader learns that it (Melbourne) is so "modern," that "twelve years ago it was a wilderness," this wilderness being, in fact, twelve years ago above thirty-six years old, and possessing, with its suburb's, above a hundred and fifty thousand souls. It even then had a Parliament and Municipal Corporation of many years' standing, and you were then as likely to meet a kangaroo or emu in its streets as you are to run against a giraffe in Cheapside. Again, the gazetteer tells is that Melbourne now has a population of " more than 1,200,000 ! " whereas, the population of Melbourne (see Mr. Hayter's statistics), together with the suburbs, is only, according to the last census in-1871-206,780 souls, and the entire population of the whole colony of Victoria is very little beyond two-thirds of that the gazetteer gives to Melbourne alone. The city is not supplied with water from the Yarra, but draws and has for many years drawn its supplies from a large artificial lake, called " the Yan Yean Reservoir," sonic miles inland from Melbourne. Again, under the heading of "Australia," I find no mention of Queensland at all, although that large and . important colony is (under the head of "Queensland") disposed of, at page 691, in ten lines. Again, under the heading of "Australia," we find (page 60) :—"The British settlements are on the east coast of which Sydney is the capital." And at page 795: "It has now [i.e., in 1876] a hospital for military and convicts, and a naval yard." The writer here seems to labour under the idea that Sydney is still a penal settlement of some kind, and it is needless to inform any one who knows anything of that part of the world that Sydney does not possess a hospital specially for convicts, any more than she has a hospital for Bishops or Judges of the Supreme Court. As Sydney possesses one of the finest harbours in the world, it was a safe shot to give her "a naval yard ;" and even had the writer given her half-a-dozen "naval yards "—if by naval yards he means ship-building establishments —he would have been still nearer the mark than be is in this one instance, apparently by accident. At page 61 we are told :—" In Victoria coal has been discovered, and several large rivers, among which are the Hutt, Greenough, and Arrowsmith." Now in Mr. Ilayter's, the Government statist's notes, published last year, I find the following (at page 33):—" The names of the principal rivers in Victoria, with their positions and approximate lengths, originally supplied by the Survey Department, and recently corrected by the Surveyor-General, Mr. Skene, according to the latest information, are as follows." Then an alphabetical list of the names of the rivers is given, beginning with the Acheron and ending with the Yarrowee ; but in the whole list, in all 115 (many of them mere creeks), I do not find any mention of any one of the "several large rivers," the Hutt, the Greenough, or the Arrowsmith, and of the existence of such rivers in Victoria I was not aware until I made their acquaintance in print. These rivers are mentioned under " Western Australia," but I cannot find them on the map.
The above tissue of blunders, committed about a part of the world with which so many of your readers are familiar, may, for aught I know to the contrary, be exceptional. But such a sample does not promise well for the bulk. There are scores of works, official and others, all easily accessible, by the aid of which such mistakes might have been avoided. Not to consult competent authorities is an unpardonable sin in a gazetteer. To be in the hands of a blind guide is bad enough, but to be charged hard money for blind guidance is a hard case
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