Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1880 — Some Facts About Australia. [ARTICLE]

Some Facts About Australia.

Australia, with Tasmania, is only a little less in area than Europe. The hottest climate in the world probably occurs in the desert interior of Australia. Capt. Stuart hung a thermometer on a tree shaded both from sun and wind. It was graduated to 127 deg. F., yet so great was the heat of the air that the mercury rose till it burst the tube, and the temperature must have been at least 128 deg. F., apparently the highest ever recorded in any part of world. For three months Capt. Stuart found the mean temperature to be over 101 deg. F. in the shade. Nevertheless on the southern mountains and tablelands three feet of snow sometimes falls in a day. Snow-storms have been known to last three weeks, the snow lying from four to fifteen feet in depth and burying the cattle. Australia is a land of drought and flood. The annual rainfall at Sydney has varied from twenty-two to eighty-two inches. Lake George, near Goulburn, was, in 1824, twenty miles long and eight miles broad. It gradually shrank till, in 1837, it became quite dry, and its bottom was converted into a grassy plain. In 1865 it was a lake again, seventeen feet deep; two years later it was only two feet deep, and in 1876 it was twenty feet in depth.