Chapter IV
TASMANIA
TASMANIA, the Garden Island, is as large as Scotland: and considerably more sleepy than the Channel Islands. Like the rest of Australia, it was at one time a sort of dependency of Java, having been discovered, and named Van Diemen's Land, by Tasman in 1642. It was taken possession of as a British colony in the first years of this century, shortly after Dr Bass had discovered that it had ceased (since the tertiary period, approximately speaking) to form a part of Continental Australia. It is still marked in the old charts, specimens of which, printed on pottery ware, are still to be bought in the china shops of Kensington, as the southern extremity of the mainland; though the error has been corrected, probably, in maps of more recent issue. This mistake, however, together with the fact, already referred to, that the north shore of South Australia faces New Guinea, is possibly responsible for the extraordinarily confused state of the British mind in respect of Australian geography. The name of the colony was subsequently changed to Tasmania, in order to encourage a discreet oblivion of a chapter of history about which, even now, the less said the better, except that it is fully set forth in Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life." And since that time Tasmania has settled down to the production of potatoes, contentment, and jam. The guide-books call the island the Sanatorium of the South. That, of course, is the alliterative sort of thing guide-books usually
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