Adventures Of Two Youths In A Journey To The Sandwich, Marquesas, Society, Samoan, And Feejee Islands, And Through The Colonies Of New Zealand, New South Wales Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, And South Australia
The writer of this volume is not aware that any illustrated book descriptive of Australia and its neighboring colonies, New Zealand and Tasmania, by an American author, or from an American press, has ever yet appeared. Believing such a book desirable, he sent those youthful veterans of travel, Frank Bassett and Fred Bronson, over the route indicated on the title-page, with instructions to make careful note of what they saw and learned. Under the guidance of their mentor and our old friend Doctor Bronson they carried out their instructions to the letter, and the results of their observations will be found in the following pages. Trusting that the book will meet the favor that has been accorded to previous volumes of the "Boy Traveller" series, they offer their present work as their contribution to the Australian centennial, and hope that the boys and girls of their native land will find pleasure and profit in its perusal.
The method followed in the preparation of previous volumes of the series has been observed in the present book as far as it was possible to do so. The author's personal knowledge of the countries and people of Australasia has been supplemented by information drawn from many sources—from books, newspapers, maps, and other publications, and from numerous Australian gentlemen whom he has known or with whom he has been in correspondence. During the progress of the work he has kept a watchful eye on the current news from the antipodes, and sought to bring the account of the condition of the railways, telegraphs, and other constantly changing enterprises down to the latest dates.
Many of the books consulted in the preparation of "The Boy Travellers In Australasia" are named in the text, but circumstances made it inconvenient to refer to all. Among the volumes used are the following: Wallace's "Australasia," Forrest's "Explorations in Australia," Warburton's "Journey Across the Western Interior of Australia," Alexander's "Bush-fighting in the Maori War," Smyth's "Aborigines of Victoria," Bodham-Whetham's "Pearls of the Pacific," Murray's "Forty Years of Mission Work in Polynesia," Cumming's "At Home in Fiji," Markham's "Cruise of the Rosario," Palmer's "Kidnapping in the South Seas," Buller's "Forty Years in New Zealand," "Australian Pictures," Harcus's "South Australia," Eden's "Australia's Heroes," Trollope's "Australia and New Zealand," and Nordhoff's "Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands."
