UNEXPLORED REGIONS.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1657, 5 August 1873, Page 4

UNEXPLORED REGIONS.

(From the Age.)

The unexplored regions of the world have at all times had a mysterious interest. Year by year their .limits are narrowing. Four vast areas which hare bjen traversed by civilised man itand out preeminently among these, and taken together constitute about a seventeenth part of the surface of the globe. Square miles : South Polar area, 6,Boo,ooo;'North Polar area,, 2,900,000 ; Central Africa, 1,050,000: Australian area, 850,000. Of these the greatest is in the Antartic region, the extent of which is about seventy-five times that of Great Britain. The second lies about the North. Pole, the third is in Central Africa, and the fourth is in Western Australia. That which lies round (he South Pole is almost conterminious with the Antarctic circle, and ran be traced out by the furthest points reached by the voyagers Cook, Bpllinghausen, Weddell; Biscoe, Kemp, Balleny, D'Urville, Wilkes, Ross, anJ Moore, from 1772 to 1845. That part of its boundary ot barrier ice which lies nearest the South Pole in lat. 78deg. lOmin. south of New Zealand, was attained by Boss in February, 1842. The unknown region of the Arctic Pole is also more or less circular in form, except where it stretches southward to the vast inland icefields of Greenland. In the long list of furthest points which constitute its margin, the: inroads made on the previously unknown by Gillis, Wrangell, Parry, Collison, M'CLintoek, Kane, Hogers, Hayes, Payer, and Mack from 1707 till 1871 remain perhaps the most notable. No one has yet approached nearer the North Pole than Parry, who reached the la'itude of 81deg, 45min. over ice, to northward of Spitzbergen, in July of 1827. The unexplored African area of tropical forests and great population, the most' interesting of all, because it is the moat promising in useful results, stretches: from the furthest points explored by thn Portuguese travellers of 1806, of the Hungarian Ladislaus Magyar in 1850, and ot'Livingstone in later years, on the south, to the points nearest the equator reached by Barth in 1855 on the north. Eastward its outline is given by points on the routes ofSpeke in 1862, Baker in 1864, Sohweinfurth in 1870, and Livingstone in 1870-72. On the west the limits of unknown Africa approach very closely to the coast, and near the equator huys only been driven inland at the extremities of Dv Chaillu's journey of 1865 and 1866, aid by the high point on the Ogowai river attained by Walker in 1866. The settled p>irts of the coastland of Angola give the boundary on the south-west. If it be successful, the " Livingstone Congo" expedition, under Lieutenant Q-randy, will penetrate to the very heart of the unknown spaoe. In Australia, the great unknown desert region lies west of the track explored from south to riorth by Stuart in 1861-62, which now marks the line of telegraphic communication across the continent. On the south it extends almost to the steep shores of the Great Australian Bight; on the north the greatest inroad on its domain was made by A. C. Gregory in 1856 i westward its outline it formed" by the turning points of the journeys made by Eoe, A. O. Gregory, Austin, F. Gregory, and Forrest from 1846 to the present time.

A Fea.kfttli Story is tuld ia the Madras papers, of an encounter with a tiger, in which Mr. Joseph Gay, son of Mr. Gay, Controller of Publio Works Acoounts in tho Nizam's' Territory, lost bis life. The. tiger had committed numerous depredations in the Chudderghaut district in Hyderabad. Several, persons had been killed, and the work of the Public Work§ department interferred with. Mr. Marrett, the district engineer, and a successful sportsoian, went out with young Mr. Gay to shoot the animal Mr. Marrett and a shikaree were posted under a tree; Mr. Gay placed himself on the lower branches of the. tree to watch, while the beaters surrounded the lair. The tigor appeared so suddenly that Mr. Marret could only fire, wounding the animal in the.jaw, before he was knocked down, and the tiger, MrV Marrett, and the shikarhee rolled over together. Mr. Gay at this nfoment, in trying to shift his seat so as to get a clear shot, lost his balance, and fell on the back of the enraged tiger. Mr. Marrett had swooned, and the man-eater turned on his new assailant, mangling him fearfully. The beaters then succeeded in driving off the tiger to the jungle. Mr. Marrett was not badly hurt, «nd the ihiUrw was uninjured, but }Oimg Wf. G»y di*d of hi». wound* tix tour* tftwMdi,