writings as far back as the time of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century before Christ. More than two hundred years later, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy make distinct mention of the same mysterious territory, although the accounts given of the inhabitants by these writers are evidently apocryphal. There is no doubt that the existence of Australia was known to the Greeks and Romans, although all trace of the channels through which they obtained their information seem to be hopelessly lost. There are indications that in the eight centuries of Mohammedan rule in the Malay Peninsula, the northern coasts of Australia were visited by adventurers from that country. At the same time there is abundant proof that the trepang fishery was carried on by the Chinese on the north coast of the continent from an early period. The features of the aborigines in the Gulf of Carpentaria and at Cape York plainly reveal the fact that they had been in contact with Mongolians from the Celestial Empire.

The "Columbus" who discovered the Australian continent is believed to have been a Provençal navigator, called Gillaume le Testu, a native of Grasse. French maps and related documents exist in the British. Museum and the War Office in Paris, which counteance this view, and point to the discovery as having taken place in 1531. The story of Le Testu's undertaking, and the interesting accounts of subsequent explorers, including the Dutch and the first Englishman, Dampier, who landed at different points on the coast, are, however, too long to be recited. We come

at once to Captain Cook, who sighted the coast of Victoria, and subsequently landed in Botany Bay, New South Wales, in 1770, upwards of a century and a half after the period covered by Dutch exploration. Attempts, which ended only with the first half of the present century, were made by other nations to acquire a foothold in the country. Some of these attempts

1

failed from timidity, and others from incompetence in the explorers. But for the providential croaking of frogs, it is not improbable that to-day Western Australia would have belonged to France. A century ago a party of French colonists landed on the west coast, but the first morning after they had alighted from their boats on the beach, they were scared by the loud croaking of these animals, which they superstitiously believed to be demons, and they returned in haste and fright to their ships. Another expedition of the same nationality was so squeamish, that they were driven from their intention to settle on the coast by the repulsive appearance of the natives. A third party pronounced Australia Felix to be generally unfit for human habitation. The most serious of French attempts to take possession of a portion of the continent were made in 1801, when three French men-of-war, under Baudin and Freycinet, cruised about the southern coasts in quest of a suitable spot for the establishment of a pioneer colony, but without success.

So far, however, from any glory in the first instance accruing to England from becoming possessed of Australia, her experience-if the truth must be told-was quite of an opposite kind. Upwards of a century ago, and for many years afterwards, the English Government had no intention of annexing the whole of the country. Their sole object at first was to form a penal settlement for convicts, as the Declaration of Independence by the first federal Government of the United States prevented us from any longer utilising the American colonies for a similar purpose. Eighteen years after Cook discovered Botany Bay, Captain Phillip disembarked the first cargo of English convicts in that locality in 1788. In 1802 a shipload of convicts was sent out by the Home authorities in the care of Lieu

1 This reminds us of the story told by Herodotus of a vast army of Scythians being put to flight, in a panic, by the braying of an ass.

tenant-Colonel Collins, under instructions that a penal settlement should be founded by him on the shores of Hobson's Bay, in what is now the colony of Victoria. But after an inspection of that region, it appeared to those appointed to select a site, so inhospitable as to be utterly unfit to support civilised immigrants. Yet, in that very neighbourhood the populous towns of Melbourne and Geelong now flourish. In 1804, LieutenantColonel Collins transferred the prisoners who were destined for settlement in Hobson's Bay to Van Diemen's Land-now called Tasmania-and this was the origin of convictism in that beautiful island, which subsequently became the scene of those horrors and cruelties so graphically depicted in Marcus Clarke's famous novel, "The Term of his Natural Life." So little attraction did New South Wales present to immigrants from the United Kingdom, that, upwards of forty years after the first convict settlement had been established in that colony, the inhabitants did not number in 1830 more than 39,000, the colony being 309,000 square miles in extent. The population of New South Wales to-day approaches a million and a quarter, and is certain to advance at a steady pace.

Taking the colonies in the order of their formation, Western Australia was founded in 1829 by free settlers from England, who planted themselves on the banks of the Swan River, where the rapidly-growing city of Perth now stands. This band of pioneers was reinforced by a thousand immigrants from New South Wales in 1830, who brought with them an aggregate capital of £140,000; and to these two contingents of settlers considerable free grants of land were ceded by the Government. But unhappily a large proportion of the first settlers turned out to be unsuited to the hardships incident to their position, and many of them soon left the colony in disgust. Finding extreme difficulty for many years in obtaining labour to assist them in con

ducting farming operations, and, after experiencing a variety of trying vicissitudes from other causes, the settlers in 1850 were necessitated to petition the Home Government to export to them convict labour, and for a long time they were mainly dependent on the aid of some thousands sent out from British prisons, for carrying on work of on work of every kind. Up to 1891, Western Australia, with an area of nearly 1,000,000 square miles, had only attained a population of 55,000. Since that date the number has number has increased to 172,000, and a constant stream of immigrants flows into the colony from the eastern colonies of Australia, and from all parts of Europe, attracted by the remarkable gold discoveries which have been made in the west. As the vast expanse of auriferous country is developed, the population is certain to increase at a surprising rate. The irony of fate, however, is strangely illustrated in the history of this latest born of selfgoverning Australian colonies. Rich and extensive gold mines were discovered in New South Wales and Victoria about thirty-five years before the existence of gold was even suspected in Western Australia, despite the fact that the original discoveries of Australian land were made by European explorers on the West Australian coast.

Victoria, which had previously been included in the colony of New South Wales, was erected into a separate colony in 1834, receiving its first inhabitants from Tasmania, these immigrants being headed by Batman and Fawkner. Four years later, in 1838, the population of Victoria rose to 3500, and in 1891 it reached 1,140,000, the area of the colony being 87,800 square miles. Since the latter year, however, there has been a decline in population, consequent upon the disastrous collapse of inflated land speculations and the failure of local banks. But it is believed that a general recovery has now been effected,

and it is hoped that progress will be resumed on a more solid basis than previously. Responsible government was not conferred upon Victoria till 1850, the year immediately before that in which the marvellous gold mines of Ballarat and Bendigo attracted notice, and brought tens of thousands of gold-seekers from many distant countries. And in about fifty years the collective amount of gold the colony has yielded is valued at upwards of £246,000,000. Last year alone the gold production reached nearly £3,700,000, although it is noteworthy that last year (1898), for the first time, Victoria was dethroned from her position as chief gold producer in the Australian group of colonies by Western Australia, which in this respect is expected to maintain her supremacy.

South Australia was founded in 1836, under the auspices of an English joint-stock company, called the South Australian Colonisation Association, promoted and directed by the eminent philanthropist, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, an ingenious and well-meaning theorist, whose conspicuous lack of wise organising power, nevertheless, brought serious disappointment, privation, and loss on those who followed his guidance. The first working of his colonising scheme was disastrous. The colony was inundated with immigrants who were unable to settle on the land for want of means, and the small proportion who could settle could not sell what they produced for want of markets. Now, in a territory comprising 900,000 square miles, there is a population of 340,000 with a promising future before it. Queensland, situated to the northeast of New South Wales, was carved out of the parent colony, and ultimately received self-governing institutions in 1857. Its area is 678,000 square miles, and its inhabitants number 400,000. Already it almost equals Victoria in gold production, and it is not impossible that it may eventually surpass it.