was occupied as it now is by the European settler. Mr Eyre s work above referred to, and Captain (afterwards Sir George) Grey s Discoveries in North-West and Western Australia, are authorities that may be relied upon.
Colonial History. -Of the five Australian provinces, that of New South Wales may be reckoned the oldest. It was in 1788, eighteen years after Captain Cook explored the east coast, that Port Jackson was founded as a penal station for criminals from England; and the settlement retained that character, more or less, during the subsequent fifty years, transportation being virtually suspended in 1839. The colony, however, from 1821 had made a fail- start in free industrial progress. By this time, too, several of the other provinces had come into existence. Van Diemen s Land, now called Tasmania, had been occupied as early as 1803. It was an auxiliary penal station under New South Wales, till in 1825 it became a separate province. From this island, ten years later, parties crossed Bass s Straits to Port Phillip, where a new settlement was shortly established, forming till 1851 a part of New South Wales, but now the richer and more populous colony of Victoria. In 1827 and 1829, an English company endeavoured to plant a settlement at the Swan River, and this, added to a small convict station established in 1825 at King George s Sound, constituted Western Australia. On the shores of the Gulf St Vincent, again, from 1835 to 1837, South Australia was created by another joint-stock company, as an experiment in the Wake- field scheme of colonisation. Such were the political component parts of British Australia up to 1839. The earlier history, therefore, of New South Wales is peculiar to itself. Unlike the other mainland provinces, it was at first held and used chiefly for the reception of British convicts. When that system was abolished, the social conditions of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia became more equal Pre vious to the gold discoveries of 1851 they may be included, from 1839, in a general summary view. The first British governors at Sydney, from 1788, ruled with despotic power. They were naval or military officers in command of the garrison, the convicts, and the few free settlers The duty was performed by such men as Captain Arthur Phillip, Captain Hunter, and others. In the twelve years rule of General Macquarie, closing with 1821, the colony made a substantial advance. By means of con vict labour roads and bridges were constructed, and a route opened into the interior beyond the Blue Mountains. A population of 30,000, three-fourths of them convicts, formed the infant commonwealth, whose attention was soon directed to the profitable trade of rearing fine wool sheep, first commenced by Mr John M Arthur in 1803. During the next ten years, 1821-31, Sir Thomas Bris bane and Sir Ralph Darling, two generals of the army, being successively governors, the colony increased, and eventually succeeded in obtaining the advantages of a representative institution, by means of a legislative council. Then came General Sir Richard Bourke, whose wise and liberal administration proved most beneficial. New South Wales became prosperous and attractive to emigrants with capital. Its enterprising ambition was encouraged by taking fresh country north and south. In the latter direc tion, explored by Mitchell in 1834 and 1836, lay Australia Felix, now Victoria, including the well-watered, thickly- wooded country of Gipps Land. This district, then called Port Phillip, in the time of Governor Sir George Gipps, 1838 to 1846, was growing fast into a position claiming independence. Melbourne, which began with a few huts on the banks of the Yarra-Yarra in 1835, was in 1840 a busy town of 6000 inhabitants, the population of the whole district, with the towns of Geelong and Portland, reaching 12,850; while its import trade amounted to 204,000, audits exports to 138,000. Such was the growth of infant Victoria in five years ; that of Adelaide or South Australia, in the same period, was nearly equal to it. At Melbourne there was a deputy governor, Mr Latrobe, under Sir George Gipps at Sydney. Adelaide had its own governors, first Captain Hindmarsh, next Colonel Gawler, and then Captain George Grey. Western Australia progressed but slowly, with less than 4000 inhabitants altogether, under Governors Stirling and Hutt. The general advancement of Australia, to the era of the gold-mining, had been satisfactory, in spite of a severe commercial crisis, from 1841 to 1843, caused by extrava gant land speculations and inflated prices. Victoria pro duced already more wool than New South Wales, the aggregate produce of Australia in 1852 being 45,000,000 Ib ; and South Australia, between 1842 and this date, had opened most valuable mines of copper. The population of New South Wales in 1851 was 190,000; that of Victoria, 77,000; and that of South Australia about the same. At Summerhill Creek, 20 miles north of Bathurst, in the Macquarie plains, gold was discovered, in February 1851, by Mr E. Hargraves, a gold-miner from California, The intelligence was made known in April or May ; and then began a rush of thousands, men leaving their former employments in the bush or in the towns to search for the ore so greatly coveted in all ages. In August it was found at Anderson s Creek, near Melbourne ; a few weeks later the great Ballarat gold-field, 80 miles west of that city, was opened; and after that, Bendigo, now called Sandhurst, to the north. Not only in these lucky pro vinces, New South Wales and Victoria, where the auri ferous deposits were revealed, but in every British colony of Australasia, all ordinary industry was left for the one exciting pursuit. The copper mines of South Australia were for the time deserted, while Tasmania and New Zea land lost many inhabitants, who emigrated to the more promising country. The disturbance of social, industrial, and commercial affairs, during the first two or three years of the gold era, was very great. Immigrants from Europe, and to some extent from North America and China, poured into Melbourne, where the arrivals in 1852 averaged 2000 persons in a week. The population of Victoria was doubled in the first twelvemonth of the gold fever, and the value of imports and exports was multiplied tenfold between 1851 and 1853. The colony of Victoria was constituted a separate pro vince in July 1851, Mr Latrobe being appointed governor, followed by Sir Charles Hotham and Sir Henry Barkly in succession. The more rapid increase of Victoria since that time, in wealth and number of inhabitants, has gained it a pre-eminence in the esteem of emigrants ; but the varied resources of New South Wales, and its greater extent of territory, may in some degree tend to redress the balance, if not to restore the character of superior importance to the older colony. The separation of the northern part of eastern Australia, under the name of Queensland, from the original province of New South Wales, took place in 1859. At that time the i district contained about 25,000 inhabitants; and in the first six years (as Sk George Bowen, the first governor, observed in 1865) its population was quadrupled and its trade trebled. It appears, from a general view of Australian progress in the last twenty years, that the provinces less rich in gold than Victoria have been enabled to advance in prosperity by other means. Wool continues the great staple of Aus tralia. But New South Wales, possessing both coal and
iron, is becoming a seat of manufactures ; while Queens-
