Were it not for the pride of race that everywhere shows itself in the acts of English settlers, there might be a bright side to the political future of the Queensland colony. The coloured labourers at present introduced-industrious Tongans, and active Hill-coolies from Hindostan, laborious, sober, and free from superstition-should not only be able to advance the commercial fortunes of Queensland as they have those of the Mauritius, but eventually to take an equal share in free government with their white employers. To avoid the gigantic evil of the degradation of hand labour, which has ruined morally as well as economically the Southern States of the American republic, the Indian, Malay, and Chinese labourers should be tempted to become members of land-holding associations. A large spice and sugar-growing population in Northern Queensand would require a vast agricultural population in the South to feed it; and the two colonies, hitherto rivals, might grow up as sister countries, each depending upon the other for the supply of half its needs. It is, however, worthy of notice that the agreements of the Queensland planters with the imported dark-skinned field-hands provide only for the payment of wages in goods, at the rates of 6s. to 1os. a month. The "Goods" consist of pipes, tobacco, knives, and beads. Judging from the experience of California and Ceylon, there can be little hope of the admission of coloured men to equal rights by English settlers, and the Pacific islands offer so tempting a field to kidnapping skippers that there is much fear that Queensland may come to show us not merely semi-slavery, but peonage of that worst of kinds, in which it is cheaper to work the labourer to death than to "breed " him.

Such is the present rapidity of the growth and rise to power of Queensland, such the apparent poverty of New South Wales, that were the question merely one between the Sydney wheatgrowers and the cotton-planters of Brisbane and Rockampton, the sub-tropical settlers would be as certain of the foremost position in any future confederation, as they were in America when the struggle lay only between the Carolinas and New England. As it is, just as America was first saved by the coal of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Australia will be saved by the coal of New South Wales. Queensland possesses some small stores

of coal, but the vast preponderance of acreage of the great power of the future lies in New South Wales.

On my return from a short voyage to the north, I visited the coal-field of New South Wales at Newcastle, on the Hunter. The beds are of vast extent: they lie upon the banks of a navigable river, and so near to the surface that the best qualities are raised, in a country of dear labour, at 8s. or 9s. the ton, and delivered on board ship for 125. For manufacturing purposes the coal is perfect; for steam-ship use it is, though somewhat "dirty," a serviceable fuel; and copper and iron are found in close proximity to the beds. The Newcastle and Port Jackson fields open a brilliant future to Sydney in these times, when coal is king in a far higher degree than was ever cotton. her black beds the colony will owe not only manufactures, bringing wealth and population, but that leisure which is begotten of riches-leisure that brings culture, and love of harmony and truth.

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Factories are already springing up in the neighbourhood of Sydney, adding to the whirl and the bustle of the town, and adding, too, to its enormous population, already disproportionate to that of the colony in which it stands. As the depôt for much of the trade of Queensland and New Zealand, and as the metropolis of pleasure to which the wealthy squatters pour from all parts of Australia, to spend, rapidly enough, their hard-won money, Sydney would in any case have been a populous city; but the barrenness of the country in which it stands has, until the recent opening of the railroads, tended still further to increase its size, by failing to tempt into the country the European immigrants. The Irish in Sydney form a third of the population, yet hardly one of these men but meant to settle upon land when he left his native island.

In France there is a tendency to migrate to Paris; in Austria, a continual drain towards Vienna; in England, towards London. A corresponding tendency is observable throughout Australia and America. Immigrants hang about New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Sydney, Melbourne; and, finding that they can scrape a living in these large cities with toil somewhat less severe than that which would be needed to procure them a decent livelihood in the bush, the unthrifty as well as the dissi

pated throng together in densely-populated "rookeries" in the cities, and render the first quarter of New York and the so-called "Chinese" quarter of Melbourne an insult to the civilization of the world.

In the case of Australia this concentration of population is becoming more remarkable day by day. Even under the system of free selection, by which the Legislature has attempted to encourage agricultural settlement, the moment a free selector can make a little money he comes to one of the capitals to spend it. Sydney is the city of pleasure, to which the wealthy Queensland squatters resort to spend their money, returning to the North for fresh supplies only when they cannot afford another day of dissipation, while Melbourne receives the outpour of Tasmania.

The rushing to great cities the moment there is money to be spent, characteristic of the settlers in all these colonies, is much to be regretted, and presents a sad contrast to the quiet stay-athome habits of American farmers. Everything here is fever and excitement ;-as in some systems of geometry, motion is the primary, rest the derived idea. New South Welshmen tell you that this unquiet is peculiar to Victoria; to a new-comer, it seems as rife in Sydney as in Melbourne.

Judging from the Colonial Government reports, which immigrants are conjured by the inspectors to procure and read, and which are printed in a cheap form for the purpose, the New South Welsh can hardly wish to lure settlers into "the bush ;" for in one of these documents, published while I was in Sydney, the curator of the Museum reported that in his explorations he never went more than twelve miles from the city, but that within that circuit he found seventeen distinct species of land-snakes, two of sea-snakes, thirty of lizards, and sixteen of frogs-seventyeight species of reptiles rewarded him in all. The seventeen species of land-snakes found by him within the suburbs were named by the curator in a printed list; it commenced with the pale-headed snake, and ended with the death-adder.

CHAPTER III.

VICTORIA.

THE smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania-onefourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland, one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South AustraliaVictoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies of Great Britain.

When Mr. Fawkner's party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and she pays to her Governor £10,000 a year, or one-fourth more than even New South Wales.

When looked into, all this success means gold. There is industry, there is energy, there is talent, there is generosity and public spirit, but they are the abilities and virtues that gold will bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashing fellows in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of San Francisco; it is the success of Hokitika on a larger scale, and refined and steadied by having lasted through some years-the triumph of a population which has hitherto consisted chiefly of adult males.

Sydney people, in their jealousy of the Victorians, refuse to admit even that the superior energy of the Melbourne men is a

necessary consequence of their having been the pick of the spirited youths of all the world, brought together by the rush for gold. At the time of the first "find" in 1851, all the resolute, able, physically strong do-noughts of Europe and America flocked into Port Philip, as Victoria was then called; and such timid and weak men as came along with them being soon crowded out, the men of energy and tough vital force alone remained.

Some of the New South Welsh, shutting their eyes to the facts connected with the gold-rush, assert so loudly that the Victorians are the refuse of California, or "Yankee scum," that when I first landed in Melbourne I expected to find street-cars, revolvers, big hotels, and fire-clubs, euchre, caucuses, and mixed drinks. I could discover nothing American about Melbourne except the grandeur of the public buildings and the width of the streets, and its people are far more thoroughly British than are the citizens of the rival capital. In many senses, Melbourne is the London, Sydney the Paris, of Australia.

Of the surpassing vigour of the Victorians there can be no doubt; a glance at the map shows the Victorian railways stretching to the Murray, while those of New South Wales are still boggling at the Green Hills, fifty miles from Sydney. Melbourne has carried off the Australian trade with the New Zealand gold-fields from Sydney, the nearer port. Melbourne imports Sydney shale, and makes from it mineral oil, before the Sydney people have found out its value; and gas in Melbourne is cheaper than in Sydney, though the Victorians are bringing their coal five hundred miles, from a spot only fifty miles from Sydney.

It is possible that the secret of the superior energy of the Victorians may lie, not in the fact that they are more American, but more English, than the New South Welsh. The leading Sydney people are mainly the sons or grandsons of original settlers-" corn-stalks" reared in the semi-tropical climate of the coast; the Victorians are full-blooded English immigrants, bred in the more rugged climes of Tasmania, Canada, or Great Britain, and brought only in their maturity to live in the exhilarating air of Melbourne, the finest climate in the world for healthy men: Melbourne is hotter than Sydney, but its climate is never tropical. The squatters on the Queensland downs,