heir successful settlement was a
feat which by comparison utterly dwarfs all the European wars of the
last two centuries; just as the importance of the issues at stake in
the wars of Rome and Carthage completely overshadowed the interests
for which the various contemporary Greek kingdoms were at the same
time striving.

Australia, which was much less important than America, was also won
and settled with far less difficulty. The natives were so few in
number and of such a low type, that they practically offered no
resistance at all, being but little more hindrance than an equal
number of ferocious beasts. There was no rivalry whatever by any
European power, because the actual settlement--not the mere
expatriation of convicts--only began when England, as a result of her
struggle with Republican and Imperial France, had won the absolute
control of the seas. Unknown to themselves, Nelson and his fellow
admirals settled the fate of Australia, upon which they probably never
wasted a thought. Trafalgar decided much more than the mere question
whether Great Britain should temporarily share the fate that so soon
befell Prussia; for in all probability it decided the destiny of the
island-continent that lay in the South Seas.

The history of the English-speaking race in America has been widely
different. In Australia there was no fighting whatever, whether with
natives or with other foreigners. In America for the past two
centuries and a half there has been a constant succession of contests
with powerful and warlike native tribes, with rival European nations,
and with American nations of European origin. But even in America
there have been wide differences in the way the work has had to be
done in different parts of the country, since the close of the great
colonial contests between England, France, and Spain.

The extension of the English westward through Canada since the war of
the Revolution has been in its essential features merely a less
important repetition of what has gone on in the northern United
States. The gold miner, the transcontinental railway, and the soldier
have been the pioneers of civilization. The chief point of difference,
which was but small, arose from the fact that the whole of western
Canada was for a long time under the control of the most powerful of
all the fur companies, in whose employ were very many French voyageurs
and coureurs des bois. From these there sprang up in the valleys of
the Red River