Eldorado (a mythical country abounding in gold), so talked
of in the sixteenth century, than was the imaginary land of untold
wealth so confidently believed by the adventurous Spaniards, to exist
somewhere between the Orinoco and the Amazon.

This new home of the British race in the South Pacific, surrounded by
accessible seas and inviting harbors, inspires us with vivid interest.
We say "new," and yet, geologically speaking, it is one of the oldest
portions of the earth's surface. While a great part of Europe has been
submerged and elevated, crumpled up as it were into mountain chains,
Australia seems to have been undisturbed. It is remarkable that in a
division of the globe of such colossal proportions there was found no
larger quadruped than the kangaroo, and that man was the only animal
that destroyed his kind. He, alas! was more ferocious than the lynx, the
leopard, or the hyena; for these animals do not prey upon each other,
while the aborigines of Australia devoured one another.

What America was to Spain in the proud days of that nation's glory
Australia has been to England, and that too, without the crime of
wholesale murder, and the spilling of rivers of blood, as was the case
in the days of Cortez and Pizarro. The wealth poured into the lap of
England by these far-away colonies belittles all the riches which the
Spaniards realized by the conquests of Mexico and Peru. Here is an
empire won without war, a new world called into existence, as it were,
by moral forces, an Eldorado captured without the sword. Here, Nature
has spread her generous favors over a land only one-fifth smaller than
the whole continent of Europe, granting every needed resource wherewith
to form a great, independent, and prosperous nation; where labor is
already more liberally rewarded, and life more easily sustained, than in
any other civilized country except America. It is difficult to believe
while observing the present population, wealth, power, and prosperity
of the country at large, characterized by such grand and conspicuous
elements of empire, that it has been settled for so brief a period, and
that its pioneers were from English prisons. The authentic record of
life in the colonies of Australia and Tasmania during the first few
years of their existence, is mainly the account of the control of
lawless men by the strong and cruel arm of military despotism.

Up to the present writing Australia has realized from her soil over
three h