gical wealth. All the
fruits of the tropics and of the most temperate lands may be easily
brought to the same table. Taking Tasmania and Port Phillip as the
central regions; on the right and on the left the fertile earth yields
every variety of European fruits, until the meridian is reached where
the sugar cane and cotton tree flourish. It is true, that some other
lands present more comparative fertility, but the Australias contain
sufficient alluvial soils to satisfy the wants of millions. Washington
raised but twenty bushels of wheat per acre in his paternal lands of
Virginia. The intelligent Australian farmer often far exceeds that
quantity even with imperfect cultivation. Nor is there a season of the
year when he cannot toil, or one when the garden is wholly unproductive.

But if the position of Australia in relation to the rest of the world be
surveyed, the prospect is still more brilliant. An Englishman measures
distance from his native land, and thus his pardonable vanity fixes the
Australias at the extremity of the earth. But such is not the real
position of New Holland. In reference to the most populous and fertile,
or the most ancient and opulent,[283] it has been compared to the frog
or soft part of a horse's foot in relation to the outline of the hoof.
With the face turning to the north, America is on the right, Asia and
Africa on the left. Great Britain, the parent land, is far more distant
from most of those mighty regions which feed her commerce and sustain
her strength than her Australian colonies. They will soon meet her
vessels on every shore. Steam navigation will flourish on the Pacific
ocean not less than on the rivers of America. The eye that scans the
future, guided by calculation rather than fancy, sees the ports of
Australia thronged with steamers, or follows them traversing every sea
and ocean, and bringing from every city of the civilised world both
merchandise and men.

Thus the progress of the next quarter of a century will be multiplied by
its years.

When North America separated from Great Britain, she exported not much
more than four millions in value per annum. Australia already exports
not less.[284] The commerce of England with her Australian colonies is
without parallel. History affords no example of such rapid advancement;
and this not as the result of protective laws, or of remarkable
intelligence or enterprise, but as the fruit of that boundless opulence
scattered by the hand of