The Story of Australia. By Flora L. Shaw. (Horace Marshall
and Son.)—This is a welcome addition to the volumes of the "Story of the Empire Series." It reads, especially in the earlier parts, like a delightful romance. Like most other places, Australia was originally discovered by the Dutch, and the first Englishman who visited the country to any purpose appears to have been, characteristically enough, a pirate ; characteristically again, he made his second voyage as a King's officer in command of H.M.S. 'Roebuck' in 1699. After him came Cook, who surveyed and mapped New Zealand—" the accuracy of the New Zealand coast as laid down by Cook has remained to astonish subsequent surveyors "—and took possession of the whole eastern coast in right of his Majesty King George III. The first colony, a convict settlement, was founded at Sydney in 1788, and for years the position of the settlers was desperate. Their cattle, consisting of two bulls and four cows, ran away; their sheep died of eating rank grass. "The seeds, spoilt by salt water and planted in un-
grateful soil, rotted for the most part in the ground For months at a time the settlement was kept upon short rations. The Governor, surrendering all his private stores, lived on the same half-rations as the convicts Store-ships were wrecked on the way out. Convicts, bringing with them every disease, as a consequence of the indescribably horrible conditions under which they were shipped out, continued to arrive." In, 3808 the Governor was arrested by the leaders of a military despotism known as the New South Wales Corps, which for nearly two years ruled the Colony. Then came the marvellous stories, first of the discovery of rich pastoral and agricultural land in the hitherto inaccessible interior, and then of the finding of gold; and after that we are on more or less familiar ground. These things, and many others, Miss Shaw describes in a little book of a hundred and fifty pages. Her style is as clear and direct as usual, but the narrative is necessarily scrappy, and her- incorrigible optimism concerning Colonial matters mars the accuracy of her picture. She cannot see a blot anywhere. She talks of the dispute between the pastoral and agricultural in- terest, but makes no adequate reference to the large aggregations of loafers in the towns, which constitute a very real danger to the future of the Colonies. She skips lightly over the dark side of Australian finance. "Under the new system of colonial responsibility the money required for these developments was borrowed from the British investor, who has ever since received interest regularly paid out of the resources of the colonies." The service of the Colonial Government loans has, it is true, been met, but what of the millions lost by Australian banking and mortgage companies ? "In 1893 a financial crisis of unusual severity threatened, for a moment, to involve the standing insti- tutions of the colonies in universal bankruptcy. The storm was weathered. The immense natural resources of the colonies rendered it possible for them to bear the heavy strain to which they were exposed." On the contrary, the storm was only "weathered" at the expense of the British investor and depositor.
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