After Stuart’s journey there remained only to complete the conquest of the desert from east to west. In 1840, Eyre had succeeded in travelling from Adelaide to West Australia along the shores of the Great Australian Bight. It was 1870 before Sir John Forrest traversed the same route in the opposite direction. The result was the occupation of Eucla, in the middle of the Bight, and the completion of the overland wire from Adelaide to Albany in 1877. Finally, in 1874, Forrest crossed the middle of the great plateau, from Geraldton to the north-south telegraph line. A few daring journeys and the two telegraph lines still represent the only land links between the detached areas of settlement which fringe the central plateau block; but a stronger link will soon be forged. Already the work is in hand. A survey of the route was completed in 1909 by the Federal Government; and at the end of 1911 a Bill was passed for the construction of a railway from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie, a distance of over 1000 miles. This line will not only shorten the mail route to the eastern States, but may also lead to some pastoral settlement, as not all the country traversed is desert. South and Western Australia, with the Northern Territory, together include nearly two-thirds of the continent. Western Australia alone includes nearly a third. It is rather more than five times the size of Spain, but its population is smaller than that of any of the States of the mainland. The reason for this contrast is partly a matter of history, as the State is comparatively young, and partly due to geographical causes, as we shall see when we have examined the country. The map shows Western Australia stretching from north to south, 26 across the whole breadth of the continent, with the Tropic running through the middle. It corresponds in position to Queensland and New South Wales; for Cape Londonderry is in the same latitude as the middle of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, while Albany is a little south of Sydney. The greater part of the State is occupied by a broad plateau, from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet high; between this and the sea is a narrow coastal plain, irregular and deeply indented in the north, narrower and more uniform towards the south, and disappearing in the south-west corner where the plateau edge approaches the sea. We may notice a certain likeness here to the structure of the eastern end of the continent. We shall find nearly the whole of the agricultural population collected along a comparatively narrow belt of country from Geraldton to Albany, with Perth, the capital, in the middle. On the plateau there are no great rivers, but many short streams run down from its western edge to the sea; and though the map shows large lakes in the interior we shall find that in this case the map is not entirely to be trusted.