It would be too much to expect that the denominations could lay aside their differences and unite. But a very kindly feeling exists for the most part between them, whether it be due to their equality, or to the novel circumstances in which they were placed when they began their work. That it may continue and tend to further co-operation is the earnest wish of all. Statistics, giving the most recent facts about the condition of the various Churches in the colonies, will be found in the Appendix. SECTION II. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE COLONIES. CHAPTER IV. VICTORIA. PORT PHILLIP--EARLY SETTLEMENT AND ABANDONMENT--THE PIONEERS HENTY, BATMAN AND FAWKNER--SIZE OF VICTORIA--MELBOURNE--ITS APPEARANCE--PUBLIC BUILDINGS--STREETS--RESERVES--PRIDE OF ITS PEOPLE--UNEARNED INCREMENT--SANDHURST--BALLARAT--THE CAPITAL OF THE INTERIOR--GEELONG--THE WESTERN DISTRICT--VIEW OF THE LAKES--PORTLAND--THE WHEAT PLAINS--SHEPPERTON--THE MALLEE--GIPPSLAND--MOUNTAIN RANGES--SCHOOL SYSTEM--COBB'S COACHES--FACTS AND FIGURES. [Illustration: SEMI-CIVILISED VICTORIAN ABORIGINES.] [Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MELBOURNE.] It is strange that Victoria should be one of the youngest of the colonies, for Port Phillip was amongst the places first noticed by the early settlers of the continent. Lieutenant Grant, commanding the little brig _Lady Nelson_, observed the inlet in the year 1800, when _en route_ for Sydney. In 1802 Governor King, of New South Wales, dispatched the _Lady Nelson_, under Lieutenant Murray, to explore and report. The account given was most favourable of the extent of the bay, the security of its anchorages, and the beauty and apparent fertility of its shores. The result was that it was decided to establish a convict settlement on the shores of the gulf, and in 1803 Colonel Collins and a party of prisoners, with their guards, landed at the site of the now fashionable seaside resort, which has been called Sorrento at the instance of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the first landowners there. To the lover of beauty the scene, gazing from Sorrento down Capel Sound, is fair; the blue sea ripples at your feet; the high hills around Dromana, draped with the rich ultramarine blue not to be found outside of Australia, form a charming background on which one can gaze and gaze again. But the prose of the situation for Governor Collins was that he was landed on a well-nigh waterless sand-spit, the most sterile portion of the district, the resort to-day of the admirers of loveliness, but shunned even to-day by the practical settler. The citizen in his Sorrento villa is lulled by the roar of the league-long surf which ever breaks on the rocky ocean beach, scarcely a mile away. But circumstances alter human views, and the historian of the expedition reports that the monotonous booming of the breakers irritated and depressed both soldiers and convicts, and made a miserable company still more wretched.