In the case of Australia this concentration of population is becoming more remarkable day by day. Even under the system of free selection, by which the legislature has attempted to encourage agricultural settlement, the moment a free selector can make a little money he comes to one of the capitals to spend it. Sydney is the city of pleasure, to which the wealthy Queensland squatters resort to spend their money, returning to the north for fresh supplies only when they cannot afford another day of dissipation, while Melbourne receives the outpour of Tasmania. The rushing to great cities the moment there is money to be spent, characteristic of the settlers in all these colonies, is much to be regretted, and presents a sad contrast to the quiet stay-at-home habits of American farmers. Everything here is fever and excitement;--as in some systems of geometry, motion is the primary, rest the derived idea. New South Welshmen tell you that this unquiet is peculiar to Victoria; to a new-comer it seems as rife in Sydney as in Melbourne. Judging from the colonial government reports, which immigrants are conjured by the inspectors to procure and read, and which are printed in a cheap form for the purpose, the New South Welsh can hardly wish to lure settlers into “the bush,” for in one of these documents, published while I was in Sydney, the curator of the museum reported that he never went more than twelve miles from the city, but that within that circuit he found seventeen distinct species of land snakes, two of sea snakes, thirty of lizards, and sixteen of frogs--seventy-eight species of reptiles rewarded him in all. The seventeen species of land snakes found by him within the suburbs were named by the curator in a printed list; it commenced with the pale-headed snake, and ended with the death-adder. CHAPTER III. VICTORIA. The smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania,--one-fourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland, one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South Australia,--Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies of Great Britain. When Mr. Fawkner‘s party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and she pays to her governor £10,000 a year, or one-fourth more than even New South Wales.