In America, as soon as the Alleghanies were {207} passed, the flood of immigration poured out upon the great river valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and the prairies of the far West, capable of at once absorbing millions of people. Nothing of this kind is possible for Australia. There the want of water in the interior, the partly desert and partly pastoral character of the country, are limiting dense population to the rim of the continent. Even there it is curiously concentrated in the cities. Irrigation, with the intense culture which it makes possible, may cause a considerable change over limited areas, and artesian wells will do much to give steadiness to the pastoral industry, but after all such allowances have been made it seems perfectly clear that the centre of Australia will be conquered but slowly, and will never be densely inhabited. It is hoped that by a united effort among the colonies a railway may be thrown across the continent from North to South; one from East to West would apparently be impracticable, and the connection between the opposite coasts will be chiefly maintained by Sea. Over vast areas from five to ten acres of land must be allowed for each sheep pastured, and it is doubtful if the capacity of much of this land to carry stock can be sensibly increased. The care of sheep and cattle can be carried on with great profit and on an immense scale by an exceedingly limited population, and a large part of Australia must always be chiefly pastoral. I suspect that in the mining industry also the proportion of workers to the volume of production {208} is comparatively small. Three hundred millions of gold taken from the soil since the first discovery of the precious metal less than fifty years ago, and vast public and private borrowings in addition of outside capital have given a great impulse to settlement in the past. But the conditions of the last half century have clearly been abnormal, and can scarcely be taken as an index of the future.