The telegraph posts and wires by which the Australian colonies are now connected with Great Britain are already an established fact. This line enters the Australian continent from Java, at a point on the northern coast called Port Darwin. At Port Darwin there is a small settlement called Palmerston, around which land had been sold to the extent of 500,000 acres when I was in the colony, and this has been selected as the landing-place of European news. The colonisation of the northern territory is thus begun,--and there can be little doubt but that a town, and then a settlement, and then a colony, will form themselves. When the scheme of the telegraph was first put on foot the colony of South Australia undertook to make the entire line across the continent,--the submarine line to Java and the line thence on to Singapore and home to Europe being in other hands. It was an immense undertaking for a community so small in number, and one as to which many doubted the power of the colony to complete it. But it has been completed. I had heard, before I left England in 1871, that an undertaking had been given by the government of South Australia to finish the work by January 1, 1872. This certainly was not done, but very great efforts were made to accomplish it, and the failure was caused by the violence of nature rather than by any want of energy. Unexpected and prolonged rains interfered with the operations and greatly retarded them. The world is used to the breaking of such promises in regard to time, and hardly ever expects that a contractor for a large work shall be punctual within a month or two. The world may well excuse this breach of contract, for surely no contractor ever had a harder job of work on hand. The delay would not be worth mention here, were it not that the leading South Australians of the day, headed by the governor, had been so anxious to show that they could really do all that they had undertaken to perform, and were equally disappointed at their own partial failure.