The other Australian colonies were originally founded on some ground or for some cause special to themselves. New South Wales, which was the first occupied, was selected as a penal settlement for the use of the mother country. Captain Cook had then but lately made himself acquainted with the coast, and had specially recommended Botany Bay to the British Government. Consequently, a young convict world, under the rule of Governor Phillip, was sent to Botany Bay; and finding Botany Bay unsuited for its purposes, the young world settled itself at Port Jackson. From this establishment Van Diemen’s Land was an offshoot, first colonised for the same purpose,--that of affording a safe refuge to British criminal exiles. An effort was also made in 1803 to establish a penal settlement near the site on which Melbourne now stands. And indeed the first attempt to set up the British flag on that part of the Australian continent which is now called Western Australia was a step made in the same direction. The governors of Port Jackson, or New South Wales, as it came to be called, having been nearly overwhelmed in their heroic struggles to find food for these convicts fourteen thousand miles away from home, on a land which, as far as they had seen it, was very barren, made a sister settlement, first at Norfolk Island, then in Van Diemen’s Land, and thirdly at King George’s Sound,--where stands the town of Albany, which place is now the Southern District of Western Australia. A small party of convicts, with Major Lockyer as their governor, were stationed here in 1826,--but the convicts were withdrawn from the place when it was recognised as belonging to the established colony of Western Australia. After this fashion and for this reason, that of affording a home to the transported ruffians of Great Britain,--the first Australian settlements were made. South Australia was colonised by private enterprise. Victoria and Queensland were separated from New South Wales to the south and north as they became sufficiently populous and strong to demand to be allowed to stand alone. But Western Australia arose after another fashion. She was colonised because she was there,--not because she was wanted for any special purpose, either by the community at large or by any small section of it. We had claimed, and made good our claim, to call all New Holland, hardly by this time known by the name of Australia, as our own. We had done something on the east coast, something in the southern island; some small attempts had been made to utilise the south generally. There were still the west and the north open to us. The northern coast, which even yet we have hardly touched except for telegraphic purposes, was very hot and very unpromising. But there came news to us that on an estuary which had been named the Swan River, running out into the ocean at about the thirty-second parallel of latitude, in a salubrious climate, a commodious settlement might be formed.