The chief drawback of Australia as a cattle and sheep producing country has always been its liability to long droughts when no rain falls and the grass perishes and the stock dies for lack of food and water. Much trouble arose at one time from the foolish and short-sighted action of the Government at home in transporting criminals thither. In the first instance they were sent to New South Wales and later to Queensland also. Many of these convicts escaped into the bush, and, banding themselves together, became a terror, by the name of bushrangers, to peaceful farmers. Obviously the families of the convicts could not have been brought up in circumstances likely to turn them into good citizens. It is all the more to the credit of the country that it has such a fine population to-day. The folly and the wickedness of thus filling up a grand new country with the refuse ejected from the old was gradually realised. Transportation of criminals ceased in 1868. The Australian colonies continued to govern themselves as separate units, under a constitution granted them by the Crown in 1850, for just fifty years. In {239} 1900, by their own request, they were welded into the Commonwealth of Australia, with a Governor-General appointed by the Crown. The federated States are six, that is to say, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia on the main land, with the island State of Tasmania to the south. Thus, shortly, it is possible to relate the story of the white man's acquisition of this great continent of the South; but though its story is so short and simple the importance of the part that it is likely to play in the future of this Greatest of all Stories is quite beyond our estimate, but is certain to be very large. Its vacant spaces, ready for the immigrant, are vast. The difficulties created by the droughts are being gradually overcome, as the means of irrigation are improved. The population is vigorous and efficient. Australia sent fighters of splendid bravery and splendid loyalty to aid the mother country in the Great War. The world has yet to learn the possibilities of this young and still undeveloped continent.