Other Powers, not heard of as colonizers in the past, have since come into this field, though too late to obtain any of the great prizes. These are Germany and Italy, the latter having recently added to its acquisitions by the conquest of Tripoli. But there is a great Power still to name, which in its way stands as a rival to Great Britain, the empire of Russia, whose acquisitions in Asia have grown enormously in extent. These are not colonies in the ordinary sense, but rather results of the expansion of an empire through warlike aggression. Yet they are colonial in the sense of absorbing the excess population of European Russia. The great territory of Siberia was gained by Russia before the nineteenth century, though within recent years the Russian dominion in Asia has greatly increased, and has now become enormous, extending from the Arctic Ocean to the borders of Afghanistan, Persia and the Asiatic empire of Turkey. GREAT BRITAIN AS A COLONIZING POWER With this preliminary preview we may proceed to consider the history of colonization within the recent period. And first we must take up the results of the colonial enterprise of Great Britain, as much the most important of the whole. In addition to Hindustan, in which the dominion of Great Britain now extends to Afghanistan and Thibet in the north, the British acquisitions in Asia now include Burmah and the west-coast region of Indo-China, with the Straits Settlements in the Malay peninsula, and the island of Ceylon, acquired in 1802 from Holland. In the eastern seas Great Britain possesses another colony of vast dimensions, the continental island of Australia, which, with its area of nearly 3,000,000 square miles, is three-fourths the size of Europe. The first British settlement was made here in 1788, at Port Jackson, the site of the present thriving city of Sydney, and a part of the island was maintained as a penal settlement, convicts being sent there up to 1868. It was the discovery of gold in 1851 to which Australia owed its great progress. The incitement of the yellow metal drew the enterprising thither by thousands, until the population of the colony is now more than 4,000,000, and is still growing at a rapid rate. There are other valuable resources besides that of gold. Of its cities, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, with its suburbs, has more than 500,000 population; Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, 600,000, while there are other cities of rapid growth. Australia is the one important British colony obtained without a war. In its human beings, as in its animals generally, it stood at a low level of development, and it was taken possession of without a protest from the savage inhabitants. COLONIES IN THE PACIFIC REGION