its great inheritance. When these continents were settled they
contained the largest tracts of fertile, temperate, thinly peopled
country on the face of the globe. We cannot rate too highly the
importance of their acquisition. Their successful settlement was a
feat which by comparison utterly dwarfs all the European wars of the
last two centuries; just as the importance of the issues at stake in
the wars of Rome and Carthage completely overshadowed the interests
for which the various contemporary Greek kingdoms were at the same
time striving.

Australia, which was much less important than America, was also won
and settled with far less difficulty. The natives were so few in
number and of such a low type, that they practically offered no
resistance at all, being but little more hindrance than an equal
number of ferocious beasts. There was no rivalry whatever by any
European power, because the actual settlement--not the mere
expatriation of convicts--only began when England, as a result of her
struggle with Republican and Imperial France, had won the absolute
control of the seas. Unknown to themselves, Nelson and his fellow
admirals settled the fate of Australia, upon which they probably never
wasted a thought. Trafalgar decided much more than the mere question
whether Great Britain should temporarily share the fate that so soon
befell Prussia; for in all probability it decided the destiny of the
island-continent that lay in the South Seas.

The history of the English-speaking race in America has been widely
different. In Australia there was no fighting whatever, whether with
natives or with other foreigners. In America for the past two
centuries and a half there has been a constant succession of contests
with powerful and warlike native tribes, with rival European nations,