Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/404

 392 THE MODERN NATIONS Pacific were gradually occupied by British settlers ; and the whole of British North America with the exception of the island of Newfoundland was ultimately incorporated in the dominion of Canada. Bereft of half North America, the British Empire almost unconsciously expanded into a new continent. Although for centuries Portuguese and Dutch had occupied lands in the great eastern Archipelago, Australia remained unexplored and unoccupied until Captain Cook visited it in 1770. Eighteen years later it was annexed by Great Britain, and the first British settlement was planted on its shores. The primary object was to find a new region for the deportation of criminals who were no longer wanted for forced labour in British colonies. The new territory was in part taken up by settlers other than the convicts sent to penal settlements. By slow degrees they spread, and New South Wales was organised as a colony. No material resistance was offered by the nomadic native races, an exceptionally undeveloped type of humanity. Emigrants from home increased in numbers, more of the continent was taken up, and separate colonies under separate governments were established, including the comparatively remote islands of New Zealand. The movement towards self- government already noticed in Canada was brought to bear also in Australasia; and an immense impulse was given to immigration, and to the development of manufactures, to meet the needs of the growing population, by the discovery of gold- fields. The northern sea-board of Africa on the Mediterranean had been included in the civilised world ever since the days of South Carthage. To Europeans the rest of the continent Africa. was unknown till the voyages of the Portuguese led to the establishment of trading settlements at points on the coast. There was no penetrating inland. Only the Dutch discovered at the southern extremity a land and a climate where they could settle and remain from generation to generation. Arabs took possession of the east coast, and south of them the Portuguese retained a foothold; practically the whole interior was occupied by negro tribes which occasionally developed