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 the Pacific. Viewed in comparison with the other provincial centres, she is at once more rudimentally national and less obtrusively Australian; the inevitable capital, wherever the Federal centre may be, of the continent.

It is a 567 mile run from Melbourne to Sydney by sea, and about the same distance by rail. The boundary of the two colonies, crossed at Albury, is the Murray, which we crossed also on the journey from Adelaide. It is the only river of importance in Australia, and, except in very dry seasons, is navigable for about 1,200 miles of its length. In the busy season the scene on the river is interesting. The wool clip of stations in the far interior has been brought down the Darling, the Murrumbidgee, and other tributaries of the Murray in huge shallow barges. These are towed by steamers up the river to Echuca; a great part of the New South Wales clip thus finding an outlet through the rival city, Melbourne.

The war of hostile railway tariffs between the two colonies has resulted in New South Wales pushing her railways into the far west to divert this traffic; a legitimate move as between rival communities, but one of the developments of inter-colonial competition which must end with the federation of the colonies.

Riverina, the largest province of New South Wales, is geographically part of Victoria; which colony, having failed to include them in her boundaries, apparently finds it the next best thing to repel her profitable neighbours and their trade as much as possible by taxing their cattle at the border.

There is a break of gauge where the railway systems of the two colonies meet at Albury, which not only converts the ordinary traveller into a keen Federationist, by vexing him with a superfluous change of trains in the middle of his journey, but would be a source of trouble and