VI
AUSTRALASIA
89
destined to elapse before Australians became Australasians and began to gaze eastward ; and before England gave birth to one Pacific colony she must ' feel in her breast the whole six days' creation'.
CHAPTER VII
SECOND EPOCH OP AUSTRALIAN HISTORY — EXTENSION
Australian extension was due — not to wars and treaties, Extension
like Canadian and Indian extension, nor, like Australian ™** due i0
, the wool
dispersion, to theories of colonization or to international trade. competition — but solely to commerce. Sydney was commercial queen of the Southern Hemisphere ; and the commerce of Sydney meant wool. Wool was the only export which grew unceasingly, unremittingly in every Australian colony. It left its Australian rivals far behind. Down to 1834 the annual exports of wool were less valuable than the annual exports of oil; but in 1837 exports of wool were one half, and from 1845 to 1850 two-thirds, in value of the total exports from Sydney. The value or quantity of the output of wool by New South Wales increased little by little, year by year, during the whole of the second epoch, except only in two years of distress —1830 and 1841— and in the year of gold madness, 1852; and its value in 1826— when wool was dear, and New South Wales and Australia were synonymous — was of what it was in 1854, when wool was cheap, and New South Wales owned much less than half the Australian pastures. The wool trade grew with a steadiness which was as amazing as its rapidity. In the English market, to which all this wool went, its rivals were similarly outpaced. After 1825 Spain and Germany waned while Australia waxed, and at the close of the epoch