Melbourne has two obvious superiorities—­first in the systematic laying out of the streets, and second in the more conveniently level site.  Thus no Sydney street can compare with Collins-street, where even the moderate rise of the eastern and western hills still adds to the commanding effect of the whole line.  The Melbourne street tram system is also greatly superior to that of Sydney, and seems, indeed, to have attained to all that is possible in that direction.  In point of population, Melbourne continues ahead, having, with the suburbs, about 400,000, while Sydney has about 350,000.  On the other hand, New South Wales has rather the advantage over Victoria in the total population, as well as in the amount of external commerce, having lately, in these respects, overtaken her younger sister, after the latter had clean distanced her senior for a whole generation by help of the surpassing gold production.  The populations are now about 1,050,000 respectively.

The rival race.

In estimating the future of these two great colonies and their respective capitals, I will endeavour to mark some distinctive considerations.  Unquestionably the climatic difference, although it may not be serious, is in favour of Victoria, for the English race of both colonies and for English industries.  Then, again, we have this ever-recurring Australian drought, from which Victoria does not indeed always or altogether escape, but to which, with her cooler sea-girt shores, she is certainly less liable than her sister colonies, including New South Wales.  Even now, as I sail along the northern shores of the latter and along Southern Queensland, the severe drought which has prevailed for the past six months is indicated by the ascending smoke of bush fires in every direction, while Victoria, as I left it, was in universal green from the sufficiency of rain.  Lastly, there is the disputable question as to how the much wider area of New South Wales than Victoria bears upon the question.  Is that a help to her or a drag?  With the present scant population to either, the advantage seems to me with Victoria, compact as she is, and full of fertile land.  Fifty years hence, when the population of each has passed from one million to ten millions, and when a system of irrigation has fertilized the large proportion of now sterile areas of the larger colony, the latter will assert her precedence and, perhaps, easily pass her rival.  But for the present she is rather handicapped than otherwise by her distances.  Granting that she has throughout as many rich acres as Victoria, still she is, for the time being, under the disadvantage of having to draw her resources from greater distances—­from an average, say, of more than 300 miles to Victoria’s 100.