The chief reason why they did not seťtle there for good nor penetrate farther into the interior of the country which to primitive man offered in profusion all to satisfy his necessities of life, was doubtlessly the very energetic resistance offered to them by the Australian aborigines who distrusted the new-comers and were hostile to them.

So even in prehistorie times we come upon an agent, not a biological one, but one deliberately brought about by man, accentuating the inaccessibility of Australia for members of more advanced tribes. This agent was the successful resistance of the Australian aborigines against the intrusion of foreign elements from the neighbourhood.

We do not know whether the seafarers of the more advanced nations immigrating into the Malayan archipelago and there gaining-a solid footing, came as far as the Australian coast. A chance discovery of some parts of the Australian coast is, however, most probable, as such informations seem to underlie the „Terra Australis" figuring on 16th Century mapš. But even in case that some of them, Chinamen, Indians, Arabs or Malays from some important commercial centre happened to know part of the North Australian coast, they did not find there anything luring them to establish a settlement or to repeat their visit.

The repulsing and quite primitive aborigines ignored metals and they had nothing to excite the rapacity of the seafarers. If they had found gold or silver, or any valuables among the tribes on the coast, the colonization of Australia might have been effected many centuries ago by one of the Eastern nations striving after the political and economic hegemony in the Malayan archipelago. But the desert, inhospitable shores inhabited by hostile naked savages throwing murderous spears from afar, were not worth anybody's effort to take possession of them.

Similar reasons were doubtlessly decisive with the Dutch who since the end of the 16th Century bestowed great attention on the exploration of the Australian coast. The firm belief that the new lands were not worth the conquest, not even the establishment of a commercial station as they showed no visible source of wealth; was again decisive.

The British colonization began in 1788 and at first developed but slowly and partially. Only with the discovery of gold and with the rush of diggers in the fifties, a new period of Australian history began in which the colony awoke to a new, more active and varied life.

Again, natural agents and artificial ones due to man were the reason why during the first period colonization proceeded so slowly and partially.

The natural factors were: once the long, expensive and trouble-somę journey, deterring the emigrants to whom America was more acces-sible, once the conditions of climate and soil in Australia, considered