Excerpt from First Twenty Years of Australia: A History Founded on Official DocumentsThe story of the Early Days in Australia is one full of interest to many more than Australian settlers or the Australian born. It so differs from the tale to be told of present life there, as if centuries had passed in the interval.Dark as the chronicle may be, it is highly instructive and suggestive. We have in that gloomy and often forbidding picture of humanity a means of gauging the immense social progress of the colonies. Even in the worst phases of society at that remote period we fail not to detect some bright and pleasing features, indications of that struggle between light and darkness which ultimately led to the opening day. We have seen men and women, steeped in vice and misery, from neglect of Church and of State in Europe, emerging from poverty and moral degradation into respectability and purity.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.