from the sale of its public lands. These persons think their craft is in danger. Unable to extend their views, and to perceive that the advance of each of those adjoining settlements must accelerate the progress of the other, they imagine that the purchase of land in South Australia will check its purchase in New South Wales, and thus diminish the emigration fund, from the expenditure of which their profit is derived. No enlightened friend of the elder colony will join in this unworthy rivalry against the younger sister; and it is to be hoped that even those of more narrow views will desist from their illiberal attacks, seeing that on the present occasion their hostile missiles have recoiled upon themselves, and that their mounted Balaam has given a blessing, though sent forth to curse.

6

"A pamphlet," says the Spectator, "entitled 'An Impartial Examination of all the Authors on Australia,' has been sent to us with a request for a 'favourable notice.' We cannot say any thing which would be favourable' and at the same time true. It consists mostly of extracts, chiefly from well-known writers on New South Wales, strung together, but without examination,' to prove the superiority of the pickpocket or penal colony over every other. The writer sagaciously infers, that because Swan River failed, South Australia must also be ruined; and that New South Wales must be a better colony for the emigrants, because the price of land there is 5s. an acre, instead of 17.,

6

in a state of severe privation, and were under the painful impression besides that the vessel in which they had engaged their passage could not be put into a proper state for that purpose. They vented, of course, loud complaints, but being for the most part poor and friendless, they were without hope of obtaining redress for the grievance under which they suffered. Being desirous of avoiding all exaggeration in bringing this case before the public, we engaged a gentleman who resides in Devonport to make some inquiry into the facts relating to it, and his report leaves little doubt that the Asia was not a vessel fit to be employed in such a service. But he adds further, that now she has come out of dock, and is reported fit to resume the voyage, she is discovered to be leaky even in the harbour, the water rising 3 feet in 24 hours." A correspondent of the Times in alluding to the editor's remarks, a few days afterwards, says, "I have been informed that 19 out of every 20 ships taken up by Government for the conveyance of convicts or of emigrants are taken from one and the same favoured party. The survey of the condition and capacity of the vessels for many years has been a perfect farce, or rather a survey to consider and to calculate the best mode of rejecting really good ships and taking up those that are offered by one and the same party. This matter should be probed to the bottom, and a vigilant and incorruptible controller selected." A subsequent account states that the emigrants had "unanimously come to the unalterable determination of not proceeding in the Asia," and that the whole of the crew, with the exception of four or five boys, had quitted the vessel. Nor are these "emigration-mongers very nice as to the representations they make use of, by which to allure intending emigrants to go out in their ships. We have heard of some of their unprincipled tricks. In Chapter XIX. we stated that many simple and unsuspecting labourers had fallen into their trap; and had been induced to join their "first class or A 1. ships," under the expectation of being landed at South Australia, but who would be landed at Sydney, and have to find their way to Adelaide as best they might; or, which is most probable, would be compelled to remain at Sydney for want of means, or from a reluctance to undertake a second voyage. Not long ago a gentleman went to an office in London to procure information about South Australia; and, says our informant, he was sent to the office of a well-known Sydney agent, who gave such information as quite deceived him, and sent him home to Dorsetshire with his own papers only, never giving the applicant to understand that he was not a South Australian agent. Can it be true that one of these Sydney bird-catchers is realizing between 30007. and 4000l. per year by his limed twigs?

the minimum in South Australia. The following prophetic passage will give the reader an idea of the author's capacity to instruct emigrantsThe two colonies (New South Wales and South Australia) I doubt not, will yet form one great state, of which the capital will be on these splendid central plains. But the South colony must ever be only an appendage of the East; it is fifty years behind it, in every thing; and without convicts, five hundred years behind it, in roads, bridges, and public buildings, and all the immense advantages the first two carry with them.” Let the reader make sense of this jargon, if he can. We shall only remind the author of this impartial' production, that there is imminent danger of the loss of his darling convicts, from the discontinuance of transportation, now advocated by leading men of all parties."

"It is gratifying to know," adds the Spectator, "that in spite of the evil forebodings and interested calumnies of its opponents, and the difficulties to be anticipated on first starting the colony, its triumphant success may now be deemed certain. In a few years the trade to South Australia will form a respectable item in the commercial accounts of England; and it is to be hoped that the example of supporting itself and flourishing without drawing a penny from the British treasury, will have its influence in reforming the British colonial system. As long as there were hopes of its failure, parties interested in other schemes said little; but the latest accounts, which prove that it has flourished in an extraordinary degree, notwithstanding the errors and misconduct of persons to whom the official administration in the colony was intrusted, and the fact that while emigration to the British North American provinces has been interrupted, persons of various pursuits from the three kingdoms and the European continent are proceeding by thousands to South Australia, have stirred up the bile of the mortified opponents of the undertaking, and stimulated them to assail it in various ways-all equally futile."

At the last moment we have seen an article in Tait's Magazine for December, founded upon Mr. Gouger's book; and we should be doing the reviewer no injustice to characterise his production as an attack upon the colony. His professed object is to dissuade small capitalists, and labouring men with families, from too precipitately determining to emigrate to South Australia. Had he stopped here, he would have entitled himself to the approbation of all upright men; but he could not rest satisfied without attempting to dissuade those of his readers disposed to emigrate from selecting the new colony as their future home. To accomplish his purpose, he has magnified the "plague of insects," the "intolerable heat," the "high price of provisions," to an extent which no well-authenticated letter of recent date warrants, as all who have followed us through the foregoing pages well know. His most plausible objections are founded upon the alleged smallness of the population, as affording no sufficient encouragement for the emigration of handicraftsmen, and upon the abatement which must be made from expressions of unqualified satisfaction employed by settlers writing home after so little experience of the place. Here, however,

* Another of this author's absurdities is the following: "The south colony appears to be an inclined plane rising from the coast to the most southerly part of New South Wales, only about two thousand feet in seven hundred and fifty miles! ! !”

he has exposed himself to the charge of a palpable want of candour and fair dealing; for his statements and reasonings are based entirely upon letters written in 1837, or other information of no more recent date, when abundant intelligence reaching to June of the present year was open to him and close at hand. It does not seem to have suited his purpose to grapple with the fact, that the population of the colony was, at the date of the last despatches, more than double what it was at the period to which he refers: nor, his design being to frighten honest sober Scotchmen from taking ship for Adelaide, could he afford to quote the statements made after two years' residence in the colony, because they imply as much satisfaction as those from which he demands an abatement on the score of the insufficient experience of the writers; and it would be rather too barefaced to contend that two years' experience does not warrant the expression of a strong and decided opinion respecting soil, climate, and all other natural capabilities. Equally unfair is the use this writer has made of the few criminal prosecutions which have taken place, and of the habits of drunkenness in which some of the labourers indulge. Where is the paradise from which intemperance and crime are entirely excluded? But it is unnecessary to pursue this topic, since the reviewer admits that the founders and governors of the colony have taken every possible precaution to secure an honest and virtuous, as well as an industrious population.

Upon the whole, this novel experiment in colonization must be admitted by every impartial examiner, to have succeeded admirably well, in so far as it has had time to develop itself, and that there is no reason at present to expect any other than a steady course of increasing prosperity for the future. The natural capabilities of the soil and climate have been proved to be excellent; the principles on which the colony has been founded are manifestly calculated to foster all the arts of peace, and consequently to produce all the fruits of temporal happiness; and nothing seems necessary to secure the highest ends of human society, moral and intellectual advancement, but greater liberality in providing the means of education and religious instruction. With all the experience of the past to guide and warn them, and every disposition to be governed by its instructions, it is not to be doubted that the friends of the new colony will have the gratification of seeing the little one become a thousand, the small one a strong nation, and the wilderness blossom as the rose.

POSTSCRIPT.

December 11, 1838.

We are just in receipt of letters and papers from the colony of as late a date as the 14th of July last. The intelligence they contain is so highly satisfactory, that we shall append to this sheet a few extracts from them for the encouragement of the real friends of South Australia, and, we should think, to the discomfiture of its enemies.

FERTILITY OF THE SOIL.

The following extract, dated Adelaide, South Australia, June 29, 1838, descriptive of the country and the productions of its soil, is from the letter of a gentleman from Exeter, well versed in agriculture and grazing, and the son of a highly respectable Devonshire farmer. It is not one of those letters to which the writer in Tait's Magazine would take exception, as being written before the party could have had any experience of the colony, nor is the writer of it one of the "exaggerating trumpeters" connected with South Australia, against whom he inveighs. Nay, so far from wishing to send home any false representations of the land of his adoption, he declares he has hitherto abstained from writing altogether, lest he should "precipitately deceive both himself and others." But he shall now speak for himself." Many of my respectable friends," says he, "requested of me most particularly, before I left England, to write them and give them a true and faithful report of the colony; and, in addition to this, I have been informed by sundry letters I have received since my arrival here, that many others are waiting my report to decide whether they will emigrate to this colony or not. Under these circumstances I have refrained writing to any one but to my own relatives up to the present moment [the writer had then been not "six months in South Australia," but eighteen], and to them only just after my arrival." He then goes on to state that he had on several occasions accompanied the surveying corps within a few miles of Adelaide. "But," he

adds, "for the purpose of seeing the land more remote I have been out from six to eight days at two different times. In one of these excursions I went seventy miles inland from this [Adelaide] to Encounter Bay. The land from hence then varies much, both in quality and beauty of scenery. The road thither, generally taken, is by Onkaparingo. The distance to it from this place is about twenty miles, and, with the exception of about three or four miles, pretty level, and through as beautiful and undulating a country as I ever saw. At many places the land is very rich, of a black sandy loam, and, I think, fit to grow maize, or almost any other kind of grain. Much of the country in this district (as in many others) has a complete park-like appearance, and one is every now and then expect

ing some nobleman's seat to break upon one's view. The greatest disappointment an Englishman meets with (as appears to me) is the want of streams of water. There are streams to be met with, and in some districts frequent; but this is by no means general. After passing Onkaparingo (which is a very romantic place), the country begins to be very hilly for some distance, and some part extensively so; but much of the land very good, particularly a valley through which runs a beautiful stream of water throughout the year. This vale resembles some of our English parks for verdure and beauty, but exceeds them in one thing—that is, its trees-many of which (of the gum kind, very large and spreading) are never seen bare of their foliage; of the two they are greener in winter than in summer. After passing this valley we soon get out of good land, and it continues very indifferent and worthless for the distance of ten or twelve miles, until we come to the declivity that leads down a beautiful valley about two miles in width, by six or eight in length, terminating at Encounter Bay. The scenery in this valley is beautiful, and the pasturage luxuriant. I have been on one excursion across the ridges of mountains, passing Mount Lofty on the left or north, steering S. E. for one day, and on the following morning setting out due east, and arrived about noon out in a beautiful undulating park-like country, the soil a very rich black loam, and many of the trees very large and spreading, of which we met with a goodly number. Many of the places we came to showed a beautiful, open (but sufficiently wooded), pastoral country. Many hundred acres may be had at very many places without an obstacle worth naming to prevent the plough going, and I am of opinion, that after the land has been broken and cropped, and then grassed down with artificial grasses, it will be most productive. In most places at present the grass is not sufficiently thick. I attribute this to the frequent burnings it is exposed to annually; which, in my opinion, destroys both the seeds and the seedling grasses. The quality of the land in and about Adelaide, generally, though not at all bad, is not so good as farther inland. I have had sufficient proof that almost all European vegetables will grow well. I have now cabbages as good as ever I had in England, grown from seed I brought with me. I took a number of fruit trees also with me (amongst which I had three orange trees) from the Cape, and, although out of earth full two months (all but the oranges), yet they took root well, and not a single tree failed. I have lately had an opportunity of adding to my stock in the purchase of about a hundred lately imported from the adjoining colony of Van Diemen's Land. I have also a number of vines, of different sorts, taken from the Cape, doing well. I have no doubt both the orange and vine will do well here. Although it was late in November (near midsummer) when I planted my trees, most of them have made excellent shoots, from six to fifteen inches in length. I have apples, pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, and cherries, all of which appear likely to do well. I have now got some gooseberries and currants, but I almost think it will be too hot for them in summer. I have different sorts of turnips as good as I ever saw, and, as well as the cabbages and broccoli, cannot as yet be equalled in the colony. I have tried some maize, and it answers well. I have now a small patch of wheat in the garden looking beautiful."