Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/153

 hastened to outbid each other at the Government sales by auction, and purchased at exorbitant rates, sections and allotments of land which they had probably never seen, and which were often hundreds of miles from Sydney, and in situations such, that if they had only listened to the dictates of common sense, they must have perceived that they were often paying for their land ten times more than it was worth. When the Government thus set the example of exciting competition for land, the same spirit, of course, prevailed in all private land sales; innumerable plans of fine-towns and cities, (at least on paper,) divided into red and green allotments, with reserves for market-places, churches, parks, cemeteries, &c. were prominently displayed in every corner of the auctioneers' sale-rooms in Sydney; and it mattered little where the sites for these projected towns had been chosen; whether one hundred or five hundred miles from Sydney, the allotments were certain to be eagerly bought up. Most of them might be appositely compared to the famous American city of Eden, in Boz's new work; and at the present time, many of the allotments of some of these imaginary towns might be purchased for fewer pence, than they were, at one time, supposed to be worth pounds. Indeed, in the prosperous times, three or four years ago, scarcely any one purchased land for its fertility, or capability of being converted into good farms; for not one person in a hundred built on, or improved the ground