Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/169

 The expense of converting sheep into tallow, in New South Wales, sorting and packing the skin, wool, &c. has been taken at one shilling per sheep, that being the price charged at the sheep-boiling establishments (see page 133). Mr. Ebsworth, in a letter to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, supposes that all the expense of slaughtering, boiling, &c. might be covered, by converting the pelt, horns, hoofs, sinews and gut into glue; each sheep would yield on an average four pounds of glue, which would be at any rate equal to the "Country glue," which was quoted at from 38 shillings to 46 shillings per cwt., London glue being 50 shillings to 54 shillings per cwt. at the same time.

A person with a small capital, which he has invested in sheep in New South Wales, would find that his occupation as a flock-master in that colony, would be attended with little of that intense application to business, long continued toil, or harassing cares and anxiety, which necessarily fall to the lot of the small capitalist in England, who embarks his all in a desperate and unequal struggle with the over numerous competitors in every profession or trade in the mother country. The greatest drawback to the life of an Australian settler is the solitude, and the absence of the conveniencies of civilization. With some persons, however, this would be more than counterbalanced by the feeling of unrestrained independence they would enjoy; and the bushman of Australia, unshackled by the customs and