Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/173

 I have not heard what success has attended these shipments of beef to the former countries, but in England, the Australian beef, which has hitherto arrived, has been pronounced inferior to that of Canada and the United States, and the price offered for it is not such as would render it profitable to send any more of it to Europe; that is, if the beef which has lately arrived from Sydney and Port Philip, is a fair sample of New South Wales' meat generally, which I am rather inclined to doubt, as I have certainly seen beef from aged bullocks in that colony, fat, juicy, and apparently unexceptionable in every respect. The faults most complained of in the Australian beef just arrived, are the great quantity of inferior salt that has been used in curing it, the objectionable way in which it has been cut up and packed, and its dryness. The former faults might be remedied; but under the present tariff, so favourable to the Americans, I think it will be found much more profitable for the Australian stockholders to slaughter and boil down their surplus cattle for their tallow, hides, horns, and bones, than to salt them for exportation, (at least to the mother country). I think also that it would be practicable to make some sort of glaze, or preserved concentrated soups, which could be supplied at a very low figure, and yield a considerable profit, as good bullocks are only one penny a pound in Sydney at present.

In examining into the degree of profit which may henceforth be likely to attend the rearing of horned