Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/185

 below 56s. a quarter, the whole of the South Australian and Van Diemen's Land wheat was sold at from 60s to 72s a quarter. This was another circumstance which weighed with the merchants, for it was now found that such was the purity and dryness of the Australian climate, that the whole of the wheat, after passing that vast expanse of ocean, was found to have suffered nothing from either moisture or heat, and arrived in a condition scarcely less suited to the purposes for which it was intended, than when it was originally placed on board ship. In order to prove the correctness of these statements he would read an extract from a letter from Messrs. Putnam and Sons (so we understood) of Mark Lane. The Honourable Member then read a letter, in which it was stated that the prime cost of the South Australian wheat was

in the London market, and that 384 quarters of it were sold at from 60s, to 65s. per quarter, and 380 quarters at 62s. to 70s. The sales were in October 1843. The freight of 10s. a quarter was much less than could be a remunerating return to the shipowner; but in consequence of the alteration which the Government had made, the year before last, in