Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/192

 not one-fourth of their former price. Besides, very extensive tracts of country have been discovered since 1834, much more suitable for agriculture than the more central parts of the colony. It would therefore appear, that if agriculture were profitable in 1834, it ought to be more so now.

But I am wandering from the subject I promised to discuss, viz., that a farmer now on the spot, to take advantage of the frightful sacrifice in landed property, with a small capital, partly invested in a cleared farm of rich soil, consisting of a portion of alluvial land, and a portion of moist forest land, situated in a district unvisited by serious droughts, and with water carriage to Sydney, would realize a tolerable profit on his money, even supposing that the price of wheat and maize in the Sydney market should fall to as low a rate as 26 shillings a quarter for wheat, and 14 shillings a quarter for maize.

Notwithstanding the prevalent notion that the periodical droughts of Australia will always render agricultural operations uncertain in that part of the world, there are even in the old settled parts of New South Wales, many districts which, from their physical conformation, never suffer much from those visitations; among these favoured localities, I may enumerate, Illawarra, the Williams and Paterson rivers, the Manning river, and Port Macquarie.