Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/317

 299 been very sultry for some days past.—The Eagle, schooner, has arrived from Sydney after a 90 days' passage. She lost all the sheep she was bringing here except 25, and the season is now so late we have no hopes of getting any more until after our winter. You see how difficult it is to get them here. We have had no importation of sheep for a very long time, yet there is perhaps a sum of £1500 ready to be invested here in sheep. The Eagle touched at Port Lincoln, where the new settlement of South Australia ought to be; but there was no such thing. I suppose the project has failed, and is abandoned for the present, which is fortunate for those who were thinking of going to it. They would have been ruined by the plans proposed to be adopted in order to avoid that which they say caused the "failure" of Swan River. But Swan River is an instance of surprizing success, considering what it had to struggle with. Its stability and progressive prosperity are now secured, especially within the last year; and how? Why, by that very course which they seem so anxious to avoid, namely, by driving the population out of towns and concentrated places, and scattering them over the face of the country as a pastoral people. Pasture is and must be, at first, for a long time, the chief and almost the only resource of colonies so situated as these are. There are no other natural resources which the means of a young colony could make available (always excepting whale and seal fishing, but even they require large capital and heavy expenditure). There are no natives or tribes in the interior to traffic with, as in South Africa. There are no natural products which the settler can collect. The curing of beef for exportation requires skill, labour, and expense in managing it, in procuring salt, in making casks or cooperage. Sheep grazing is, certainly, the most suitable occupation for a new, extensive district, requiring, as it does, a less proportion of annual expenditure, for managing a large capital profitably invested than any other occupation. Vineyards require time, &c. Then, you