Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/43

 CHAPTER II THE ARCHITECTS 1831-6 Reports read in England— Colonisation—Edward Gibbon Wakefield— Western Australia — First proposal to form settlement in Southein Australia abandoned — The second stage— The third stage — Bill empowering foundation of the Province passed — Some of its provisions — Commissioners — South Australian Company — Four vessels sail- Captain Hindmarsh appointed Governor — ^A Resident Commissioner — Civil Officers — Four more vessels sail with officers. ^>c<'*. HE scene now changes to England ; and while it is being unfolded, and many hands are helping to complete the plans for future operations, readers should picture this land as lying in repose. It might aptly be termed The Waiting Land. Here were stretches of fertile soil that no one had yet troubled to till, and pastures ready for herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. It was as silent and comparatively unused as a sterile African desert. Woods contrasted with open plains, dreary scrub with treeless prairies, green hillsides with baked salt lakes. Many of the hills and valleys to the south were covered with nutritious grasses, wholesomely green in the English summer ; broken, parched, and shrivelled in the English winter. These were waiting to receive and assist the labor of civilised people. The reports of Sturt and Barker were forwarded to England, and received a fair amount of attention during the months immediately following their issue. Flinders' journals dealing with the same country were consulted with renewed interest, and an account was published of a hurried visit paid by Captain John Jones to Gulf St. Vincent after Barker's trip. This writer, however, tended to do harm to the cause of any proposed colony, for he supplied an exaggerated, unreliable, and too attractive description of a natural port and river, on the ea.st coast of the Gulf, which led readers to anticipate a very superior site for a settlement, which Port Adelaide certainly was not. 17 c