Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/66

 40 ADELAIDE AND VICINITY The Founders Australia must be content to receive and to hold his appointment subject to the condition of non-interference with the officer appointed to execute the surveys and to dispose of the public land." In the meantime. Colonel Light and his assistants had been surveying and staking off the t«)wn acres. They began this work on January ii, 1837, and completed it on March 10 following. Colonel Light prepared tiie plans for the streets and squares and terraces ; and none will deny that he did his work conscientiously and well. After an exlendetl and systematic .search, he had chosen a delightful spot, .slightly elevated above the surrountling plain. A few miles to the east and south-east were the varied but ever-beautiful range of hill.s. of which .Mount Lofty, almost due east, was the highest eminence. Plains, fertile and occasionally wooded, stretchetl north and south, and to the sea in the west. Between the town and the harbor there was but little timber. Altogether, the site was a magnificent location for a new town, and the gradients afforded excellent opportunity for dr.iinage. Except for its distance from the harbor, it posse.ssed almost every advantage asked for by the Commissioners in their instructions. The judgment of Colonel Light is now looked upon as beyond rej)roach, and the present beautiful city is his best monument. Opinion is unanimous that Adelaide is one of the best-laid-out cities in the .Southern Hemisphere, and that its alignment of streets is in artistic sympathy with the delightful panorama presented by the neighboring country. Colonel Light made the main street to tniil down a pretty slope to the river, and the cross streets to run east and we.st, so as to afford for all time vistas through which the noble background of hills might Ix.' viewed. All the streets were at right angles. Near each corner of the city area south of the river a square was reserved by Colonel Light, and another in the centre five in all. The site was so situated that suburban cities without number could Ix; built at every jjoint of the compass, of dimensions such as no centre could ever recjuire. Three hundred and forty-two acres of the original area lay on the north side of the forren-s. in laying out which advantage was taken of the contour of the ground, and 700 acres on the south. On every side parks 500 yards in width were reserved. Ten acres were reserved as a Government domain in a beautiful position on the river banks, and 200 acres were .set apart for the purposes of a botanical garden. Reserves were made for the sites of a hospital, public cemetery. Government stores, schools outside the town, and of public offices close to the central square. Collectively, the general plan provided all that was necessary for an imposing city to be built upon. In .March. 1S37, Adelaide was merely a city of surveyors' pegs, and of numerous squares or blocks flanked by grass-clothed, tree-encumbered streets, that were not easy to Ix.' distmguished. Each block acre was numbered, and the time was come when the pioneers could select their town property, and on March 23 the f^rst allotment was made. As already mentioned, when the first lands were being .sold in England, the purchaser of a rural area obtained at the .same time the right to a town acre. Up to 1836 some 437