Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/73

 'r*'"^""'^"' ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 47 among the idle, and, owing to non-arrival of transports, the staff had to work on miserable fare. Provisions were introduced at enormous cost from New South Wales, Van Diemen Land, and the Cape of Good Hope. The Governor and Council voted ^^5,000 for the purchase of flour, horses, bullocks, wagons, and other necessaries, and appointed a committee to select and obtain them, but these were necessarily a long time in arriving, and common articles of food brought prices above the means of many of the poorer class. Owing to the demand for artisans, and the cost of living, the rates of wages rose considerably, and the men attached to the survey staff complained, and eventually demanded an increase. What with disaffection, lack of food, interruption, and dissatisfaction concerning wages, the Surveyor-General's difficulties increased weekly. Hardly any of the officials, and very few of the men employed by them, were in a good temper ; and a dissatisfied and sulky man is never a willing worker. Colonel Light, while seeking to push on the surveys, was well aware that his staff had just cause for complaint. Writing afterwards of his troubles at this time, he said that though the men had signed in England for a wage of 12s. a week and rations, they " were sometimes many days with hardly anything but biscuit, sometimes not that." " Not a single working bullock was to be had," he continued, and the " tents were all in use by the immigrants as well as by the surveying parties." He did what he could to overcome these obstacles, but the rations had to be divided, not only among those who were entitled to them by agreement, but also among immigrants. " Humanity," said he, "required this, but the consequence was a cessation of work, and an apparent neglect of duty on the part of the Surveyor-General, for which, of course, there were many quite ready to abuse him." Even when a better supply of stores was obtained. Colonel Light's troubles did not end. He divided his party, and Mr. Finniss took charge of that which surveyed on the west side of Adelaide, and the Colonel himself of that on the other side. Work was then hindered by bad weather and — as their wages were lower than those ruling in the city — by strikes among the men. Colonel Light wrote : — " During this period I began to feel a very evident change in my health, which, with anxieties of mind, wore me down very much, and I was obliged to neglect many days' working in consequence." Still the people waited for their rural grants, and some of those who came to the Province to engage in agriculture were reluctantly compelled to become merchants. In November, 1837, the population was estimated by Mr. Gouger to be 2,500. Stagnation was general, and dissatisfaction even more pronounced. One early writer says that the " majority of the settlers were without income, and had to live upon their capital and by the sale of their town acres." Rents were still very high, wages extravagant, and provisions scarce. By November, some 300 houses had been built in Adelaide, and, with their increase, rents temporarily fell, the land boom lost its intensity, and those who had invested in buildings somewhat hurriedly regretted the circumstance. As evidence of the infinitesimal amount of developmental work, besides the building of houses, carried on in 1837, it is