Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/153

 propriety of transforming the hair that disgraced so many of their sheep into golden fleeces.” The total export of wool for that year amounted to no more than about 80,000 lbs. But at that moment the spirit of improvement seems to have caught the whole agricultural population, and the following facts will give our readers some notion what miracles a whole population can perform, when they act in concert and from upright principles.

In 1816, as we have seen, the quantity of wool exported from New South Wales was about 80,000 lbs., more or less. Nothing in the history of agriculture has been known parallel to this—except in the neighbouring colony Van Diemen’s Land, into which sheep were introduced for the first time in 1826. Indeed it was only discovered to be an island in 1798, and taken possession of by the British in 1803. In 1830 the population, exclusive of a few savage natives, amounted to only 21,125, of whom about 10,000 were convicts. And what quantity of wool did these 11,125 recent free settlers export to the United Kingdom in 1830, only twenty-seven years after the foundation of the colony? No less than 993,979 lbs.

By the above statement we see that the quantity of wool exported from New South Wales, since 1822, has been more than doubled every three years. But its improvement in quality has not been less admirable. In 1816 it was described by Mr. Riley as “hair which disgraced the sheep.” In 1820 a few bales of wool from Mr. Macarthur’s flock sold in England at 5 s. 6 d. per lb., and one at 10 s. 4 d. The common price was 2 s. In 1830 the Australian wool sold in the London market at the following prices, viz.:—

Best, 2 s. to 5 s.; second and inferior, 1 s. 2 d. to 2 s.; lamb’s, 1 s. 2 d. to 2 s. 1 d.

The whole of the enormous quantity they now export, it is expected, will realize an average price of 2 s. per lb., which will give for the crop of 1834 the sum of 270,000 l.

With respect to the number of sheep from whose backs this prodigious sum of money is annually extracted, we have, at the moment, no certain information of later date than 1828. But as from 1819 to