Page:The new British province of South Australia.djvu/90

Rh supply by the demand, and nearly all the animal food imported, consisted necessarily of salt provisions.

The whole supply of food obtained, was often insufficient, always dear, and never of a good quality. In the present case, no such evil is to be apprehended.

As respects food and live-stock, the province of South Australia will be, not a new colony, but a new settlement in an old colony which produces plenty of whatever is required for human subsistence. The following tables of Sailing Distances, and of the Cost of Provisions and the Prices of Stock in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, will show, that the new colony may easily obtain from those settlements an ample and cheap supply of food, seeds, and all kinds of live-stock. There is nothing perhaps (except more, and more constant, labour wherewith to raise commodities for distant markets) that the capitalists of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land require so much, as new markets in which to dispose of those things which they raise in abundance, notwithstanding deficiency of labour. They made large shipments of such things to the Swan River; and their enterprising character leaves no doubt, that, if sufficient notice be given, the first settlers in South Australia will, on landing, or very soon afterwards, find a cheap market established, in which to supply themselves with potatoes, flour, seeds of all sorts, sheep, cattle, and horses. "Still," says the writer of A Letter from Sydney, "are not these settlements" (New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land) "parted by the ocean? No; they are united by a strait.

Water is every where the best of roads for bringing together distant places. Without the great