Page:The new British province of South Australia.djvu/91

72 of England, London would be nearer to Hamburgh than to Birmingham. Here, where canals are out of the question, and where the few roads of which I have boasted, are due entirely to a forced cheapness" (constancy and combination) " of labour, now coming to its end, the operation of water in contracting absolute space, is far more evident than in any part of Europe. The inhabitants of Hobart's Town and Sydney are nearer neighbours, than two families in the district of Bathurst, who may be separated by only fifty miles of unreclaimed land. A farmer of Van Diemen's Land sells corn in the market of Sydney, whilst many a New South Wales farmer grows no more corn than will supply his family, because he would be unable to remove a surplus quantity from his own barn. The shopkeeper of Launceston, again, can sell Chinese goods obtained from Sydney, for less than the shopkeeper of Bathurst, who, on the map, appears nearer to Sydney by some hundred miles.

In a word, ships, and water to float them on, are to the inhabitants of new countries, what waggons, carriages, inns, and Macadam's roads, are to you. Believe, then, that New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land are connected, not separated, by Bass's Strait."

It is the same with respect to Van Diemen's Land and the shores of Spencer's Gulph [sic]. The first town of South Australia, whether formed at Nepean Bay, on Cape Jervis, or at Port Lincoln, will be more easily provisioned; and stocked with what a new settlement requires, than a fresh settlement within New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land, which was planted at a distance of fifty miles from the nearest cultivated district. As respects a new market for the