Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/193

 Indian corn, is a much more certain crop on the low grounds; the produce of the latter species of grain being from 60 to 100 bushels per acre. Indian corn is little used as an article of food for men in New South Wales, although it forms a palatable diet, and constitutes a principal part of the sustenance of the virtuous peasantry of New England: it is of great value, however, in the colony for the rearing of all sorts of domestic stock, such as pigs, poultry, &c. The sweet potato, which also forms a palatable food for man, is wonderfully prolific at Moreton Bay; and arrow-root of the finest quality has been grown in the government-garden at Brisbane river, at the rate of a ton per acre. The vine, the peach, the pine-apple, the orange, the pomegranate, the banana, the guava, the sugar-cane, the tobacco-plant, the coffee and cotton-bearing shrubs, and indeed, all sorts of semi-tropical fruits and productions, grow luxuriantly at Moreton Bay; while the climate would admit of various important branches of cultivation that have hitherto been untried in New South Wales. In short, with ten acres of cleared land to begin upon, and rations for six or eight months, to be repaid within a given period, an agricultural labourer from Great Britain or Ireland would have no difficulty in paying for his land in the course of a very few years, and in