to be renovated by manure, and are quite different from those inexhaustible alluvial soils on the banks of some of the coast rivers of New South Wales. I should very much doubt whether there be land in South Australia capable of yielding two crops of grain in the same year without manure, and at the rate of fifty bushels of wheat, and one hundred bushels of maize to each acre, which, Mr. Wentworth says, have been harvested at the Hawkesbury river.[1] The near approach of the sandy wastes of the interior to the coast, will also never allow that almost unlimited extension of sheep and cattle stations in that colony, which has taken place in New South Wales. I have penned these remarks in fear and trembling, as I am aware that South Australia is much more favourably thought of in England than the other Australian colonies.
The colonists of that province are certainly much more industrious than those of New South Wales. They have been indefatigable in examining into all the natural advantages of their adopted country, and have been laudably anxious in their endeavours to make these advantages generally known in Eng-
- ↑ The slovenly mode of cultivating the soil at this river, to ensure two crops a year off the same ground, is another proof of its richness, for after the wheat is off the ground, the maize is planted in the stubble without breaking up the land. The Hawkesbury river is not, however, a good agricultural district, as it is subject to great drought and violent floods; the wheat produced on its banks is also of very inferior quality.
