CHAPTER XII.

ADELAIDE.

THE capital of South Australia is reputed the hottest of all the cities that are chiefly inhabited by the English race, and as I neared it through the Backstairs Passage into the Gulf of St. Vincent, past Kangaroo Island, and still more when I landed at Glenelg, I came to the conclusion that its reputation is deserved. The extreme heat which characterizes South Australia is to some extent a consequence of its lying as far north as New South Wales and Queensland, and so far inland as to escape the breeze by which their coasts are visited; for although by "South Australia" we should, in the southern hemisphere, naturally understand that portion of Australia which was farthest from the tropics, yet it is a curious fact that the whole colony of Victoria is to the south of Adelaide, and that nearly all the northernmost points of the continent now lie within the country misnamed "South Australia."

The immense northern territory, being supposed to be valueless, has generously been handed over to South Australia, which thus becomes the widest of all British colonies, and nearly as large as English Hindostan. If the present great expenditure succeeds in causing the discovery of any good land at the north, it will of course at once be made a separate colony. The only important result that seems likely to follow from this annexation of the northern territory to South Australia is that schoolboys' geography will suffer; one would expect, indeed, that a total destruction of all principle in the next generation will be the inevitable result of so rude a blow to confidence in books and masters as the assurance from a teacher's lips that the two most remote countries of Australia are united under one colonial

government, and that the northernmost points of the whole continent are situated in South Australia. Boys will probably conclude that, across the line, south becomes north and north south, and that in Australia the sun rises in the west.

Instead of gold, wheat, sheep, as in Victoria, the staples here are wheat, sheep, copper; and my introduction to South Australia was characteristic of the colony, for I found in Port Adelaide, where I first set foot, not only every store filled to overflowing, but piles of wheat-sacks in the roadways, and lines of wheat-cars on the sidings of railways, without ever a tarpaulin to cover the grain.

Of all the mysteries of commerce, those that concern the wheat and flour trade are, perhaps, the strangest to the uninitiated. Breadstuffs are still sent from California and Chili to Victoria, yet from Adelaide, close at hand, wheat is being sent to England and flour to New York!

There can be no doubt but that ultimately Victoria and Tasmania will at least succeed in feeding themselves. It is probable that neither New Zealand nor Queensland will find it to their interest to do the like. Wool-growing in the former, and cotton and wool in the latter, will continue to pay better than wheat in the greater portion of their lands. Their granary, and that possibly of the city of Sydney itself, will be found in South Australia, especially if land capable of carrying wheat be discovered to the westward of the settlements about Adelaide. That the Australias, Chili, California, Oregon, and other Pacific States can ever export largely of wheat to Europe is more than doubtful. If manufactures spring up on this side the world, these countries, whatever their fertility, will have at least enough to do to feed themselves.

As I entered the streets of the "farinaceous village," as Adelaide is called by conceited Victorians, I was struck with the amount of character they exhibit both in the way of buildings, of faces, and of dress. The South Australians have far more idea of adapting their houses and clothes to their climate than have the people of the other colonies, and their faces adapt themselves. The verandahs to the shops are sufficiently close to form a perfect piazza; the people rise early, and water the side walk in front of their houses and you never meet a man

who does not make some sacrifice to the heat, in the shape of puggree, silk coat, or sun-helmet; but the women are nearly as unwise here as in the other colonies, and persist in going about in shawls and coloured dresses. Might they but see a few of the Richmond or Baltimore ladies in their pure white muslin frocks, and die of envy, for the dress most suited to a hot dry climate is also the most beautiful under its bright sun.

The German element is strong in South Australia, and there are whole villages in the wheat-country where English is never spoken; but here, as in America, there has been no mingling of the races, and the whole divergence from the British types is traceable to climatic influences, and especially dry heat. The men born here are thin, and fine-featured, somewhat like the Pitcairn Islanders, while the women are all alike—small, pretty, and bright, but with a burnt-up look. The haggard eye might, perhaps, be ascribed to the dreaded presence of my old friend of the Rocky Mountains, the brulot sand-fly. The inhabitants of all hot dry countries speak from the head, and not the chest, and the English in Australia are acquiring this habit; you seldom find a "corn-stalk" who speaks well from the chest.

The air is crisp and hot-crisper and hotter even than that of Melbourne. The shaded thermometer upon the Victorian coast seldom reaches 110°, but in the town of Adelaide, 117° has been recorded by the Government astronomer. Such is the figure of the Australian continent, that Adelaide, although a seaport town, lies, as it were, inland. Catching the heated gales from three of the cardinal points, Adelaide has a summer six months long, and is exposed to a fearful continuance of hot winds; nevertheless, 105° at Adelaide is easier borne than 95° in the shade at Sydney.

Nothing can be prettier than the outskirts of the capital. In laying out Adelaide, its founders have reserved a park about a quarter of a mile in width all round the city. This gives a charming drive nine miles long, outside which again are the olive-yards and villas of the citizens. Hedges of the yellow cactus, or of the graceful Kangaroo Island acacia, bound the gardens, and the pomegranate, magnolia, fig, and aloe grow upon every lawn. Five miles to the eastward are the cool wooded hills of the Mount Lofty Range, on the tops of which

are grown the English fruits for which the plains afford no shade or moisture.

Crossing the Adelaide plains, for fifty miles by railway, tc Kapunda, I beheld one great wheat-field without a break. The country was finer than any stretch of equal extent in California or Victoria, and looked as though the crops were "standing "which in one sense they were, though the grain was long since "in." The fact is that the farmers use the Ridley machines, by which the ears are thrashed out without any cutting of the straw, which continues to stand, and is finally ploughed in at leisure, except in the neighbourhood of Adelaide. There would be a golden age of partridge-shooting in Old England did the climate and the price of straw allow of the adoption of the Ridley reaper. Under this system, South Australia grows on the average six times as much wheat as she can use, whereas, if reaping had to be paid for, she could only grow from one and a half times to twice as much as would meet the home demand.

In this country, as in America, "bad farming" is found to pay, for with cheap land, the Ridley reaper, and good markets, light crops without labour, except the peasant-proprietor's own toil, pay well when heavy crops obtained by the use of hired labour would not reimburse the capitalist. The amount of land under cultivation has been trebled in the last seven years, and half a million acres are now under wheat. South Australia has this year produced seven times as much grain as she can consume, and twelve acres are under wheat for every adult male of the population of the colony.

A committee has been lately sitting in New South Wales "to consider the state of the colony." To judge from the evidence taken before it, the members seemed to have conceived that their task was to inquire why South Australia prospered above New South Wales. Frugality of the people, especially of the Germans, and fertility of the soil were the reasons which they gave for the result, but it is impossible not to see that the success of South Australia is but another instance of the triumph of small proprietors, of whom there are now some seven or eight thousand in the colony, and who were brought here by the adoption of the Wakefield land system.

In the early days of the colony, land was sold at a good price

in 130-acre sections, with one acre of town-land to each agricultural section. Now, under rules made at home, but confirmed after the introduction of self-government, land is sold by auction, with a reserved price of £1 an acre, but when once a block has passed the hammer, it can for ever be taken up at £1 the acre without further competition. The Land Fund is kept separate from the other revenue, and a few permanent charges, such as that for the aborigines, being paid out of it, the remainder is divided into three portions, of which two are destined for public works, and one for immigration.

There is a marvellous contrast to be drawn between the success which has attended the Wakefield system in South Australia and the total failure, in the neighbouring colony of West Australia, of the old system, under which, vast tracts of land being alienated for small prices by the Crown, there remains no fund for introducing that abundant supply of labour without which the land is useless.

Adelaide is so distant from Europe that no immigrants come of themselves, and, in the assisted importation of both men and women, the relative proportions of English, Scotch, and Irish that exist at home are carefully preserved; by which simple precaution the colony is saved from an organic change of type such as that which threatens all America, although it would, of course, be idle to deny that the restriction is aimed against the Irish.

The greatest difficulty of young countries lies in the want of women: not only is this a bar to the natural increase of population; it is a deficiency preventive of permanency, destructive of religion: where woman is not, there can be no home, no country.

How to obtain a supply of marriageable girls is a question which Canada, Tasmania, South Australia, and New South Wales, have each in their turn attempted to solve by the artificial introduction of Irish workhouse girls. The difficulty apparently got rid of, we begin to find that it is not so much as fairly seen; we have yet to look it "squarely" in the face. The point of the matter is that we should find not girls, but honest girls-not women merely, but women fit to bear families, in a free State.