CHAPTER XXXI. FORTUNES BY LAND BUYING. From The Argus, Melbourne. THE following is a statement of the prices which lands in Melbourne were sold at in the year 1837, and the prices which they are worth in the market to-day, including the buildings upon them : COLLINS, WILLIAM, KING, AND FLINDERS STREETS. BOURKE, ELIZABETH, QUEEN, AND COLLINS STREETS. BOURKE, QUEEN, ELIZABETH, AND COLLINS STREETS. ... 198,000 ... 198,000 Lots 1, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19 and 20 in each of the blocks are corner plots, and contain a superficial area of about 20,691 square feet. All the other lots in each of the blocks contain a superficial area of about 21,780 square feet, being exactly half an acre. The results as set forth above should be an encouragement to investors to put some of their money in town. and suburban lands. When Queen Victoria Street in the City was formed a few years ago, several fortunes were made by those who leased and re-leased, bought and sold, the plots offered. The same thing is being done now in other newly-formed eading thoroughfares of the metropolis. The same thing is constantly being done in the suburbs around London, where land bought at the rate of a few hundred pounds per acre twenty years ago is now worth at the rate of thousands of pounds per acre. These facts should stimulate capitalists to put some of their money into land. C. F. Dowsett. Author of "The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries," "Roba d'Italia, a Record of Travel," Essays, Biographies, Reviews, Original Essays, &c. It requires a mental effort to realize the full meaning of the term "Land," for it expresses that which is the sole but inexhaustible source of all, which man calls property, the foundation not only of all his material prosperity, but of all his moral and intellectual progress. The three physical wants of man-housing, clothing and food-are all supplied by the land. But it does a great deal more than this. The treasures with which it teems, and which man seizes, making himself master of all their inherent properties, virtues, and powers, by chemically and mechanically manipulating them; these treasures having, by passing through the crucible of the human mind, been elaborated into roots of wealth and forms of grace, beautify the existence of man, and ennoble his aspirations. Mankind would never have emerged from barbarism ; science and art would have no existence, had man not sought out and discovered the land's hidden wealth; and we find, as a matter of fact, that in regions where the soil is poor, deficient in mineral stores or a productive vegetation, man remains in a low stage of physical and mental development; we may give the Esquimaux as an instance. |