Page images
PDF
EPUB

glance that the shipments of wool and meat, hides and tallow, to Europe are upon an immense scale.

The pastoralist in a comparatively moist and cool country for instance, anywhere in New Zealand or Tasmania, and in parts of Victoria and New South Wales-if only his "holding" or "station " is either free of debt, or not heavily burdened with high-interest mortgages, often lives an enviably pleasant life. Simplicity, freedom, and health are the qualities of his comfort. The conditions are contributory to the growth of a of a truly English type of character. The fluctuations in the prices of wool and hides and frozen meats are not so harassing as the incessant and complicated mishaps and anxieties of city business. If the wool-grower chooses to do so, he can spend part of the year in inter-colonial travel, or in the metropolis or one of the leading cities of his colony. He is not shut out from the social province of civilisation. He is never far from it. But he is not a victim of its unrest and discontent. In the breadth and peacefulness of his home surroundings he can find the profit of gladness.

But the "dry country"! Ah, that has its hardships, its trials, its temptations. It is generally a lonely life. The settler's nearest neighbour may be one or two, or even three days' journey distantthat is, the nearest man of his own class. His employés, however, are about him; overseers, "jackeroos," "rouseabouts," boundary riders, and the rest. And there is the annual excitement (and sometimes tumult) of the shearing. Still he is acquainted with solitude. Mails are infrequent, and it is hard to sustain an intellectual interest in the big world's affairs. The only talk he can listen to is about sheep. His own thoughts are apt to range only within the sphere of his labours.

courage.

The difficulties of a wayward climate and of a strange vegetation beset him. Periodically, his patience is both strained and strengthened by a prolonged drought. His sheep starve, and neither the pity in his heart nor the power in his hand avails to save them alive. One scorching, withering day follows another in appalling succession. But the curse of rainless months or years is a discipline. It has searching power. It discovers in and reveals to him unsuspected reserves of courage. The courage inspires thought, purpose-ultimately achievement. The "squatter" grapples with the terror. He learns how, if not to defeat it, at least to mitigate or minimise its awfulness. And in this fortitude, this resolution, this conflict with climate, there are elements which blend and develop into heroic character. A certain rugged power of manhood is wrested from inhospitable skies and earth. And there are positive compensations. The free open-air life is itself a luxury. The daily companionship with Nature, never voiceless to those who have ears to hear, establishes a masterful hold upon the mind. The magical growth after the fall of a few inches of rain the dusty desert changing to a tender garden within a few days; the delicious coolness of the earth to the foot and of the sky to the eye-who that has had this experience could willingly forget it? And then the supreme triumph of individually carrying out the original charter; of subduing and replenishing a patch of hitherto unprofitable country, of extracting from the scanty vegetation of a desolate territory the wool which will give warmth to the poor who shiver through the northern winters!

But it is the agricultural industry which will give the broadest basis for the future prosperity of Australasiawhich will create innumerable homes for the English nation

there. Neither the pastoral, nor the mining, nor the manufacturing industry has the potentiality of wealthproduction which is the attribute of the agricultural use of the soil.

Even now a comparison can be made which proves and illustrates this statement. The pastoral industry has spread itself over six of the seven colonies, and is the largest occupant of space in the seventh. In 1889, the aggregate value of its output of produce was calculated to be about thirty-five millions sterling. In that year only about one-third of one acre of every hundred acres was put under crop, but that small fraction of the total space yielded, exclusive of dairy produce, a return of about twenty-five millions sterling, or about seven-tenths of the pastoral result. That is a prophetic fact. Is it likely that agriculture will be neglected in the years to come? It has its own puzzling problems to the English immigrants, who are unaccustomed to the ways of a sub-tropical climate; but the problems are not insoluble. The cooler lands are producing the grains and roots and fruits of the mother country, and the capabilities of the warmer lands are being tested and discovered season by season. Agriculture is already the leading occupation in New Zealand, Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria. Only in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia is the pastoral supremacy maintained. There will always be a great pastoral industry in Australasia. Wool and meat will always be immense freights to the northern markets of the world. But wheat, and oats, and barley, and maize, and hops, and wine, and fruit, will make a wonderful aggregate in quantity and value. The cool chamber of the modern steamship virtually abolishes the geographical distance between producer and consumer of the perishable products of the soil. Beef and mutton,

butter and apples, are Australia to London. this list in the near future. And when all that is implied in the reversal of the seasons in the two hemispheres is borne in mind, that southern products will be placed on the northern markets when otherwise they would be more or less bare, it is clear that a magnificent expansion awaits the agricultural industry in antipodean settlements. The far South is holding out hands, lifting up voices of invitation to English tillers of the soil. Cheap land and stimulating sunshine are surely suggestive to energetic, profit-loving men. The change of sky is not associated with change of flag. Differences, political and social, there are and must be, but they are not of repulsive character. The English there are perhaps just a little more English than the English here—more independent, more boastful; the old national character under less pressure of encompassing conditions. The faults of the new development have nothing very terrible in them. They are not much else than the excesses of youth and freedom. The sterling qualities of the old race are more deeply embedded in the nature and will exhibit more power in conduct than pessimists imagine. As population increases, the sense of nationality, of the higher citizenship, of the nobler responsibility of civilisation, will grow into a complete and irresistible self-governing force. The happy English homes of the south will be no unworthy reproduction of the happy English homes of the north; and what better thing could patriotic purpose labour to achieve?

now regularly shipped from Other articles will be added to

F. W. WARD.

CHAPTER LXXXIX.

BRITISH PRAIRIES NEAR TO ENGLAND.

BY EDWARD H PAXTON, F.S.I.

ONE of the most vital social problems which presents itself for solution to the minds of thoughtful men of the present day, is how to provide for the rising generation, which threatens to swell the vast tide of humanity, already flowing with rapidly increasing volume into the cities and towns of this country.

One cannot but foresee that, unless the channels of emigration are largely availed of, the keen competition. which now exists in all branches of professional and commercial interest in Great Britain must, in the near future, resolve itself into a struggle for very existence.

This is a fact which cannot be lightly set aside, and it becomes, therefore, the duty of parents to consider, however reluctantly, the advisability of looking beyond the seas for a start in life for their children.

Loyalty and love of their country are cherished in the hearts of every true Englishman, and a repugnance to become subject to any foreign flag, or to go far from the old home, naturally asserts itself. Happily, however, there is no necessity to adopt either of these courses.

Glance at a map of the world, and note that vast extent of British territory, the eastern and western shores of which are washed by the mightiest oceans of the universe, its southern boundary the United States of America, and

« PreviousContinue »