COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 



1385 



the total was 36,591,946; and in 1887, the number of sheep in New South Wales 

 stood at 46,965,152. while the value of the wool-clip reached ,9,496,019, The total 

 number of sheep in the whole of Australasia was estimated in iSSS to be close upon a 

 hundred million, of which half were depastured in New South Wales. 



It was a singular fact with regard to most of the brave men who took up tin- 

 hazardous work of early exploration, that their reports on the condition of the country they 

 opened up erred either on the side of the pes- 

 simistic or the optimistic, with a decided lean- 

 ing to the former. In the diaries of the first 

 explorers we sometimes find the brightest de- 

 scriptions of country which we have since learnt 

 to be comparatively worthless, the discoverer 

 being misled by the accident of the season. 

 At other times we have been told that certain 

 tracts of country were useless for occupation, 

 because the explorer went there during a 



SHEEP-SHEARING IN AUSTRALIA. 



period of drought, or in the dry season. A more fortunate visitor has gi\en 

 more promising accounts later on, and thus many parts of the colonies that \\ 

 condemned as useless have more especially by sinking for and conserving water- 

 become the pasturages of great flocks and herds. Colonel Gawler thought that no wheat 

 would grow north of Adelaide. Mr. Oxley, the Surveyor-General who discovered the 

 Lachlan, and Sir Thomas Mitchell who discovered the Darling, both regretted that such 

 vast tracts should be so utterly barren as to be worthless for man or beast. Neither 



