240 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



For a million acres, at the end of five years, it was to 

 pay a nominal quit-rent, and its lands were to be re- 

 deemed in twenty years by the employment of a pro- 

 portionate number of convicts, thus reheving the Colonial 

 Treasury of the burden of their maintenance. Its estates 

 were situated away in the rural districts — at Port 

 Stephen, the Liverpool Plains, and Peel River. It was 

 therefore virtually McAi'thur's Company on an English, 

 in place of an Australian, base. Like many Enghsh 

 colonising companies, it was controlled by men of high 

 character and lofty aims ; Sir Edward Parry was one of 

 its chairmen, and Admiral Gidley King (son of the 

 eminent Governor) one of its directors. A similar Com- 

 pany, the Van Diemen's Land Company, was formed in 

 almost the same year, and on quite the same principles. 

 An offshoot of the A.A.C. came into existence as the 

 Peel River Company. All of these Avere rather Enghsh 

 than Austrahan companies, and their history belongs in 

 good part to the commercial history of the Motherland. 

 The A. A. Company still exists, though now shorn of its 

 splendour ; and the Peel River Company, its daughter, 

 which pays good dividends, is still vital and active. It 

 holds, I have heard, three stations, of which one, at 

 Tamworth, has a milhon and a half of sheep, and is 

 therefore the largest sheep-station in Austraha. In 1910 

 it paid a dividend of 10 per cent. All these companies 

 have played a large part in colonial pastoral history. 

 Sometimes their action has been conservative and retro- 

 gressive, and the greatest of all has latterly been a 

 millstone around the neck of the colony. Only under 

 pressure, and in recent years, has it released its grasp 

 on the lands it obstinately kept under pasture, and 

 surrendered them for conversion into agricultural farms. 

 Another big pastoral company enjoys the unenviable 

 distinction of being the most colossal failure in Austraha. 

 The Western Australian Company was founded in 1838 

 in order to attract settlers to Australia by applying (so 

 we are told) the principles on which South Australia had 

 been formed. In 1840 it purchased extensive blocks for 



