328 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTJRALASIA 



population is scant}^ this is the predestined use of 

 such lands, and the shepherd with his flocks, or the 

 stockman v>'ith his cattle, is their rightful denizen. 



As among the ancient Hindus described in the Vedas, 

 the pastoral phase passed easily into the agricultural 

 phase. The two were indeed simultaneous. In the 

 fifties there were in Austraha, side by side with the 

 extensive pastures, " cultivated fields well fenced on 

 nearly every station." * Small farms date back to 

 the very beginnings of settlement in New South Wales. 

 By grants to convicts and to settlers Governor Phillip 

 and Acting-Governor Grose created a " chain of 

 farms " between Sj'dney and Parramatta. Tlie first 

 two chaplains, Johnson and Marsden, devoted no small 

 portion of their unemployed time and energy to mixed 

 farming, namely, at once pastoral and agricultural. 

 Most of the military officers, who received from the 

 Government moderate grants of land, and some of 

 whom purchased on easy terms the farms of returning 

 convicts or disheartened settlers, were small farmers. 

 The greatest of early pastoralists, John McAi'thur, was 

 at first, in this sense, a mixed farmer, and it was out 

 of these confused attempts that his pastoral pursuits 

 grew, dwarfing his agricultural operations. In much 

 later years Dr. Lang found that, in the neighbourhood 

 of Bathurst, some of the great pastoral domains had 

 been broken up through the insolvenc}^ of their owners, 

 and subdivided into farms. f Everywhere too, in the 

 less settled districts, squatters (in the primary sense 

 of the word) were dropping down into nooks and corners 

 on the big runs, where they made themselves more con- 

 spicuous than agreeable. All of these types of small 

 farmer together had made sensible encroachments on 

 the integrity of the squatters' preserves. 



Yet the dominion of the great runholders remained 

 unbroken. Over ^^rtually the whole of each province 

 in Australasia the big pastoralist had laid an unyielding 



* Victorian Pioneers, p. 140. 

 ■f" Accoimt, ii. 214-5. 



