THE GENESIS OF THE STATION 67 



squatters outside the pale, aided by the squatters 

 inside the pale, had won a legal triumph. The right 

 to form a station was at last assured, and it was con- 

 tinually being exercised. Not till 1846 did the Colony 

 realise in what numbers such stations had sprung up, 

 and how massive was the force, M'hen they were puii 

 on their metal, they could exert. 



To how large an extent the conquest of the soil was 

 made by the new squatting clement we have but to 

 turn to the figures showing the qviantity of stock and 

 the amount of land held without and within the pale 

 of settlement. At the beginning of 1846 the number 

 of cattle mthin these bounds in New South Wales was 

 417,000, and of sheep 1,891,000; while the cattle 

 without them numbered 698,000, and of sheep, 2,518,000. 

 The disparity is still more sharply accentuated in what 

 was for some time known as the Port Philhp province, 

 or Victoria. There only 30,000 cattle and 351,000 

 sheep were inside the settlement, while 200,973 cattle 

 and 1,430,914 sheep grazed outside of it. The dispropor- 

 tion was far greater still in Queensland, There the great 

 mass of the grazing runs long lay outside of the settled 

 districts. In 1884, at the time of the passing of the 

 Button Land Act, only 334 runs, held by a far smaller 

 number of lessees, containing 7,440,000 acres, were 

 within the settled portion of the Colony ; while 9,208 

 runs, again held by a much smaller number of tenants, 

 and embracing no less than 308,669,026 acres, lay 

 outside of the occupied and settled districts. Evidently, 

 in Queensland as in New South Wales, and indeed in 

 all the colonies, the pioneer squatter has been the 

 author of its chief and most prominent advance. He 

 has rough-hewed the path that others have trod, and 

 which others still have converted into a highway. He 

 is one of those social variants who are the authors of all 

 social progress, as Darwin has taught us to see in 

 physiological variations the agencies of all organic 

 evolution. He is by pre-eminence, the " maker of 

 Australasia," 



