262 
EMIGRATION. 
wealth, more disease, and many a grave. Still, with all this 
influx, the gold colonies have not proportionably advanced. 
Sydney and Melbourne, it is true, have become great cities, 
but this is no proof of the general progression of the country. 
The fresh comers are gold diggers, but not ploughers. The 
two sea-ports have grown to an enormous size, but the culti¬ 
vated lands have not increased in the same degree. A person 
who visits the colony after years of absence, is first struck 
with the size and elegance of the Sydney houses, the wonderful 
way the city has extended; but when he is fairly out of 
it, he is also struck with the little progress made in the 
country, and the sordid selfish spirit of its inhabitants. Gold 
has changed the Australian character—hospitality, which was 
the characteristic trait of the country, has been buried in 
deep pits, from whence they have drawn their nuggets. It 
proves that the country does not possess its cultivators in 
proportion to the inhabitants of the city, and that the popula¬ 
tion of the city is sufficiently great to change the entire 
character of the colony, which it never would have done had 
emigrants gone on the land, where hospitable homes would 
have sprung up in every direction. The high price of land 
has stopped up the road to the emigrant, and made the vast 
wilderness of Australia a Government preserve, as much as 
the Norman kings did the New Forest. 
From Australia, a ten days’ sail brings the emigrant to New 
Zealand. The climate is more inviting, the scenery more 
enchanting, and the land infinitely more fertile as a whole; 
for whilst Australia has its rich and fertile oases, equal 
to any in the world, they stand in the midst of deserts, 
vast plains of iron gravel, and gum trees. In the northern 
island the prospect is more hopeful; the shrewd and dis¬ 
cerning spirit of the late Governor, saw the extreme absurdity 
of keeping up the high price of land; he tried to do so, but 
seeing the evil of it, he gave way; he reduced it to the fixed 
price of 10s. per acre; and if the land should not be thought 
worth that sum, it is to be put up by auction at 5s., 
but any one, by putting down his 10s., can be immediately 
registered as the owner of any unselected spot. This was 
