..^iM..„ii>^^^J^.. UNIVERSITY OF CAI AT LOS ANGEl ^I'-^t P^i&f f '■^^t%^■: ' f> '^-.i'.i.l'- A STUDY IN COLONISATION (KA.iA^ THK SOUTH AUSTRALIAN COMPANY A STUDY IN COLONISATION BY GEORGE SUTHERLAND, M.A. LATE SCHOLAR OF MKLHOURNK UNIVEKSITV IN HISTORY AND rOLITlCAl, ECONOMY AUTHOR OF 'AUSTRALIA OR ENGLAND IN THK SOUTH' JOINT AUTHOR OK 'a history of AUSTKAMA AND NEW ZEALAND' LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1898 All rights reserved S 9<^ -.VIII. Making a Port 127 ae < g IX. Copper and Gold 153 X. Agriculture and P'lour Milling . . . 183 ?»• XI. Flocks and Herds ...... 199 m XII. City Investments 311 u XIII. The Outlook for the Future . . .222 ^ 430428 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES Adelaide and Mount Lofty, from N.W. Frontispiece From a draivhig by Colonel Light, 1837-8. South Australian Bank, Council Room, ETC., North Terrace, Adelaide . Tu face p. 66 From a draiLiiiig by S. T. Gill, 1845. \'iE\v OF North Terrace, Adelaide, SHOWING South Australian Com- pany's Office „ 93 I''roin a draioiiig bv S. T. dill. 1845. Hank of South Australia, Norih Ter- race, Adelaide ,,152 /■'mm a dmwiiig by ('oloiicl Light , i83q. m TEXT I'AGK Rosrtta Head (the Whalers' Look-oitt Statiox), from (iRANlTE ISLAND 1 7 The Company's Wharf at Port Adelaide, na.med McLaren's Wharf, after the first Colonial Manager 127 From a skctrh made in 1846 by F. A'. A'ixoii. viii List of Illusfrations rAf.F '\'\\v. Company's Flour Milt, on the Torrens rivkr, near present hotanicai, park. Entrance 182 From a sketch made in 1846 by I'. R. Nixon. Mr. Georc.e Fife Angas, first Chairman of the South Australian Company 209 Mr. C. (}. Roberts, Chairman of the South Australian Company 218 THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN COMPANY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The story of each successive effort made by those who have been aptly termed the British Empire Builders will be found, on examination, to present curious and interesting parallel features to those of similar enterprises which have preceded it. In Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Year, when so much has been said with practical unanimity of assent, about the immense value to England of that ' Greater Britain ' which lies beyond the seas, it is difficult for the average reader to realise how enormous is the change in public sentiment which this consensus of opinion represents. At B Introdtt,cto7'\ the date of her Majesty's accession, as well as for some years before and after it, enthusiasts in colonisation were looked upon as nuisances and disturbers of the public peace, or, in other words, very much in the same light in which Mr. Cecil Rhodes is regarded at the present day by the most reactionary among the ' Little England ' Party. The despatch of the pioneer vessels of the South Australian Company, without waiting for that official sanction which had so long been sought in vain, as narrated in the succeeding pages, may be taken as a type of what happened at the founding of almost every settlement by British colonisers of that date. When the New Zealand Company, which founded the present capital of the southern colony, failed to pass its Bill in the House of Commons, and quietly fitted up the ship ' Tory ' to convey a party under Colonel Wakefield, the British Govern- ment despatched the warship ' Druid ' to chase the expedition and bring its leaders to their senses. When Batman and others of his colonising association, tired out with waiting for official sanction for their proposed settlement on the present site of Melbourne, crossed Bass's Illegal Empire Building 3 Strait with a few sheep and bej^an pastoral operations near Port Phillip, they were warned that they could not be regarded in any other light than as trespassers and intruders. Even in New South Wales the introduction of the first free settlers, which was the real beginning of the true settlement of that great colony, was opposed most bitterly by officials and legis- lators. No active hostilities of course were, in any of these cases, initiated against the enthusiastic colonisers. That would have been too ridicu- lous. But the spirit in which every application for leave to colonise any j^ortion of the immense undeveloped territory of the British Empire was received, found its ordinary expression in some such appeal as that of the statesman who was continually exclaiming, * Why cannot you let it alone ? ' It almost seemed as if, in this regard, the settled policy of England had been framed and interpreted on the principle laid down by another eminent politician that ' To do anything which you are not obliged to do, must necessarily be wrong.' At any rate it was in tacit recognition of such an understanding that the Empire Builders of those days generally 4 IntrodMctory proceeded. ' The Gov^eniment will not move, unless its hcind be forced ; therefore let us force it and risk the consequences.' This was the line of policy upon which the most ardent of them acted ; and it generally worked out correctly. The danger of a French occupation of the ' Golfe Josephine' — as Napoleon had named the inlet near to which Adelaide now stands — was at one time by no means imaginary, and the events succeeding the Revolution of 1830 served to enable the British people to realise what would happen should a new French colonising leader arise. The public recognition of this risk was, in fact, the principal deciding factor in the reasons which enabled the Duke of Wellington to win over a majority in the House of Lords to the support of the South Australian Act of 1834 ; and, moreover, it^ con- doned the offence of those who planted the settlement in New Zealand and who named their town in a spirit of gratitude after the illustrious Iron Duke, A similar danger exists in the present day that the Boers — possibly with the aid of the Germans — may draw a cordon across from the 7\^'o Founders Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Wide as are the differences observable in the characters of the first Chairmen of th(; South Aiistrah'an Company and the British South Africa Com- pany respectively, still there exists between them a certain degree of resemblance in their ineradicable belief in the superiority of that pattern of political and social liberty called British, as a lasting material from which to construct the foundations of free constitutions in every region of the globe. Red tape is a terrible bugbear and source of irritation to Cecil Rhodes, just as it was to George Fife Angas ; and both of them arrived at the resolution to form a colonisation company, by a process of reasoning based on the deeply rooted conviction that while the ornamental part of colonisation may be congenial to the purely official mind, yet the really practical work of settling people on the land in a new country is generally found to be far beyond its capacities. It is easy to laugh at the blunders and in- consistencies of the Colonial Office and of some of the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia, whose idea of carrying out their instructions from Parliament to promote emi- 6 Introdticiory gration by the proceeds from the sale of land was to immediately create such an expensive ornamt'ntal establishment that, within three or four years, 56,000/. — or practically the whole of the emigration fund — had been misapplied, as frankly stated by the Committee of Enquiry. It may perhaps be imagined that such a piece of absurdity would never be perpetrated in our day and generation. But one should not make too sure of this. Anyone can take a well-inten- tioned and fairly capable man and make him into a salaried State official of the class whose actions cannot fairly be complained of, yet whose maintenance is felt to be a really onerous burden. But it is a different matter to take that same man and convert him into a useful colonist, quick to seize the varied and un- expected opportunities which life in a new country affords, and courageous enough to hold on to his adopted country with a firm and tenacious grip when seasons are unpropitious or when times are specially hard. To give the British race plenty of room for expansion, and to impose upon it as little out- side restraint or government as might be compatible with the maintenance of order, was The Secret of Sticcess the Icciding idea in the programme \)\ which the earhest practical coloniscTs of Austraha accompHshecl their greatest successes. It was the exact antithesis of tht- notion which prompted Lord Napier to demand, as a con- dition of his accepting the Governorship of South Austraha, that he should have a con- siderable number of soldiers to oxerawe the settlers and force them to obey the law. Each individual settlement of the British race, all the world over, knows its own business best and can best ripply those rules to its own goxern- ment which are found to be most in conformity with its environment. The,- practice of transpor- tation, however, had in those days tainted almost all the thoughts of the averacre Eno-Hsh- man on the subject of colonisation. The free emigrant in his opinion might not be a convict ; but he required a good deal of sharp restraint. Nothing could be further from the truth. Self- reliant colonists who have plenty of room to breathe and plenty of hard work form probably the most absolutely honest and easily governed communities in the whole world ; and as a general rule it is only when schemes of State interference come uppermost in tht: minds of 8 Inh'oductory th(^ clvvelk^rs in colonial cities that any sc^rious departure, from this riih; is to be observed, French transportation now maintains the only surviving trace of convictisni in the Pacific regions, and, as recently announced by the Colonial Secretary at Sydney, there is scarcely a month in which the New South Wales Government are not called upon to carry out the unpleasant duty of extraditing escapees who have made their way to Australia from New Caledonia. This fact was recently elicited by the publication of the United States bill of costs for extraditing a very notorious criminal, the sum demanded being no less than twent)- eight thousand dollars, when it was pointed out that the Government of New South Wales performs the same services on behalf of the French penal colony of New Caledonia free of charge. The unprevented leakage of French convicts into the Australasian colonies cannot be accurately estimated ; but it is certainly con- siderable. Australians would gladly incur still greater expense could they but establish a com- plete moral quarantine against infection from the moral plague-spot of the Pacific. The fate which might have awaited South France a Rival Australia and New Zealand, had not the enthu- siastic colonisers of the early part of the pre- sent reign secured the establishment of British settlements in these places, may therefore be readily imagined. As regards New Zealand the danger was at one time particularly serious. It was urged upon the attention of Lord Glenelg in a l«tter written to him by Mr. G. F. Angas in 1838, in which the writer said : ' New Zealand is at present nominally an independent nation, in which British interests are represented by a Consul, &c., and in its present position and relation to this country the French may esta- blish a settlement there with as much propriety as the British, providing the Baron de Thierry possesses sufficient influence with the leading chiefs to obtain their concurrence — a point to which he appears to be directing all his efforts — merely because her Majesty's Government has declined to avail itself of the predilection known to exist amongst the New Zealanders in favour of this country.' The signal services which the first Chairman of the South Australian Com- pany had rendered to the British nation, more particularly in securing a recognition of the naval strategic value of New Zealand, were in lo Iutroducto7y later years so fully admitted on all hands that the British Government made him the offer of a baronetcy. But he was, like other F^mpire Builders, simple and unostentatious in his style of livino-, and he respectfully declined the prof- fered honour. The ' Review of Reviews,' in commenting in 1890 upon the facts stated in an article of mine upon ' The German Villages of South Australia,' remarked that few Englishmen were aware of the extent to which Germans were utilising the British colonies as fields for settle- ment. The statement was fully justified at the time it was written. But, in reference at any rate to South African colonisation, the fierce light which has recently beaten upon the racial politics of that quarter of the world has called the attention of British politicians to the fact that the intermixture of the Teutonic with the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races in the self- governing colonies of the Empire is a feature in their progress which must be reckoned with. It may then be asked whether the encourage- ment of German emigration by the South Australian Company, as described in the suc- ceeding pages, must not be looked upon in the Gcrnian Settlers i i liglit of a dangerous experiment. How did it come about that the Chairman of those days promoted German colonisation in AustraHa although he deplored the danger that New Zealand should fall to the lot of France ? The answer, so far as he was personally concerned, was to be found in the fact that the colonists sent out by G. F. Angas had been tested and tried in the fire of religious persecu- tion and had proved themselves steadfast and true. The Company, for its part, was influenced to follow his example, not only on account of the same reason, but also as a consequence of the evil reports that had been spread abroad in England, respecting the colony and the resulting dearth of suitable British emi- grants. But, in the light of subsequent experience, the fundamental difference between French and German colonisation may be set down mainly to the fact that the population of France is stationary, while that of Germany is increasing rapidly. The consequence is that, while no doubt most notable exceptions always exist, the Frenchmen who go abroad are as a rule not the best specimens of their race. France still 1 2 Introd^tctory clings to the idea that emioration is exile, and that the word is practically a synonym for transportation. The Germans on the; other hand must necessarily swarm, like a hive of bees, and the brood that they send forth is just as good as that which they keep at home. This has been proved in South Australia, and it will doubtless yet be recognised in South Africa. The labours of the pioneer are soon for- gotten by succeeding generations in the rush and turmoil of life. In practical matters man lives mentally in the present and in the future rather than in the past ; and perhaps, in general, it is just as well that this should be so. Yet the encouraafement to those who have the ability and the means to promote good work in the future depends so intimately upon the recollection of the way in which similar work has been regarded or rewarded in the past, that no one can logically dissociate entirely the one from the other. There is still much need to enforce, in regard to colonisation and pioneering generally, the application of the truth which the rhymester blunderingly attempted to express when he exclaimed on Employment of Capital 13 looking at the first highways constructed among the Highlands of Scotland : If you had seen these roads before they were made, You would hold up )'our hands and bless General Wade I The great bulk of the capital, amounting to about a third of a million sterling, invested in South Australia by the Company, was without any doubt most judiciously expended for such practically and permanently useful purposes as the promotion of emigration, the making of roads and bridges, the dredging of river- frontages ; the making of wharves ; the build- ing of stores and mills ; the promotion of mineral discoveries and the encouragement of mining ; the finding of markets for agricultural products and the improvement of the methods of cultivation. The Colonial Government was in 1 84 1 indirectly accused by a Select Com- mittee of the House of Commons of having been guilty of a certain amount of wasteful expenditure, it ha\-ing been discovered that a sum of 56,000/. collected from the sale of lands had been diverted, in contravention ot the Act, from its settled purpose of promoting emigration. This, however, was a fault which could in 1 4 Introductory no decree be laid at the Company's door. On the contrary, by setting to work to devise other means of keepino' up the stream of free and assisted emigration without looking' to the kind fund, the Directors did the best that was possible towards repairing the mischief already done. It is probable, in fact, that such a sum as the Company's original caj)ital investment was never expended in colonisation enterprise in any part of the world with so little waste. The Company was the first shipowner ; the first exporter of grain, of tallow and of ore ; the first niill proprietor and the first organiser of agricultural shows in the colony. But these were onh" incidental enterprises connected with the primary necessity of opening up the land by roads, bridges, and other means of com- munication. When a pioneer colonist invests money in a new settlement, the statement that he has bought land ought to be regarded as being only another way of expressing the fact that he has contrilnited towards the bringing out of emigrants, the making of roads and the carrying out of such other public works as are necessary for promoting the success of the colony. The Company never sought for, or obtained, A Generous Policy 15 any charter of monopoly whatever ; nor did it enter into invidious competition as a trading concern, or make use of its large capital in order to crush out rivalry and secure for itself a free held. It took large risks at the beginning, and then, when the continued progress of the colony was assured, it left to others the pursuit of all such callings as were not absolutely and necessarily involved in the first investments of its capital. During the sixty-two years of its existence, its dividends have averaged, as nearly as possible, seven and a half per cent, on its outlay. If, however, the fact be reckoned that, during five years, more than half a century ago, there was no return whatever for the money invested, it will be seen that, as compared with a six per cent, debenture holder, a shareholder in the Company, although he undertook much greater risks and responsi- bilities, has really secured but little extra advantage in the long run. Had the British or the Colonial Government borrowed the money at the rates current for such purposes in 1835, its payments to the debenture holders would have been fully as great as the average returns to holders of the Company's stock, 1 6 Introductory while it is very problematical indeed whether the benefits to the Colony and to the Empire would hav^e been equal to those which have accrued from the work of the South Australian Company. ROSETTA HEAD (THE WHALERS' LOOK-OUT STATION), FROM GRANITE ISLAND CHAPTER II THE UNKNOWN WILT^ERNESS Bold granite headlands, upon whose stubborn boulders the majestic billows of the southern ocean break with long monotonous wash, and beyond whose inland margins the eye discerns nothing but interminable masses of undulating scrub, with sandy, worthless soil, and stunted bushes ; away to eastwards, trending to the c The Unknoivn Wilderness south, a lono' stretch of low sandy coast, sink- ing into the dim distance still unchanged, and having at its back an almost interminable successiort of sand hills, leading on to the still unreclaimed Ninety Mile Desert ; such was the coast of South Australia as known to the wild roN'ing spirits, who, alone among white people during the ' early thirties,' visited at intervals the inhospitable shores. Rude and reckless was the life led by the Southern Ocean whalers and sealers of those days, some of them ex-convicts froni Sydney and from Hobart, some British sailors, with, perhaps, nothing worse in their uncultured natures than instincts drawing them away from civilisation. All were as daring a set of seadogs as ever launched a craft upon a perilous adventure. Mingling freely among the blacks, and getting into occasional quarrels with them, as a natural consequence, some of them had more rea- sons than those based upon prudence and the preservation of their whaling and sealing monopoly and secrets for keeping their where- abouts as far as possible unknown to the out- side world. Of the interior they knew% and cared to know, practically nothing, and although The Invader 19 a mighty river ran into a broad lake that stretched away within reach of their view from the lookout station on Rosetta Head, yet they never made any attempt ai solving the mysteries hidden behind the line of surf and the sand- hills. Ankle-deep in the soft drifting sand of one of these windblown sandy hillocks, Captain Barker, the leader of an exploring expedition from Sydney, was laboriously making his way one afternoon in the autumn of 1831, towards a spot on which he might take some observations with a telescope which he carried in his hands. Unconscious of the imminent danger in which he had placed himself by venturing alone into such a place, he proceeded to set up his in- struments, while, from a distance, the natives, who had been fishing in the neighbouring shallow waters, watched him with wondering eyes, while a few of their warriors crept with crafty stealth from cover to cover, until, quite unknown to their victim, they had closed all around him and rendered his escape impossible. A sudden rush, the fierce thrusts of a dozen spears, and the bloody deed was done. A white man lay at their feet, dead, and having c 2 20 The Unknown Wilderness danced a wild war dance over the body, they carried it off and threw it into a channel of deep water, where the tide ran strongly along the channel towards the Murray Mouth, and the evidences of their day's work would soon be buried in oblivion in the waters of the ocean. Waiting on the opposite or western side of the Murray Mouth, one of the ill-fated Captain's companions in travel had heard, or thought he heard, a sharp sudden cry ; but whether it was the note of some seabird on the solitary coast, or the voice of a human being, he could not tell for certain. As night fell and they still con- tinued to strain their anxious eyes scanning the murky outline of the knoll beyond whose shoulder the Captain had disappeared from their gaze, a smoke went up and presently a circle of fires could be discerned. Black men were dancing in apparent triumph around the summit of the hillock, and to their movements the women kept up a weird refrain or chant that sounded like both a dirge and a song of defiance. Bitter regrets filled the minds of the surviv- ing travellers as the truth dawned upon them. His skill as a swimmer had proved poor Further Investigation 2 i Barker's undoing. Arrived at the mouth of the river, where the waters of the Lake run out to sea with a strong current on a falling tide, he had judged the distance to be only a quarter of a mile and had proposed to swim across. None of his men were sufficiently expert to face the distance and to breast such a current. They urged him not to attempt the feat, burdened as he would be with clothes and telescope. He faced this danger resolutely, and overcame it without much difficulty ; but little thought that another of a much more formidable nature awaited him on the opposite side. So long as any doubt as to his fate re- mained, the second in command of the party, Mr. Kent, was determined that everything that was practicable should be done, in order that the mystery might be cleared up. Rejoining the small vessel by which the explorers had come from Sydney, he sailed across to Nepean Bay in Kangaroo Island, where some whalers had established a camp. One of these men was induced by the offer of a reward to take with him a lubra or native woman who was attached to the camp and by her means to investigate the matter. The facts were clearly brought 2 2 The Unhiown Wilderness to light ; but the motives of the blacks in perpetrating their cruel deed were more diffi- cult to fathom. Captain Sturt, when he heard of the incident, expressed the opinion that it was probable that the cruelties exercised by the sealers towards the blacks along the south coast might have instigated the latter to take vengeance on the innocent as well as on the guilty. Misfortune dogged the footsteps of almost all the explorers who outlined the coast of Southern Australia in the early part of the nineteenth century. Thistle Island and Cape Catastrophe, on the western side of Spencer's Gulf, are names which commemorate the loss of a boat's crew under the charge of Mr. Thistle, the boatswain, who sailed under the command of Captain Matthew Flinders and along with John Franklin, afterwards celebrated as an arctic navigator. The great war with Napoleon was still raging fiercely when the French navigator Baudin, not far from Rosetta Head, met with Flinders, who at once cleared his decks, turned his broadside, and prepared for action. The broad indentation in the land at which this occurred was named by him Pioneers 2 3 Encounter Bay, and, although the meeting had a peaceful termination, still it was productive of the most disastrous results to poor Flinders, who was seized at Mauritius later on, and shut up in prison for six long years, while the credit of his discoveries, as recorded on the charts captured with him, was given to Baudin and his companions. Flinders, however, with true sailor-like generosity absolved the French navigators from any active complicity in the fraud, believing, as he said a short time before his death, that they had acted under compul- sion from those in authority above them. Meagre as were the details respecting the Southern Australian inland that had been collected through the travels of explorers, the facts communicated by the survivors of Captain Barker's party were of great service to those who at that time were proposing the scheme for the colonisation of South Australia. The explorers had landed on the eastern shore of the Gulf of St. Vincent, and after making their way upwards towards the range along the course of a streamlet running down a romantic glen they had ascended Mount Lofty. On the map which accompanies the First 24 The Unknown Wilderness Report of the Directors of the South Australian Company, issued in 1836, the country imme- diately to the north of the Mount is marked as being a ' grassy forest,' beyond which is ' Six- teen-Mile-Creek,' identified as one of the streams running into the Torrens. Away to the north, in the far distance, was seen some land which is vaguely described on the map as ' undulating.' On the south is Sturt's River, and south-west of the range lies some ' flat and wooded country.' The only anchorage known to exist on this part of the coast was near to Cape Jervis, at a place now called Rapid Bay, and immediately to eastward of this the map shows ' fiats and beautiful valley.' The sole really encouraging words to any intending colonist which are included in the nomenclature of this interesting map, are those describing the country bordering upon Vivonne Bay in Kangaroo Island — namely ' rich country.' The words were inserted, probably on the strength of a report by a certain Captain Sutherland, the skipper of a southern whaler who had landed on the coast of the island and had proceeded for a short distance inland. But his estimate of the value of the land has certainly Barren Land 25 turned out to be an over-sanguine one, inasmuch as, after the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, the whole island does n(3t contain niore than a few score of persons, although it has a length of eighty-five miles and a breadth of about thirty miles, including an area about as large as the counties of Surrey and Kent put together. Other parts of the South Australian coast then known to navigators, have not proved to offer very many more attractions to settlement than the land of Kangaroo Island. Round about the splendid harbour of Port Lincoln, which, owing to its natural advantages as an anchorage, was at one time favoured very much by seafaring" men as the locality of the future capital, the country, although good in patches, has never shown itself capable of supporting a large population. The physical facts explaining this com- parative barrenness of much of the land are interesting. To the eastward of Kangaroo Island the granite headlands, according to the evidence quite recendy collected by geologists, represent, as it were, the worn-down stumps of high mountains, down whose sides, during the 26 The Unknown Wilderness glacial epoch, large morains and glaciers made their way, not to the southward as might be supposed, but always trending north, and carrying the spoil from the high lands out across the plains which now fringe the northern parts of the gulf of St. Vincent and Spencer's Gulf. Parts of these alpine solitudes of the glacial ages are believed to have sunk far under the sea, and only in places, such as the dangerous reef known as Seal Rock, do the granite boulders that once rested on the topmost summits of great elevated ranges barely emerge from the surface of the ocean. The revelations of Mr. Kent, as the second in command who took charge of the ill-fated Captain Barker's expedition, were therefore in strict accord with the facts which science has long afterwards made known to the world. The good land was to be sought for not in the vicinity of the southern coast but further up the Gulf of St. Vincent than any navigator had previously penetrated. The plain across which Captain Barker made his way to the summit of Mount Lofty, now contains about two-thirds of the whole population of South Australia, while the country lying around the lookout stations of Napoleon and Australia 27 the early sealers and whalers is for the most part still in a state of nature. Sheep and a few cattle find a precarious living uj^on it, and when the settlers have burnt off the dozen square miles of the interminable scrub by means of bush fires, the shallow soil may, after the next rain, yield a fairly good grassy feed for the stock. But so solitary is the country stretch- ing from Cape Jervis to Rosetta Head, that, even at the present day, it is the custom of the settlers occasionally to go out shooting wild cattle, lest they should entice the tame stock away into the bush, where it would be very difficult to recapture them. Napoleon the Great, when in the zenith of his power and success, undoubtedly formed a determination to establish a military station on the southern coast of Australia which could be used as a base from which to drive the British out of the country. After a gallant struggle in America the French had been obliged to relinquish any idea of conc^uest in that direction. The defeat and death of the brave Montcalm at Quebec had been followed by a long series of struggles in defence of what the French called Acadie, and on many a stream and portage the 28 The Unknown Wilderness French trappers still continued to hold their own. But Napoleon believed that he had officers whose bravery equalled and whose skill sur- passed that of Montcalm, and in sending out the ' National ship,' ' Le Geographe,' to make discoveries, and in naming the larger gulf ' Golfe Bonaparte ' and the other ' Golfe Josephine,' he showed his evident determi- nation to make these important inlets the rallying points of a distant campaign which should harass the British and force them to abandon their prospects of trade and colonisa- tion in the southern hemisphere. The Duke of Wellington was well aware of the nature of these projects, and, nearly a score of years after the batde of Waterloo, he still remained impressed with the necessity of cir- cumventing them. He had ceased to be premier in 1830, and his opposition to the Reform Bill of 1832 had made him for a time intensely unpopular. But he still retained very great inHuence in the House of Lords, and was able, on this account, to render services of the utmost importance to the scheme for colonising South Australia. When the Bill ' to erect South Australia In the Balance 29 into a British province and to provide for the colonisation and government thereof ' came before the Lords in 1834 its prospects were for a time exceedingly doubtful. The opposi- tion to it was determined, and many of the promoters of the measure, among whom were several members of the House of Commons, were aware that its passage through the Upper House was the critical point in its fate. W'ith the mortification of defeat over the Reform Bill still fresh in their minds, some of the peers could not quite forget that some of those who formed the committee of thirty-one in charge of the scheme on behalf of the South Australian Association, had been warm advocates of that measure. The colonisation of what was practically an unknown land, upon plaos worked_out merely on paper by a writer of facile pen but very little colonial experience, named^Mr.' Tldward Gibbon Wakefield, was sneeringly referred to as a visionary project, and those who held this view appeared at one time to be certain to carry the House with them. But when the Iron Duke gave to the Bill his emphatic support, and spoke of the necessity for retain- 30 The Unknoivn Wilde7^ness 11114' the portion of Australia referred to as a British possession, the old martial spirit came back. Colonisation had but a secondary place in the thoughts of the new converts to the support of the measure, but imperial defence must not be neglected on any account. The Bill was therefore passed through triumphantly and received the royal assent on August 15, 1834. Mr. Wakefield and the Duke of Wellino-ton were found to be in accord on the subject ; but by reason of very different motives. The former out of gratitude pro- posed that the capital of the new colony should be named Wellington, and was bitterly dis- appointed when his suggestion was rejected or overlooked. These facts must be understood before any general understanding can be arrived at as to the peculiarly conflicting nature of the two currents of feeling and of policy which affected the designs of the promoters of South Australia!n colonisation, and which made the formation of the South Australian Company an absolute necessity. An experiment in the art of coloni- sation was not of itself sufficient to induce the House of Lords to give the necessary assent A Neiv Departure to a project promoted mainly by political opponents of that august assemblage. But it so happened that, by reason of the strategic arguments of the Duke of Wellington and the immense influence which the hero of the Peninsula and of Waterloo still exercised, the two conflictincj currents of feelin^ were forced for a short time to flow in the same direction. The philanthropic sympathies of the advocates of the Bill excited in those davs a ofood deal of suspicion and distrust. The spectacle of a deliberate experiment in ^r colonisation, promoted mainly in the interests of the proposed colonists themselves and for the \ bettering of their condition, was probably quite unique in the history of England. But in this instance the philanthropic philosophers and the soldiers happened to think in unison, though from different motives, and the alliance saved the Bill from destruction. But, as we shall find later on, it was not enough that these two elements should combine their forces. Some- thing more was wanted in order to render the enterprise a success, either as a scheme for anticipating the French by planting a strong British settlement in the long interval that lay The Unknown Wilderness between Swan River and 15otany Bay, or as a philanthropic undertaking designed to reheve the congestion of population in England and the consequent misery which that unfortunate fact entailed upon the toiling masses of the people. A Piz in ci Poke CHAPTER III COMMISSIONERS AT A STANDSTILL ' There is an essential difficulty,' remarked Mr. Rowland Hill, the Secretary to the Board of Colonisation Commissioners, ' namely the necessity for selling land, or doing that which is equivalent to the sale of land, which no one knows anything about' In other words he was experiencing the difficulty of doing what is popularly known as selling a ' pig in a poke.' The journey of Captain Barker had certainly added something to the current stock of knowledge respecting those portions of New Holland which lie in the vicinity of the great gulfs, and a paragraph had been published in the London papers announcing that Mount Lofty, which Flinders had seen from a dis- tance, had been climbed by an adventurous party from Sydney. But the fact that the gallant Captain lost his life owing to the D Comiitissioners at a Standstill treach€iry of the natives, did not tend to re- assure the pul)lic. On this account it was argued h\ some of the intending" emigrants for the new land that, unless a really large party of settlers could be got together, having adequate provision for their own defence, it would be better to take up their abodes on some portion of Kangaroo Island, which was believed to contain very few natives and upon which, as a matter of fact, the roving whalers had safely dwelt for some time previously. Sitting in the office of the Commission day after day at 19 Bishopsgate Street, within a stone's throw of that marvellous corner where the Royal Exchange fronts the Bank of England, and where, as it has been truly remarked, the heart-beat of the world's finan- cial circulation seems to throb with an al- most overpowering vigour, Mr. Rowland Hill had begun to feel, and not without reason, that the project upon which he was engaged was foredoomed to failure. Emigrants in plenty no doubt had made their applications to the Commission. The problem of ' What to do with our boys ' had in the early thirties reached a particularly acute stage of its unsolved per- What to do ivitk Our Boys 35 plexity, and some who did not want to o() them- selves intended to _f;-ive their children a start in the new country. Some had a very little capital, while many had none at all, or did not care to risk it. But, prior to the passage of the Bill, the greatest enthusiasm had pervadc^d the notable meeting" in I^lxeter Hall at which the resolution was arrived at, that an association for the colonisation of South Australia should be formed, and this feeling still exerted its spell upon large numbers who believed that they only needed the fuller and freer life of Australia to enable them to find an outlet for the energies of themselves and families, and a real chance of bettering their positions. But ships were needed, and it would have been folly to make any attempt to reach the new land without the guarantee of a consider- able sum of monev. In the Bill constitutino- the Commission, the Imperial GovernnK-nt had taken care that it was not pledged to spend a single farthing upon the proposed enterprise. On the contrary the large sum of 35,000/. — estimated as the amount required for the initial expenses — must, according to the provisions of the Act, be raised bv the sale of land ; and, 36 Commissioners at a Standstill as Mr. II ill was now findiiiL;- to his acute chagrin, it was one thin^- for a moneyed man to exhibit enthusiasm about an abstract pro- position at a public meeting, and quite a different thin.g- for him to give substantial proof of the lasting qualities of that feeling by tabling down money for land which, as the Secretary himself admitted, no one knew anything about. Rowland Hill was in many respects a remarkable man, as his subsequent achieve- ments proved. In his earlier years his eager nervous temperament had kept him so hard at work while engaged in teaching mathematics in his father's school at Birmingham that he had been compelled to give up his duties through ill health, and had sought the post of Secretary to the South Australian Commission partly on account of its quietness. It -was not until the year 1837 that he began publishing those pamphlets on postal reform which drew him into the vortex of the great agitation for penny postage, of which, indeed, he was the originator. But the quietness of his position at Bishopsgate Street was more than he bargained for. Not that there was any lack of persons who would Cheap Emigration 2>7 willingly, in that spirit of adventure for which the British race have always been noted, brave the danoers of the unknown and o-q forth into what was looked upon as the Antipodean wilderness. For several years, in fact, various parties of such intending colonists had been kept in a state of suspense owing to the various schemes that had secured attention and had then been allowed to lapse for want of sup- port. ' Free passages for emigrants ; land sales to cover the outlay ; ' these had been the main pro- posals set forth by Mr. Edward Gibbon Wake- field in the ' View of the Art of Colonisation ' which he published in 1829. What, he asked, was the use of offering to the labouring man free land in a country which he could not reach ? and there was no gainsaying the force of his argument. A score of members of Parliament and other well-known oentlemen had formed themselves into the provisional committee of the South Australian Association in 1834, and both inside and outside of the House there was plenty of talk about the new and complete plan by which colonies might be established without the cost of a single penny to the taxpayer, in 4304 J28 38 Coniuiissioucrs at a Standstill those distant lands which England had fought so hard to retain or to capture. A typical member of the philosophical section of this Committee was George Grote, whose name is now associated with that of Mr. Wakefield in connection with the tw^o wide streets by which the square city of Adelaide is divided in an east and west direction. An ardent student of the history of Greece, he was particularly interested in the analogies between Greek and British colonisation. It was not until several years later that he resigned his seat in the House of Commons in order to devote his attention exclusively to that magni- ficent work on the Hellenic race in ancient times which has made his name famous. The experiment which it was j^roposed to make in Southern Australia appeared, in the niind of such an authority on abstract history, an extremely interesting one. But the practical talents needed to put the scheme in operation had to be sought for elsewhere ; and, as Mr. Hodder says in his ' History of South Australia,' remarking upon the duties of the Committee, ' The active work devolved upon a few.' Disappointment awaited the intending colo- Delay 39 nists, as they called at the office of the Com- mission time after time, to see Mr. Hill and ask what was being" done. Some of them had given in their names as being- anxious and willing to emigrate even so early as in 1829, when, after the publication of Mr. Wakefield's book, a party had waited upon Mr. Robert Gouger and had asked him, on account of his well-known sympathy with such movements, to further their objects. He had gone to a good deal of trouble over the matter, and in each of the various colonisation schemes set on foot successively during the next five or six years he took an active interest, being ultimately chosen Secretary to the Provisional Committee of the South Australian Association. On two or three occasions the Colonial Office had deli- berately blocked his proposals. High hopes were raised in the minds of those who wished to emigrate by the passage of the Bill and the favour with which the Government regarded it. But the stipulation that the scheme was not to cost E norland one penny, and that a large sum must be raised by the sale of land and by the issue of debentures, proved at the time to be quite an insuperable 40 ConDnissioiU'j's at a Standstill barrier. Although, as has been said, many were ready to go themselves into the unknown land and many were willing to send sons and other relatives, there were very few indeed who were found desirous of sending their money. Accordingly Mr. Rowland Hill placed the position before an influential member of the Board of Commissioners in a letter to the following effect : — * Some objection or other,' he said, ' attaches to every arrangement proposed for raising the 35,000/. Indeed,' he added in the words already quoted, ' there is an essential difficulty, namely the necessity for selling land, or doing that which is equivalent to the sale of land, which no one knows anything about.' This was no news to Mr. George Fife Angas, the gentleman addressed, as he had, by reason of his special training and his' exceed- ingly active and philanthropic temperament, been in a position to feel the pulse of the financial community on the matter of colonisa- tion schemes better than perhaps any other member of the Board. Colonel Torrens, the chairman, was a distinguished military man of fine intellectual qualities but little commercial A Low Exchequer 4 1 experiencf^ Two or three othcM" members of Parliament were associated with him whose talents were great but not exactly in the line suited to render them most active in promoting- a new colony. The expenses of the Royal Commission were mounting' up. In the office sev^eral clerks were busy at work writing letters to many parts of the country, and in some provincial centres it was found necessary to appoint agents to disseminate information re- garding the proposed new southern colony. Leaflets were scattered among the people broadcast, and not only hundreds but thousands of desirable emigrants had their minds directed towards the object of getting away from the curse of over-competition and into a land where their energies might have freer scope. Adver- tisements were inserted in the leading news- papers, and a good deal of literature on the subject of colonisation was kept in stock. All this meant a serious amount of outlay, and the Commission had no funds in hand, because they were expressly debarred by the terms of their Act from exercising any of their powers until the full thirty-five thousand pounds had been subscribed and the debentures floated. 42 Commissioners at a Standstill Selling land from nothing btit map know- ledge was in short found to be an almost impracticable operation, and to many seemed to savoLir so much of an invitation to mere gam- bling that the Commissioners found no prospect of raising the whole thirty-five thousand pounds. They held their appointments from May 5, 1835, on which date the Board was recon- structed after a change of ministry, and during the whole of the succeeding months of that year they exerted all their personal influence to induce friends, acquaintances, and the general public to buy at the fixed price of twelve shillings per acre. ' Why don't you have the land surveyed ? ' some one asked and, no doubt, very naturally. ' It is all very well to ask us to buy ; but you yourselves admit that the place is an unexplored wilderness and it may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a perfect Sahara.' This weakness in their position was fully ad- mitted by the Commissioners in their fourth annual report, when they remarked that had the provisions of the Act permitted it, they ought to have sent out in the first instance a corps of surveyors and pioneers to examine the coasts Allot her South Sea Bubble 43 and harbours, so as to determine the site of the first town and to mark out the adjoining- land for occupation. ' But,' they explained, ' we were precluded from the adoption of this course by the twenty-sixth section of the Act, providing that none of the powers invested in us should come into operation until the sum of thirty-five thousand pounds should be advanced for the purchase of the public lands of the Province, and until the further sum of twenty thousand pounds should be raised upon the security of its future revenues and unappropriated lands.' ' You are trying- to start another South Sea Bubble,' was the remark with which their advances were sometimes met as they laid the details of the Parliamentary scheme before the business men of the City of London. It was, in fact, rather an unfortunate coincidence that the family connections of Major Bacon, who had brought the project of South Austra- lian colonisation before the Government in 1832, had been so intimately related to histori- cal personages concerned in the starting of that disastrous financial saturnalia. Lady Charlotte Bacon was a descendant of Harley, the talented but volatile Chancellor of the Exchequer who 44 Commissioners at a Standstill was impeached for his share in promoting the great South Sea excitement. She afterwards, when a widow, went to reside with her children at Adelaide, having caught the roving mania, perhaps, from those verses which Byron ad- dressed to her under the name of lanthe as prologue to ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' beginning : Not in those climes where I have late been straying. The whole project, in fact, was in many quarters described as being to a large extent visionary and certain to end in financial disaster resembling on a smaller scale that of the South Sea craze. Criticism of a still more destructive kind came from Australia, more especially from some of those colonists and investors who were in- terested in the working of the land and the employment of convicts or assigned servants in New South Wales, The ' Sydney Herald,' on October 26, 1835, ^i^fter quoting from the ' Stan- dard ' the official announcement that ' The King has appointed ' certain gentlemen ' to be his Majesty's Commissioners for carrying into effect the South Australian Act,' struck the keynote Newspaper Criticism 45 of the new indictment against the scheme when it said : 'In the formation of Swan River no objectionable principle existed, and besides the distance of the Australian Colonies rendered consultation on the subject immaterial ; but this new colony, perfectly unshackled by prison discipline, by military governors and by immense civil and legal establishments, and wholly inde- pendent and free, threatens to annihilate the other colonies. If it be successfully established the Colony of New South Wales will probably become an inferior, subordinate, and subservient appendage to it.' The ' Herald,' in short, con- fidently predicted that no Governor would be able to maintain New South Wales as a penal settlement if Southern Australia were esta- blished as a free colony with a Governor a})pointed by the Crown. ' Besides,' continued the article, ' let our landholders be fully on the alert to another important consequence. If the new Colony prospers, with her land rated at twelve shillings per acre as the minimum price, we shall soon have the land in this country raised to the same price, and will probably be required, besides, to pay handsomely for the privilege and honour of employing convicts.' 46 Commissioners at a Standstill The price of Australian land at twelve shillings per acre was in this view regarded as absurdly hi^h. When the Commissioners, in their efforts to raise the stipulated sum, altered the minimum to twenty shillings, the force of this argument seemed to many to be seriously strengthened. The financial troubles brought about in New South Wales by the formation of the Australian Agricultural Company, in 1831, were at that time considerable. This Company, consisting largely of merchants and members of Parliament, had subscribed a capital of one million sterling: and had received from the Government of New South Wales an absolute o-rant of one million acres. The theory acted upon in this instance, as will be noted, was that, as the land was lying waste and idle, simply for want of the applica- tion of capital to it for such necessary purposes as the introduction of immigrants, the making of roads and the starting of farms and sheep runs, the authorities ought, in reason, to be quite ready and willing to give it for nothing to any body of men who proved their ability to actually work it on an adequate scale. Sir Edward Parry, the famous polar navigator, was the first Further Difficulties 47 manager of this Agricultural Company, which, notwithstanding' the initial difficulties encoun- tered by it, and the peculiar financial crisis which it brought about in Sydney, made con- siderable progress in later years, and, by pro- moting the emigration of free labour, paved the way for the abolition of transportation. ' When others get their land free, in a country fairly explored, and known to contain many fertile tracts, why should we be asked to pay so high a price for rural sections in an un- known land and for allotments in a city that may perhaps never be established ? ' This was the burden of the question with which the Commissioners were met at every turn. By dint of sheer pertinacity however they had managed, in the beginning of the year 1836, to dispose of 335 out of the total of 437 prelimi- nary land orders, each of which carried the right to I 34 acres of country, and one acre of town land. But here the whole scheme stuck, and not an inch further could they progress. Eighteen months from the date (August 1834) on which King William had given the royal assent to the Act, there still remained 102 land ordc^rs which 48 Commissioners at a Standstill the Board could not by any means dispose of. Not only Mr, Rowland Hill, but most of the Commissioners were reduced to desj)air about the whole project. They realised for them- selves the force of the objections to buying unexplored land, and talked of resigning in a body. The Act allowed them no powers, not even that of sending surveyors, without a full subscription of money. But the public said in effect, ' W^e won't buy land until we have a survey, or at least an exploration,' and thus the whole matter had reached the stage of absolute deadlock. Gcoi'ge Fife Angas 49 CHAPTER IV A PROliLEM SOLVED The guidinj;- spirit of the rapidly developed movement which solved the difficulty was Mr. George Fife Angas, and his master-motive, throughout his eager and zealous labour, was a lofty ideal of religious liberty and the cause of education. The train of historical circumstances which enabled him to possess not only the desire for the promotion of these objects but also an ample fortune ot 180,000/. by means of which to carry through the work which he undertook, is so interesting as to be worthy of special notice. The beginning of the eighteenth century had seen the most disastrous failure in colonisation which the British nation had ever experienced. The Darien scheme, in which so many enthusiastic Scotchmen were induced to venture their lives in the uncongenial climate of the E 50 A Problem Solved Isthmus of Paiicimci, produced effects not unlike those of some of the other plans promoted by its originator, the bold and darini^ Paterson — that is to say it brought about immediate and apparently irremediable failure, but opened up the way for successes later on. This, at any rate, was pre-eminently the case with the I>ank of Enc^dand, of which Paterson was virtually the founder. Partly as the result of the Darien scheme and of the struggles of its promoters to redeem themselves, a very valuable trade in timber and other products of Central America was opened up by North Countrymen resident in Glasgow and Newcastle. Among the latter was Mr. Caleb Anitas, whose original business as a coachbuilder gradually developed into that of an importer of mahogany and a shipowner. Businesses both in London and in Newcastle were conducted by Mr. George P ife Angas at the time when the South Australian colonisation scheme was brought under his notice. The sorrow of a sad bereavement was upon him as he went up and down the bustling streets of London in those days, for his brother, Mr. W. H. Angas, the 'Sailors' Friend' and self- A Christian Philanthropist 5 i sacrificing missionary, had just been called lohis rest after a life full of peril, adventure and hardship in French prisons, in shipwrecks, in tempests and in unhealthy climates. He had given up the prospects of riches and of a widely influential career in order to go down among the barques, ketches and luggers on the Tyne- side, and to alleviate, to the best of his ability, the hard lot ot sailor lads and seamen in the port of Newcastle, To help others to help themselves, and to do so under a deep religious conviction of moral responsibility, was the great object of George Fife Angfas's activities. In other words, he believed in practical Christian philanthropy, and he believed the estrangement of religious motives from commercial projects, although tacitly admitted by many business men of the day, to be by no means essential. In the spirit of this belief he had tried to organise a ' Society for Promoting Christianity and Civilisation, through the Medium of Commercial, Scientific and Professional Agency.' The scheme failed for lack of support ; and, moreover, his connec- tion with it certainly tended to make some keen 52 A Problem Solved mc'ii of business in the City of London look with coldness upon any project which he might happen to be furthering. ' Is this business, or is it philanthropy ? ' they would ask. 'It is both," he would reply, in effect. ' But ,t^ey won't , mix,' would often be the discouraging reply. For fear of encountering such a rebuff many good business men habitually keep most studi- ously in the background their higher motives. They are afraid not only that the expression of any earnest desire to promote the welfare of their fellow men may injure the prospects of the business which they have in hand, but also that it may look like cant. Commercialism accordingly always gets credit for less of true philanthropy than is really concerned in the motives of its representatives ; while; on the other hand, political projects — especially those of a more or less socialistic character — nearly always get credit for higher motives than their outward advocates actually entertain. The world forgets, far too readily, that politics may be pursued for gain, and that commerce may be followed up with an inner motive of mutual Prospectus of the Company 53 helpfulness and the promotion of the best interests of one's fellow men. The value of hard work was, however, the first practical fact which Mr. Angas had to illustrate, in formulatino- his proposals for the foundation of the South Australian Company. Seven objects were specified in the jwospectus of the Company, w^hich was mainly drawn up by him, and to which he and four other gentle- men agreed on the occasion of a memorable meeting at 19 Bishopsgate Street, London, on October 9, 1835. These were, as printed in the prospectus of the Company : — Firstly, the erection upon their town bnd, of wharfs, warehouses, dwellinof houses, &c., and lettinor or leasino- the same to the colonists, or otherwise disposing of them. Secondly, the improvement and cultivation of their country land and the leasing or sale of part of it, if deemed expedient, and the sub- letting of their pasture lands at advanced rates. Thirdly, the laying out of farms, the erec- tion of suitable buildings thereon, and letting the same to industrious tenants on lease with the right of purchase before the expiration of 54 A Problem Solved such lease, at a price to be fixed at th(; time the t(;nant may ent(;r. Fourthly, the o-rowth of wool for the Euro- pean markets. Fifthly, the pursuit of the whale, seal, and other fisheries in the gulfs and seas around the colony, and the curing and salting of such fish as may be suitable for exportation. Sixthly, the salting and curing of beef and pork for the stores of ships and for the purposes of general export. (The abundance of salt of superior strength and quality with which Kan- garoo Island abounds, it is added, will afford the utmost facility for the pursuit of this object.) Seventhly, the establishment of a bank or banks in or connected with the new colony of South Australia making loans on land or pro- duce in the Colony and the conducting- of such banking operations as the Directors may think expedient. Much of this, no doubt, was risky business, and some of it, perhaps, in the light of the increased knowledge which time has brought with it. may be looked upon as having been hopeless from the very beginning. Curing and Heavy Outlay 55 salting fish for exportation has never been foiiiul a very profitable branch of colonial inclustr\-, and salt beef and pork have; not becMi very exten- sively bought from Australia either for the stores of ships or for export purposes. The whale and seal fishery industry was already Hearing the period of its extinction in the southern seas. After paying cash for its land, the Company would have to find suitable industrious tenants in England, who were willing to face the risk of a four or five months' voyage to the Antipodes and to meet the chances of matters on their arrival being different from what they expected. It had also before it the prospect that although the money which it would pay for the land was, in accordance with the Act and the scheme upon which it was based, intended as an Emigration Fund, still a good many of the Company's tenants, if they were ever to reach South Aus- tralia at all, would have to journey thither in the Company's ships and at the Company's expense. When the eighteen months' expenses of keeping up the London office and of paying for agents, advertising, &c., were dcifrayed, and 56 A Problem Solved when salaries wore paid to Governor, Resident Commissioner, Rei^istrar, Colonial Secretary, Judge- Advocate -General, Harbour Master, Colonial Treasurer, Surveyor-General, and about a dozen officers, from the time of their appointment in England, and when, in addition, the heavy cost of equipping and chartering vessels to convey these officers to the scene of their labours had been m.et, besides many other absolutely necessary expenses in building and settling the first official and other immigrants, how much would be left out of the thirty-five thousand pounds with which to bring out tenants to occupy the land that had been bought ? This was a very practical question to be asked by anyone who intended to invest the whole or part of his savings in the colony. Subsequent circumstances, indeed,' showed that it was a wise policy to be ))repared to find tenants in England and to take them straight to the colony without waiting to share in the proposed benefits of the hypothetical balance of an Emio"ration Fund having so many charges against it already. The tenants of those days, going to an unknown country, took heavy risks. A Jack of .-/// Trades 57 and it was only rii^ht that they slioulcl cnjo)- the ried as producers, and Hour had risen from 20/. to "^ol. per ton. Had it not been for the Company's tenants, the famine would have been still more acute. Civil servants found it impossible to live upon their salaries, which accordingly were raised. Colonel Gawler had spent his private fortune in keeping the affairs of the colony going, and excepting in the apparently unavoidable mistake of exceeding his instructions by drawing upon the Commissioners, he showed himself an able administrator. But one day during May 1 84 1 , a young officer named Captain George Grey, afterwards Sir George Grey, walked into Government House, and presented his credentials as the new Governor. In this summary manner was Colonel Gawler dismissed. He had not been officially informed of the appointment of his successor, who, not- withstanding his remarkable talents as an administraior, wliich were afterwards exhibited in Cape Colony and New Zealand, had the utmost difficulty in steering clear of the numerous shoals which had wrecked his pre- decessor, and in commending his policy of io6 A Co /any in Despair retrenchment to the settlers. A ParHamentary Committee at Westminster enquired into the affairs of South Austraha, and having found that the sum of 56,000/. had been wrongly diverted from the Emigration Fund, recommended that it should be restored ; also eventually that a sum of 155,000/. should be advanced to meet urgent leofal claims. Contrast, for a moment, the relative posi- tions of the Royal Commission and of the South Australian Company in 1837. The one represented State enterprise as applied to a very practical purpose, namely, the colonisation of a tract of territory under the British Crown ; while the other stood for private enterprise and was under the control and direction of a body of business men, the majority of whom were not in touch with the official class ; in the one case the clumsy machine of Government authority went lumbering" on in a totally wTong direction, until it was found to be stuck hard and fast in the mud. Official salaries and residences, together with many miscellaneous expenses having nothing to do with the actual work of rendering the colony self-supporting in the immediate future, had absorbed the bulk An Ostcntalious State J:stat)/is/n)u-ut 107 of the funds with which South AustraHa was to have been established. Money intended for the bringing out of healthy and capable labourers with their families had been ex- pended in keeping up an expensive State es- tablishment which (in these earlier years, at any rate) was ridiculously out of proportion to the number of persons to be governed. The absurdity of the position, in tact, is apparent at a glance. In times when Adelaide possessed a population similar to that of some country township or council district, the ordi- nary administrative government of which, at the present day, would be well looked after by a couple of justices of the peace and a police trooper, it was saddled with official salaries to the amount of 5,000/. or 6,oooL per annum. When almost every measure relating to the maintenance of the Government was carried out on this same extravagantly lopsided scale, what was the wonder that a period of deadlock swiftly overtook the settlement ? Mr. Micawber, in his character as emigrant bound for Australia, alternately hopeful and despondent concerning his prospects, was a type of the then existing state of feeling io8 A Colony in Despair amon;^" many of the South AustraHan settlers. Who does not remember that inimitable touch (jf humour at the conclusion of the chronicles of David Copperfield ? ' Those I O U's and so forth, which Mr, Micawbergave for the advances he had ?' asks Traddles. ' Well ! They must be paid ! ' said the Aunt. So poor Mr. Micawber sat down and wrote his luo-ubrious letter intimatino^ that his colo- nising enterprise had been strangled in its birth : — ' The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon,' he piteously complained, 'is again enveloped in impenetrable mists and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of a drifting wretch, whose doom is sealed.' But when the debt was paid ' in the noble name of Miss Trotwood ' the letter was re- opened for the purpose of adding a postscript to state that the intending colonist and his family were again ' at the height of earthly bliss.' And so were many of the South Australian colonists when, on the Christmas Eve of 1842, a vessel arrived at Port Adelaide Tivo Bills 109 brin<4'in<4' the welcome news that the House of Commons had adopted the recommendations of the Committee, and that some monetary accommodation, as opportune as that offered in Miss Trotwood's noble name, was to be extended to the embarrassed Public Treasury of the Province. It will be seen later on, that the British Government did not act uj) to the letter or spirit of the instructions thus indirectly con- veyed in Parliament. A Bill, however, was passed ' For the Better Government of South Australia,' and another for ' Regulating the Sale of Waste Lands ' both in that colony and in New Zealand. The danger of an immediate collapse was thus averted. But the debt and the depression remained. Not only were the settlers plunged into a despondent state of mind, very ill suited to the work of colonisation, but the tide of emigration — so necessary to the welfare of the settlement — was checked by the prominence given in England to the bad news about South Australia and the adverse com- ments of those critics who naturally seized the opportunity to exclaim, ' We told you so ! ' The Company, on the other hand had 1 1 o A Colo7iy ill Despair practised, at head-quarters, a rigid economy strangely in contrast with the lavish expendi- ture of the Government. It had directed its affairs through two hard-working managers, and its ofhce work had been done by two or three clerks. Thus it was enabled to put all its available capital into reproductive works. Had it not been for the burdens imposed upon it by the losses of others its funds would have remained almost intact. But in 1842 the Report announced that ' Claims to a consider- able amount on the Colonisation Commissioners still remained in the hands of the Board unliqui dated.' The dividend was accordingly reduced to four per cent., and the interim Manager was instructed to ' exercise the most rigid economy,' In 1843 it became the painful duty of the Directors to announce that no dividend could be paid ! Things then apparently went from bad to worse, both lor the Colony and for the Company. Dragged downwards by the heavy reaction of public and private affairs, the Company, with all its buoyancy, had much ado to keep afloat. No dividends were declared or paid in i'843 o^ in 1844. In the next year heavy reductions A Case of Hopeless Adversity 1 1 i in all the valuations were made, and as time advanced the days of realised profits seemed to be receding- far into the distance. The reports of some mineral discoveries in 1846 to some extent again raised the hopes of the shareholders, but as there were still no profits and heavy losses had to be met, it was resolved that, 'in order to liquidate the obliga- tions of the Company each shareholder whose calls had been paid, might have the option of taking up half the number of his or her shares at 1 5/. per share, such shares to rank equally with the old shares of 25/.' It was not until 1848, when the effect of the great Burra Burra copper discovery was fully felt, that the Directors found it possible to recommend a moderate distribution of 1/. per share. The intervening j^eriod was a terribly anxious one. The Chairman, in his diary during 1843, noted that ' The Company's affairs seem in a condition of hopeless adver- sity — vastly worse than I could ever have conjectured.' Again, in June 1844, he wrote: ' The annual meeting was long, rather stormy, and very perplexing . . . My mind was much depressed, for not only had I the reflections of 112 A Colony in Despair the proprietors to bear and answers to give to all the difhcult questions put, but to feel that there was no dividend for them or for me. although my stake was so large and I so much needed the money. Besides this there was the uncomfortable feeling about next year.' The need of money of which he here speaks forced him in 1848 to relinquish so much of his interest that he resigned his position, after more than twelve years' connection with the Company, receiving a vote of thanks ' for the eminent services he had rendered to Great Britain and to colonial interests.' Gcriuan Names and Pilgrims r i CHAPTER VII THE GERMAN REFUGEES From Prussian prisons many pathetic appeals for aid in their distress were being- made by the persecuted pastors of the old Lutheran Church to British philanthropists, at the time of the formation of the South Australian Company. It is curious to reflect that from this circumstance arises the similarity in the names to be found on the map of South Australia at the present day to those of certain provinces of Germany. About a hundred miles to the eastward of Berlin stands the little village of Klemzig, in the midst of the broad plain through which the Oder runs down from Silesian highlands, and upon which, in the middle of the past century, the great disaster happened to the arms of the Prussians when the Russians swarmed across their borders and defeated them in the battle of Zullichau. I 1 1 4 The German Refugees On the sloping uplands of the Oder valley, just as on the neighbouring plains of Bohemia, the vine was cultivated as well as many fruits well suited to the climate of South Australia, but about the practical culture of which British colonists, in those days at least, were profoundly ignorant. It is interesting to note how, just as the persecutions of the Huguenots in France had the effect of assisting to spread throughout some portions of the British do- minions a knowledge of certain arts until then but little practised by the Anglo-Saxon race, so the troubles of the Silesian Lutherans became the means of for the first time intro- ducing into Australia a knowledge of the methods of growing and of tending the economic plants of middle and southern Europe. The religious aspect of the movement, however, furnished the sole motive which in the first instance actuated the first Chairman of the Company, Mr. G. F. Angas, in bringing before his co-directors the hapless case of the Lutheran congfreofations at Klemzie and other Prussian towns. The sheriff of the circle of Zullichau had assembled the Lutherans together and had read to them a document in which it was Pastor Kavel i r 5 announced that, if they still refused to join the United Church, or allow the sacraments to be administered to them by the established clergy, they must leave the country. At first Russia was indicated as the place of their exile ; but on application the permission was extended to South Australia, provided that responsible parties would guarantee the necessary funds. About two hundred persons, members of the congregation of Pastor Kavel, who had already undergone imprisonment on account of steadfast adherence to his religious views, desired to emigrate to the new colony ; and application was made to the Company to allow them passage money and to promise them employment on their landing at Adelaide. This proposal, obviously, was not in harmony with the principles of the Act under which South Australia was founded, inasmuch as, according to that statute, the funds raised by the sale of land were to be expended in pro- moting the emigration of British subjects only. Theoretically, therefore, if the Company should pay for land, and should also at the same time send out some hundreds of German colonists, it would virtually be paying for its land twice I 2 ii6 The German Refugees ov'er. Theoretically also the Company had nothino- whatever to do with the religious scruples which prompted the Klemzig con- gregation to leave their native land ; it was a business concern, and its selection of the emigrants which it should assist depended upon business principles. The Chairman, whose love of religious freedom was stirred by the appeals of the Lutherans, but who recognised the initial difficulty with regard to the Company, now came forward and generously offered to become responsible for the despatch of the first band of German emigrants. Starting from Plymouth Sound, like the Pilgrim Fathers of the New World, these German exiles journeyed out to the colony under the guidance of Mr. Flaxman, one of Mr. Angas's business assistants who could speak German, being largely engaged in the trade between London and Hamburg. They settled down on a section belono-ino" to Mr. Angas, situated on the banks of the Torrens, just two miles above North Adelaide, and there they reproduced, as closely as they could in the new country, all the quaint old characteristics of their German village, the high gables of German Industry 1 1 7 their houses turned towards the streets ; the German wag'gons with sloping- sides, exactly as they are still to be seen on the roads near the existing German settlements of South Australia ; and many other peculiarities too numerous to mention. The Germans of Klemzig w^ere soon recognised as being among the most indus- trious and trustworthy of the colonists. And indeed it was fairly to be expected that they would prove to be such, seeing that they had proved their attachment to what they regarded as truth and their ineradicable love of religious liberty by going into voluntary exile among people whose language and manners were entirely strange to them. Pastor Kavel, who, with his wife, both of them over seventy years of age, had been among the pilgrims who sailed from Hamburg and Plymouth, exercised in the little community on the banks of the Torrens, the same sort of moral influence over the minds and hearts of his llock as some ancient patriarch. Letters went home to their friends and kinsmen in far Silesia and Brandenburg from these Germans of South Australia, and always the country was described 1 1 8 The German Refugees as a land ot" freedom where the horrors of war were unknown, where it was permitted to every man to worship God according" to his con- science, and where, with that rigid German economy in wliich they had been brought up, it was possible to not only earn a living but to save something from year to year. British subjects, as we have seen, were to have the preference as assisted emigrants under the Act providing for the founding of South Australia. But as soon as it became evident that no further funds were available from the sales of land to promote the granting of free passages to intending colonists, the Directors ot the South Australian Company were among the first to recognise, that in order to ensure the progress of the colony it would be necessary to take emigrants of good character and healthy constitution from any place in which they could be found. They reported specially in 1844 respecting their continual efforts to induce British emigrants to try their fortunes in the new colony. But the most damaging rumours had been set in circulation regarding the settle- ment and its prospects, and very few of the right sort came forward. As regards any Outspoken Dircclors 1 1 9 who might possess funds to enable them to jKiy their own passages, and to establish themseK'es on their arrival, it was practically impossible to find them. The complaint made in the Report of 1844 was that ' her Majesty's Ministers had refused both to appropriate the money received in the colony from land sales during- the year 1842, amounting to nearly 6,000/., and to apply to Parliament for a grant of money to enable them to repay the sum formerly withdrawn from the Emigration Land r\ind.' In regard to this latter subject it should be remembered that the Select Committee of the House of Commons in their Report dated June 10, 1841 (subsequently adopted by the House), expressly declared that ' It is expedient that provision should be made by Parliament for the advance to the Emigration Fund of this sum of 56,000/., and that the said sum, when so advanced, should be applied to the purpose of conveying emigrants to South Australia.' Under these circumstances the Directors spoke very plainly about the light in which they regarded the action of the Go- vernment. They * deeply regretted that ht;r Majesty's Ministers had declined to give effect I20 The German RefiLgces to that well-considered and equitable part of the Report, and they could not regard the conduct of the Government in this matter in any other light than as being injurious to the interests of their Com[)any and adverse to the progress of the colony.' But the favourable letters from Germans in Klemzig and other parts of South Australia were now producing their due effect. Not long after being finally informed that the Government had refused to refund anything whatever, in order to promote emigration according to the original scheme, the Directors ' were gratified to learn that a considerable number of Silesians were preparing to emi- grate to South Australia.' With characteristic German caution these people had not only written to their friends who had gone out to the new land, but they had despatched emissaries to spy out the country and to report upon it. On their return these men gave such fa\'ourable accounts of the land near Adelaide, and of the comfortable way in which their com- patriots were settled in the vicinity, that a large party at once determined to make their homes in Australia on condition that they could find Origin of the Wool Trade 121 anyone ready to imitate the example of Mr. G. P\ Angas by offering them free passages or, at least, contributing in some degree to the expense of taking them out. Some of them no doubt might have managed to scrape up sufficient money to enable them to pay their passages ; but the great majority were far too poor to think of attempting it. A grant of 200/. was therefore resolved upon by the Directors of the Company. In order that the new settlers might not be burdened with any sort of debt it was decided that this money should be an absolute gift, or 'gratuity,' as it is called in the Report of 1844. On May 27 in that year the ship ' George Washington,' which had formerly been in the American trade, sailed from Bremen having on board 181 emigrants, of whom the majority were between the ages of fifteen and fifty, the sexes being about equally divided. The Silesian women are accustomed in their own country to act as shepherdesses, and their skill in tending sheep and shearing them and in getting up the wool for market was admitted in every part of Europe. All along the Bohemian boundary, both in Saxony and in the 122 The Gcj'i/ian Refugees neighbouring province of Silesia, the hnewoolled merino was specially bred as being the source (3f a most lucrative part of the trade of Upper Germany. The merino had probably been originally introduced by the Spaniards when they held possession of the Netherlands, and had naturally gravitated towards the watersheds of the rivers rather than the country around their mouths. On the hillsides of Saxony and Silesia it was necessary, on account of the winter cold, to house the sheep and to take much greater care with them than is ever needed in the con- o-enial climate of Australia. ' The German females already in the colony,' remarks the Report of 1 844, ' are very efficient labourers ; a large proportion of our flocks this last season was shorn by them.' The pastoral work of the South Australian Company will be referred to in another chapter, so that it" is not necessary in this place to refer at length to the flocks here spoken of. The interesting and instructive fact brought out by the extract ofiven is that the German women of the Lutheran congregation who went to South Australia, fleeing from the religious persecution prevailing in their native land, proved to be almost, if not Proposed Foreign Trade 123 absolutely, the sole persons who could be relied upon to perform the shearing and make up the merino wool in proper style for niarket. Not only so, but in harvest time it is added these German women were employed in both reaping and thrashing the corn. As justifying the grant of 200/. to assist in sending more emigrants by the ' George Washington,' it was stated that ' in all probability the new hands would arrive in good time to assist in getting in the next harvest.' So far as the German women are concerned the custom of allotting to them certain departments of outdoor labour still survives in certain rural districts of South Australia. The return trip of this vessel was arranged to terminate, as the outward had beoun, at a German port, the object being to take a cargo of wheat flour and other South Australian pro- duce for the European markets, and it was prophetically hinted that ' the sailing of this vessel may be the commencement of a new and permanent trade between Germany and South Australia.' Yet it must not be supposed that during all the time that the Board were making- efforts to secure an adequate supply of labour [24 The Germ ail Refugees by means of this assisted Silesian emigration they relaxed in the sHghtest degree their activity in promoting British settlement in the colony. At the annual meeting it was resolved, on the motion of the Rev. Thomas Timpson, seconded by Colonel Torrens, ' that as a Committee has been appointed to diffuse information on the state and prospects of South Australia which may meet the general desire for such intelli- gence, this meeting recommends the Directors to appoint two of their number to unite with that Committee in the promotion of that object.' The Report, remarking on the same subject, said that ' calumny and misrepresentation had been in some degree silenced by the production of statistical evidence, yet great ignorance still prevailed, and any judicious measures calculated to diffuse throughout the country accurate intelli- gence respecting the state of the colony could not fail to promote the interests of the Company and of the colonists generally.' In the hope of this the shareholders had to rest content, and for the second time to forego their dividend, and the same ' hope-deferred ' was all that they received for the next three years besides. Free emigration on a very limited scale was 1,500 Genuaii Settlers 125 resumed by the Commissioners during' the suc- ceeding" year, one vessel taking out 1 19 persons. But the Company, notwithstanding its reverses, and in spite of the fact that its payments for land were supposed to have been devoted to taking emigrants out to South Australia, had determined to do thinos on a much more ade- quate scale. By a small pecuniary grant a second expedition from Germany was encou- raged, and the ship ' Patell ' sailed from Bremen in May with 268 free emigrants, the sexes as in the former case being' about equally divided. There were 162 adults in the party together with sixteen youths from fourteen to eighteen years of age. Those who went out by the ' George Washington ' all got employment in the course of a few days after their arrival in the colony, and the owner of the two vessels made up his mind to despatch heragain from Germany. Applications for passages came in freely, and at least 200 passengers signified their intention of going by her. In 1849 the Directors were able to announce that upwards of 1,500 German emigrants had gone out to the colony. Indirectly there is no doubt that this effort to secure labour on the Continent in default r 2 6 The German Refugees of that liritish emioration which had been promised and then so unaccountably and unfairly denied, served to stir up the Home Authorities to do something more vioorous towards encou- raging British emigration. Regular and ample supplies of labour were being sent by the Com- missioners in 1848 and 1849. Then came the great mineral discoveries, which changed the aspect of the whole problem and made South Au ,tralia a most attractive field for emigrants, seeing that the rates of wages offered were so high. But the services rendered by those who in the years of the depression had kept the ball rolling and helped to secure the colony against such a collapse as might have led to its aban- donment can hardly be over-estimated. 'IHE company's wharf AT TORT ADELAIDE, .NAMED MCLAREN'S WHARF, AFTER THE FIRST COLONIAL MANAGER From a sketch made in 1846 by F. R. Xi.voii CHAPTER VIII MAKING A PORT Bullock teams had a very rough time in cart- ing goods from the sea-coast to the embryo settlement in the earliest days of Adelaide. If ships anchored in the Gulf of St. Vincent opposite Glenelg, and sent their cargoes ashore by boats, it was necessary to cart the goods through a long stretch of soft sand before they could be brought to terj-a finna. Even then, 128 Making a Port if th(; weather were wet, there were several very nasty bogoy patches to l^e negotiated before the site of the future town could be reached. Here is a characteristic grumble from a purchaser of several sections who evidently considered that a most serious mistake had been committed in fixing the locality of the capital about six or seven miles from the nearest practicable place of landing. ' After a delay of several months,' this writer complained in the first newspaper printed at Glenelg, ' the town acres have been obtained at a place so far from the sea that it costs us more money to bring our goods from the beach to them than from England to the beach.' Six miles of cartage often cost fully as much as the convey- ance of eoods for 16,000 miles from Eng-land by the Cape route, in a voyage occupying often more than six months ! Things were in almost as bad a condition in the direction of the inlet lying eight or nine miles north-west of the city and known as the Port River. Here the landing had to be effected at a place in the midst of mangrove swamps. In wet seasons the condition of the \ Water Acconiuwdatioii 129' track was all indcscribal)ly muddy, and all along a wide stretch of eight or nine miles running parallel with the coast nearly to Glenelg the swampy accumulations of water gave rise to the existence of a belt of almost impenetrable morass lying between the town and the sea. The River Torrens only overflows into the Port River in exceptionally wet weather. In ordinary seasons it loses itself in the Reed- beds, which contract or enlarge their area according to the amount of rain which has fallen. That such a river should ever be con- verted into a navigable highway of commerce was a purely chimerical idea to which, unfortu- nately, Colonel Light gave a certain amount of support in endeavouring to defend his selec- tion of the site of Acielaicle, and, of cour.se, his opponents showered upon him a good deal of ridicule on that account. In writing, too, about such a project as that ot ' connecting the Torrens with the harbour by means of a canal,' he was also giving himself into the hands of his critics, because, as a matter of fact, there is a difference of level amounting to fully 100 feet, and the cost of negotiating such a work would have been enormous. K 130 Making a Port The bold but entirely practical policy adopted by the Manager of the South Aus- tralian Company, in making a road without waiting for the slow process of agreement, reconciliation, and practical action by the Government officials, had the effect of solving the perplexing difficulty in the immediate emer- gency, and ultimately of fixing the site of Port Adelaide in its present position. This work was accomplished in 1839. It seems almost incredible that in a settlement whose expenses in salaries were so high, nothing had been done by those who were supposed to be in charge of the colony to remove the terrible handicap caused by the want of proper means of communication between town and port. \\ hile others were contending in never-ending disputations as to whether the capital ought to have been fixed closer to the shore, the Manager of the Com- pany formed the very sensible resolution of making the best of matters as they stood and of constructing a road through the swamps at very considerable cost. In the Fourth Report, issued in June 1840, it is explained, in refer- ence to this bold stroke, that ' The Company's Section A immediately adjoins that part of the A Road Across the Swamps 131 harbour where large vessels unload, and being on the Adelaide side, Mr. McLaren determined to form a road across the swamps ; to embank a portion of the property ; to construct a wharf for landing goods ; and to promote the erec- tion of warehouses and buildings by the colo- nists generally. Upon this gigantic undertaking he appears to have proceeded with caution and economy, and although the outlay will be heavy the return and profits are expected to be very great. ' David McLaren was a man well worthy of the trust and confidence here displayed in him, in connection with a matter upon which he had undoubtedly undertaken grave responsibilities. Full of faith in the value of hard work for to- day, and of hopefulness for the future, the spirit which he evinced during his comparatively short residence in South Australia strongly suggests that to his early teaching his son must have owed much of the pr^ictical buoyant common sense which characterises his preach- ing and his widely circulated writings. Refer- ring to him in 1838, the Rev. T. O. Stow, the first Congregational Minister of the colony, said in a letter, ' He is a Baptist Manager for K 2 1 ^2 AlakinQ- a Port the Company, and is said to be an excellent preacher.' ' A small l)ut very attentive audience,' was the description applied by Mr. Robert Gouger, the first Colonial Secretary, in his little book entitled ' South Australia in 1837,' to the con- gregation which assembled each Sunday and to which Mr. McLaren addressed himself. ' It is to be regretted,' he goes on to say, ' that the very excellent discourses of this gentleman are not more widely appreciated. A remark- able earnestness attaches to his style, and his eloquence is sometimes very forcible. Mr. McLaren unites, in an extraordinary degree, aptitude for business, manly decision, urbanity of manners, and glowing piety, and it is only to be regretted that the shortness of his intended stay in the Province (three years) will soon deprive it of one of its best and most enlightened defenders. There is also a Metho- dist chapel, built by Mr. Edward Stephens, the Manager of the South Australian Company's bank, but as yet no regular minister has been appointed to it. Mr. McLaren |)reaches in it in the morning, and it is occupied by the Methodists in the afternoon and evening.' J A Regatta 133 Old colonists who came into contact with the first colonial manager of the Company have noted, as an interestino" fact, how strongly his warm sympathy in friendly intercourse and epigrammatic style of speaking and of writing suggest some characteristics of the published writings of the Manchester preacher of to-day. Dr. McLaren's saying that 'You never know wdiat you can do till you tr\-,' has passed into a sort of proverb ; and there is equal wisdom in ' It is glad labour which is ordinarily produc- tive labour,' and (referring to the meaning of Scriptural promises). ' The protection which we have is protection in ?i\\(\ noX. f^'ovi strife and dangler.' A man who goes to work in this spirit, as David McLaren certainly did, will never shirk responsibility when he sees that a certain piece of work is urgent and that others have shown no disposition to tackle it. It was quite a gala day on October 14, 1840, when the wharf and road over the swamp were declared open to the public In the (jovernor. who warmly c;ulogised the Company's enterprise. A regatta was held in the afternoon, and it was estimated that fully 5,000 persons were present during the day. 134 Makiiio- a Port A toll-gate was erected on this road to the Port, and, under the sanction of the Governor, an Act of Council was passed giving- to the Company the right to levy tolls on the traffic. So highly was the value of the work appraised that the maximum to be charged in any year was fixed at not more than twenty-Jive per cent. on the outlay. It may perhaps to some appear exceedinoflv strange that, assessing- the benefits to the community so very highly, the Governor and Council did not undertake the work them- selves. But with a depleted treasury, and with heavy liabilities still outstanding, what else was to be done ? Within the very liberal limits allowed to it, the Company might, had it not so closely iden- tified the general progress of the colony with its own, have easily built up by means of this Port Road a very lucrative monopoly. But ' keep- ing a pike ' was, in the eyes of others besides Mr. Weller, senior, the ideal and perfection of a misanthropic occupation, and the Company had no special desire to figure before the colonists as a collector of taxes on the principal thoroughfare of the young settlement. During the year 1841, therefore, overtures were made A Liberal Policy 135 to the authorities, and an arrangement M'as conckided with the Manager, by which the road was made over to the Government, in exchange for 12,000 acres of land. Seeing that the work had cost the Company 13,400/., and that land of equal or superior quality to that secured was to be bought in the open market at a lower price than 20.s\ per acre, the bargain was not by any means a keen one, so far as the Company was con- cerned. This became very plainly apparent when, within a very short time, owing to the need for retrenchment and demand for the careful husbanding of its resources, the Com- pany resold 2,341 acres of the same land at 17.T. 6c/. per acre. The sections offered by Captain Grey in lieu of the 1,600/ per annum agreed upon by Colonel Gawler were situated at a considerable distance to the north of Adelaide. They cost the Company 22^-. dd. per acre, and most of the land is not valued to-day at more than 30.V. per acre. While this policy of liberality was being })ursued towards the Government, in the inte- rests of the colony as a whole, Mr. McLaren was fullv alive to the need for securincr to the Com- 136 Making a Port pany some of the ' betterment ' resulting from the road and from other works for the accom- modation of the Port traffic. He therefore obtained a lease, ' for seven years certain,' of the allotments of land immediately (opposite to Section A. The holders of these sections had obtained them very cheap by reason of the fact that the Port proper, as originally selected and surveyed by Colonel Light and his staff, was two miles further up the creek, at a place to which the shoal water prevented any but small boats from oaining access. This, of course, compelled the majority of the vessels, in unload- ing, to anchor at the deeper stream opposite the swampy ground and to send their cargoes up in smaller boats. The selection of the locality of what is now referred to as the Old Port seems to have been guided mainly by the same considerations which influenced the fixing of the site of Adelaide itself. The land at the head of the creek happened to be comparatively dry, and, owing to the idea that dredging could soon clear out a good fairway for vessels up to a wharf, the spot had been chosen, regardless of its very indifferent nautical claims as a place of debarkation. Buildino- at the Port 137 Mr. McLaren, however, perceived lliat drcdgino- was a matter for future consideration, and that, for the immediate purposes of the settlement, it would be far better to overcome the swamps on land than to attempt to deal with the shoals in the river. Thus the x'alueof Section A was really created by the construction of the road. So also were the values of the opposite and adjoining sections with frontages to the Port River, and it would obviously have been unfair to offer to the owners of these a premium for pursuing the line of policy usually characterised on the goldfields as ' shepherd- ing.' Even at the risk of some present loss, it was found to be better to secure leases of these neighbouring sections, so that they might be re-let at low rentals for the first year or two and then, perhaps, at higher rates towards the close of the Company's leases, when the real value of the wharf and the road would be appreciated. A jetty, erected in a very simple manner to serve as a temporary structure, was at first the only Port termination to the road through the swamps. But the work of building a more substantial wharf was very soon undertaken, 138 Making a Port and, in grateful recoo-nition of the fcir-siixhted enterprise of the Manager who planned the scheme, the structure was called ' McLaren Wharf — a name which it bears to the present day. It is interesting to note that McLaren \'ale, the centre of the beautiful fruit and vine growing district of the South, also received its name from Mr. David McLaren. It is difficult for colonists at the present day to realise the true value of the practical common sense show^n by this pioneer Manager, and so cordially endorsed by the Directors of the Company, in this matter. So complete had been the paralysis of official action in regard to shipping accommodation and other practical aids to colonisation brought about by the disputes as to the proper site of the capital, combined with the lack ol ready money, that some of those who entered Adelaide full x)f hope departed from it in deep dejection. The recall of the first two Governors in succession gave the colony a bad name as a settlement of quarrelsome colonists. The spirit in which Captain Hindmarsh and Colonel Gawler — both of them crood men and true — took leave of the colony and of its opposing factions was com- Cheaper Living 139 parable to that by which Mcrcutio prefaces his farewell to Romeo — A plague o' botli \oiir liouses I — Theorists })layed a very large part in found- inq- the colony of South Australia. They had either read the paper-schemes of others and adopted them as fixed unalterable ideas, or had worked out such plans for themselves ; and men of this description are exxeedingly prone to take to wrangling when they find them- selves face to face with the practical, workaday problems of utilising the resources of a new country. But these colonists were, after all, for the most part thinking men, who, while they held their own opinions, could appreciate highly the common sense of any man who acted upon the principle that ' second best is usually better than nothing at all,' and that 'doing nothing is doing ill.' The construction of the road and jetty at once brought about an immense reduction in the cost of landing goods at Adelaide, thus helping to lower the cost of living at a time when high prices meant something like starvation to many industrious citizens. Their indirect effects, how^ever, were still more important because 140 Making a Port they enabled the colonists to employ in more directly reproductive work some of the bullock teams that had previously been engaged in laboriously hauling goods across muddy flats to the city. Some of the teams were sent up to ' The Tiers,' as the Mount Lofty Ranges were then called, to brino- down timber for fencin^r purposes, while others were employed in plough- ing and other operations connected with the preparation of the land. The Governor and Council, to do them justice, were exceedingly anxious that some- thing practical in the way of facilitating com- merce should be done, and as far as the Com- pany was concerned they recognised how important it was that, in the bankrupt state of the public treasury, its capital should be partly applied to works which, under more auspicious circumstances, would have been undertaken by the State. Speaking of the course taken by the Colonial Government in its negotiations with Mr. McLaren during the year 1839, the Directors said, in their Fourth Report, that ' It was their duty gratefully to record the ready co-operation of the local authorities in these important works ; ' and again that ' The Com- A Man ivith a Grievance 141 pany's undertaking is highly approved by the merchants and storekeepers of Adelaide, many of whom are in treaty for sites for warehouses &c.' A large building was erected by the Company for use as a warehouse in connection with the wharf. These works, carried through with the thoroughly practical object of meeting the urgent necessities of the moment, really had the effect of fixing the site of Port Adelaide, although, as already stated, they were situated some two miles further down the river than the place officially laid out. The assistant surveyor who measured off the bends of the Torrens from the Hills to the Reedbeds, was Mr. R. G. Symonds, son of a Madeira mechant. Being of an adventurous disposition he had joined the staff of Colonel Light when applica- tions for surveyors to go to South Australia were invited, and in ICS38 he expended some money in the purchase of more than a thousand acres in various places in the colony. From his examination of the Reedbeds and their adjacent places he had formed a most unfavour- able opini(,)n of all the land, which was liable to become swampy in times of tlood, as a site for 142 Making a Port the Port, and he, some ten years later, laid out for that purpose his section at the North Arm much further down the Port River than the present position. His failure to induce the colony to abandon its existing arrangements and to shift the site of its principal shipping operations to New- haven, as the North Arm township was called, converted Mr. R. G. Symonds into ' a man with a grievance,' and the industry and energy with which he prosecuted the lifelong task of demonstrating what he regarded as the errors and injustices of the past might have been sufficient to have ensured his success in almost any line of business had he been able to make up his mind to forget all about them, and let bygones be bygones. In his declining years ' Newhaven Symonds,' as he loved to style himself, earned a living by teaching book-keeping, and being a man of high principle, although poor, he was always esteemed by those among whom he lived. His case is here cited as affording an example of the class of colonists who, starting out with some theoretical principle as to the lines on which a settlement should be established, in regard to some practical detail fmd that, having yl Projected Railway 143 once taken sides in a dispute, they are unable to work harnioniously with the i)lan practically approved by the great majorit) of the people. The year after Mr. Symonds laid out his rival port on the North Arm, his vigorous efforts to induce the authorities to adopt it as the main seaport of the colony were referred to by the Directors of the South Australian Company. In the Report of that year, they remarked upon the project for the construction of a railway from Adekiide to the Port, and said that ' The agitation as to carrying the railroad to the North Arm, still farther down the Creek than the present Port, has been set at rest by the judicious resolution of the colonists to defer that project till the commerce of the country requires it.' Again, in the next yearly Report, the same agitation was mentioned, with the additional comment that ' From the o-reat outlav made, both of Government and private money, in the formation of the existing" harbour, now only beginning to become remunerative, the prevailing opinion in Adelaide is that the railroad should not be carried beyond the present Port till the commercial exigences of the colony require it.' 144 Making a Port Prom})t and [)ractical action followed upon the enunciation of this policy of common sense, just as on the occasion of the selection of the berths at block A and the construction of the road through the swamp. Vessels of larger tonnage and o^reater draught were beofinninor to arrive at the Port, and the need for accommo- dating these was one of the principal reasons advanced by those who advocated a change to the site two and a half miles further down the Port River. It was therefore decided by the Directors to send out a steam engine of ten horse-power, along with a dredging apparatus, for the purpose of facilitating the extension of McLaren Wharf, and removing as far as practi- cable every possible objection to its being used by the larger class of ships now frequenting the Port. This work, together with other schemes for the practical benefit of both the Company and the colony, involved a considerable out- lay, which was properly chargeable to capital account. It was accordingly decided that, as a few shares of the capital stock, upon which the sum of 5/. ])er share had not been ])aid, still remained, the balance slKjLild be called up in two instalments, and the demands upon the \ A Death 145 holders of these shares were promptly re- sponded to. But Mr. David McLaren did not live to see any of the later improvements in the wharf which bears his name. He returned to England, and after being employed for several years as London Manager for the Company, his health broke down and he died. An appreciative allusion to him was inserted as a postscript in the Report published in June 1850, which says : ' Your Directors feel that they should not be doing justice to the memory of your long- tried and faithful officer if they failed on this occasion in recording his recent and much lamented death ; as well as in expressing their deep sense of the zeal and ability he dis- played in the service of the Company.' This reference was all the more necessary by reason of the very natural impression left on the minds of some shareholders and colonists alike to the effect that because Mr, McLaren's management for several years did not produce dividends it was injudicious. As a matter of fact, however, he did the very best that was practicable under the depressed circumstances of the colony. L 146 Making a Port Upon Mr. William Giles, the new Colonial Manager, who had been with Mr. McLaren from the time of the first landing on Kangaroo Island, devolved many of the most onerous duties connected with some very difficult times in the history of the colony and the Company. Reference will be made to this able and con- scientious officer more particularly in the chapter relating to his energy in encouraging copper-mining. But his plan for deepening the frontage to the v/harf is the matter to which special reference must be made in this place. In this case the colonial authorities in their enterprise on behalf of the colony kept well abreast of the Company. The fact was that the Government, stimulated largely by the in- creased trade brought to the colony through the great advance of mining, had ordered a ten horse-power dredger to be made in England and sent out for the purpose of deepening 'the en- trance of Port Adelaide, as well as the creek and harbour. The Directors of the Company promptly responded, and sent out another ten horse-power engine with a dredger for facilita- ting the extension of the wharf, and deepen- ing the frontage. The idea was to provide Port I]np7'ovcinents 147 accommodation at the Company's wharfs for vessels of 1,000 tons burden, so that they could He afloat at all states of the tide. A Supplementary Report of the Company, pub- lished in 1850, added that it was also in con- templation to erect the proposed new Custom House on a part of the Company's property nearly adjoining the new warehouses. The lumbering machines which in those days were the most approved appliances for scooping out silt from the tioor of a river or harbour had but little in common with the very efficient machines of the present day. The most vexatious accidents and delays were encountered in the attempt to get the steam dredger to work in front of the wharfs, and in 1852 the machine was still so far hors de combat that the Report admitted the expecta- tions of the Directors to have been disappointed ; ' the steam dredger,' we read, 'owing to its de- fective construction, has not yet proved of that advantage which was expected, and it has required a large expenditure to place it in efficient working order. Mr. Giles, however, was fortunate in securing the services of a clever engineer who had been fourteen years L 2 148 Making a Port engaged in dredoing- on the Clyde. The parts of the machine which emptied the buckets were altered after some delay, and, later on in the same year, a Supplementary Report supplied the intelligence that the machine was in active opera- tion deepening the water opposite the wharfs. Its beneficial effects indeed were already by that time apparent, as the ' Washington,' a vessel of about 1,100 tons register, was in July discharging her cargo alongside the Company's Wharf, and had since been hauled up on the patent slip to have her damages repaired, havinof been ashore on the Trowbridoe shoal in the Gulf of St. Vincent. The patent slip was another undertaking of the Company's, and it passed through some curious experiences during its chequered career. Landed at Kangaroo Island in 1837 — at a time when it was fully anticipated that Nepean Bay might become an emporium both for the mercantile marine and for the whaling trade — the slip had been for years a kind of ' white elephant ' in the hands of the Company. The old adage which says ' Keep a thing seven years and you will find a use for it,' was, how- ever, illustrated in its experience. The period Respectable and Ente7'prising Men 149 of its enforced idleness, no doubt, was longer than seven years. Indeed, the Report of 1850 alludes to its having been sent out ' many years ago.' The slip, however, was in that year re- moved to Port Adelaide. It was laid down in a portion of the Company's property, and was expected very soon to be ready to receive ships for repair. For this purpose it was announced that a lease of two acres of land had been granted. The slip, as mentioned in the 185 1 Supplementary Report, was not worked by the Company itself, but erected on the land oppo- site the wharfs, and leased to the ' respectable and enterprising men ' who had laid it down at considerable expense. These shipwrights soon had a good trade in their hands, inasmuch as vessels of 600 tons burden and upwards were within the next few months repaired on it with efficiency and despatch, and nautical men pronounced the slip to be capable of taking ships up to 1,000 tons. A wide creek running into the Port River created at that time an impassable barrier acrainst the northward extension of the wharfs and warehouses. In order to facilitate traffic to the northwards, and also to improve the 150 Making a Port value of the land held in that direction, a drawbridge was constructed across the creek. Swampy portions connected with the creek were filled up with the spoil taken by the dredger in the deepening operations, and some of the land thus reclaimed, as well as portions on the northern side of the channel which had been dry, became available for leasing to tenants. The idea of converting a portion of this creek into wharfage by the construction of a wet dock was mooted as early as 1850; but the Directors did not see their way, in the exist- ing state of the Company's funds, to recommend so large an undertaking. When, however, the Port Railway was in course of construction, it was noted, in 1854, that by extending the already existing wh^irfs around a part of the creek so as to make them continue through part of Section A, the wharfage accommodation might readily be brought into connection with the goods terminus of the railway, A pile- driving machine, with a portable steam engine of eight horse-power, was shipped from England as soon as possible, and care was taken that the same engine, when not engaged in driving piles, might be applicable for stevedoring pur- Road and Raihuay 1 5 1 poses. In short, the Company, by its energetic action at the Port, responded fully to the new enterprise shown by the Government in build- ing the railway. The cost of its undertakings in this direction came to about 12,000/., and as there was not (Miough money in hand to meet the expenditure, the Company issued debenture bonds to cover it. To be brought directly into connection with the goods terminus of the railway was no doubt, as the Directors asserted, a point of con- siderable importance to the Port wharfage. Yet the supposed magic effects expected from the railway, and the probability of its taking all the traffic away from the road, were to a very large extent exaggerated. The Old Port road made by the South Australian Company still holds its own against the Port Railway, and many of the largest firms, even to the present day, find it better, when they have their goods on their carts or waggons at the wharfside, to send them right up to their own doors in the city, thus saving the time, trouble, and expense wasted in loading up twice. It was really the road made by the Company which solved the essential part of the mportant 152 Making a Port problem of communication between the City of Adelaide and the Port. As for the Old Port originally surveyed on behalf of the Government, it remains nearly in the same condition in which it was sixty years aeo. Besides the initial error in the selection of its site, this abortive port experienced several other pieces of very ill luck, notably in the extraordinary trickery practised by those who undertook to build the wharf at the land- ing place. ' The expense incurred by the Government at the early period at which they were constructed,' wrote Mr. Francis Dutton in 1846, in his book on ' South Australia and its Mines,' had been ' all but rendered useless by the slovenly way in which they were executed, to say nothing of the actual dishonesty of saw- ing off from 5 to 6 feet from the piles, instead of drivin": them into the mud to that additional depth, these " tops " having lately been fished up from the bottom of the harbour, thus rising like Banquo's ghost in judgment on the con- tractors ! ' A Gco/ogist's IVaiidcriiios 15^ CHAPTER IX COPPER AND r; O L D The eccentric, but clev^er and most enthusiastic mineralogist whom the Directors of the South Australian Company had sent out in 1836 to Kangaroo Island found but little in that place, save the pursuit of botany and the cultivation of a small garden, to exercise his attention. But on his removal to the mainland he com- menced a series of rambles, in the course of which he discovered sufficient evidence of mineralised country to prove the existence of an extraordinary profusion of metals. Wan- dering for weeks and even for months together, out among the primeval bush and forests, he had his geologist's hammer continually in use, and with blowpipe and other apparatus for mineralogical investigation he made careful examinations of his specimens when he got home. 't 154 Copper and Gold ' Professor Mengc,' as he was almost uni- versally called, soon became a well-known character. His talents and erudition were fully admitted, and no one doubted his whole- souled enthusiasm in the special work which he had taken up. But, unfortunately, in the first few years of his sojourn he had found too much for the average practical settler to believe in ; and among the most unlearned section of the community he was credited with an unlimited faculty for what they termed ' pitching yarns.' This ' Father of South Australian Minera- logy ' — to use the title which he was afterwards admitted to have fully earned — never did much which was of direct practical use in a money- making direction either for himself or for the Company that sent him out to the colony. But, on the whole, it must be recorded that the anticipations of the Directors in announcing his engagement were not really disappointed. He came rather before his time, and it was his fate, so to speak, to preach in the wilderness. Yet he prepared the way for the wonderful work that was accomplished later on, and which made South Australia, for a time, the world's leading producer of copper. Of the existence Discovery of Minerals 155 of that metal in the Mount Lofty Range he had discovered evidences ahiiost immediately on his arrival ; and he also foretold that gold- fields would be found to exist in the same direction. Silver, lead, antimony, bismuth, and other metals he identified, as well as sixteen varieties of precious stones, including the diamond, opal, amethyst and emerald. Speci- mens of these, from his collection, were after- wards sent to the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. The Professor, indeed, was much prouder of his gems than of his metalliferous specimens, and he set too much store by their economic importance to the colony. The majority of the settlers themselves, however, were making a much worse mistake, for they looked for the means of subsistence rather to land speculation and town buildino- than to oetting; either the mineral or the agricultural riches out of the earth. It was, no doubt, on this account that when silver-lead was found on a section at Glen Osmond, the property of Mr. Osmond Gilles, the Colonial Treasurer, and its true value fully demonstrated, very little notice was taken of the fact. 156 Copper and Gold Twenty miles south from Adelaide, in the undulating district near the mouth of the Onkaparing'a, at Noarlunf^a, the Com[)any held a section of land upon which sonie green mineral was observed and sent up to the town for identification. It proved to contain copper, and the presence of a good lode was afterwards demonstrated. This was in 1841, when re- trenchments in Adelaide had forced upon all the settlers, by the sharp lessons' of necessity, the conception that they must earn their living from the resources of the land. The (ilen Osmond silver-lead discovery was recalled to memory, and a ' South Australian Mining- Association ' was formed to work the Wheal Gawler Silver and Lead Mine. ' The Glen Osmond lodes,' writes the Government Geo- logist of South Australia, in his ' Record of the Mines of South Australia," 'are small compared with some of those at the Barrier ; on the other hand the ore contains the highest per- centage of lead and a fair amount of silver ; besides these mines have the advantage in regard to transport, timber, &c.' Here then, just about three miles from Adelaide, the settlers had ocular demonstration of the fact Excitement at Kap2inda 157 that Mr. Menge's reports of mineral riches were not altogether ' moonshine,' as they had been so generally characterised. After being profitably worked for some time the Gilles Glen Osmond Mine was bought by an English company, who took from it 30,000/. worth of silver and lead. This was only one of a group of mines worked within sight of Adelaide, of which the Wheal Gawler was the first to start operations in 1 84 1. The South Australian Company had copper and lead mines at Rapid Bay, from one of which specimens were sent to England, and yielded by assay 19 per cent, copper, 66 per cent, lead, and 14^ ounces of silver per ton. Public interest in the development of mining as an industry was now thoroughly aroused. Messrs. C. S. Bagotand F.S. Dutton, on a sheep station at Kapunda, noticed some green stones cropping out from the ground, and, owing to the presence of mineralogists in the young settlement, the true value of this material as malachite, or the green carbonate of copper, was soon ascertained. The profits made at Kapunda on a very small outlay caused much excitement, and every one accustomed to walk or drive over any part of 158 Copper and Gold the country was 011 the look-out for <^reen stones or rocks of any kind that might be suspected of carryino' metals. The astonishino" richness of the Burra Burra Copper Mine, which w^as discovered by a shepherd in 1845, soon, however, threw all other finds into the shade. The money value of the copper obtained from this mine during the twenty-nine and a half years of its working was 4,749,224/. When the Burra was dis- covered Mr. William Giles, the Manager of the Company, clearly perceived its value, and knowing that his powers permitted him to acquire properties of all kinds in the colony, he had to face the responsibility of saying whether he would commit the Directors to embarking on the unknown sea of mining speculation. Two parties were organised in Adelaide for the purpose of bidding for the Government lease of the land, and most strenuous exertions were being made for the raising of the 20,000/. required as the deposit. The richer men and officials, or ' Nobs,' as they were popularly nicknamed, had nominally by far the larger capital ; but the ' Snobs,' or tradespeople, man- aged to force a delay of the sale, by drawing Nol)s and Snobs 159 heavily from the bank in specie, in order to prevent an immediate payment of the deposit in gold. Overtures were made to Mr, Giles, first by one party and then by the other, in order to introduce the Company as a partner in the concern, and one time an offer was made through his assistance of 12,000/. in sovereigns and 8,000/. in the form of the bank's cheque. The terms requiring payment in gold wxre, however, very rigid, and as neither ' Nobs ' nor ' Snobs ' could get together, independently of each other, enough of gold to make the payment, a truce was patched up between them, and the lease was secured in their joint names and then divided off by lot. The ' Snobs ' drew what proved to be the better half, and great fortunes were made through the operations of their Association. This most exciting episode, and the reflec- tion that the Company had so narrowly missed securing such an immense prize as the Burra Mine, maybe quoted as offering an explanation of the eagerness subsequently shown by the Manager and his advisers to go in for copper mining in other parts of the colony. The Burra, as it was familiarly called, made business i6o Copper and Gold 'hum ' in all directions. The wharfage accom- modation at the Port was taxed to its utter- most capacity to provide room for the vessels employed to load up the rich carbonate ore for conveyance to English smelting works. Bullock drays, in long strings, came and went alonw- the road from the Burra, restino- for the first night at Gawler, and for the second at Dry Creek. The great bulk of the colony's shipping trade in those days passed across McLaren wharf, and in this way the benefits of the copper discoveries were shared by the Company ; so that the far-seeing policy of the first Directors in contributing in some degree to the first equipment of the colony by engag- ing a mineralogist was fully justified even as regards its own profit and loss accounts. A colonisation association, however, ought to have nothing to do with mining as a specu- lative pursuit. This rule, if its wisdonr were not amply demonstrated from a priori con- siderations respecting the nature of the mining industry, would be clearly indicated by a per- usal of the various entries in the South Aus- tralian Company's reports relating to its copper mining operations at Kanmantoo. Kanmantoo 1 6 1 On the railway route from Adelaide to Melbourne, and about thirty-five miles from the former city, travellers looking out of the carriage windows not long before crossing Murray Bridge, often express wonder at the extent of the abandoned buildings and mining works near to the River Bremer. These are the Kanmantoo copper mines, first opened u[) by the South Australian Company on a portion of their Mount Barker property. They have been, on the whole, fairly productive of ore, though not of profit to owners or lessees. Out of about I 5,000 tons of ore — the total amount raised from the mines since their opening — the Company extracted only about 4,000 tons, and yet it accomplished the greater portion of the dead work of making shafts, drives and crosscuts. On the whole the promotion of mining in the district by the Company, although productive only of a heavy direct pecuniary loss to the shareholders, was not c}uite so serious a handi- cap as it might have appeared at first sight, because the increased prosperity which was brought to the district so lono: as the workinos were continued undoubtedly assisted in helping M 1 62 Copper and Gold to secure tenants for some of the land in the neighbourhood. Not many weeks after the discovery of the Burra, three gentleman were busily engaged for some days in examining the special survey of 12,000 acres in the Mount Barker District in which Kanmantoo was situated and which was under offer to the Company. These were Mr. W. Giles, the Colonial Manager, Mr. Edward Stephens, the Bank Manager, and Mr. J. C. Dixon, a gentleman of considerable geological knowledge and experience. They rode and walked over a large extent of ground and came to the conclusion that the special survey should be secured with the least possible delay. In this decision the gentlemen who acted for the Company as a local Board of Advice concurred. When the report drawn up by Mr. Dixon for the Manager reached London, it was placed at the disposal of the shareholders for perusal and created some diversity of opinion. Some thought that the Company would be travelling beyond its legitimate sphere of operations if it went in for mining on its own account ; while others argued that, having possession of a certain block of land which had proved to be Copper Ores in loo Places i6 v5 highly mineraHsed, it was the best poHcy of the Company to work it lor what it was worth. When, however, the Kanmantoo sam- ples, which had been sent along with the report, were assayed and proved to contain on the average from 29 to 36 per cent, of fine copper, these results practically settled the matter. Mr. Giles wrote to say that he and others had traced the minerals for a space of five miles in length and three miles in breadth, and in not less than 100 places they had dis- covered copper ores, either upon the surface or within a few inches of it. From a lode in one of the sections two men had raised 2 tons 5 cwts, of excellent copper ore in the short space of seven hours. Six men in nine days had brought to the surface about 20 tons of the best ore, besides a similar weight of second quality undressed. Mr. Giles added the comment, ' Every time I visit this property I am niore convinced of its immense worth.' The speculative character of mining invest- ment has nearly always caused it to be looked at askance by the directors and shareholders of companies formed with the object of pro- moting the development of new land. Such :\i 2 1 64 Coppej" and Gold associations find it usually the best policy not to run after the rich lottery prizes which in mining' fall to a few investors, leaving blanks to all the others ; but rather tr) countenance only those enterprises which promise a moderate but steady rate of interest upon a capital outlay. The current belief among many of the shrewd- est men connected with the South Australian Company fifty years ago was virtually the same as that expressed by i^dam vSmith when he said, that for such an association ' any kind of mining projects must almost of necessity prove uncertain and ruinous.' The conditions laid down by him in ' The Wealth of Nations ' as being necessary for the safe conduct of any class of business by a joint stock company were that the trade should be ' reducible to a strictly defined rule and method.' Thus, in his quaint, precise way, Adam Smith had instanced bank- ing, insurance, canal cutting, and city 'water supply, as being types of the useful public undertakings which properly belonged to the sphere of the joint stock company. But with regard to the promotion of mining, on this principle, his condemnation was brief and emphatic, ' The Mine Adventurers' Company,' Gambling 165 he said, 'has been long- ago bankrupt.' Subse- quent experience has proved that joint stock companies are usc-ful in mining enterprise. iUit the companies formed tor the purpose ot wori^.- ing mineral deposits form a class entirely by themselves, and are worked on separate and characteristic principles. The great railway mania which characterised the years 1845 ^^^"^*^1 1846 must, however, be taken into account as a prime factor in deter- mining the as[)ect under which all financial movements of the time ought to be viewed. In less than a couple of years more than 700 railway schemes, involving a capital outlay of nearly 800,000,000/. sterling, had been launched upon the British money market. Fortunes were made in the course of a few hours through the sudden rise in share prices occasioned by the almost universal practice of gambling in speculative scrip. The mania too. it should not be forgotten, affected not only projects for the building of railways, but also the schemes of all sorts of joint stock companies. The general excitement in England was such, indeed, that for ordinary and sound steady projects, such as those for which the South 1 66 Copper and (lo/d Australian Company had issued debentures, a high rate of interest was demanded. For this reason, in 1847, the Directors ])()inted out to the shareholders that, if they wished to avoid a still further increase in the rates payable to those who had lent them money, they should at once make an effort to liquidate their debt and thus to secure for themselves the earnings of their investments. It was then that the scheme was brought forward for allowing- each shareholder to take up, at the rate of 15/., shares to the value of half those already paid for, the new shares being entitled to rank as equal to the original 25/. shares. This, of course, was virtually writing down the capital of the Company at the same time that additional funds were being raised. The Kanmantoo mining project, when viewed in the light of the facts just stated, will not seem quite so foreign to the interests of the Company as at first sight might appear. It had, in the very beginning, the important effect of calling the attention of the shareholders and the creditors of the Company to the remarkable copper discoveries which had taken place in South Australia, and which must A Progressive Policy 167 sooner or later bring about a turn in the dreary absence of dixidends, if not directly through the Company's own mining properties, at any rate on account of the wharfage and other trading^ facilities in which it had invested so large a proportion of its capital. The adoption of a policy in harmony with the progress of the colony gave the shareholders new heart, and doubtless assisted towards the success of the scheme for wiping off the debentures by the subscription of fresh capital. But the mine itself proved a serious loss. The mineral lands were purchased by means of some money borrowed from the South Austra- lian Banking Company. The report of 1847, however, stated that this had been repaid to the extent of 6,000/. at the same time that a further sum of 15,300/. was secured by the issue of circulars to the shareholders asking them to take up debentures, bearing interest at the rate of five per cent., so that the debt to the bank, which involved payments at a higher rate, might be liquidated. In the colony the excitement which pre- vailed in 1847 in consequence of the great copper discoveries had the effect of drawing 1 68 Copper and Gold away labour from farminj^' pursuits. But new immigrants ]X)urcd into South Australia and farm land was well taken up. In 1847 the population was estimated at about 40,000 persons. For the working of its mineral properties in the Mount Barker district, the Company sent out Mr. Joseph Renfry as Mining Captain, and his inspection of the lodes led to his expressing a high opinion as to their value. A letter which came down to Adelaide just after he had gone to the scene of operations, stated that ' there was a lode of yellow ore in the New Winze, three feet wide solid ; and ten tons of ore had been got out.' It was added, however, that ' owino- to defective arrano-ements the expense of hauling from a depth of twenty fathoms was very great.' In a letter quoted by the Board in 1849. Captain Renfry con- cluded a highly encouraging report in these terms : ' After all that I have stated, I wish to be perfectly understood that I believe that the Kanmantoo Mines to be a most lasting, rich, and productive concern, but will take some time before the mine will be got into a practicable course of working.' The grammar, like that Svicl/iiio- Difficulties 169 of a large proportion of practical mining" reports, left something to be desired, but the encourage- ment given for the further expenditure of capital on the property was undoubted. Copper smelting, in furnaces burning wood instead of coal, was started at Kanmantoo by the Messrs. Thomas ; but very great difficulties were met in the attempt to turn out a pure article, and when the metal arrived in Enofland containing three or four per cent, of foreign matter, it had to be sold at 68/. per ton, while the current price of English copper was 78/. IO.S-. The Napier Patent Process was, however, being introduced at the Burra Burra Mines by Messrs. Walters and Williams, whose business was connected with that of Messrs. John Schneider and Co., the celebrated metallurgists. Mr. Giles opened up negotiations with them, and ultimately arranged to have a smelting plant, on the same principle, put up at Kanmantoo. The heavy drain u[)on the resources of the Company entailed by this pioneering energy on the Mount Barker Special Survey may be judged from the fact that, for the year ending October 31, 1848, the expenditure for raising copper I 70 Coppe7' and Gold ore ; dressing some of it at the mine ; carting it to Port Adelaide by bullock teams, and ship- ping it to England, amounted to 7,922/. Besides this, of course, there were charges incurred in the erection of cottages for the men, &c., and although this outlay was put down to capital account and not included in current expenses, yet, in the end, it proved to represent practi- cally a dead loss. Portions of the Report of the Company, as presented to the shareholders in the meeting of June 1849, read more like the statements of a struggling mining company, hoping against hope that its expenditure may in time be justified by good strokes of luck, than the record of a year's operations undertaken by a solid colonisation association. An apologetic tone consequently prevails in this, as well as in several subsequent explana- tions of the Board with reference to this matter, * Two leading objects,' it is stated, ' have been held in view during the opening up of the mine at Kanmantoo, namely, first to ascertain and develop their real character, and secondly, to grant leases, or setts, to others who might be disposed to work them with spirit.' This was fair and honourable. The Company did not Gold Discoveries 171 want to encourage others to put money or labour into the properties until it had, by its own outlay, proved the mines to be valuable and worth working-. Next year it was necessary to cast up the accounts in the form of a profit-and-loss balance, because the stages of initial outlay might fairly be assumed to have been passed. The calcula- tion certainly did not work out very favourably, seeing that the year's outlay had amounted to 5,516/., and the value of the ore raised was only 3,625/., leaving a loss of 1,891/. to be provided by the shareholders. This was bad enough ; but worse remained behind ; for in the year after that report was printed, the great excitement over the gold discoveries in Victoria began, and the labour market became so com- pletely deranged that copper lodes, which for- merly might have paid fairly well for working, soon became unremunerative. Gold had been ascertained to exist in the colony by the Company's mineralogist, Mr. Menge, as already indicated, at a very early period of South Australia's history. In 1849, when the statements of the Rev. W. B. Clarke and Sir Roderick Murchison regarding the 172 Copper and Gold character of the gold- bearing" specimens found in New South Wales, and the similarity of the Blue Mountains to the Ural Range in Russia, were attracting the attention of the scientific world, and when Mr. Edward Hargraves was picking up in California those hints which enabled him to show his fellow-colonists of New South Wales how to separate alluvial gold from wash-dirt, the Company's new mining expert. Captain Remfry, was prospecting, by similar methods, the beds of streams flowing through its land. Referring to the events of 1849 the Board stated that some specimens of gold from the beds of rivers in the Company's land had been received. It is added in the Report that ' a careful experiment is now being made by Captain Renfry to test the value of these undoubted auriferous sands by ascertaining the exact cost of extracting the gold from them. Some of the colonists are most sanguine as to the success of this branch of industry ; but the present amount of your Directors' information does not justify them as yet holding out to you very brilliant prospects.' Within a year or two from the date when this caution was penned, Adelaide was almost Gold Rush Problems /v) empty, and the sanguine expectations of those who l^ad predicted a great impetus to the pros- perity of South Austraha were strangely frus- trated by the tremendous rush to Ballarat, Mount Alexander, Bendigo and other great gold-mining centres in Victoria. The helter- skelter which set in towards the gold diggings drained South Australia of its population to such an extent that it was scarcely worth while for any man of energy to remain in it, seeing that there was no business to be done. It is not necessary to recount in this place the measures by which many of the diggers who had started from South Australia were induced to retrace their steps and to take up their abodes again in their own colony. The gold escort, which ran regularly from Adelaide to the diggings, and the Bullion Act, according to which ingots of the precious metal were constituted a legal tender, so that the drain of coined gold taken away by the adventurers might nt) longer j)aralyse the trade of tht; colony — these were aniong the i)rincipal elements in the solution of the difficult problem presented to the public men of the day. In those times of excitement, when so many 174 Copper and Gold men nicick; sudden and often ill-advised resolves to make for the g-oldfields without really count- ing the cost, or properly })roviding for busi- ness and family claims, the regular agricultural settlement which had been promoted by the South Australian Company proved to be like an anchor to a ship in a troubled sea, and it was ])articularly noted that its German tenants were far less affected by the glamour of gold than any other class of the community. Individual farmers or owners of land might, under the spell of the gold fever, become so far affected as to join in the mad rush for sudden wealth, regardless of consequences ; but a company which had invested a third of a million of money in the work of colonisation, road-making, and all those other public purposes upon which the land revenue of the colony had mainly been expended, was not so likely to act under such a spasmodic impulse. Mr. Giles's advice- to the tenants in almost every case was — 'Wait a little ; and see whether your farms may not turn out to be quite as profitable as claims on the gold fields.' And, as we shall see when we come to consider the movements in the prices of grain Supplying Needs 175 in South Australia, this adrice proved to be the very best that could have been given. Dioorers must eat and drink. Some of the most substantial little fortunes put together on Ballarat and Bendigo were made by men who never put a pick into the ground and never paid anyone else for doing so, but who went to work at the apparently prosaic business of catering for the needs of the goldfields' popu- lations. And so it was with some of the Company's tenants who followed Mr. Giles's advice and kept a firm hold on their ploughs, although visions of diggers' pans and cradles floated before their eyes. The effect of the gold excitement on the operations at Kanmantoo, however, was abso- lutely disastrous, and the Directors, finding that with the scarcity of miners and the extraordi- narily high wages that had to be paid to those who remained, still further heavy losses were in prospect, decided to cease work on the expiry of the mining captain's agreement in April 1853. They acted thus, as stated in the Report of 1852, 'from the conviction that, by continuing to work much longer on the limited scale hitherto pursued, they would be injuring 176 Coppej'- and Gold the property more than by ceasint^ operations altogether.' Again it was announced in 1853 that 'All the mining operations of the Company ceased in January 1852, and, having been objected to by many of the shareholders, will not be resumed.' Still it was mentioned, evi- dently not without a tinge of regret at leaving off this attractive line of work, that ' The ore and copper received from Adelaide and sold in this country during the past year leaves a balance of 765/. in favour of the mine.' The price of copper at that time, however, was high, and as it fell in later years the possible margin of profit was destroyed. The Kanmantoo Mine was subsequently taken up by a lessee who went to some expense in sinking shafts and putting up a refinery in order to be able to ship nearly pure copper, instead of regulus as formerly. But in i860 he had got into difficulties, and the Report' stated that ' The working of the Kanmantoo mine does not proceed satisfactorily, the principal lessee having, through other speculations, been obliged to suspend his payments.' In 1863 Mr. J. B. Austin wrote a short account of the mining, in which he said that ' the Company Retirement of Mr. Giles 177 had raised about 4,000 tons of ore and opened a large extent of ground.' Mr. W. B. Dawes, the subsequent lessee, raised about 1,900 tons. Much anxiety had been entailed upon Mr. Giles, the manager, during the seven or eight years in which the colony was passing through its i^reatest excitement over mineral discoveries. In a Supplementary Report issued in i860 it was stated that ' the advanced age of your valued manager Mr. Giles, and his recent serious illness, had more than once led to correspondence relative to the possibility of meeting his wishes by some arrangement which should enable him at an early period to retire from active duty.' It was therefore decided that he should resign the colonial management. The year 1 860 thus marked, as it were, the conclusion of an epoch in the history of the Company. Like his predecessor in office, Mr. William Giles was a great believer in character as an essential guide to the selection of trustworthy men, and an earnest advocate of practical religion in all the affairs of life. He had a very large family, being quite a patriarch N 178 Copper and Gold amonCT South Australian colonists. During Mr. Giles's illness Mr. W. J. Brind, who had been the accountant and cashier at Adelaide for six years previously, had carried out the duties of manager ; and it was arranged, in response to Mr. Giles's request, that he should take over the office permanently. This Mr. Brind did, after having paid a visit to England, during which he was present at a meeting of the shareholders and conferred with the Directors. The board, in making the change, stated that ' they felt they could not do less than mark their appreciation of Mr. Giles's long and faith- ful services by adequately providing for the comfort of his declining years. This object, they were happy to armounce, had been fully accomplished, without any addition to the colo- nial expenses, or increase of cost to the Com- pany.' The retired manager did not live long to enjoy the pension which had been allotted to him. His successor took charge as from January i, 1861. But the infirmities of old age crept on apace, and he died on May 1 1 of the next year, very much regretted by a very wide circle of friends, including almost the whole community of South Australians. Search for Deep Lead at Barossa 179 In more recent years the attention of miners in South AustraHa was, and still is, strongly- directed towards the Barossa goldfield, about twenty-two miles north from Adelaide, first dis- covered in 1868. Some of the alluvial claims were so rich that, according to the records of the Government Geologist, they yielded as much as a thousand pounds per man. Deep leads were found to exist at the head and down the side of Spike Gully, and these are pro- nounced by Mr. Brown to have been the richest diggings then discovered in the colony. The deeply buried ancient river beds were followed up for a certain distance and then lost. Experts declared emphatically that a true ' main-lead ' existed further on which, if it could be found, would at once establish gold mining as a great and permanent industry of the Barossa district. The Directors of the South Australian Company accordingly decided to give a free grant of 500/. to the ' Enterprise Excelsior Gold Mining- Company,' with the object of assisting in the search for the line of underground auriferous gravel. Shafts were sunk and drives opened out in various directions, but the effort proved vain. The mining company never found the N 2 i8o Copper and Gold deep lead, and the money of the South Austra- lian Company was lost. The knowledge gained, however, has been valuable to the colony, having been partly instrumental in inducing successful mine owners from the west to pro- mote the present very spirited and thorough working of the gold reefs of the Barossa Ranges. In another direction, towards Woodside, various auriferous reefs run through properties held by the Company, which has recently made very liberal concessions in order to prevent the mineral resources of the district from lying- dormant, if by any possible application of the latest and best modern processes they can be made productive, and thus support a flourish- ing industry. Under the Mining on Private Property Act, the royalty chargeable by the South Australian Government on all gold ex- tracted from the lands of owners other than the miners has been fixed at two and a half per cent. ; but the average royalty required by the Company in this instance is considerably below that rate. In response to this inducement the Australian Gold Recovery Company has recently started ' cyaniding ' at Woodside ; and the extra ' Cyaniding' at Wood side 18 1 yield of gold obtained by the cyanide solution from the tailings in the vats will probably be sufficient to bring about a great revival of mining in the district, through the introduction of British as well as of Australian capital. THE COMPANY S KLOUK MILL ON THE TORRENS RIVER, NEAR PRESENT BOTANICAL PARK ENTRANCE h'rotn a sketch made in 1846 by F. R. Nixon CHAPTER X AGRICULTURE AND FLOUR MILLING A CLEVER and amusing- grumbler, of the type familiar to most people who have taken long" sea voyages, journeyed out to Kangaroo Island by the Company's vessel the ' South Australian ' as surgeon of the ship. This was Dr. W. H. Leigh, who afterwards published reminiscences of his experiences under the title of ' Recon- noitring Voyages and Travels, with Adventures Misleading Literature 183 in the New Colonies of South AustraHa, &c.' Rollicking sallies of humour, without the slightest regard for literal accuracy, abounded throughout the work. The same kind of ima- ginative dealing with the problem of emigra- tion was perhaps more excusable in his later literary effort, which was a novel entitled ' The Emigrant — A Tale of Australia.' But both books were calculated to leave on the mind of the reader the utterly unwarrantable impression that the new colony, instead of being the ' Land of Promise ' that it had been repre- sented to be, was a desert unfitted for the maintenance even of savages, to say nothing of civilised human beings who required at least some of the comforts and luxuries to which they had been accustomed in the Old Country. In this spirit of exaggeration he thus re- ferred to the first efforts of cultivating the soil in South Australia (the error of mistaking the German mineralogist for a Scotchman being, perhaps, the most excusable part of the mis- representation conveyed in the passage) : ' A Mr. Menzies, who is the Company's geologist here, has been trying these nine months to raise a cabbage, but in vain. The want of J 84 Agricnlturc and Flour J\/i//iiio- rain, upon land so thirsty in its nature;, renders it impossible to produce vegetables, except during the wet season. 1 have seen this gentleman travelling with a bag full of mould, which he had been at the pains to fetch from a distant spot, in order to plant some favourite seedling.' Comical half-truths of this kind abounded in the book ; and, although the plains of Adelaide were referred to, yet no attempt was made to remove the reader's impression that the alleged cabbage garden of the alleged Mr. Menzies was not a fair sample of the soil of South Australia, instead of being simply the land upon which the Company's emigrants remained while awaiting the arrival of the Government survey parties to select the site of the settlement. Particularly doleful was the view which Dr. Leigh took of the prospects of the Company's engineer, Mr. Henry Mildred, who during the voyage had confided to him the fact that he had left a good position in an English dockyard and marine engineering works to try his for- tunes as an emigrant. The patent slip, in par- ticular, excited the doctor's ridicule, although, as we have seen, it ultimately justified its The Whaling Industry 185 existence, and became of the utmost service to the young settlement when removed to Port Adelaide. No doubt the calculations of the Directors regarding the prospects of a trade in repairing and refitting Southern whalers and sealers proved to have been based on erroneous data. The whaling industry, which had made a busy settlement at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, was already hastening to its extinction because the whalers made a practice of ' corner- ing ' the young whales so as to entrap the females through their maternal anxiety, and of then killing both. In a few years this suicidal policy destroyed what had been the most lucra- tive trade of the Southern seas. Flour milling machinery was not so much in Mr. Mildred's line as that pertaining to the work of the shipwright, and when, later on, it was proposed that he should continue in charge of the engine and milling-stones carrying on the business of ' The Company's Mill,' he pre- ferred to strike out a course for himself as a colonist. Whether Dr. Leigh, in later years, prospered in life is not a matter with which we are concerned here. But the commiseration which he bestowed upon his late shipmate, as 1 86 Agriculture and Flour Milling he sailed away on the round voyage to Sydney, Calcutta, and back to London, was certainly misplaced. If he oot on as well in the Old Country as the Hon. Henry Mildred, M.L.C., did as a South Australian colonist, he had good reason to be satisfied. To this irres[)onsible ship doctor it did not matter much what became of the settlement or what kind of impressions might be circulated among intending emigrants in England. But his book was certainly good reading of a light and entertaining character, and, passing rapidly through two or three editions, it certainly did a great deal of harm to the early prospects of South Australia. Writing up comical details about the discomforts of living in tents and the shifts which women had to resort to in order to make things look a little homelike, was perhaps as good fun to him as the game of throwing stones into the frogpond appeared to the boys in the fable. But what is fun to one party may be a serious matter to others, and so it proved when South Australia was in financial straits, and these amusing sallies were the favourite current literature in England respecting it. It The Old Flour Mill 187 is always so much easier to make people laugh than to make them think. The flour mill, by means of which the Company first enabled the settlement at Adelaide to supply its own requirements for bread, was for many years an object of great historical interest. Its record was connected not onl)- with a most critical time in the development of the colony, but also with those first experiments in the finding of outside markets for bread-stuffs which gave the great- est impetus to agriculture in South Australia, and the consequent increase in the prosperity and population of the wide northern wheat- growing areas of the province. Its final demo- lition was due to the encroachments of the river upon its alluvial banks, which rendered one of the walls unsafe. The ' Company's Bridge,' by which access was obtained from the northern side of the river to the Mill, remained until quite recent times, although the slight wooden structure seen in the sketch taken by Mr. Nixon in 1845 did not remain very long. On two or three occasions, indeed, similar temporary bridges 1 88 AQriai/Zuir and Flour Millino- were washed away by floods, but later on, a much larger one, still of wood, was constructed, which was finally replaced by the present fine iron structure. The surrounding" land to the westward — that is, towards the city, which is only a couple of miles distant — has all been taken up for such public recreation grounds as the Botanic Park, and the Zoological Gardens Park Lands ; while extensive suburbs of the city stretch out in other directions. The old primitive days when the ploughmen, drawing their long furrows, were ' within cooee ' of the terraces of Adelaide, and when the hum of the stripper on calm summer days could be heard from the streets of the city, have now passed away. But in these times the Company's Mill was a great institution, representing as it did the revival of enterprise in the midst of a period of absolute commercial panic and col- lapse. In the dreary dispiriting days of 1842 Mr. Giles, who had only recently become Colonial Manager, was busy going round among those of the colonists who were believed to have some money left, and trying to induce them to form a joint stock company for the purpose Proposed Mil lino- Company 189 of putting up a flour mill. The Directors of the South Australian Company, as has already been explained, had sent out a steam engine of twenty horse-power, together with four [)airs of stones, and Mr. Giles offered these on most favourable terms, provided that the purchasers could show their ability to push ahead with the work at once, and supply the urgent needs of the settlers for flour. The proposed Milling Conipany had indeed been formed, and the necessary preliminary arrangements had been agreed upon, when matters suddenly came to a standstill. The faith of the settlers in the future of the colony, in fact, had reached its low-water mark. Very few would pay up, and soon it became apparent that unless Mr. Giles himself took action nothing at all would be done. It was a very anxious time for Mr. Giles. He knew that not many months before, when his pre- decessor had arrived in England and had given an account of his stewardship before a meeting of the London shareholders, some complaints had been made about the unprofitable enter- prises undertaken at direct pecuniary loss to the Company although indirectly for the benefit 190 Agriculttux and FIozlv Milling of the colony itself. The whaling operations had been abandoned. Two of the vessels engaged in that trade, the ' Uuke of York ' and the ' South Australian,' had been wrecked, the former on ' an unknown reef in the South Seas ' and the latter on the rocks near En- counter Bay, although without any loss of life. In the banking department some of the advances made by the manager had been strongly objected to ; and the only possible answer was that in a new country, where the financial standing of so many people depended entirely upon the success of the settlement, the real position of affairs could not be known for some years to come. Mr. Giles took counsel with two ofentlemen who had been named as the Company's Board of Advice. It seemed in the highest degree ridiculous that good wheat, grown almost within a stone's throw of Adelaide, should have to be sent away some hundreds of miles, to Sydney or to Hobart Town, to be milled and brought back as flour, when the work could just as well be carried out on the spot. The Board of Advice therefore agreed that, as no one would accept the stones and steam engine, 'The Company s Farm' 191 the Company should erect its own mill. The report in which this fact was announced, namely, that of 1843, was the first of the series in which it was ' re<4r(;tted that no dividend could be announced,' and some of the shareholders were for this and other reasons inclined to view with disfavour the putting of additional capital into the colony. But the Company had, so to speak, ' burnt its bridges ' by this time, and its only hope of success lay in sticking to the colony for good or for ill. The first small trials with a view to the exporting of wheat to the Old Country were announced in the same report. Some of the Company's land in the vicinity of Adelaide had been laid out as a garden, principally intended for the growing of vegetable, while another portion was cultivated for wheat, and for a long time bore the name of ' The Com- pany's Farm.' By the ' Sarah and Elizabeth,' which arrived in 1843, some samples of grain were received. The Manager also forwarded specimens of cheese, and looked hopefully on the prospects of opening up a trade with England in that article. Commenting on these samples the Directors remarked that they T92 Agriculture and Flour Milling ' afforded gratifying evidence of the success of both agricultural and dairying operations.' Indeed, they remarked upon them as indis- j)utable evidences of the ' superior capabiH- ties of South Austraha, as depending on the abundance of water, the fineness of the climate, and the superior quality of the soil.' The possibilities of exporting grain were destined to be taken advantage of at a comparatively early date. But in regard to dairy produce Australia has had to wait until, by the freezing process and improved, modes of shipment, butter as well as cheese could be sent to the United Kingdom. The way in which the South Australian Company became one of the actual pioneers in exporting South Australian wheat to England affords a curious illustration of the old proverb that necessity is the mother of invention, or of the oft-quoted but little believed assertion of King Henry V. that There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out. The f^irm tenants were in sore straits during the greater part of the years 1844 and 1845 because production had got beyond the require- Expcriiucutal Shipments of Wheat 1 93 ments of the local market, and the intlux of population clue to the mineral discoveries had not yet be^un to have its due effect of reinforc- ino^ the demand for breadstuffs. The farmers had had fairly good seasons, and there was plenty of wheat but very little money. Under these circumstances the Manager appealed for au- thority to accept wheat in payment of arrears of rent. A large stock was soon accumulated at the Mill and the stores. A trial shipment was sent to New Zealand ; but the settlers there were growing nearly all the grain that they required and the results were not encourag- ing. The Manager then tried Mauritius — the island from which supplies of sugar for the colony were received. In each case there was a heavy loss. The experiment of placing some wheat on the London market was then resolved upon. In November 1845 a parcel of about 450 quarters, which had been sent by the Manager to England, was sold at 76.^-. per quarter. The average price of English wheat at that time was only about 6o5". per quarter, and an advance of \6s. upon the ordinary rates seemed such a remarkable thing that inquiries were soon o 194 Ajyricitlturc and Flour Milling made in Mark Lane as to where the new wheat came from. A small parcel of seed wheat from South Australia was also sold by the Company, about the sanie time, for 955, and 96^'. per quarter. The Reports did not fail to emphasise such remarkable facts as these, for the purpose of refuting the doleful predic- tions of those who asserted that the colonies had nothing but wool to send to England worth buying. In their Report for 1846, after stating the facts above mentioned, the Directors printed in capitals the assertion made by Lord Lyttelton in the House of Lords that Australian wheat was the best in the world. Within the short space of a year or two after the date referred to, the price of wheat in Adelaide rose, partly owing to the opening up of this outside market and partly to the copper discoveries, from 2s. 6d. per bushel to 4^. 6d., and in 1846 Mr. Dutton expressed the belief that ' the times when such a price as half a crown per bushel would be accepted were past, not to return again. ' The invention of the ' Ridley Stripping Machine ' by John Ridley rendered it possible for farmers to gather in their harvests with a minimum of assistance ; and it should be Taking Wheat for Rent 195 remembered that in a country where the occasional labour of gangs of harvest labourers could not be depended upon, as in the United Kingdom, this made all the ciifference between being able to cultivate a large or a small extent of land to a profit. So enthusiastic was Captain Bagot about the marvellous economy rendered possible by the use of this machine that he declared wheat could be produced in South Australia at \s. 6d. per bushel ! and of course was ridiculed for making such an assertion. In more recent years the pressure of hard necessity has forced many unfortunate farmers to demonstrate at least the possibility of such a thing ; but at what cost to their families and themselves only those who have travelled through the country in 1895 ^'id 1896 can fully understand. While taking wheat for rent the Company also remitted a large sum of money and reduced its rent-roll all round One Annual Report remarked that ' the general prevalence and severity of the pecuniary distress in the colony not only rendered arrears irrecoverable, but compelled the Colonial Manager to reduce the rents.' It was this loss in fact, coupled with o 2 196 Agriculiiirc and F!o2ir Millmg tlic dishonouring of the Government paper, which rendered it necessary to reduce all the valuations, to suspend for five years the pay- ment of dividends, and to distribute, on other occasions, only half the usual rate of profit. Similar reductions have been allowed at various periods during the history of the Company in its relations with its tenants ; the principle of the concessions being that the Company should share in the adversity of the colony just as it does in its prosperity. When higher prices for produce have again brought back prosperity to the producers, moderate increases have enabled the Company to average the general returns for its investments, so that there should be no prolonged collapse such as that which occurred from 1842 to 1848. Quite recently there has occurred an instance in point. The extraordi- nary depression in the prices of wheat and other produce during 1894 and 1895 called for con- siderable reductions in the rents of agricultural land. Debts to the amount of 10,000/. were cancelled, and the rent-roll of 14,977/. was re- duced by concessions of 25 to 40 per cent. Similar reductions were made in 1868 and Olive and Flax 197 1872, when red rust and locusts seriously cur- tailed the harvests. But the very satisfactory rise in the prices of wheat &c. in 1896 and 1897 enabled the Company once more to share in the improved prospects of the colony. The Company, under the circumstances, agreed to make no increase in the rents until 1897, and then only to an extent of half the former decrease, thus placing the fixed rent-roll on a lower scale than ever. The culture of the olive was started by the Company at a very early period of the colony's history, some of the best varieties being intro- duced from France and planted in the ' Com- pany's Garden ' at Hackney. Free distribution was begun as soon as the plantation was suffi- ciently advanced, truncheons being given away to anyone willing to cultivate the olive. It is worthy of note that the plantations of Sir John Morphett at Cummins, and of Sir Samuel Davenport at Beaumont, were from these olives imported Ijy the South Australian Com- pany. Flax growing and the treatment of the fibre for industrial purposes also received encourage- I 98 A(^'ricu/turc and Flour Milling ment from the Company. At Lyndoch, thirty- six miles north from Adelaide, a company began operations and received from the South Australian Company a grant of 100/. The concern, however, went into liquidation, and the money was lost. MacaiHhtir of Neiv South Wales 199 CHAPTER XI FLO CK S AND HERDS One day, during the busy weeks while the Company's first fleet was being" fitted out for the voyage, it came to the knowledge of the Directors that a man well versed in the breed- ing of sheep had been travelling in Saxony examining some pure Merino fine-woolled sheep for a certain squatter who lived in Van Diemen's Land. At that date, of course, it was a well-established fact that the introduction of the Spanish Merino by Macarthur of New South Wales, who had bought part of the celebrated flock of George III., had proved to be the foundation of a flourishing Australian industry. The Saxon sheep had originally been brought from Spain, and belonged essen- tially to the same breed as those which Macarthur had acquired for New South Wales ; and yet there was a difference which 200 Flocks and Herds mi^ht, or min'ht not, prove material in the adoption of tht; strain as the sole foundation of the first South Australian flocks. The climate of Saxony does not resemble that of the South of Spain so much as that of Australia does. The Saxon shepherds were obliged to house their sheep and to give them far more pampering" than would be possible in Australia. They produced, it is true, the finest grade of short wool in the world, and Saxon fine merino still obtains the top prices at Bradford. But would the sheep from that part of Germany prove sufficiently hardy to take to an open air life and thrive in it } That was the question which the Directors had to face in sending out the first sheep to South Australia. They wisely decided upon a compromise. They made an offer to the agent of the Tasmanian wool-grower, at an advance on the cost which he had incurred in securing the Saxon Merinoes ; and this was accepted. The sheep w^ere, of course, pure Merinoes, both rams and ewes, and they were pronounced ' a very superior lot.' But these animals were only intended to be the means of improving, as much as might be practicable, the strains which A Disastrous Voyage 201 already existed in the lands of the South. For the bulk of their Hocks the Directors looked forward to making purchases from Van Diemen'sLand and New South Wales, with occasional importations from the Cape of Good Hope, where good ' store ' sheep were at that time to be bought for about 5.S". each. With the first lleet there were sent out also some pure Leicester and Southdown sheep to improve the value of the flocks for the produc- tion of mutton. A terrible storm arose, most unfortunately, during the weeks while the Manager was carry- ing out the second part of this programme, namely, the shipping of the bulk of the fiocks from Hobart and Launceston. The season was already far advanced before he could get the vessels away from the island colony, and he knew that he had a risky operation to carry through. Moreover, the insurance offices in Australia, as well as in England, refused at that time to accept risks on such a cargo as a flock ot sheep. The voyage was a very long one, the winds being adverse throughout the whole time. Nearly 2,000 sheep died and were thrown overboard before reaching Ade- 202 Flocks and Herds laidc. Many of those which were landed ahve had been reduced to such a condition that the mortahty went on for many weeks afterwards. The pecuniary loss suffered through this storm was not less than 3,000/., because the sheep were a very fine lot and had averaged 30^'. each in Van Diemen's Land. It was rather a surprising- circumstance that the long voyage from England had proved much less fatal than the short trip across from a neighbouring colony. From that time forward, however, the policy adopted was to buy sheep and cattle, in smaller lots, from ships which brought general cargo from the other colonies, and which could afford more deck space. By the close of the year 1841 the Company held 20,000 sheep and was considered to be by far the largest owner in the colony. In a little book entitled ' A Historical and Descriptive Account of South Australia,' by Mr. J. F. Bennett, some interesting details of the state of the pastoral industry in that year are supplied, from which it appears that the second largest holders in the colony were Messrs. Dutton and Bagot, who had 1 1,000 sheep, while Mr. Duncan McFarlane, at Mount Barker, and Mr. Georpfe Well-known Names 203 Alexander Anstey at Para, had 10,000 each. The others mentioned are Mr. Gleeson, Mr. Lodwick, Mr. Reynell, Mr. Freeman, Mr. PhilHps, Mr. Gemmell of Strathalbyn, Messrs. Jones of YankaHlla, Mr. John Baker, Mr. John Bristow Hughes, Mr. R. L. Leake, Messrs. Hopkins and Green, Mr. Horrocks of the River Hutt, and Messrs. Peters. Some of these names are familiar to the present generation of colonists as having left their marks upon the geographical nomenclature of the country on which the pioneers settled their flocks. The cattle held by the Company, according to the same authority, numbered at the end of 1841, 1,160 head. The largest cattle owners of that date, however, were Messrs. Frew and Rankin, who kept 1,758 head on their station at Strathalbyn. The numbers mentioned were, of course, only representative of the foundations of the flocks and herds of South Australia, and very great increases took place in the course of a very few years. Close settlement was, however, the ideal which the Directors of the South Australian Company had placed before themselves in organising their holdings in the young colony. 204 F/oc/cs and Herds For each workman in their employment they allotted a plot of land and a cow and pig. The ^TowinLi' of vegetables was encouraged in every way, and it was shown at a very early date that with care and frugality a man could live very cheaply and save money out of his wages. Many of the Company's tenants also saved from year to year and laid the founda- tions of very satisfactory future prosperity. While the efforts of the Directors to promote the stocking of the outside country by the importation of pure-bred stock entailed heavy expense and loss upon its own direct finances, as we have seen, it also served indirectly to raise up and to facilitate competition on the part of those who held at a cheaper rate land away out on the fringes of the settlement and with whom the promotion of agricultural colonisation was not the special aim. It was this primary object of settling a rural population in all the available agricultural country which became the reason for the ulti- mate abandonnient of the pastoral industry by the Company. In most cases the Manager found that he could do better with the land, both in the Company's interests and in those of Improvmg the Breed 205 th(:^ colony, and that the more distant country was in the meantime better utiHsed by others. Mr. Gouger in his book already quoted, still stick- ing close to the dicta of Adam Smith, summed up the Company's pastoral position in the very earliest days by saying that ' Sheep breeding and grazing generally, to any extent, may be entered u[)on by the Company with a full confidence as to its pecuniary result. The Company will probably not manage its flock so cheaply as individuals ; but the profits attend- ing this pursuit are such as to allow an ample discount for the probable inattention of agents.' As a general rule in those days, however, the handicap against which the Company had to contend, in competing in the production of wool, beef, and mutton, was that it paid more for labour proportionately than did the majority of the resident employers. For the first few years, as Gouger anticipated, the high prices of products assured a gooci profit. The price of wool was \s. 8d. per pound in 1845, '^^^ ^^e Com- pany's clip sold splendidly, fetching the highest Australian prices. The Directors went in for still further improving the llock and imported twelve Mecklenbur"- rams at considerable 2o6 Flocks and Herds expense. Then came the dech'ne in prices both for meat and for wool. In i CS49 the sheep that were sold only averaged 5^". },d. each. There were no evidences of want of care and attention on the part of the Company's agents, if one might judge from the excellent condition and general ' get-up ' in which the wool from its flocks went to market. Indeed on several occasions between 1841 and 1849 the Com- jmny's clip brought the top price for Australian merino in the London sales. But as the wide outside areas were taken up for the depasturing of mobs of cattle and of flocks of many thousands of sheep by men who took the chances of the seasons and were willing to undergo the hardships of solitude for sake of a prospective gain, it was found to be the best policy for the Company to confine its attention to investments in agricultural land, from which its returns, although comparatively small, might be steady. The glut in the local meat market reached its most acute stage in 1848, fat cattle being almost unsaleable. The shareholders had already intimated their desire that the unprofitable pastoral department should be discontinued. But it was not an easy thing Selling off Ihc Flocks 207 to comply with this order. Indeed, the Colonial Manager and local Board of Advice, of whom Messrs. Davenport and Bartleywere prominent members, were at their wits' end to know how to comply with this order without seriously sacrificing the stock. Boiling down was tried, as a last resort, but only on a limited scale, twenty-five head of cattle being converted into tallow, which was sent to London for sale. The market proved to be very dull, and as the Report of 1849 remarks, ' the Colonial Manager did not require to wait for the actual result of the sale to see that the process would not answer.' As oppor- tunity offered the balance of the cattle were sold off for whatever prices they would fetch. The sheep also were gradually sold off, those disposed of in 1849 realising 4^-. "]({. each. Finally, in 1850, the whole of the Company's Hocks, together with a few cattle at the Bremer and Mount Gambler stations, were disposed of, and 472 acres of land at the latter place for 305. per acre. Had the outbreak of the gold fever been foreseen, and the material increase to which it gave rise in the value of stock, perhaps it would have been decided to retain the pastoral 2o8 Flocks and Herds department for a few years longer in the hope of making it pay. Stock in the Western district of Victoria and neighbouring parts of South Austraha brought very different prices in 1854. From a public point of view, how^ever, the benefits derived from the Company's importa- tions of pure and thoroughly sound stock in the very earliest days of the colony were of the most important character. Low-bred cattle and sheep nearly always waste more pasturage than they utilise. This is a fact which, even at the present clay, has only been partially appreciated, and of which more particular account must be taken if the dairying industry is to become as profitable to the great bulk of the Australian agriculturists as it ought to be. A bad start, however, would have made matters very much worse, as anyone will admit who knows what struggles the graziers of South America had to undergo before they even made a beginning in the immense task of displacing the scrubby cattle and wasty sheep of the peasantry by better and more profitable animals. In sheep the Company's importations from Saxony and Tasmania were of material assist- ance in the building up of some of the best Sale of Cattle 209 stud flocks of South Australia. In cattle the celebrated shorthorn or Durham bull ' Comet ' sold for a very heavy price at the historical ,;;0m i m0^ ^.-^ . it t^^s ^ MR. Gr<:oRc;E fife ancas First Cliairinaii of tJic South . lustraliun Company sale of Charles Colling-'s English herd, and imported by the Company to South Australia became one of the leading progenitors of a p 2 1 o Flocks and Herds strain absolutely unequalled in the southern hemisphere. It was from this magnificent animal, in fact, that some of the best blood was derived for the making of the famous herd now owned by Mr, J. H. Angas, son of the Company's first Chairman, The latter, it may be mentioned, emigrated to South Australia in 1850, after having been compelled to sell his shares in the Company at half cost, in order to meet a claim for 100,000/. which the colony had against him for the purchase of land by his agent far in excess of anything which he had authorised that gentleman to secure. I Land Booms 211 CHAPTER XII CITY INVESTMENTS City land booms have always been a snare of the people of the Australian colonies. Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide have been each in its turn badly smitten by the mania for gambling- in building allotments. While the excitement has lasted there has been a period of seeming prosperity, almost everyone being contented or in good spirits. Then, when the inevitable reaction has come about, like the headache in the morning which succeeds to a ' jolly evening,' vows have been recorded solemnly and emphatically, like the plaint of the Raven — Never more ! But the memories of commercial disaster soon wear off, and when another spell of buoy- ant, confident, hopefulness and extravagance takes possession of the community, the same p 2 212 City Investments wild speculation and the same inevitable collapse of credit ensue. The Australian panic of 1S93 had its ori^'in in the extraordinary elation among Melbourne property holders ; but a similar epidemic of excitement, although not so extreme in its intensity, had been experienced in Sydney only a very few years before. These booms were only repetitions, on a larger scale, of what had already taken place repeatedly from the very earliest colonial days. In 1842, both in Sydney and Melbourne, business was so brisk and town properties passed from hand to hand so rapidly that almost everyone seemed to be making a fortune. The most expensive habits accordingly prevailed, and when Governor Gipps, on his visit to Port Phillip in 1843, found the people all complaining of a sudden reversal of public confidence, he pointed to the champagne bottles that lay strewn along the banks of the Yarra, where picnics had been held in the ' merriest, maddest times ' of the boom. These in his opinion afforded at least one significant explanation of the real origin of the trouble. Similar periods of elation recurred in Victoria during 1853 and 1854, when the Shifting Populations 213 public revenue held suddenly increiised more than twelve-fold through the great discoveries of gold, and when building allotments around Melbourne were sold at prices which were not again attained for thirty or forty years. It has always been found, however, that when Melbourne has been in the excitement of a boom its attractions have proved temporarily inimical to the prosperity of Adelaide. This was particularly the case in 1842, in 1853, and from 1890 to 1892. Residents of European countries do not readily realise the fluctuating character of a certain proportion of the popula- tion which has settled the Australasian colonies. Things have never been so bad as at one time they were in the Western States of America ; where as each new area of land was thrown open the settlers rushed away from place to place, filling up one newly laid out town, antl leaving another only a few months older almost deserted. Yet the exodus may some- times be sufficient to greatly affect the public confidence in the stability of any particular colony. One sixth of the total town lands of Adelaide had been purchased by the South 2 1 4 City Investments Australian Company along with the rural sections which it took up on the foundation of the colony. Yet at the present time, out of the 1,044 ^cre blocks of which South and North Adelaide consist, the Company retains only twenty and three-quarter acres. The best business parts of the city are mostly situated to the west of Pulteney Street ; but with the ex- ception of five acres, the Company's allotments are all to the east of that thoroughfare. The policy of the Company has been to avoid holding anything for merely speculative pur- poses, and to realise on city lands which could not, within a reasonably short period, be profitably utilised for the benefit of the Company itself and of the colony. Anyone who reckons up the immense sums of money that must have been lost through invest- ments in city land in x'\ustralia, first through extravagant valuations and rash purchases, ,and secondly in the long-continued payment of rates and taxes upon vacant allotments for which there was no demand, will agree that this general line of policy must have been the safest and the best as well as the most public spirited in the end. On a rising property Urban Lands 2 1 5 market, no doubt, large profits are sometimes made by the mere speculator who has no inten- tion of building" on his land, but who simply intends to turn it over to the first comer willini>- to take the risk of giving him his stipulated advance. But that was not the kind of purpose for which the South Australian Company was formed. Its city land came to it by virtue of the arrangement made from the very inception of the colonisation scheme by the Com- missioners, who offered a city acre along with each section of rural land. It is of course proverbially easy to be wise after the event ; and yet the economist and historian would fail in their duty if they refrained from emphasising the seriousness of the mistake involved in linking country along with urban investment. More than one thousand acres of city lands were laid out with streets, all methodically arranged on the rectangular system, and, by the allotment of an acre to each purchaser of a country section, as well as by the early auction sales of those blocks which remained, city investments acquired from the beginning a kind of paper fictitious value. Town settlement 2 1 6 City Investments was unduly scattered out over a wide area. At a time when Adelaide only had some (S,ooo or io,ooo inhabitants it was endeavouring to maintain streets which in a F2uropean city would have been considered amply adequate for a city of ten times that number of persons. As each successive little spurt in the selling values of city lands raised the hopes of holders the determination to stand out for an advance on price was strengthened ; and so it has gone on until the present day. Many, however, have been forced to succumb. Men who, sixteen or eighteen years ago, bought city acres for 2,ooo/. or 3,000/. apiece have, in the interval, paid as much as that in rates and taxes and have at last been glad to sell out for half of what they paid for the land. The x-^delaide land boom of 188 1-2 arose partly from the travelling facilities afforded by the new tram-lines, which conferred residential values upon lands formerly beyond the reach of the city workers. Rumour no doubt very greatly exaggerated the profits which some of the boom speculators netted upon their invest- ments ; and yet, in proportion to the amount in actual circulation, it is certain that very large Land Taxation 217 sums changed hands. The jorices of land with- in walking distance of the city, or moderately close to a tram-line, went up to such figures that many tenants had to pay in ground rents alone, without reckoning anything for the buildings, twice as much as would have been required for very comfortable accommodation in England. Four and five roomed cottages at i/. or 25^". per week were by no means un- common. Such a state of affairs undoubtedly helped to bring prominently to the front the question of land taxation. The land tax of 1882 was imposed not upon the principle of municipal valuation but on that of assessing the land luiuus the improvements on it. This of course was an idea by no means new to political economists. But it so chanced that in the scheme propounded by Mr. Henry George for the expropriation of all land owners by taxing away the whole annual value of their landed property this mode of valuation had been recommended. Consequently the party known as the Single Taxers began to boast that they had ' got in the thin end of the wedge,' and it only remained for them to ' drive it home." What followed so far as the Company was 2l8 City Investments concerned may be brielly told in the words of Mr. C. G. Roberts, the present Chairman, during his lecture before the Democratic Club in 1894. MR. C. C ROBER'IS Chairman of the Soicth Australian Co)iipany 'Many of our Directors,' he said, 'were alarmed. It was in the time of the land boom, and we had funds in hand derived from the sale Mr. Roberts s Doubts 219 of land. Hitherto we had always reinvested in the colony the proceeds of such sales. The Board thought it best to return 75,000/. of capital to the shareholders. 1 may mention that I was the only Director who spoke and voted against the repayment. I did so because I had confidence in the colony, and thought that if a land tax were introduced we should never be called upon to contribute more than our fair share. I thought it would be better for our shareholders, and better for the colony, to retain that 75,000/. in South Australia. It is only recently, since the proposal of a progres- sive land tax and a tax on absentees, that I have been made to doubt whether in that matter I was wrong and my co-Directors right. The repayment of 75,000/. or 5/ per share, reduced the original 25/ share to 20/. nominally.' He then went on to show that the present shareholders who have made recent invest- ments in the Company's stock, are getting for their money interest at the rate of 4/ 2s. 3^^'/ per cent. The inference therefore is that the 75,000/ withdrawn from South Australia on the occasion referred to, was seeking little if any- thing more than 4 per cent as an inxestment. 2 20 City Investiiicuis It would not have been removed from Australia unless the element of risk arising from the political unrest of the times had made it appear that something less than 4 per cent, in some other part of the world, with more complete security, was better than something more than 4 per cent, in Australia. The practical question, for the people of South Australia and for those who take an interest in the economics of colonisation, to consider is, whether it would have been better for the colony had that 75,000/. remained, instead of being withdrawn at a time of considerable commercial and political disquietude, with its consequent depression and general insecurity of employment for the working folks ? The money, be it observed, was withdrawn from city and suburban investments ; and in accordance with the general policy of the Directors, had it been re-invested in South Australia it would most probably have been removed to the country and would have become part and parcel of the capital devoted to the promotion of rural industry. We have seen that, from being the possessor of one-sixth part of the land of Adelaide the Company has at last come to hold not more than 2o| acres, out of more than A Shifting of Assets 221 1,000 city acre blocks. This process of reduc- tion in urban investment has been going on gradually, and seeing that, until quite recently, the total of its investments, namely 355,000/., has remained in the colony, it follows that there has been a steady shifting" of its assets from the city to the country. No doubt the exceptional value of its comparatively small holding in the busy part of Adelaide has balanced to some extent the reduction in acreage in other parts of Adelaide. But on the whole the valuations show that the policy enunciated in the infancy of the colony, of preferring reproductive investments and avoiding urban speculation, has been kept clearly in view. Would the 75,000/. if shifted to the country, instead of being withdrawn for investment elsewhere, have done any good to South Australia ? The amount no doubt may seem comparatively a small one ; but as its case is typical of very many similar withdrawn investments the question is worth careful consideration. As it concerns rather the rural than the city investments of the Company, and as its lesson is for the future rather than for the past, it must be referred to more particularly in another chapter. 222 The Outlook for the Futttre CHAPTER XIII THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE The glut in the fruit market has in recent years been disastrous to a mosi industrious class of Australian producers. Growers of grapes in South Australia have been amongst the most unfortunate of all in this respect. During the autumn of 1897 it was reported that good sound grapes were being sold at prices under i/. per ton, or about a tenth of a penny per pound. At this rate it was admitted that grape growing would not pay, and many owners of small vine- yards began to seriously contemplate grubbing their vines out of the ground to make room for something that might at least yield a better return for the labour bestowed upon it. The fact was that, during the time of political unrest already mentioned, two agitations of a mutually destructive tendency were in vogue, namely one for promoting, on a wholesale scale, the planting A Plethora of Grapes 22, of orchards and vineyards, and anodier for discouraging, as much as possible, the invest- ment of outside capital by means of special taxation on absentees. Mark the result. The new vines and the new legislation began to bear fruit simul- taneously, and the consequence was that when grapes were most abundant capital to make use of them was most scarce. This was the tenor of a conversation frequently to be heard at the grape-buying offices of the ' Wineries : ' ' For goodness' sake,' says the grower, ' take my crop off my hands ! I have payments to meet and I must i-t'// this season at any price' ' It's of no use asking us,' is the reply ; ' we can't store another gallon of grape juice.' ' Then why did you encourage us poor fellows to put all our little capital into planting and standing out of our profits for these five or six years, only to tell us when we have a crop to sell that you have no room for it .'^ ' ' We have done the best we could. I assure you that all our own capital, and as much more as our credit can possibly command, has been invested in putting in tanks, barrels and other storage. What can we do more ? ' 2 24 The Outlook for the Future The conclusion arrived at, after this very- poor consolation had been administered, was to the following effect : 'It is a great pity that more of our own people in South Australia don't have their capital free for putting into things that will benefit the producer, instead of having it locked up in land that gives a much poorer return. If we could only get in some outside capital to take some of our dead-weight investments off our hands, we could soon make things a good deal livelier.' The need for maintaining the balance between the investments devoted to vine grow- ing and those intended to promote the erection of new storage, was early seen by the Directors and Manager of the South Australian Company. Like the Colonial Government, the Company gave encouragement to the planting of good varieties of vines, and offered special terms to leaseholders who were willing to follow up the industry of viticulture in a systematic manner. At the same time advances were made to certain winemakers in order to enable them to erect suitable machinery and storage for the business ; one express stipulation being that the grapes General Risks 225 produced by the Company's tenants should be bought by the new ' winery.' This arranofement was carried out at one of the oldest of the Company's estates, some distance to the north of Adelaide, and had it not been for the doubts which were felt as to the trend of political events, the system inaugu- rated in that instance might have been extended to other localities. Even as regards the terms which could safely be offered to those who intended to plant vines, it is obvious that these same doubts constituted an element of risk not only to the Company but also to other investors which, as a matter of ordinary business prudence, could not safely be overlooked. The Company might clearly perceive that a serious glut would soon be created unless a due balance of capital investments on different sides of the industry were maintained ; but there was no guarantee that other capitalists would come forward to lend the funds needful for dealing with the produce of vineyards, more particularly in the face of the new discouragements offered. The prospect that vineyards, as well as grapes, would soon become a ' drug on the market ' therefore ren- Q 2 26 The Outlook for the Future dered the problem an exceedingly difficult one to deal with. In colonisation it is of vital importance that the working capital of the colonists themselves should be devoted as far as possible to the promotion of enterprises which they, being on the spot and having their interests wrapped up in their adopted country, understand better than anyone else. About ten millions sterling has been raised in South Australia by the sale of land, and the great bulk of this capital, like the sum of over one-third of a million invested by the South Australian Company in the early days, has been spent in making roads, bridges, and other public improvements, besides pro- moting emigration upon which, at one time, the prosperity of the colony depended. The cost of the public railways and waterworks has amounted to about twice that sum, the money being practically all borrowed from British capitalists. Almost every colonist will readily admit that if these railways and other public works had not been made with British capital they would never have been made at all. Many, however, make a most serious mistake in failing A Calamity of Untold Magnitude 227 to understand the true relations between the land, the capital invested on it, and the labour which is expended on it. They see that, just as the original capital investments of the vSouth Australian Company and other early promoters of the colony practically created the value put upon its land, so the pushing out of railways to various parts of the country has made colonisa- tion possible in places further inland. But they do not fully realise that an enlightened public works policy, as well as the private investment of outside capital, adds very materi- ally to the value of labour in a new country, as may be seen in the fact that, so long as such investments continue, owing to the maintenance of confidence in public good faith, the rate of interest usually tends downwards while that of wages tends upwards. To be either forced or induced to withdraw their business capital from its present employ- ment, and to invest it in the purchase of the bonds by the sale of which their railways were built, would be a calamity of almost untold magnitude to the inhabitants of the Australian colonies. Yet this was virtually the kind of Q 2 2 28 The Outlook for the Future thing which the absentee taxation aimed at accompHshing' with respect to other invest- ments. The local man was to be induced to buy out the British investor, v/ho was to some extent penalised through taxation in order to induce him to sell. But when the colonial resident had made his purchases he would g'enerally find that, in some way or other, he had crippled his business in order to place his capital in investments which, from their very nature, could not, on the whole, bring a larger return or better promote the prosperity of the colony. Thus, in the instance referred to, namely, the case of the vine-growers, it is easy to see the mistake that was made. At the very time when outside capital was urgently needed for the building of new cellarage, or for setting free local money to go towards the same object, it suddenly became the adopted national policy to discourao^e the flow of investments from England. Other causes, such as the Melbourne land boom, no doubt contributed to the local depression. Yet the withdrawal of every sum of money that was taken away from the colony undoubtedly helped to accentuate the difficul- Sounder Counsels 229 ties in which the producers, not only of grapes, but of wool, wheat, fruit, and dairy produce, were placed. One would have thought that in a country having an immense territory and unlimited resources only awaiting the applica- tion of British capital to enable it to support a large amount of labour, every encouragement would have been offered to those who were willing to make such investments. Sounder counsels, based on the lessons that have been gained by experience, are, however, now prevailing ; and to this fact, as well as to the rise in the price of wheat, may be attributed the spirit of greater hopefulness which actuates the people of South Australia. The shows of the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society always afford a very fair index to the state of feeling existing at any time in the agricultural community, and excel- lent progress has in this direction been indicated during the years from 1894 ^o 1S97. As being the originator of these shows the South Aus- tralian Company was in 1897 presented with the honorary life membership of the society. It was in the office of the Company on North Terrace, and on the invitation of Mr. McLaren, 230 llic Outlook for the Future the Colonial Mtinager, in 1840, that the first local display of produce was held ; and from that modest beginning the idea of forming a permanent society, to continue the Show annually, took its rise. Technical education and instruction in modern practical and scientific methods applied to rural industries have advanced very greatly during the past few years. In one of the earliest reports of the South Australian Com- pany a plan was propounded for establishing a school for this purpose ; and although the financial difficulties of the colony placed this scheme for a long time in the background, yet it influenced ultimately the trend of public feeling in educational matters. The Company actively promoted the South Australian School Society, and sent out as its first schoolmaster Mr. J. B. Shepherdson, late Stipendiary Magistrate, who died at a ripe old age in 1897. The schools promoted thus, both directly and indirectly, by the Company were noted for the practical nature of their teaching, and it cannot be said that the proposal to engraft technical instruc- tion on the earliest educational methods of the colony really came to nothing. Analysis of Samples of Soils 231 In going- his ordinary rounds among the farmers and gardeners of various districts, the Company's Inspector has for many years found various ways of spreading a knowledge of im- proved agronomial methods and thus promoting the prosperity of the people as a whole. Leaf- lets containing valuable information have from time to time been circulated, and many farmers and others, including some who are not among the Company's tenants, have picked up from these publications various hints that have been of great service to them. On the question of the economical and profitable application of manures and other modes of enriching the soil, the present Inspector has long been an enthusiast ; and in this move- ment is entirely in sympathy with the Professor of the Government Agfricultural College, and the officials and members of the Aoricultural Bureaus, The analysis of samples of soil from different localities, and the settlement of some very perplexing problems as to the advantages of each kind for the growth of different products, have claimed a considerable amount of attention even from the early times of the Company's connection with the colony. 232 The Outlook fo7' the Future The Inspector gives useful advice on the subject of fallowing — a practice which is of the utmost importance in a country where the pos- sible applications of manuring are so limited, and where, in very many cases, the only practi- cal method of keeping the land in good heart is to give it a rest periodically and run stock upon it. This careful policy is systematically em- bodied in the Company's contracts with its tenants, and competent agricultural authorities have given it as their opinion that it has been the means of preserving some of the best land in the colony from being ruined and the pros- perity of old settled districts from being seriously interfered with. In the past there has always been a temptation among colonial agriculturists to work the heart out of the land, sell out, and move further north or to another colony, in search of fresh viroin soil. But throuofh the system of obligatory good husbandry, the Com- pany's agricultural land, comprising almost sixty- five thousand acres, has maintained its settled population perhaps better than any other equal agricultural area in South Australia. The impetus given to the dairying industry Fallowing and Dairying 233 by the adoption of the factory system and the export trade in butter and cheese has, to some extent, assisted in demonstrating the wisdom of this poHcy by rendering a certain amount of grazing profitable as an adjunct to cereal grow- ing. The Company, recognising that the pro- motion of this industry was of the utmost im- portance not only to its own tenants but also to the colony at large, made special efforts to encourage the breeding of better milking strains of cattle among the farmers generally. Prizes were offered for the best bulls and cows exhibited at various shows, these being open to all comers. More recently the Government has given similar enlio^htened encourao-ement, and has even im- ported some Jersey bulls, which will probably do as much towards improving the Channel Islands breeds of cattle as the Company's early impor- tations did towards the foundation of those good Shorthorn herds which are acknowledged to be the finest in Australia. The practical work of the farm is in Australia very different from what it is in England, Ireland or Scotland ; and it was only by frequent intercourse with those who have 2 34 '^^^ Outlook for the Future been connected with the working of the Com- pany's estate for very long periods that some details of the advice thus sfiven were arrived at. Snow is scarcely ever seen in any part of Australia, so that the housing of stock, and the heavy outlay on building which it entails, are unnecessary. But the long dry summer, and the occasional protracted droughts, present diffi- culties of another nature upon which the advice of an old colonist may be of very great service to a younger man or a more recent arrival. Nothing is more noticeable to the observer within the colony, during the past two or three years, than the gradual increase in public con- fidence and patriotism which is now taking place amongst all classes of the community. England and all the British colonies have un- doubtedly been in sentiment drawn much closer together as a result of the celebrations of the long reiofn of Oueen Victoria, and in the colonies of South Australia and Victoria this fact is especially significant, because the lives of these two settlements have been practically con- temporaneous with the duration of the reign. Historical retrospect has therefore been the order of the day, and this, it need hardly be Average Dividends of the Company 235 said, is a mental exercise eminently conducive to the formation of sound common-sense views of the present and of the future. Closer settlement is the object now aimed at by special legislation, which is much advocated both inside and outside of the local houses of Parliament, the policy being for the State, with borrowed money, to buy up land and utilise it for subdivision and colonisation for agricultural and horticultural purposes. Whether this plan will work out to an economic success will, of course, depend very largely upon the skill and care that may be exercised in carrying it into effect. But it is certain that if the Government of South Australia had borrowed, on the public security, the money which the Company put into the colony in the early days of settlement, the result would have been disappointing. No doubt the average dividends distributed by the Company since the beginning have amounted to rather more than seven per cent., while the first loans for public and municipal purposes raised some years after the colony was esta- blished carried only six per cent, interest. Waiving the question whether, at this rate, money would have been subscribed prior to the 236 The Outlook for' the Future settlement of what was an unexplored wilder- ness, it can readily be shown that a steady payment of the rate named would have amounted to more than the Company has re- ceived for the use of its capital from all sources. Between the years 1840 and 1850, as we have seen, the Company received scarcely any return at all, and if during that term the colony had been in a position to raise six per cent, on so large a sum, these payments would have made a great difference in the ultimate state of the balance sheet. Any bond-holder getting that rate half a century ago, saving his interest for five or six years, and continually reinvesting the money, would by this time have realised, from this source alone, an amount equal to several times that of his first capital investment. At such a time of depression the Company was obliged^ for its own sake as well as for that of the colony, not only to forego any actual return, but to put fresh capital into the country, with a view to reviving its drooping prospects. The difference is somewhat similar to that between a mortgagee and a partner, the former The Company and the Colony 237 of whom exacts his interest in rising or in falling fortunes, while the latter must not only ' share and share alike.' but may, at a pinch, come forward with fresh capital to put into the concern. The question as to whether State- directed can be so economically conducted as private enterprise is too large to be at present entered upon. But the history of the settlement of South Australia, and of the Company's connection with it, which has here been only briefly sum- marised, is at least sufficient to suggest thoughts of some importance to all who take an interest in colonisation in general and in the ' Expansion of England ' in particular. There has been no enterprise of this description more patriotically conducted ; no colonisation more fruitful of solid advantages to its people. No British settlement has ever received more direct and permanent advantages from the establishment of a private company than South Australia. Its story may surely be adduced as another example of the truth that in the great work of colonising those vast tracts of the earth's surface over which it is the high destiny of the British nation to hold sway, there is a most -o' The Outlook for the Future useful place for the investment of private capital, directed by patriotic and far-seeing men of business, men of the stamp indicated by Burke when he declared, in the course of his great speech on the India Bill, that ' there were some merchants who acted in the spirit of statesmen.' PRINTED BV SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below WAY 2 1952 10 1954 NOV 2 6 1S6^ OEC 2 1963. URL MAR 19 1973 m 41987 Form L-9 2.-,m -2, '43(3205) h ■» JUL i IJO^ MAY 04 1987 J B 3 1158 00599 2663 | UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY (ALILITV AA 000 975 626 3