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capital, unless his ideas were proportionately adjusted. You could not get a grant on the Swan under from £100 to £1000, according to the size and quality. Supposing you purchase from Government or from a settler, land at a distance; if from Government you pay 5s. an acre, settlers wish to get 4s. 6d.; your grant may be from 30 to 50, or more miles away. How are you to get at it? You must in the first place buy a team—that will cost you £100, and a cart at least £20. In short, I am afraid to enumerate all the expenses and difficulties, you would think them so disheartening. They can all be surmounted, but if a man be not prepared for them he may sink under them. Good bargains, lucky chances of spots may be met with, but they are few, and becoming fewer every day. A squatter that is a person who would go beyond the locations and occupy any ground that would answer his purpose might do well here with a large flock, but he must be contented with a rude house or a tent, cultivate only such ground as would give him wheat and vegetables; live much upon the produce of his dogs and his guns; drive his surplus stock occasionally to market, with his wool also; and take back little necessaries, comforts, and luxuries. This might be done by a man who had a large family, and all help within himself, for you could scarcely tempt free English servants to go out of the pale of society voluntarily, and in this respect the convict population at Sydney is an advantage. The natives are the serious obstacle to a small establishment in a distant situation.
August 29.—James bought a young ram from me to-day for 32s., and sold it almost immediately for £2. Had some emu to-day for dinner; it tastes very like young beef, sweet and tender; a roast thigh looked very like a roasted leg of mutton. Have scarcely had a moment of the day to myself people here on different sorts of business: Mr. Bull, Mr. Mellersh, J. Mackie, and Nat. Shaw.—I have calculated that there are 1131 acres of wheat sown in the colony this year
