arose who dealt in and professed to put a value on these "scrip," according to their respective dates. Sometimes an emigrant who had been months in the colony would be superseded by the holder of the land order of an absentee sent at the latest moment by ship letter. It was a foreshadowing of the railway stagging of 1846, and a revival of the famous days of the South Sea Bubble. On one occasion the supposed discovery of a lead mine, under an eighty-acre section, sent up the earliest-dated order to a premium of £500. After all there was no lead mine; but the lucky purchaser, being in command of the market made use of a later order, and reserved his £500 prize for future use.
After five days of the week had been consumed by those who purchased "land orders" in England in selecting the best sections, on the sixth the colonising emigrant who had preferred seeing before investing, or the frugal labourer who had saved enough to work for himself on his own land, was allowed to take his pick of the refuse. Such parties were required to send in a sealed tender. A person tendering for several adjoining sections had the preference over a person tendering for a single section. Thus, in every way, the cultivating colonist was discouraged, and land-jobbing speculation invited.
That no element of confusion might be wanting in the land arrangements of the model colony, the commissioners devised, and Mr. Wakefield approved, the "special survey system," which enabled them to raise large sums of money, by offering special privileges to capitalists; and it proved most effective in England. Under this system a capitalist was entitled to have 15,000 acres surveyed in any part of the province, on condition that he purchased not less than 4,000 acres at £1 an acre. In South Australia, as in New South Wales, there is a great scarcity of water, and good cultivable land lies only in patches surrounded by other land which is, at best, only fit for pasture. By judicious management the purchaser of a special survey could command all the water, and all the pastoral advantages of 15,000 acres, by purchasing 4,000; the remainder, 11,000 acres, being useless to any one else, fell naturally in his occupation, at an average of 5s. 4d. an acre. To increase the mischief, purchasers of special surveys were permitted to establish secondary towns, in addition to Adelaide, which was twenty times too large for the population; while the staff of surveyors were continually interrupted in their regular work, to the great injury of cultivating emigrants, in order to make these special surveys, at an expense often exceeding the total value of the purchase-money.
In a very short time all the good land in the neighbourhood of
