apparently intelligent men, who had encamped on the site of the city of Adelaide, all hopeful, active, speculating, dealing with each other and with each party of newly-arrived emigrants, full of magnificent plans for every sort of investment, in markets, warehouses, arcades, ship-building, and whaling. A bit of painted board nailed to a tree created a Wakefield, a Torrens, an Angas, or Whit-more street. All the notabilities of the South Australian interest were thus immortalised. Each speculator, having so large a space to deal with, endeavoured to draw the tide of trade or fashion into his own locality, and thus, instead of one compact village, as near as possible to the port, tents, wooden huts, pise huts, wooden houses imported from England, shops of slabs, brick, and stone, and elegant cottages of gentility, surrounded by iron rails, were scattered over a vast park of 1,130 acres.
Those who had not been able to secure town lots at prices to their mind proceeded into the suburbs, where at one time, with the aid of surveyors' pegged lines, not less than thirty villages were founded, for sale to those who could not afford to give the city price; others were building mansions, laying out pleasure grounds, and even contemplating deer parks. The climate was delightful, the valley of the Torrens fertile; and emigrants of capital poured in, burning to commence realising th golden dreams they had enjoyed during a three months' voyage.
Colonel Crawler was carried away by the stream. The very con fusion in which he found public business, the inefficiency of all the officers selected by the commissioners, the backward state of the surveys, were to a certain extent an encouragement; because he sanguinely contemplated that, if so much had been done under no system, or the worst possible system of administration when no accounts were kept when the governor and the resident commissioner held rival public meetings, and the colonial secretary and colonial treasurer fought in the streets, how much more might be done under an orderly, regular government, such as he lost no time in establishing.
He proceeded to supersede the incompetent officials, to bring all the government business into a regular form, to press on the surveys, and to make proper arrangements for the reception of the emigrants into barracks, and the numerous sick of ship-fever and dysentery into an hospital. In order to obtain a revenue from customs dues, to keep down illicit distillation, and protect the public from criminals, it was necessary, as Colonel Napier had foreseen, to raise a police. As labourers were worth from 10s. to 15s. a day, and indifferent horses cost 50 each, this was an expensive affair; but, by giving a tasteful uniform, and making the appointment rather honourable, he succeeded
