a temperate and even cold region is to be found, where the vegetables, fruits, and grain of northern Europe nourish, and the settler or traveller finds the necessity of warm clothing, and the comfort of blazing fires.
But despite all the varieties of temperature found in Australia, the climate is, with the exception of the burning plains of the interior, congenial to Europeans. Even the tropical regions of the coast are free from those fevers which decimate white men visiting the Indian seas and the African coast.
The soil of Australia varies even more than its climate. Of the whole extent a very large proportion is hopelessly barren, but still enough remains capable of supporting a very numerous, and in some districts a dense population. There are no data for calculating with such a degree of accuracy as would be useful the proportions of available land in the occupied districts. It will be safe to assume that only two-thirds of the land worth occupying is, or ever will be, fit for pastoral purposes, and can no more be profitably cultivated than the limestone hills and moors of Wales, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Gloucestershire, or the Highlands of Scotland.
Of land fit for agricultural purposes, and sufficiently clear of trees to be put under plough at a reasonable expenditure of labour, there is enough to support a population to be counted by millions, but continually intersected by barren ranges and forests of scrub, which can never be of any value except for firewood.
On the coast to the northward, between Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay, are vast tracts of well-watered land, on which the soil is excellently adapted for various crops, but so covered with heavy timber that nothing less than the old system of convict-clearing gangs, or of free grants to clearing parties, will bring them into cultivation in this generation, although well placed for water conveyance to the seaport towns. On the other hand, in Port Phillip there are plains on which the plough might be driven for one hundred miles in a straight line, turning up a furrow of rich mould along the whole tract; and the other two colonies can present similar instances, although not to the same extent, or so near the seacoast.
The soil of Australia presents as many anomalies as its configuration and its animal and vegetable productions.
In other parts of the world the most fertile tracts are generally found near the mouths of rivers; in Australia the greatest fertility usually commences where the navigation ceases. In Europe the valleys will generally be found full of rich soil; in Australia some of the richest mould is to be found on the tops of hills. The low hills formed
