Colonel Gawler encouraged the blacks to camp by frequent feasts of flour and mutton, and there strangers had an opportunity of seeing, sometimes to their amusement, oftener to their surprise, their peculiar customs, habits and sports. Many pretty cottages are to be found in,the suburbs, as neat and highly finished as in England.
South Adelaide is considered the commercial quarter of the town, and contains the principal streets, one of which is 130 feet wide, and Government House, which stands in the centre of a domain of ten acres.
Hindley-street is the Regent-street of Adelaide, and has the distinction of being paved. For want of this luxury of civilisation, coupled with the nature of the soil, Adelaide is terribly afflicted with dust, at all times a nuisance, which is indeed common to all Australian towns. Sydney has at certain times of the year its brickfielders. In addition to the park lands, which occupy a breadth of half a mile round the two divisions of the city, a cemetery and a racecourse are among its out-of-door ornaments.
In the surrounding suburbs many pretty villages have been founded, both inland and on the shore. The system of selling land regularly in eighty-acre lots has, in some degree, neutralised the disadvantage of the large absentee proprietorships and the special surveys, which have monopolised so much of the limited extent of agricultural land.
There is one point in which the South Australians possess an unquestionable superiority over the other two colonies, and that is their local literature. With the exception of the Sydney Morning Herald, which is the Times of the southern hemisphere, the newspapers and periodicals are very superior in style of getting up and in matter to those of New South Wales and Port Phillip. This superiority is especially marked in the South Australian almanacs, which contain a fund of useful information on the statistics, the agriculture, the horticulture, and the mining progress of that colony.
Before the check occasioned by the gold discoveries, sheep stations had been formed as far north as Mount Brown, toward the Darling, near the eastern boundary. The whole of York Peninsula had been occupied, and, in the country westward of Spencer's Gulf, flockmasters had penetrated to Anxious Bay, on the Australian Bight; and townships had been founded at Rivoli Bay, in the county of Grey, and Guichen Bay, in the county of Robe, whence a coasting trade had been opened.
Ever since 1843 South Australia has been a corn -exporting country, although with great fluctuations: in that year 38,480 bushels were exported; in the following year the quantity increased to 132,000 bushels; but the low price, 2s. 9d. a bushel, reduced the cultivation by ten thousand acres. In 1845 the price continued low, and cultivation
