Sugar, Ration, (that is, for issuing to Servants.)

chest 4 4

0

1

do.

5 10

0 •

lb.

0 0

2

3 10

IN CONSIDERABLE DEMAND.

Geneva in Bottle, duty paid, first quality.

Tarpaulings,

Earthenware, Invoice, 80 per cent. advance.

EXPORTS.

Bark, Chopped,

Beef,

None.

Red Gum, Wood, §×7 and 24×34,

100 ft.

Live Stock.

Sheep, mixed flocks, clean, clipped, with Station,

each,

Wethers, each,

Cattle, mixed herds, with Station, each,

CHAPTER X.

THE SQUATTING SYSTEM.

AFTER having travelled along with me so many hundred miles through the Australian wilderness, the reader will not require to be reminded of what is meant by the term Squatter, in the Australian dialect of the English language. The Squatting System, as distinguished from the leases of Crown Land that are granted Within the Boundaries, or limits of counties in the comparatively settled portions of the Colony, is thus described by His Excellency, Sir George Gipps, in a letter to Lord Stanley, of date, Government House, Sydney, 3d April 1844:

A lease within the boundaries is for a definite quantity of land, generally a square mile (whether measured or only taken by estimation), and the lease is strictly limited to one year. For the most part the lessees have lands of their own on which they live; and they frequently take on lease the lands of the Crown which lie contiguous to their own, in order only to prevent their falling into the hands of others; and I may add, although it is not material to the point under consideration, that they often occupy seven or eight square miles, paying rent only for one or two.

Beyond the boundaries, the country never having been surveyed, there is no division either real or pretended, into allotments or sections of square miles; the quantity of land therefore occupied by any squatter under the denomination of a "Station," or a "Run," is altogether indefinite, and the price of a license is equally £10 for everybody, whatever may be the extent of his run, or the number of sheep or cattle depastured on it. Parties, originally, in taking up their runs, were limited only by their own moderation, or by the pressure of other squatters on them, and it was this pressure of one squatter on another, and the disagree

ments which arose therefrom, added to contests with the Aborigines, which led, in the year 1837, to the first appointment of Crown Commissioners.

These Commissioners are Stipendiary Magistrates, appointed to collect the dues of the Crown, as well as to keep the peace within the district; and they enjoy some peculiar powers under the Acts passed to restrain the unauthorised occupation of Crown Lands. Still, however, the extent of runs beyond the boundaries is often ill-defined, and no man has any property in the soil which he occupies.

If your Lordship will now cast your eye over the accompanying rough map, or rather outline of this colony, a glance will suffice to show the immense extent to which the squatting, as it is called, has grown :-From Wilson's Promontory, on the south, to Harvey's Bay, on the north, it extends through fourteen degrees of latitude, with an average width of four degrees of longitude, and a straight line passing through the centre of it, from the bottom of Harvey's Bay (in latitude twenty-five degrees south, longitude one hundred and fifty-two degrees east, to the mouth of the Glenelg, on the southern confine of South Australia), measures eleven hundred English statute miles.

This vast extent of country is divided into fifteen districts, and the total amount of population and stock on it, according to the latest returns, was as follows:

Horned cattle,
Sheep,

Though as the returns of stock are taken for the purposes of an assessment, raised under the 16th clause of the Local Act, 2 Victoria, No. 27, the numbers are considered to be below the truth. So rapid, too, in this colony, is the increase of sheep, cattle, and horses, that this wide extent of country has been overrun in the course of fourteen or fifteen years.

That such a system was objectionable in the highest degree, from the extreme inequality of its operation, must be obvious to any person who gives the subject the slightest consideration. Certain of the Squattersnot a few, indeed, of the most influential of the bodyhave doubtless been in the habit of comparing the Waste Lands of the colony to a parish-common, over which all the inhabitants of the parish are alike free to depasture their herds, or to the sea, in which any person is at liberty to fish wherever he pleases. But as the native pastures of Australia had proved to be a source of great wealth, it was fitting, on the one hand, that they should