odest and moderate pretensions will
rise up in the land-locked basin of Port Lincoln, along the margin of
the deep water, consisting of 640 acres, divided into building lots of
one rood each, which will be enough for a population of 50,000 persons,
which is as many as the most sanguine friend of the Colony can
anticipate for a century to come. There, under the shelter of Boston
Island, or in Spalding Cove, the merchant may leave his office and walk
across a plank into the last ship that arrived from England, and all the
hundreds of bullocks now employed dragging up waggon loads of rubbish
and merchandise from Adelaide Swamp to Adelaide Township, may then be
dispensed with and go a-ploughing, as they ought to have done long
since, which will save L20,000 a year to the settlers in the item of
land carriage alone, and by being employed on the farms instead of on
the road the Colony will not require such frequent importations of farm
produce from Van Diemen's Land, to the great impoverishment of the
community. What, abandon Adelaide! I think I hear the carriers exclaim.
Oh no, let Adelaide remain as before, it will always answer well enough
for a country village, and stand a monument to the folly of the
projectors, but let the Governor and Civil Establishment move their
head-quarters without loss of time, to Port Lincoln, before more money
is thrown away. Every month that this measure is delayed it is made
more difficult and therefore should not be postponed at all. The buyers
of the 1,200 town acres would feel much disappointment at the measure,
as the market would be spoiled for the sale of their building lots, but
they would be rightly served for asking a monopoly price to respectable
new-comers, who ought to be enabled to obtain a town allotment for a
trifle of the Government.

In New South Wales they are sold by auction as applied for, and put up
at 20_s._ each, at which price they are generally knocked down; but with
a view to prevent any monopolizer buying them up, to the injury of the
_bona fide_ settler, every purchaser must sign a bond to the Government
in a penalty of L20, that he will build a house on the allotment, of a
certain value, within three years, or otherwise the land reverts
absolutely to the Crown, and the penalty is enforced too. This is as it
should be, and the evil working of the old system ought to have been
forseen, but at South Australia the Commissioners and Survey Department
disdained to copy