Divine Bounty,--we grope there in the dark and confused
labyrinth of human malice." (2)

But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes,--now a line, now
a speck; let us turn away, with the face to the Old. Amongst my
fellow-passengers how many there are returning home disgusted,
disappointed, impoverished, ruined, throwing themselves again on those
unsuspecting poor friends who thought they had done with the luckless
good-for-noughts forever. For don't let me deceive thee, reader,
into supposing that every adventurer to Australia has the luck of
Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor laborer, and especially the poor
operative from London and the great trading towns (who has generally
more of the quick knack of learning,--the adaptable faculty,--required
in a new colony, than the simple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure
to succeed, the class to which I belong is one in which failures are
numerous and success the exception,--I mean young men with scholastic
education and the habits of gentlemen; with small capital and sanguine
hopes. But this, in ninety-nine times out of a hundred, is not the fault
of the colony, but of the emigrants. It requires not so much intellect
as a peculiar turn of intellect, and a fortunate combination of physical
qualities, easy temper, and quick mother-wit, to make a small capitalist
a prosperous Bushman. (3) And if you could see the sharks that swim
round a man just dropped at Adelaide or Sydney, with one or two thousand
pounds in his pocket! Hurry out of the towns as fast as you can, my
young emigrant; turn a deaf ear, for the present at least, to all
jobbers and speculators; make friends with some practised old Bushman;
spend several months at his station before you hazard your capital;
take with you a temper to bear everything and sigh for nothing; put your
whole heart in what you are about; never call upon Hercules when your
cart sticks in the rut,--and whether you feed sheep or breed cattle,
your success is but a question of time.

But whatever I owed to Nature, I owed also something to Fortune. I
bought my sheep at little more than 7s. each. When I left, none were
worth less than 15s., and the fat sheep were worth L1. (4) I had
an excellent shepherd, and my whole care, night and day, was the
improvement of the flock. I was fortunate, too, in entering Australia
before the system miscalled "The Wakefield" (5) had diminished the
supply of labor and raised the price of land. When the