ads, bridges, quarries, wells, and
a long _etcetera_ that one can scarcely catalogue.

_4th_, Capitalists of L.1000 and upwards can make, apart from
wool-growing, twenty per cent. on their money without being in trade,
chiefly by buying at the government land-sales, and subdividing the
section into small allotments, or by building houses, shops, &c. The
average of rental returns the capital in four years. But this can only
be done if emigration continues--and emigration with a sprinkling of
holders of L.50 to L.200. If this stops, there can be few purchasers.
Should a fixed price be put upon government land, there might be a
difference in the way in which capital could be turned to profit; but
L.1000 and upwards can find so many favourable investments in a new
colony, that a living could be secured without much trouble or
anxiety.

_5th, Population_.--By the census just completed, there are 78,000
inhabitants in Victoria (Port-Philip); County of Bourke,
44,000--including Melbourne, the capital, 20,000; County of Grant,
12,000--including Geelong, its capital, 8000. Warnambool, Belfast, and
Portland, along the coast, only number hundreds, and Kilmore, forty
miles inland, nearly 2000: there are also various villages--on
paper--so called, numbering ten to fifty houses each. From this it
will be seen that more than half of the entire population is within
twenty miles of Melbourne, a third of the residue within fifteen miles
of Geelong, and the remainder scattered, including the 1200
squatting-stations, over a very extensive country. These towns are
not, in my opinion, a natural growth, but have been forced into their
present magnitude from the difficulties in obtaining land at a price
to make up for the utter want of every convenience, a want arising
from the total absence of any effort on the part of the government
hitherto to make even one great trunk-road through the colony.
Facilities for internal communication would cause towns to increase
naturally. Now, people arrive with glowing ideas of the beauty and
fertility of the country, and finding everything difficult of access
there, betake themselves to shopkeeping, forcing up rents to an
exorbitant sum, and losing their little capital. I think my opinion
borne out by the fact, that the country population of Grant County was
1959 in 1846, and 4469 in 1851; Geelong in 1846 had 1911, and in 1851,
8000--the town population more than quadrupling itself in the last
five year