ible, thus presenting
a formidable obstruction to any communication between isolated spots of a
better description.

Land near Sydney has always been preferred to that which is remote,
though the quality may have been equal; yet throughout the wide extent of
twenty-three millions of acres only about 4,400,000 have been found worth
5 shillings per acre, and the owners of this appropriated land within the
limits have been obliged to send their cattle beyond them for the sake of
pasturage.

EMPLOYMENT OF CONVICTS.

From the labour necessary to form lines of communication across such a
country, New South Wales still affords an excellent field for the
employment of convicts; and although some of the present colonists may be
against the continuance of transportation, it must be admitted that the
increase and extension of population and the future prosperity of the
country depends much on the completion of such public works. The dominion
of man cannot indeed be extended well over nature there without much
labour of this description. The prisoners should be worked in gangs and
guarded and coerced according to some well organised system. It can
require no argument to show how much more pernicious to the general
interests of mankind the amalgamation of criminals with the people of a
young colony must be than with the dense population of old countries,
where a better organised police and laws suited to the community are in
full and efficient operation, both for the prevention and detection of
crime; but the employment of convicts on public works is not inseparable
from the question of allowing such people to become colonists; and
whoever desires to see the noble harbour of Sydney made the centre of a
flourishing country, extending from the tropic to the shores of the
Southern Ocean, rather than one only of several small settlements along
the coast, will not object to relieve the mother country by employing her
convicts even at a greater expense than they cost the colonists at
present. Thus the evil would in time cure itself by preparing the country
for such accessions of honest people from home as would reduce the
tainted portion of its inhabitants to a mere caput mortuum.

NECESSITY FOR CUTTING ROADS.

With a well arranged system of roads radiating from such a harbour even
the sandstone wastes, extensive though they be, might be overstepped and,
the good parts being connected by roads, the produce of the tropical and
temper