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 change came (like most of those