CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONIAL CITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 2914, 21 June 1872, Page 3

CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONIAL CITIES.

A traveller, writing in the Spectator, Bays : It ij as been a fortunate chance for Sydney that it grew up irregularly, knowing no sudden incase for fifty years. The result has been that instead of straight broad boulevards intersecting one another at right angles with hideous monotony such as new cities generally think good, Sydney has, at least, some streets in which the houses so sprung up naturally along a pathway or a bullock-track with the ground, and not a few which are narrow enough for the houses to overshadow the road. In another respect ■ Sydney shows signs of antiquity It still keeps here and therewith the red brick houses which belong to the early days of the Colony, and for which stone and plaster are now generally substituted. I suppose these irregularities will be swept away i« time. Colonial taste generally prefers Melbourne, with its massive blue-stone palaces, banks and warehouses, standing square to the rectilinear streets which traverse hill and valley without swerve. Having seen Chicago before the fire and San Francisco as it still is, I should give the palm to their Australian rival over them It is vaster and more solid, with grander buildings, and above all, with incomparably finer public grounds. Still there is a perceptible difference between American and Australian cities. The times of rapid growth and superabundant vitality seem to have left onr continent. Melbourne has a post-office that may match any m Europe, but the dimensions of its campanile have been curtailed. Everywhere you nr ay hear the same story. There is no real distress, but there is general stagnation ; and the expenditure of past years has to be reduced m accordance with present means. The lesson is bard for individuals and for States. But passing from the cities to the country, one feels that great and steady progress is being made. Hundreds of miles of land over which our sheep grazed ten years ago are now taken up by farmers who are settled in substantial homes. It is still fashionable in Australian society to say that those men cannot and do not make farming pay, and that their farms will soon revert to the old desert condition. I can only say that if the small farmers are beggars, they are beggars in a very comfortable fashion, and contrive to keep up appearances with great success. They seem generally to be building stone houses, putting up substantial fences, and subscribing for churches and schools. In my Colony they have lately taken up large tracts oHand at L2 and LS an acre, under a system, it is true, of defeired payments. I still think that a poor man has a better chance of getting on m the United States than in Australia. But I cannot doubt that his position here is at least equally better than what it was in England. And in one respect I should claim a certain advantage for these Colonies: I think our farming population is less migratory than it is in the States. A farmer in Canada told me that as soon as ha found himself unable to get 30 bushels off Ins land he should throw up [his farm and buy new land. This system of working out the land aud leaving it is in fact universal m the State It is rarely practiced in Australia. The expenses attending the change are greater here, and there is more difficulty m getting good land With us, therefore, a man commonly looks forward to laying his bones where he first builds his house. The result I think is that he is more careful to improve.