MR. TROLLOPE ON OTAGO.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 225, 27 June 1873, Page 3

MR. TROLLOPE ON OTAGO.

The cliief products of Otago are gold and -wool; but agricultural pursuits are extending themselves in all parts of tlie Province. The number of free-selectors, or " cockatoos, " is increasing, and by their increase declare their own prosperity. Individually, ; they almost all complain of their lot—saying that the growth of their corn is precarious, and its sale when, grown effected at so poor a price .as not to pay for the labor of producing it. The-far-mers are in debt to the banks, and their lands are not unfrequently sold under mortgage. But such complaints are general all the world over. No man is contented unless he can make a fortune—and no man is contented when he has made a fortune. The squatters, the miners, the cockatoo farmers, and the laborers working for him, all say the same thing. They regret that they ever left England. It is a mistake to suppose that the Colony is a blessed place. Argyleshire or even County Galway is much better than Otago. But in Otago all men live plenteously. Want is not known. If a man fails as a free selector, he lives plenteously as a laborer. I will quote a few words from a printed despatch respecting Otago, sent Home by Sir George Bo wen, the Governor of the Colony, in 1871" After the lapse of only twenty-three years"— from the first settlement of the Province —" I find from official statistics that the population of the Province of Otago approaches nearly to 70,000 ; that the public revenue, ordinary and territorial, actually raised thereon exceeds L 520,000; that the number of acres farmed is above a million ; that the number of horses exceeds 20,000 ; of horned cattle, 110,000; and of sheep, 4,000,000. The progress achieved in all the other elements of material ' prosperity is equally remarkable ; while the Provincial Council has made noble provision for primary, secondary, and industrial schools ; for hospitals and benevolent asylums ; for athenaeums and schools of art ; and for the new university which is to be opened at Dunedin next year." I found this to be all true. The schools, hospitals, reading-rooms, and university, were.all there, and all in useful operation ; so that life in the Province may be said to be a happy life, and one in ; which men and women may and do have food to eat, and clothes to wear, books to read, and education to enable them to read the books. The Province is now (1873) twenty-four years old, and has 70,000 inhabitants, and above four million sheep. Poor Western Australia is forty-five years old, and, with a territory so large, that an Otago could be taken from, one of its corners without be-ing-missed, it has only 25,000 inhabitants, and less than one million sheep —sheep being more decidedly the staple of Western Australia than of Otago. I do not know that British Colonists have ever succeeded morequickly or more thoroughly than they have in Otago. They have a good climate, good soil, and mineral wealth; and they have not had convicts, nor has the land been wasted by great grants. In founding Western Australia but little attention was paid either to climate or soil : land was given away in huge quantities, and convicts weie introduced to remedy the;evils, and to supply the want of labor which that system of granting lands produced. And in Western Australia gold has not been found. I know no two off-shoots from Gr,eat Britain which show a greater contrast.