CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONIAL CITIES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 230, 27 June 1872, Page 9

CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONIAL CITIES.

A traveller, writing in the " Speotator," says — It has been a fortunate chance for Sydney that it grew up irregularly, knowiug no sudden increase 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 last, some streets in which the houses sprung up naturally along a pathway or a bullocktrack with the ground, and not a few which are narrow enoug'i for the houses to overshadow the road. In another respect Sydney shows signs of antiquity. It still keeps here and there with 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 in time. Colonial taste generally prefers Melbourne, with its massive blue-stone palaces, bank and warehouse, 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 certainly 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 thero is a perceptible difference between American and Australian cities. The times of rapid growth and suptribundant vitality seem to have loft our continent. Melbourne has a Post Office that may match any in Europe, but 1 he dimensions of its campanile have been curtailed. Everywhere you may hear the same story. There is no real distress, but there is general stagnation ; and tho expenditure of past years has to be reduced in accordance with present means. The lesson is hard for individuals and for States. But passing froTi the cities to the country, one feels that great and steady progresses being made. Hundreds of miles of land over which our sheep grazed ten years ago are now taken up by farmers who are setcled in substantial homes. It is sfill 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 appe trances 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 of laud at £2 and JB3 an acre, under a system, it is true, of deferred payments. I still think that a poor man has a better chance of getting on in 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 on 3 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 ho found himself unable to get 30 bushels off his land he should throw up lua farm and buy new land. This system of workind out the land and leaving it is in fact universal in the States. It is raroly practised in Australia.