or mixed with the flour or meal of other low-priced descriptions of grain. Maize has hitherto been very little used as an article of food in New South Wales, partly from having been given in the form of meal as part of their rations to the convicts, under the idea of its being an inferior sort of food, but chiefly from the circumstance of the very poorest classes of the community in that colony being able at all times to purchase wheaten bread, which they prefer. I scarcely expected to find the common English potato cultivated successfully at Moreton Bay; but both at Brisbane and Ipswich I found them quite as good as they had been in Sydney at any time during the year 1845. They are cultivated there, however, rather because most people are accustomed to the use of them, and prefer them to any other vegetable, than because they are peculiarly suited to the soil and climate; for the potato of the growth of Port Phillip, ten degrees farther south, is greatly superior to the best I saw anywhere at Moreton Bay. The sweet potato, however, seems to be peculiarly adapted to the soil and climate of Cooksland. It is propagated either. from the root or from cuttings of the vine, as it is called, although when propagated in the latter of these modes, it degenerates rapidly. This tuber is astonishingly prolific. Dr. Simpson had been getting some planted in his garden at Red Bank, when I had the pleasure of seeing him there, and in accompanying me through the garden, he observed that maize and the sweet potato were the staple and never-failing agricultural productions of the district, and that many of the tubers turned out from the plants I saw in progress would in all likelihood be eleven pounds in weight each. Mr. Wade had seen one that weighed 18 lbs., and Mr. Kent one of 23 lbs. ; but I have since heard of one that had been forwarded from the district to Sydney, prior to the arrival of any of these gentlemen, that was called "the infant," from its resemblance to a child, and that weighed considerably upwards of 30 lbs. When propagated from the root in rich alluvial soil, the K sweet potato will yield 40 tons per acre. As an article of food this tuber is very little if at all inferior to the common potato, and when mashed up with milk and pepper into a sort of pudding, it forms a most palateable article of food. The Americans are very fond of · it, especially for ship stores, and an American whaling Captain who had been wrecked on the coast to the northward, and had reached Moreton Bay in his boats, gave it as his opinion that if the port were only properly surveyed and made known, the facility of obtaining maize-meal and sweet potatoes, with the other supplies that are likely to be procurable there at a very moderate cost, would be sure to attract many of the South Sea whalers of that nation, in preference to any other Australian port. But the sweet potato would be highly valuable to an industrious population settled at Moreton Bay, not so much as an article of food for man, as for the feeding of pigs and the curing of bacon. After having been reared for a certain period on these tubers, a comparatively small quantity of maize, to be supplied daily to the animals, would bring their flesh to the requisite consistency for all economical purposes, and a most profitable branch of industry, (especially for persons of the humbler classes, as it would require no capital to commence with,) might thus be created, and another promising channel of Colonial commerce opened up. In this observation I am happy to say I am strengthened by the concurrence of the late Mayor of Sydney, (Henry Macdermott, Esq.,) who had also visited Moreton Bay, and to whom I found the same idea had also occurred. When the Government Garden at Brisbane was kept in proper order, arrow-root was cultivated in it, by way of experiment, and with complete success; the quality of the article being pronounced by the officers of the Settlement equal to any they had ever seen, and the quantity gathered being at the rate of four tons an acre. In the garden of Dr. Ballow, the Colonial Surgeon of the establishment at Brisbane, I observed the pome granate, the orange-tree, the cotton-tree, (Sea Island,) the vine, the peach, the pear, the sugar-cane, the bamboo, the mulberry tree, the castor-oil tree, the banana, (two varieties,) the pine-apple, the fruiting passion-flower, chrysanthemums, larkspurs, roses, strawberries, cabbages, onions, potatoes, carrots, peas and beans, &c., &c., all growing luxuriantly in the open air, and all apparently quite at home. In short, the range of productions to which the soil and climate appear to be perfectly adapted, is very extensive; for, situated as it is on the verge of the torrid, although actually in the temperate zone, the peculiar productions of both of these zones seem to regard Cooksland as a sort of neutral territory or debateable land, equally common to both; and which, therefore, like Britain and America very recently, in regard to the Oregon Territory, they consider they have each an equally good right to consider as part and parcel of their respective domains. I shall make a few observations on some of the more important of these productions, principally with a view to point out those of which it appears to me it would be alike the interest and the duty of the mother-country to encourage and promote the cultivation. In regard, then, to the vine, Dr. Simpson and Dr. Leichhardt are both pretty strongly of opinion that Moreton Bay will never become a vine-growing country, from the circumstance that the periodical rains of January and February come just at the season when the grapes are getting ripe, and require the sun, and not rain, to bring them to the requisite maturity for the manufacture of wine. "The rains come," observed Dr. Simpson, when speaking of the vine, "when we don't want them."* In this opinion, however, there are intelligent persons in the district who do not concur with these gentlemen, and who therefore desire to see the culture of the vine fairly tried in it; but in the * Triste lupus stabulis, maturis frugibus imbres Arboribus venti. face of an opinion resting on such authority, I should not like to assume the responsibility of advising vinegrowers from the continent of Europe (for it is there only that such persons are to be had) to emigrate to Moreton Bay for the cultivation of the vine. There are districts enough both in New South Wales and in Port Phillip admirably adapted for that species of cultivation, and in which there are no such periodical rains in January and February to destroy the vintage as there are to the northward. And there are plenty of other objects to which industry can be applied with the certain prospect of an adequate remuneration for labour at Moreton Bay, even although that district should prove to be unsuited for the cultivation of the vine. It is not desirable, indeed, that any one country should be capable of producing everything; for where, in that case, would be the necessity for the intercourse of nations, which Infinite Wisdom and Beneficence has so beautifully made to depend upon, and, as it were, to grow out of their mutual wants? I do not know, however, a more promising speculation at the present moment, for industrious families and individuals of the class of gardeners, in the mothercountry, than to settle as free emigrants on any of the rivers of Cooksland, and especially on the Brisbane, for the cultivation of the banana and the pine-apple, and other similar intertropical plants and fruits for the southern markets of New South Wales, Port Phillip, and Van Dieman's Land, which are now all open and easily and constantly accessible from the northward by steam-navigation. I mention the Brisbane river more particularly, because it is at present the coal-river of the northern division of the great Colony of New South Wales, and will therefore be, at least for some time to come, the principal stream on that part of the east coast for steam-navigation; and also because there is a succession of alluvial flats, of limited extent, but of inexhaustible fertility, along the whole of its course, any one of which would be a perfect fortune to an industrious family of the class I have mentioned; as their produce could be put on board the steam-vessel from the proprietor's own boat at no expense whatever, and conveyed direct to Sydney, the best market in the Colony, probably every week. One of the Bonnymuir Radicals has not more than three acres of land of this description rented from my brother, on the Paterson River, one of the tributaries of the Hunter, in latitude 3210 S., for which he pays a yearly rent of one pound per acre, and from which he derives a comfortable subsistence for his family; cultivating tobacco, potatoes, and such other crops of that description as are suited to the climate in constant succession, and keeping his little farm, or rather large garden, in excellent order. I mention the circumstance to show that, if really industrious and disposed to avail himself of the advantages of his situation, wherever the soil and climate are so pre-eminently in his favour as in the case under consideration, Man wants but little here below, in the article of land; for as the range of productions is much more extensive on the Brisbane River than on the Hunter, while the tropical productions that can be raised on the former of these streams are of muchgreater value than those that can be raised on the latter, the same extent of land in the hands of an industrious person will be of correspondingly greater value on the Brisbane than on the Hunter. Tobacco is an article of produce for which the entire alluvial country throughout the territory of Cooksland is admirably adapted, and for the cultivation of which persons of the class I have just mentioned would be much better suited, from their previous habits and experience, than mere agriculturists. If this narcotic must still be supplied in such vast quantities from beyond seas, for the consumption of the smoking and snuffing population of Europe, why should Great Britain, with all the pseudo-philanthropy of her abolitionist agitation in America, and her expensive Guarda Costas |