character and changes of the country on either side, for the one is peculiar and the others are diversified.  My desire is to present such a view of the colony to the minds of my readers, as shall enable them to estimate its advantages and disadvantages.  I would speak of both with equal impartiality and decision.  The grounds of attachment I entertain for this colony rest not on any private stake I have in its pastoral or mineral interests, and I hope the reader will believe that my feelings towards it are such as would only lead me to speak as it really and truly should be spoken of.  There is no country, however fair, that has not some drawback or other.  There are no hopes, however promising, that may not be blighted; no prospects, however encouraging, that may not wither.  Unfitness for the new field of enterprise on which a man may enter—­unpropitious seasons, the designs of others, or unforeseen misfortunes; one or more of these may combine to bring about results very opposite from those we had anticipated.  I would not therefore take upon myself the responsibility of giving advice, but enter upon a general description of the province of South Australia as a tourist, whose curiosity had led him to make inquiries into the capabilities of the country through which he had travelled, and who could therefore speak to other matters, besides the description of landscape or the smoothness of a road.

If we take our departure from Adelaide by the great Northern Road, we shall have to travel 25 miles over the plains, keeping the Mount Lofty Range at greater and less distances on our right, the plains extending in varying breadth to the westward, ere we can pull up at Calton’s Hotel in Gawler Town, where, nevertheless, we should find every necessary both for ourselves and our horses.

That township, the first and most promising on the Northern Road, is, as I have stated, 25 miles from Adelaide; and occupies the angle formed by the junction of the Little Para and the Gawler Rivers; the one coming from south-east, and the other from north-north-east; the traveller approaching from the south therefore, would have to cross the first of these little streams before he can enter the town.

Still, in its infancy, Gawler Town will eventually be a place of considerable importance.  Through it all the traffic of the north must necessarily pass, and here, it appears to me, will be the great markets for the sale or purchase of stock.  From its junction with the Little Para, the Gawler flows to the westward to the shores of St. Vincent’s Gulf.  It has extensive and well wooded flats of deep alluvial soil along its banks, flanked by the plains of Adelaide—­the river line of trees running across them, only with a broader belt of wood, just as the line of trees near Adelaide indicates the course of that river.  If I except these features, and two or three open box-tree forests at no great distance from Albert Town, the plains are almost destitute of timber, and being very level, give an idea of extent they do not really possess, being succeeded by pine forests and low scrub to the north from Gawler Town.