Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/147

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
122
RICH ALLUVIAL SOIL.

rivers, which soil extends in continuous narrow borders of brush land along their banks. The inexhaustible productiveness of this kind of land I have already alluded to; it is unknown in European soils, and can only be paralleled by that of the alluvial flats of tropical countries. These rich brush lands are not available in the present state of the colony; for it would never answer to clear them of the dense mass of indigenous vegetation which encumbers them, for the culture of the mere ordinary agricultural productions of New South Wales. Should cheap labourers, such as Chinese or Coolies, ever be introduced into the colony, it is not improbable that, at some future period, the banks of these northern rivers may be diversified by plantations of sugar-cane, cotton, coffee, rice, &c.; for all these productions have been ascertained from experiments to succeed well north of Port Macquarie. There would be one great advantage also, that the climate would be better suited to Europeans, than that of almost any other country in which these productions are grown. In the meanwhile, the brush land, which has been cleared of trees in the districts of Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay, and the naturally unwooded alluvial flats, which the squatters on the intermediate rivers cultivate, yield, with little trouble, crops of maize, more certain, abundant, and of better quality, than the central parts of New South Wales; wheat, as I have before observed, grows better there on alluvial land, in dry