'Not quite. The regulations are these: if a man pays a thousand pounds for a thousand acres, the Government guarantees to spend five hundred in making the land valuable, by placing it in road communication with the external world.'

'That alters the story. Go, and my blessing be with thee, Jack!'

'And I'll be bound,' called out Mrs Douglas, 'that you will be so miserable there in that lonely, desolate forest, that, in sheer desperation, you will marry a shrew to give you some excitement.'

'Which may the gods forfend!' exclaimed the merry bachelor, with becoming solemnity.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHAT MAKES A COLONY PROSPER.

CAPTAIN DOUGLAS sometimes ran against an old colonist in Hobart Town, who was then the man of one idea. The gentleman had been known to the oldest inhabitant from remote antiquity. Some men are said to have been in the mill and come out young again; but his tall, lean figure had undergone no perceptible change for the previous thirty years, and his mental and bodily vigour bid fair for another thirty in advance.

His one idea was a railroad from Hobart Town to Launceston.

Did any one speak of bad times, he would solace the growler with a picture of the railway. When one pronounced the colony destitute of resources, he would say they would reveal themselves upon the opening of the railway. To desponding fathers who saw no fortune for their sons, he unfolded visions of transcendent prosperity upon the birth of the railway.

'But really, Mr Glen, what does a colony of one hundred thousand people want with a railway?' asked the Captain.

'Everything, sir.'

'What good is it to Hobart Town?'

'To bring produce down on the road from Launceston.'

'And what good, then, to Launceston?'

'To bring produce down on the road from Hobart Town.'

'But what good to the interior?'

'Carry off their produce, and bring back cheaper supplies.'

'Still, look at the expense. Can you afford, like the Victorians, to pay forty or fifty thousand pounds a mile for railroads?'

'Those were mad days, and the colony threw away its money.'

'Yet Victoria is far more level than Tasmania, and would present fewer engineering difficulties.'

'Bless my heart, the thing is as easy as possible.' 'For all that, Mr Glen, a very large sum of money

would be wanted, and a heavy interest would be a great burden to the small island.'

'My dear sir, that railway could be profitably made for five thousand pounds a mile. And as to the interest, the returns would pay that, and leave a margin for the gradual payment of the loan.'

'If that could be done, Mr Glen, the thing would be a success.'

'If, indeed! I assure you, sir, it is as simple as A. B. C. Better still, land now useless, because carriage absorbs profits, would become available, and mines could be wrought to advantage. Capitalists would then have no occasion to send out their cash to Melbourne, and labour would be drawn in crowds. The fact is, sir, they are all asleep here. They have been so long fed with the government spoon, that they have no energy to get their own living. The Treasury cow is dry now, and they must look for another milker.' 'I can speak of what railroads have done for India,' observed the other. They are promoting civilization as well as developing wealth.'

'And we have droned long enough here without them. The opening out of a country has a salutary effect, just as the clearing of a forest lets in the sun to sweeten the soil. Our sleepy hollows would then become hives of industry.'

'It is certainly odd that while all your colonial neighbours had some iron-roads you should have been so long without.'

N

'There is only one way of accounting for that. We lost heart, Captain Douglas. After cracking up our island as the gem of the ocean, we had dropped down to a belief that it was the most wretched, God-forsaken place in the universe.'

'No wonder, then, you lost so many of your people.' 'Yes, plenty went off on the principle of rats and the sinking ship. But there is no sinking after all. The tight little island will right itself very soon. The runaway rats may then return to the bracing air of our mountains, and the beauty of our valleys.'

'I don't see, Mr Glen, that your railway should not pay part of the interest at first, besides benefitting the country.'

'If it can pay in a poor country like Germany, it ought to do here, especially as our working expenses would not be on the Victorian scale of extravagance.'

'Working men would certainly find this a more enjoyable climate to labour in.'

'And plenty of work there would be for them to do. What I want to see is a line across the island, and then branches from Hobart Town to Port Davey, cutting the Huon forests; from Campbell Town to the east coast, cutting through the gold and coal districts of Fingal; and from Launceston to Emu Bay, opening up the best land in the world.'

'Is there not plenty of metallic wealth to the north-west?'

'Abundance. Why, there are, according to our

late government geologist, hundreds of thousands of tons of iron ore, from 55 to 75 per cent., quite surface workings, near Ilfracombe.'

'It surely is worth constructing these iron-roads, too, for other than material advantages.'

'Very true, Captain Douglas. They will not only enable produce to get out of a district, but valuable objects to get in. There will be books as well as groceries finding their way into distant homesteads. Newspapers will reach the workman, and the Bible enter his family. Had this island been opened up this way a few years ago, many of our young people that have wandered off to other colonies would have stayed here, and been a vast deal happier by it.'

Captain Douglas was very fond of a chat with a farmer at no great distance, and on his way to town. Mr Richards was a noble specimen of a thorough colonial. Strong in frame, active in movement, constant in energy, abounding in resources, he was the man for labour. He knew how to do work, and how to get it done. He did it well, and got it done well. Though impelled by the very enterprise of colonial life into operations that were not always successful, he knew he had acted with good judgment at the time, and submitted to the vicissitudes of fortune, especially capricious across the line. With a good home, a beautiful garden, a well wrought farm, a splendid family, good health, and an excellent reputation, what could he want to complete happiness?