d it opened!
That it should be open so soon, was, perhaps, remarkable, only the word
was to be his constant accomplice.

'I had never met Lord John Russell, who made me the offer,' Sir George
explained. 'He was going upon what little I had done, in regard to
Australian affairs, especially a kind of despatch by me on native
administration. After adequate thought, and acting upon good advice, I
confirmed my first resolve to accept the Governor-ship of South
Australia. It was, apparently, to be an onerous post.'

To Adelaide went this Queen's Governor, not yet thirty, his mission the
undoing of a tangle; for South Australia was on the verge of bankruptcy,
almost before it had entered into business. Hardly an acre of land was in
cultivation, and most of the people were in Adelaide with nothing to do,
clamouring for food. Sir George perceived at once that they must be got
on to the land. To have the settlers securely there, from the first,
meant that they were to grow into a nation, not to amass temporary
riches, and then return to an already overcrowded world.

Again, in South Australia, as elsewhere, he endeavoured to carry out what
he regarded as a cardinal principle in the making of a new country. This
was to draw capital direct from the soil, not by the raising of too heavy
loans. How to rear a nation? Keep its conditions of life natural, even
simple; make it self-creative and self-reliant, train it as if it were an
individual. Let it build its national homestead, as a man might lay out
his own little stance of ground. Then, the community would have the
parents' love and pride towards all that had been created. Sir George put
his shoulder to the wheel of the settlers' cart in South Australia, and
shoved until the harvest drove home.

'I ascertained,' he spoke of those efforts, 'that the soil was very
suitable for wheat, and we sowed widely. The crop, vital to the Colony;
depended upon the weather. Would there be enough rain? I often crawled
out of bed in the morning, while it was half-dawn, to ascertain if there
was any promise of rain for that day. The wheat was at the critical
stage, and if I had made the weather, it could not have proved more
suited in its conditions.

'It was the first extensive wheat crop of South Australia; the first
harvest-home of the bunch of people, who had there been shaken on to the
sea-beach. When the wheat had ripened, everybody--including, I am glad to
say, the Governor--turned to th