be well if these and
similar pests of society were confined, like their namesakes of the
ocean, to the more sultry latitudes, but unfortunately they are not
altogether without their antitypes and imitators in Great Britain.

[205] The system of starting from a certain fixed sum per acre, named
"the upset price," and selling land at whatever it will fetch beyond
this, is established in most of the Australian colonies. The fund thus
produced is spent in encouraging emigration and providing labourers.

There is another character, which, if not peculiar to Australia, is
called into being only in those colonies where a large extent of land
in its natural state remains unappropriated to any individuals. The
_squatters_, as they are called, are men who occupy with their cattle,
or their habitations, those spots on the confines of a colony or estate,
which have not as yet become any person's private property. By the
natural increase of their flocks and herds, many of these squatters have
enriched themselves; and having been allowed to enjoy the advantages of
as much pasture as they wanted in the bush, without paying any rent
for it to the government, they have removed elsewhere when the spot was
sold, and have not unfrequently gained enough to purchase that or some
other property. Thus the loneliness, the privations, and the perils of a
pastoral life in the bush, have often gained at length their recompense,
and the squatter has been converted into a respectable settler. But this
is too bright a picture to form an average specimen of the class which
we are describing. Unfortunately, many of these squatters have been
persons originally of depraved and lawless habits, and they have made
their residence at the very outskirts of civilization a means of
carrying on all manner of mischief. Or sometimes they choose spots of
waste land near a high road, where the drays halt to get water for the
night, and there the squatters knock up what is called "a hut." In such
places stolen goods are easily disposed of, spirits and tobacco are
procured in return for these at "the sly grog shops," as they are
called; and in short they combine the evils of a gypsy encampment and a
lonely beer-shop in England, only from the scattered population, the
absence of influential inhabitants, and the deplorably bad characters of
the men keeping them, these spirit shops are worse places than would be
tolerated in this country. It is stated that almost