‘What are the chief and foremost needs of this waste empire of mine―this desert city?’ soliloquised he. ‘Here I have land enough to satisfy the earth hunger of the most ravenous aspirant of _la terre_. Water in reasonable though perhaps insufficient quantity. What is the great absent factor? Population, a yeoman class, a race of Vavasours, who could use these great levels for the growth of certain semi-tropical crops, who might rear upon them a limited number of stock, who would secure homes for themselves and food for their working oxen; who would remain loyal to me, their powerful yet philosophic ally; who would work for me at reasonable rates at ordinary station work, or any reproductive improvements which I might suggest, and who would thus entirely sweep away the present undesirable relations which have hitherto subsisted between Australian country labourers and their employers. It would not be expensive to provide a school and a teacher for their children, to be paid by results. I should be enabled, by a steady supply of labour, to cultivate a reasonable area. Gardens and experimental industries would of course spring up. The carrying capabilities of Rainbar might be enormously increased by cutting a narrow canal, as Parklands suggested, between the waters of the river and the chain of deep, yet dry lakes at the back of the run. The advantages of labour on one side, of wages on the other, would be mutual. Simultaneously an improvement in the character and quality of the herd would take place. Scientific experiments might be regularly made and recorded as to rainfall and other important matters. The culture of the vine, the orange, even the silkworm, might be introduced; and finally, after a few years, the semi-co-operative community at Rainbar, self-contained, happy, and prosperous, might be pointed out as at least _one_ instance where enlightened theory and successful practice had accomplished an advance in civilisation, had solved the problem of the harmonious interchange of labour and capital, and had interpolated at least one Arcadian chapter in the sad history of mankind.’