Instances such as these of the want of communication between one district and another are now very rare indeed in these islands. But if we look to countries intimately connected with our own, we shall find no lack of examples of a state of commercial intercourse attending a want of roads. The gold-fields of Australia have largely stimulated the export of manufactured goods from Great Britain. One of the colonists at Sydney writes thus to the chief organ of intelligence in England:--"The roads throughout the colony, bad as they were, are now worse than ever. The inland mails cannot run by night, and stick fast and upset in all directions by day. Communication with the interior towns is possible only at enormous cost. The price of conveying a ton of goods from Sydney to Bathurst, about 130 miles, is eight times the freight of the same quantity from London to Sydney. In cost of conveyance London and Liverpool are, in fact, only sixteen miles from Sydney by land, though the distance by sea is 16,000. We here see daily the most striking illustration of the truth that 'Seas but join the regions they divide.' Cargoes are poured into the seaports with the greatest facility, and then the distribution is suddenly checked. Hence the enormous rents of stores, cessation of demand, and the necessity of forced sales, with the natural consequence--heavy losses to the exporters, who perhaps wonder how trade with Australia can be so unprofitable, scarcely suspecting one of the main causes of its uncertainty. English merchants might do worse than help to open up the internal communications of this continent." The city of Sydney has a wharfage two miles in extent. The communication from the port to the interior is thus described:--"Imagine the Great Western Railroad, instead of terminating in a splendid station, with every means of conveying and removing goods to roads in every direction, ending suddenly in swamp, forest, and sand, through which, by dint of lashing, and swearing, and unloading, and reloading, a team of bullocks and a dray drag their Manchester goods ten miles _per diem_, at 50_l._ or 80_l._ per ton for the journey. The channel of trade is all that civilization, science, and capital can make it, from the threshold of the Manchester factory to the edge of the Sydney wharf. There it breaks suddenly, and beyond all is primitive, rude, and barbarous in the means of conveyance. The bale of goods last unloaded from the railway train is transferred to the bullock dray, to begin its 'crawl' up the country, costing all its freight from England for every twenty miles. It cannot be otherwise. There are no passable roads." [Illustration: Modern Syrian Cart.]