But in all respects such as that of water,--in regard to pavements, gas, and sewers, in regard to hospitals, lunatic asylums, institutions for the poor, and orphanages,--the cities of Australia stand high; and few are entitled to be ranked higher than Adelaide. I had an opportunity of seeing many of these institutions, including the gaol inside the city and the gaol outside; and I saw some of them under the auspices of one who was perhaps better entitled to judge of them than any other man in the colony. It seemed to me that they were only short of absolute excellence. When I remembered how small was the population, how short a time had elapsed since the place was a wilderness, how limited the means, how necessarily curtailed were the appliances at the command of what we should call such a handful of men,--and when I remembered also what I have seen in our own workhouses at home, what I have heard of some of our own gaols, what but a few years since prevailed in many of our own lunatic asylums,--I could not but think that the people of Adelaide had been very active and very beneficent. Of course every new town founded has the advantage of all the experience of every old town founded before it. It is easier for a new country, than for an old country, to get into good ways. No man has visited new countries with his eyes open without learning so much as that. But, not the less, when the observer sees 60,000 people in a new city, with more than all the appliances of humanity belonging to four times the number in old cities, he cannot refrain from bestowing his meed of admiration. I will now finish my remarks about this town with saying that no city in Australia gives one more fixedly the idea that Australian colonisation has been a success, than does the city of Adelaide. CHAPTER III. LAND.