The farmer therefore owns the land. He has bought it probably on credit, beginning simply with savings made from two or three years of labour, and owing the price, or the greater part of it, to the government. I will presently say a word as to the system of deferred payments for land which prevails. His homestead is too frequently bare and ugly, without garden or orchard or anything like an English farmyard around it; but it is substantial, and it is his own. The price of the land has probably been something between 20_s._ and 40_s._ an acre,--and he calculates that by growing wheat under the existing agricultural circumstances around him, he can live, and bring up his family, and free himself from his debt within ten years. If he be steady and industrious he can do so,--and he does do so. He does not confine his industry to his own farm; but in shearing-time he shears for some large squatter, or he keeps a team of bullocks and brings down wool to the railway station or to the city, or perhaps he takes a month’s work at some gold-digging,--for even in South Australia there are gold-fields, though they be not prominent among the resources of the colony. In this way he lives and is independent;--and who will dare to find fault with a man who does live, and becomes independent, and makes a property exclusively by his own industry? His life is not picturesque, but he cares nothing for that. His children go to the public school,--at which he pays perhaps 2_s._ a week for three of them,--and they have plenty to eat and drink. His wife has plenty to eat and drink, and has a decent gown, and material comforts around her. He has plenty to eat and drink, and a decent coat if he cares for it. And he is nobody’s servant. Nevertheless he is a very bad farmer, and unless he mend his ways soon the land which he now ploughs will cease to give him the plenty which he desires. It may not improbably come to pass that a considerable portion of the land occupied by farmers for the purpose of growing wheat, will, under the present system, cease altogether to give sufficient increase on the seed to pay even for the labour of ploughing and reaping. In that case it will go back to pastoral purposes and the farmer will remove elsewhere,--as has already happened in certain districts of the colony. But, though the area is immense, the area which will produce wheat is limited; and thus the well-being of South Australia may be much affected, unless a less wasteful use be made of the land.