That such a railway should be made on the speculation of trade returns is impossible; but if the South Australian parliament be in earnest, and if the colony will give her land,--land which she at present has in such abundance that she cannot use it,--it may be that funds sufficient for commencing the railway will be produced. It is proposed that the land shall be given as the line is made,--so many acres for every mile of railway. The entire territory contiguous to the line is not to be given. The land is to be divided into blocks, of which alternate blocks are to be surrendered, and alternate blocks retained, by the government, so that the new owners of the territory may be constrained as to price and other terms of sale. Of course the company would fail in selling if it charged more than the government, or proposed terms less advantageous than those offered by the government. But there seem to lack two ingredients for the thorough success of such a scheme,--a town at the end, such as was San Francisco when the railway was proposed across the Rocky Mountains from Chicago to that city, and a wheat-growing country for its support, such as California,--and such as Oregon is, and the Utah territory. I do not believe that I shall live to see a railway made from Adelaide to Port Darwin, or even that younger men than I will do so. The greatness of many accomplished enterprises is now teaching men to believe that everything is possible; and they who are sanguine are falling into the error,--directly opposite to that of our grandfathers,--of thinking that nothing is too hard to be accomplished. I cannot believe in the expenditure of £10,000,000 on the construction of a railway which is to run through a desert to nowhere. But I do believe in the gold-fields and pastures of Port Darwin, and in the beauties of the Roper and Victoria Rivers; and, hot though the country be, I think that another young colony will found itself on the western shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. CHAPTER VII. LEGISLATURE AND GOVERNMENT.