Africa's interior is scarcely less mapped out and explored than Central Australia. There are thousands of square miles upon which the foot of a white man has never trod. Tartary has its steppes, America its prairies, Egypt its deserts, and Australia its "scrub." The plains so called are covered by a low-growing bush, compact and almost impenetrable in places, composed of a dwarf eucalyptus. The appearance of a large reach of this scrub is desolate indeed, the underlying soil being a sort of yellow sand which one would think could surely produce nothing else. We were told of one large section of South Australia ten thousand miles square, which is solely covered with this scrub. "Yet," said our informant, himself an agriculturist of experience and a large landholder, "experiment has shown that if a watercourse were turned upon this ground and the scrub cleared away, it would give us a soil nearly as fertile as the valley of the Nile." And he added: "After a year or two more of useless talk, irrigation will be applied in all directions."
The climate of Adelaide and the surrounding country is of much greater warmth than that of the region about Brisbane, Sydney, or Melbourne. It is not uncommon for the thermometer to register 100° in the shade during the summer months. The vegetable products are almost identical with those of South Africa, and the soil is equally productive, yielding crop after crop with no signs of exhaustion. The food of the common people is cheap, abundant, and good. Mutton and beef do not cost one tenth as much as is charged for them in England or America, while bread is but four cents per pound. The flour produced here we were told won prizes wherever it was exhibited, and was considered as ranking with the very best manufactured anywhere. All kinds of vegetables are also cheap, and thanks to the Chinamen they are also in good supply: no one but John pretends to raise them. Everybody eats meat three times a day, rich and poor; but of the cooking,--well, as we cannot say anything complimentary about it, we will not dilate upon this theme.
The large number of German residents in and about Adelaide is particularly observable, and whole villages were found to exist in South Australia where German was the one language spoken. This people form the best class of settlers, for they come hither with a well-considered purpose, almost always in the direction of agricultural enterprise; and this they pursue undeviatingly. Many of them are from the Rhine districts of Germany, and interest themselves in the planting and culture of the grape and in winemaking, having brought with them a special and valuable experience obtained in their native land.