The first labourers introduced into the district were by private intervention, and though extraneous to our tale, we may be pardoned for mentioning it here. The prime mover of this scheme was the Rev. Dr. Lang, who was at the time a member of the Colonial legislature, and than whom no greater benefactor to the colonies, and no sterner advocate for the rights and privileges of the colonists existed or exists. He was foremost in all works of reform and public utility. He seemed to be gifted with a prescience of the colonist's requirements, and was indefatigable in his exertions for their advancement and amelioration. He is the antipodean agitator, and the acknowledged benefactor of his fellow colonists in their land of adoption. Many of the privileges of the Australian constitution owe their existence to Dr. Lang's indomitable perseverance and skill, and many of the most sapient enactments bear the impress of his mental perspicuity. He is the father of Australia, and his name will long remain to the people "as familiar as household words."
Perceiving the great want of labour in the new settlement he was the first who took any active part in the procuration of the desideratum. In pursuit of this object in the year 1846 or 1847 he introduced a bill into the legislature of New South Wales, having for its object the introduction of an industrial class of immigrants into Moreton Bay. His proposed plan was to induce the government to offer a small grant of land to every immigrant arriving in the colony at his own expense, equivalent to the amount of money actually paid for the passage. But the project met with some opposition from the ministry of the day, and not until after considerable perseverance did he receive assurances of their assent. Being suddenly called to England on private affairs Dr. Lang left his pet scheme in the hands of a colleague to procure for it the formal sanction of the country; and he commenced to act upon the assurance given him in the colonies by organizing a system of emigration during his stay in England. This was in the years 1847 and 1848, when, after continually drawing the attention of the middle classes of Great Britain to the eligibility of Moreton Bay as a place for emigration, and holding out the inducement of remission of the passage-money emigrants would pay in an equivalent grant of land in the colonies, he succeeded in the latter year in despatching three ships freighted with intending settlers. Their arrival in the colony, though of considerable benefit to the community there established, was fraught with many inconveniences and privations to themselves. The Colonial government ignored their title to grants of land; and the newly arrived immigrants found themselves, upon landing in the country, disappointed in their expectations, many of them destitute, and all in a place hardly reclaimed from the wilderness of the bush, where no preparation had been made for their reception. They were, therefore, disgusted with what they considered the fraud that had been practised upon them, and were loud in their declamation of those who had enticed them from their comfortable homes to be subjected to the misery and discomforts they had then to endure. Under these circumstances piteous were the communications made to friends in the "fatherland," and dreadful the detail of their distress in the far distant land of promise.
Their case, however, attracted some little notice from the local authorities, and a piece of land adjoining the town was allotted them, on which to erect dwellings. On this they settled, calling it Fortitude Valley, from the name of one of the vessels that had conveyed them thither; and when they got over their mortification, and gave their minds to industry, they speedily transformed the almost impenetrable bush into a scene of life and animation. The first privations of settlement very soon succumbed to comfort and independence, and "the valley" shortly became a populous suburb of the town of Brisbane, and, at the period of our story, closely approximated to, if not equalled it, in population. The settlers themselves, introduced under so unfavourable auspices, were not long in immensely improving their condition, and many of them, in the course of a few years, rose to positions of comfort, eminence, and opulence; and if they ever reverted to the period of their immigration, must have done so with feelings of thankfulness and satisfaction.
From this period the influx of population continued, and the condition in which the district flourished may be gathered from the following tables:—
| The entire district | |||
| In 1846, | contained | 2,257 | souls |
| 1851, | " | 10,296 | " |
| 1856 | " | 22,232 | " |
| And was estimated, | |||
| In 1861, | to contain | 30,000 | souls. |
| The town of Brisbane, of which we wish more particularly to allude, | |||
| In 1846, | contained about | 500 | souls |
| 1851, | the population was | 2,500 | " |
| 1856, | " " " | 4,400 | " |
| And in 1861 | was calculated to contain | 8,000 | " |
Brisbane presents now a far different aspect to what it did some few years back. As we have said, it is pleasantly and, both in a sanitary and commercial point of view, admirably situated. From an obscure settlement in the bush it has become a thriving town, with some good streets, substantial stone and brick houses, stores, warehouses, and wharves, and with shops that would not disgrace many a fashionable thoroughfare in the British metropolis. It is possessed of spacious and commodious government buildings, a gaol, mechanics' school of arts, an hospital, several banking establishments, and fully a dozen churches and other places of worship. The surrounding country, that was only a few years before a wild waste, has mostly been cleared and put under cultivation; and the banks of the river far above, and considerably below the town, are studded with farms and gentlemen's seats, some elegantly and tastefully constructed with a view both to comfort and the exigencies of the climate. The town is further possessed of two steam saw-mills; one daily, and another bi-weekly newspaper; weekly steam and continual sailing communication with Sydney, and a dawning direct trade with England. Five steamers ply on the river, and a daily coach runs by land to Ipswich, and an export trade is done to the extent of considerably over half a million sterling annually. The climate is salubrious—the heat ranging, in the shade, between the means of 80° in summer, and 50° in winter; and the soil of the neighbourhood has been proved to be productive of a greater variety of plants than any other country in the world. Coupled with wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, peas, and a variety of other English edibles, its products comprise many of a tropical nature, the practicability of the growth of which has been fully demonstrated. Bananas, pine-apples, pumpkins, melons, figs, grapes, peaches, maize, and sweet potatoes, are common articles of culture; while indigo, arrow-root, sugar-cane, and cotton, flourish as in their native climes.
Of the latter product we would fain say a few words en passant, as its production of late has been a question that has been much agitated in Great Britain, and received some attention in the colonies. We believe the experiment of its growth was first tried upon the joint suggestion of an influential settler of New South Wales, Mr. T. S. Mort of Sydney, and the Rev. Dr. Lang. The former gentleman procured a supply of the best sea-island American seed, and also an instrument called "a gin" for cleaning the seed from the cotton, and placed them at the disposal of the settlers of Moreton Bay. The seeds were planted, germinated, and yielded cotton of the first description; but difficulties arose which cultivators were unable to surmount. The first was the impracticable nature of the instrument they were possessed of for cleaning. It was found to be useless, and all similar apparatuses that were subsequently introduced, and constructed on ideas suggested to the minds of local mechanical geniuses, equally failed to perform the requisite work with cleanliness and precision. Though this was in itself almost insurmountable, the greatest drawback to the culture of the cotton was the rainy weather, which usually set in just as the cotton was ripening; destroying the crop, and inflicting serious loss on the cultivator. It was, however, discovered that in the Moreton Bay climate the plant became a perennial; and that, after the first year's growth, the pods ripened considerably earlier and avoided the wet weather; while the staple of the cotton improved with the age of the plant. Satisfactory as was this discovery, the first failure militated against its general cultivation; for most of the farmers in the district, being dependent for their subsistence on their yearly crops, could not afford to experimentalize, notwithstanding that they were certain of an ultimately remunerative crop. A subsequent attempt to cultivate the cotton was tried with no better success. Though the staple was produced none of the cleaning machines to be had were efficacious; and no means being procurable to extract the seed from the cotton, it was sent to England in its raw state to be separated there. The cotton was cleaned by hand-labour in some of the penitentiaries of the "old country;" and when submitted to judges of the article, was pronounced to be the finest specimen ever introduced into the country. But these repeated failures damped the cotton-growing ardour of the people; and, being able otherwise more profitably to employ their labour and capital, they permitted its culture to be abandoned.
That cotton will eventually become a large export from this district we have no hesitation in affirming, and we believe that the time is not far distant when capitalists in England, interested in the cotton trade, will take up the matter and embark in it. It is an undertaking which we are confident, from the reasons we have expressed, would be found remunerative even with the application of free European labour, and be of considerable benefit to the manufacturers and consumers of the staple. It has been frequently argued in the colony where it was grown that the expense of labour would eat up the whole proceeds of the cotton. But this we are disposed to dispute for many cogent reasons. In the first place, notwithstanding the many assertions to the contrary, Europeans can work at all times in the open air, even under the scorching rays of a mid-summer sun; while the value of the cotton produced, by the peculiar adaptation of the soil, has been found to be of a superior character to even the finest American or Egyptian productions; and, from the fact of the necessity of annual planting being avoided, the expense of production after the first year is reduced by more than one half. These facts at once disarm of its force the statement that cotton cultivators in Queensland could not compete with slave-grown produce without the aid of cheap coolie or lascar labour.
The postulation that without Asiatic skill and economy the cotton cultivation is a chimera, has been assumed by a few interested parties in the colonies, and reverberated by them from mouth to mouth among their own party, without a solitary echo from the mass of the people. It has been advanced in ignorance, and persevered in in dogmatical obstinacy, to the entire subversion of reason and the results of experience. The theory has arisen in a desire of personal aggrandizement by its advocates, who have never dreamt of the consequences that would accrue from an influx of heathenism and depravity, or the detraction from the honour of the colony, and the degradation of our labouring fellow-countrymen and colonists. It is happily only a party cry, and that only of so meagre a nature, that it is almost an inaudible squeak. But though insignificant as it is in the country where it originated, by its propagation and circulation in the press, its virus has been made to travel through the entire arterial system of the commonwealth; which is thus made to believe in the moral gangrene of this distant member of the empire. But to return.
Before we allowed ourselves to be led into the foregoing digression we spoke of the land and water communication to the town of Ipswich; which reminds us of the existence of that important town; and of which we also crave permission, while on our topographical subject, to say a few words.