So much for the operations of single parties; but when once a road to a new market is opened numbers follow up the tracks of the first hardy adventurer, and the operations of the whole combined are not less startling in their magnitude than are those of enterprising individuals. From New South Wales into the province of South Australia the Overlanders introduced, in 1839:
4,200 Head of Horned Cattle,
130 Horses,
35,000 Sheep;
and within the three succeeding months of 1840, upwards of:
7,000 Head of Horned Cattle,
100 Horses,
25,000 Sheep;
making, in fifteen months, a total of:
11,200 Head of Horned Cattle,
230 Horses,
60,000 Sheep.
The value in pounds of the above stock being in the whole about:
Horned Cattle 112,000,
Horses 13,800,
Sheep 105,000,
Total: 230,800 pounds.
And this wonderful amount of stock was brought into a country which, three years before, only resounded to the war-cry of the naked savage; and the soil of which, hardened, baked, and unstirred for centuries, nursed not within its bosom seeds from which a plenteous harvest might spring, but, as if irritated by neglect and indifference, gave forth unwillingly only acid roots and scanty bulbs.