Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter. By Oscar
de Satge. (Hurst and Blackett. 10s 6d.)—Mr. de Satge went out to Australia nearly fifty years ago, spending ninety days on the journey, and living largely on salt pork, both things suggesting the contrast between past and present. His first work was in the office of the Commissioner of Goldfields in Victoria, where he had (at seventeen years of age) a salary of 8300. Thence he war sent to Bendigo, in the goldfields themselves. After this he joined his brother at a "run " in Moreton Bay (then in New South Wales). He worked at other places in this Colony, but finally took up with Queensland (separated from New South Wales in 1859). This country and its life, social, commercial, and political, are the chief subject of this volume. The " squatting " portions of the book are probably the most valuable. They will furnish mportant materials for a future history of the industrial growth of the Colony. But we must own to feeling more interested in the chapters that deal with " Parliamentary Life." In 1869 Mr. de Satge was returned to the Legislative Assembly for Clermont. He was a member of the Pastoralist party,—one of the many forms which the " Haves," a faction as old as the world itself, have assumed. (There were then only twenty- eight members in att.) Afterwards our author was returned for the "Mitchell District," with a mandate to oppose a great rail- way scheme by which a certain company was to have the right to make railways from Brisbane to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to receive for their work 12,000,000 acres in alternate blocks of 10,000 acres on each side of the line. From Brisbane to the Gulf is about 600 miles (as the crow flies). If we say 700 miles at .Q4,000 per mile (Mr. de Satgb says that railways in Queensland can now be made for £3,000 per mile), we get a cost of something less than 9.3,000,L00. So that the syndicate would have acquired 12,000,000 acres for five shillings per acre, with a railway to the good. The Government was actually selling land at double the price, and even this was thought by Mr. de Satge and his friends as too low. But we must not commit ourselves on Queensland politics. They remind one of the perpetual Agrarian question in Roman history. We must not forget to mention some very exciting stories of bushrangers. One might say that these
represent the opposite pole of life, did we not remember what the pirate said to Alexander the Great : " We follow the same trade, I with a single galley, you with fleets and armies."
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