In the following year (on 29th September, 1859), the Superintendent, in his opening address to the Council, stated that he had prepared a scheme by which he believed it to be practicable to furnish a thoroughly efficient system of railway transport throughout the most valuable portion of the Province, and to bring the remotest agricultural land into practical and inexpensive communication with the seaport. He pointed out that ordinary cart roads, though adapted for the convenient working of farms at a short distance from the market, would not be of any great advantage to the agriculturist whose land lay a day's journey or more from the consumer's depot. The Land Survey maps showed that the greater portion of the best land within convenient distance from the market had already been sold, and he anticipated that the balance would find purchasers within the next two years. So soon, therefore, as the land within a comparatively limited area had been sold it did not appear that the demand for agricultural land would be sufficient to supply the proportion the present proceeds of land sales bore to the gross provincial revenue. The proposed railway lines would give an immediate guarantee of profitable occupation, the strongest incentive to the purchasers of land.