Encouraging emigration was vital to the successful establishment of the new colony. George Fife Angas engaged John Stephens, an experienced journalist in England, to write on the subject of South Australia and in 1839 appeared The Land of Promise: being an authentic and impartial history of the rise and progress of the new British Province of South Australia; including particulars descriptive of its soil, climate, natural productions etc. and proofs of its superiority to all other British Colonies. This was quickly followed in the same year by this 2nd edition, with a different title, which included further information about the colony. The books were largely drawn from letters sent to Britain by people recently settled in South Australia, with commentary by Stephens.

South Australia was described in glowing terms and compared most favourably with other Australian colonies and indeed, with anywhere else on Earth.
"Ours", says the editor of the South Australian Gazette, "is the climate of Italy; not of the Campagna da Roma, but of Nice or Naples...The climate far surpasses France." "To say that all previous descriptions of this magnificent region fall far short of the reality, is," says the same writer elsewhere, "saying nothing; no past, and no present description can do it justice." p. 41

The climate was regarded as very healthy: Mr David Maclaren, the South Australian Company's manager, bears an equally strong testimony to the curative effects of the climate..."I am persuaded that South Australia will prove restorative to those affected with consumption...The climate is delightful, and instances are not wanting of its sanative and restorative influence." p. 46

In his final word on the climate of South Australia Stephens quotes an unnamed Irish writer, "in South Australia at least, the climate of Paradise appears to have survived the fall." p. 46

Stephens himself arrived in Adelaide in January 1843 and established the Adelaide Observer and shortly after acquired the South Australian  Register newspaper. He died in 1850.