sentences:  By 1840 squatters were recognized as being amongst the wealthiest men in the colony of New South Wales, many of them from upper and middle-class English and Scottish families.As unoccupied land with frontage to permanent water became more scarce, the acquisition of runs increasingly required larger capital outlays.A "run" is defined in Christopher Pemberton Hodgson's 1846 "Reminiscences of Australia, with Hints on the Squatter's Life" as