growers and the cotton-planters of Brisbane and Rockhampton, the rich tropical settlers would be as certain of the foremost position in any future confederation as they were in America when the struggle lay only between the Carolinas and New England. As it is, just as America was first saved by the coal of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Australia will be saved by the coal of New South Wales. Queensland possesses some small stores of coal, but the vast preponderance of acreage of the great power of the future lies in New South Wales. On my return from a short voyage to the north, I visited the coal-field of New South Wales, at Newcastle, on the Hunter. The beds are of vast extent. They lie upon the banks of a navigable river, and so near to the surface, that the best qualities are raised, in a country of dear labour, at 8s. or 9s. a ton, and delivered on board ship for 12s. For manufacturing purposes the coal is perfect; for steam use it is, though somewhat 'dirty,' a serviceable fuel; and copper and iron are found in close proximity to the beds. The Newcastle and Port Jackson fields open a brilliant future to Sydney in these times, when coal is king in a far higher degree than was ever cotton. To her black beds the colony will owe not only manufactures, bringing wealth and population, but that leisure which is begotten of riches-leisure that brings culture, and love of harmony and truth."

1 Dilke, "Greater Britain." pp. 300, 301.

CHAPTER XXV.

WEST AUSTRALIA AND WASTE AUSTRALIA.

ORIGIN OF THE SWAN RIVER SETTLEMENT, OR WESTERN AUSTRALIA -EARLY MISFORTUNES OF THE COLONY-ITS PRESENT CONDITION-EXPLORATIONS IN THE INTERIOR OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT-THE FIRST DISCOVERERS-STURT, MURRAY, EYRE, LEICHHARDT-STURT AGAIN-STUART-BURKE AND WILLSTHE CHARACTER OF THE INTERIOR.

[1827-1865.]

LDER as an independent colony than South Australia, Victoria, or Queensland, but less prosperous than any of them, is the settlement of Western Australia, originally intended to consist of all the great islandcontinent which was not comprised in New South Wales.

Swan River, round whose shores still clusters most of the colony's feeble life, was first visited in 1697 by Vlaming, a Dutch navigator, who gave it its name in consequence of the number of black swans that he there found; but little was thought of the district till 1827, when Captain Stirling, of the Success, called attention to it, and urged the importance of its immediate occupation so as to prevent its being converted, as was thought likely, into a French settlement. Early in 1829 Captain Freemantle was sent in the Challenger to take formal possession of the country on behalf of the English Crown; and

before the close of the year twenty-five ships had arrived at Swan River from England, bearing 850 emigrants, 57 horses, 106 pigs, 204 cows, and 1096 sheep. In 1830 there arrived 1125 other settlers, and more horses, pigs, cows, and sheep, and there were further, though not very considerable, importations of men and animals in the following years.

But the first colonists found themselves lodged on a barren coast, unfit for the agricultural and pastoral enterprise for which, had other things been favourable, they had no great aptitude, and they were seriously harassed by the multitudes of hostile savages, who resented this intrusion on their barbaric privileges. Great misery was the result, and it was not lessened by the civil, naval, and military officers in charge of the experiment, who divided among themselves about 300,000 acres of the best land that was to be obtained, shifting their dominions as often as one district after another was found or thought to be preferable. The emigrants had come out under promise of also receiving grants of land; but only the most useless parts were left for them. The result was deplorable. "The entire material of a settlement," they said, in an indignant protest forwarded to the British Government in 1831, "the official staff, settlers, property, and live stock, were hurried out to an unknown wilderness before one acre was surveyed, before one building had been erected, before even a guess had been formed as to the proper scene of their labours, before the slightest knowledge had been obtained of the soil, climate, products, or inhabitants. Nay, further, it was absolutely made a condition of the grants of land that

AN ILL-PLANNED COLONY.

301

the emigrant should bring his family, dependants, and property into the colony while in this state. The ghastly spectacle of the town-site of Clarenceits sole edifices crowded, buried, and neglected tombs --its only inhabitants corpses, the victims of disease, starvation, and despair-the sea-beach strewed with wrecks the hills and borders of the rivers studded with deserted and half-finished buildings-bear witness to these consequences, and speak of brave men, delicate females, and helpless children perishing by hundreds on a desert coast from want of food, of shelter, and even of water, and surrounded by armed hordes of angry savages. It were impossible to estimate the vast amount of property of every sort buried for safety in the sands of the shore, and never again recovered, or the vast multitude of most valuable and high-bred stock of all descriptions, whose skeletons whitened the beach or filled the morasses they had been forced to enter in the desperate search for even fresh water."1 The blame attaching to those who led them into this condition was, of course, shared by the emigrants who suffered themselves to be so led; but they paid the full penalty for their folly. "Some," we are told, "demanded to be led to their lands; others gave way to despair; servants attacked the spirit-casks; masters followed their example. The farmers were told they must wait— wait till lands were discovered, and then wait until they were surveyed. A quarter of a million sterling of property was destroyed; the means of the immigrants dissipated; their live-stock perished; many died; and numbers, as soon as practicable, fled from

1 "Parliamentary Emigration Papers" for 1849, 50.

this scene of ruin, carrying with them the wreck of their fortunes."1

That was the dismal beginning of the Swan River Settlement, afterwards known as Western Australia, intended to turn into an English colony the 978,000 square miles of land assigned as its limits, being the whole of Australia west of the 139th degree of east longitude. Slowly and painfully, however, those who survived the first hardships, and the many new-comers who left England in ignorance of the lot awaiting them, or who boldly hoped that, amid the failures of others, they might find ways of succeeding, brought some sort of order and progress into the colony. The town of Perth was built on a wellchosen site by the side of the Swan River, and Freemantle was appointed as its port, at the entrance of the river into the Indian Ocean. The village of Albany, destined to become a town, was planted by St George's Sound, on the southern coast, and other settlements were formed along the shore and here and there inland. The country was gradually found to be less inhospitable than at first it seemed, and the colonists who were able to endure the difficulties of their strange life slowly secured for themselves a measure of prosperity by sheep-farming and agriculture. In 1834 the colony contained about 1600 English inhabitants and some 3500 sheep, and there were 918 acres of land under cultivation. In 1842 there were 3476 colonists and 60,380 sheep, yielding 84,640 pounds of wool, and the cultivated land comprised 3364 acres. In 1848 the people numbered 4622 and the sheep 141,123; the wool exported 1 Martin, vol. ii. p. 713.