134 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



Here, instead of ports, of towns, and of settled districts, we find only a few 

 scattered settlements, and this is the case though the colony is an old one, 

 and one for which much has been done. By virtue of seniority of settlement, 

 it ranks next to New South Wales. It was founded in 1829, under Govern- 

 ment auspices, and with a great flourish of trumpets, mainly in consequence 

 of a very favourable report prepared by Captain Stirling, R.N., afterwards 

 Sir James Stirling, first Governor of the colony. To induce settlement, enor- 

 mous grants of land were made to men of influence and capital, who in return 

 were to bring out a proportionate number of labourers, and perform other 

 ' location duties.' Thus a Mr. Peel, a relative of Sir Robert Peel, obtained 

 250,000, Colonel Latour 103,000, and Sir James Stirling 100,000 acres. 



It appears now to be agreed that this grant system was as injudicious 

 as it was lavish. Middle-class capitalists came to reside on their estates, and 

 not to work, and the settler of humbler but more useful pretensions was led 

 to believe that the colony was closed to him. The settlement was hapless 

 from the first. Old colonists give lively descriptions of how ladies, blood 

 horses, pianos, and carriages, were landed on a desolate coast, while no one 

 knew where his particular allotment lay. The settlers found that they had 

 no control whatever over the men they brought out, and in some instances 

 they were left to establish their homes in the wilderness as they best could 

 by themselves. Many, deciding from the arid appearance of the place that 

 there was no prospect of success, abandoned it. Some who believed at one 

 time that the Garden of Eden lay on the banks of the Swan River, and 

 that colonisation was a perpetual picnic, returned wiser, poorer, and sadder, 

 to the more congenial sphere of settled and civilised England. Others, like 

 the Messrs. Henty, sought more favourable fields, and ultimately, in 

 Australia Felix, acquired both riches and reputation. Many of those who 

 remained do not seem to have possessed the stuff the real settler is made 

 of, but thought more of giving entertainments and seeking pleasure than of 

 work. When the supplies they had brought from England ran out, they were 

 very nearly starved, and they had to expend much of their capital in 

 importing provisions. 



In after years their numbers were but little increased. Considerable 

 doubt existed about their progress being sure, and none whatever about its 

 being slow. Never well-to-do, they felt very severely the depression general 

 throughout Australia in 1848. People looked to their money-chests only to 

 see if they had sufficient left to take them away. Casting about for relief, 

 the York Agricultural Society suggested that convicts should be applied for, 

 and the proposal found favour with the people. Backsliding seems as easy 

 with communities as with individuals. The colonists who had met more than 

 their share of difficulties and obstruction, while proceeding in the straight- 

 forward path of settlement, found everything prepared for them when they 

 turned aside. It so happened that, just before this time, the effects produced 



