PREFACE. 



It was at iirst intended to issue the SETTLER'S GUIDE AND 

 FARMER'S HANDBOOK as a whole in one volume, complete, but the 

 parts have so insensibly outgrown the limits originally fixed for 

 them, and the demand for information about the cultural resources 

 and prospects of Western Australia is so great, that it has been 

 deemed expedient to issue the book in parts. As will be seen on 

 perusal, Part I. consists chiefly of a description of the agricultural 

 areas and Crown lands open for selection, with an account of the 

 early settlement and progress of the pastoralists and agriculturists 

 of the colony. An endeavor has been made it is to be hoped not 

 unattended with success to write a plain, unvarnished tale, and 

 yet in such language as to make it interesting even to those whose 

 thoughts are not on settlement bent. The early history of Western 

 Australia and its pastoral pioneers is most interesting, but not 

 nearly so interesting as the country itself as we know it now, when 

 every dawn discovers new features, and each succeeding day dis- 

 closes new avenues for industrial enterprise, and offers renewed 

 encouragement to the able-bodied, active, capable settler, whether 

 miner, farmer, or mechanic, to " go in and win." Western Aus- 

 tralia may be likened to a huge pie, the crust of which has only, as 

 yet, been nibbled round the edges. Of the treasures that are 

 hidden underneath that thick and somewhat forbidding crust, we 

 have as yet only the faintest conception. We want Jack Homers 

 here to pull out the plums, and plums there are undoubtedly for 

 men of all avocations. But the men \vho come to Western Aus- 

 tralia, with the intention of making it their home, must be men 

 firm of heart and stout of body, men of mind as well as muscle, 

 and it is this class of men that the SETTLER'S GUIDE is, in part, 

 designed to attract and the Bureau of Agriculture is anxious to 

 assist after they have arrived here. There is, it may be safely said, 

 no country in the world that offers at the present moment the same 

 inducements to the settler as Western Australia. The permanence 

 of its mineral resources is now beyond question, only their immense 

 value and the vastness of their extent having yet to be determined. 

 The agronomic possibilities of the colony are equally promising, 

 and only need the developing hand of time to place Western 

 Australia in the van of the producing provinces of the Southern 

 Hemisphere. 



L. L-C. 



Perth, August i8th, 1897. 



171784 



