THE CONVICT DANGER 141 



inconsistent with the existence of a yeoman population. 

 The two classes, the large gentleman farmer and the 

 small yeoman, cannot exist side by side in a country like 

 Australia. What they do elsewhere I do not know, and 

 therefore will not presume to judge how they work 

 together ; but in Australia it is the men with excessively 

 large estates who are causing rises in the price of land in 

 the old colonies ; and rises in the price of land beyond a 

 certain sum are fatal to the prosperity of small farmers. 

 But this is not King George's Sound, and " the rambles of 

 a naturalist." 



King George's Sound is an important region both in 

 a historical sense, and as a sub-district in Australian fauna. 

 With the first I have here nothing to do, but I may pause 

 to remark that it was the spot selected by the French 

 Government, in 1825, for the settlement of a colony, which, 

 had it been established, would have robbed us of half our 

 goodly continent. Fortunately the French were anticipated 

 by Major Lockyer and some companies of the 39th Foot 

 (the gallant primus in Indus) who guarded a working party 

 of those bugbears of the land — convicts sent from New 

 South Wales — and for a time the settlement was an out- 

 post of my native colony. With the establishment of 

 another settlement at Swan River the colony of Western 

 Australia entered into life. Its actual birthday, as registered 

 in the official records, is the 1st of June 1829; but the 

 convict labourers were at work there some considerable 

 time before that date. These men worked in fear of the 

 lash and the loaded musket, and though their compulsory 

 labour was not without beneficial results to the general 

 community, it is surprising that any settlement survived 

 this introduction. The early history of nearly every settle- 

 ment on the continent is a revolting story of flogging, 

 hanging, and the crimes which led to those drastic punish- 

 ments. As, in time, the convicts were granted tickets-of- 

 leave, they became practically free men, and permeated 

 nearly every class of colonial life with disastrous results, 

 which, by mere good luck, I think, stopped short only of 

 being fatal to our great and progressive country. 



