382 CORRESPONDENCE WITH 



ject of the settlement he had intended to make near 

 Port Grey, and been made acquainted with his 

 reasons for doubting the existence of the harbour, 

 and the fertility of the surrounding country, as well 

 as with his desire to have the question satisfactorily 

 set at rest, I requested him to write to me on the sub- 

 ject ; and on the receipt of his letter,* I communi- 



* From which the following is an extract : — "Your arrival at 

 Gage Roads, in her Majesty's surveying vessel, Beagle, under 

 your command, affords me an opportunity of soliciting your able 

 assistance towards the solution of a question of great interest, 

 not only to the Western Australian Company, whom I represent, 

 but to this colony at large ; and I feel assured that your known 

 zeal in the cause of Geographical and Hydrographical research will 

 induce you, if it be within your power, to comply with the re- 

 quest which I now take the liberty to make. Under these feel- 

 ings I proceed to state to you, that the Western Australian Com- 

 pany, after all their plans had been formed for founding their 

 intended Colony of Australmd, in Leschenault inlet, were led 

 under circumstances which occurred, and information which 

 reached them, to abandon that intention and to determine to fix 

 their settlement at a port discovered by Captain Grey, designated 

 in England by the appellation of Port Grey, and lying on the 

 N. W. coast of this colony, in or about the latitude of 29° south, 

 within the limits of the district between Gantheaume Bay and the 

 River Arrowsmith, in which district her Majesty's Government 

 had permitted the Company to take possession of extensive 

 tracts of land in heu of their property in other parts of Western 

 Australia. 



" Upon my arrival, however, in March last, at Port Leschenault, 

 with the intention of conveying in the Parkfield, with the first 

 body of settlers and emigrants to the new district, the Company's 

 surveying establishment already employed in this neighbourhood, 

 I received such communications from his Excellency the Governor, 



