WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 519 



had grown into a populous colony, in which all the 

 passions, the rivalries, the loves and the hates of the 

 mother country were in some sort represented. And 

 yet there remained still much of that old English hos- 

 pitality, which rendered our first stay so pleasant, and 

 which almost made us desire to prolong our last. 

 The alteration that had taken place was rather to be 

 referred to the increasing number of settlers, which 

 rendered inevitable the formation of circles more 

 or less exclusive, and which, with the forms of 

 European society, promised to introduce many of 

 its defects. 



But our thoughts wandered, from time to time, over 

 the whole of this extraordinary continent, which vve 

 saw for the first time in November ISSJ, at the 

 point from which we took our departure, in May, 

 1843. The strange contrasts to the rest of the 

 world which it affords were enumerated and com- 

 mented upon — its cherries with their stones growing 

 outside — its trees, which shed their bark instead of 

 their leaves — its strange animals — its still stranger 

 population — its mushroom cities — and, finally, 

 the fact that the approach to human habitations is 

 not announced by the barking of dogs, but by the 

 harking of trees ! * 



Westerly winds carried us into the S. E. trade by 

 the 13th, in lat. 22° 30' S. four hundred miles 

 from the North-west Cape, when our course was 

 directed for the Mauritius. We found the trade very 



* The trees in the vicinity of houses are generally barked to 

 obtain a covering for the roofs. 



