11 
Apart from the rainfall, which is thus seen to be fairly well 
distributed all over the coastal zone, the country is watered by 
means of springs, swamps, and brooks. Rivers are few, and, except 
in the South-West corner of the State, do not run all the year 
round; but they all form along their course chaplets of pools, which 
afford a supply of water for stock or for irrigation. 
Although the country, on the whole, looks somewhat lacking in 
fresh running streams, there is underground an immense store of 
water, which is reached by sinking wells, varying in depth from 
5ft. to 100ft. Many of those wells, however, more especially in the 
inland districts, are often too highly mineralised to be of any use 
for the purpose of watering plants. 
Soaks abound over the country, and almost invariably follow 
on the process of clearing land of trees prior to cultivating; wherein 
their presence is made manifest on the surface by the look of the 
green patches during the dry months, when all vegetation looks 
brown and languishing around; there water may be obtained by 
shallow excavation. Indeed, in the Eastern districts, some 100 
miles or more from the coast, and until wells and dams are sunk, 
soaks constitute the chief source of water supply. 
In those drier districts, strewed over the surface of the country, 
occur bold, bare outcrops of cap slab granite, from 10 to 100 feet 
in height, covering from 10 to 60 or 8M acres. These outcrops rise 
from sandy and loamy flats. Thev seem to have been provided by 
Nature for the conservation of water in that arid region. After 
even the lightest rainfall they shed water like a house-roof; in very 
many cases, somewhere at the foot of those denuded rocks, fresh- 
water soaks oceur in natural dams or basins filled with sand, which, 
when cleaned, supply for stock or for trees a valuable supply of 
fresh water. 
Nowhere in the South-West Division of Western Australia need 
fruit growing be checked by dearth of water, as, apart from natural 
sources of supply, any amount commensurate with the requirements 
of the orchardist can, at a reasonable cost and with little trouble, be 
impounded in tanks and dams excavated by means of a plough and 
an earth scoop. 
But, apart from the source of visible water, attempts made of 
late years to obtain fresh water by artesian boring have proved 
eminently successful. The first bore put down was in 1894, at 
Midland Junction, when, by means of a hand plant, an abundant 
supply was struck at a depth of 500ft., and the bore now discharges 
through a 4in. lining 260,000 gallons of water per day. 
Since then many more bores have been put down along the 
coastal plateau from the Greenough Plains to the Preston River. 
Brackish and mineralised water has been struck in several instances, 
but. as a rule, pure, fresh artesian water, suitable for all domestic 
