ring with a vengeance. Mr. Clinche's
hospitality was unbounded. We were pressed to remain a week, or month,
or a year; but we only rested one day, the weather being exceedingly
hot. Mr. Clinche had a magnificent flower and fruit garden, with
fruit-trees of many kinds en espalier; these, he said, throve
remarkably well. Mr. Clinche persisted in making me take away several
bottles of fluid, whose contents need not be specifically
particularised. Formerly the sandal-wood-tree of commerce abounded all
over the settled districts of Western Australia. Merchants and others
in Perth, Fremantle, York, and other places, were buyers for any
quantity. At his place Mr. Clinche had a huge stack of I know not how
many hundred tons. He informed me he usually paid about eight pounds
sterling per measurement ton. The markets were London, Hong Kong, and
Calcutta. A very profitable trade for many years was carried on in
this article; the supply is now very limited.

There was a great deal of the poison-plant all over this country, not
the Gyrostemon, but a sheep-poisoning plant of the Gastrolobium
family; and I was always in a state of anxiety for fear the camels
should eat any of it. The shepherds in this Colony, whose flocks are
generally not larger than 500, are supposed to know every individual
poison-plant on their beat, and to keep their sheep off it; but with
us, it was all chance work, for we couldn't tie the camels up every
night, and we could not control them in what they should eat. Our next
friends were a brother of the McPherson at Glentromie and his wife.
The name of this property was Cornamah; there was a telegraph station
at this place. Both here and at Berkshire Valley Mrs. McPherson and
Miss Clinche are the operators. Next to this, we reached Mr. Cook's
station, called Arrino, where Mrs. Cook is telegraph mistress. Mr.
Cook we had met at New Norcia, on his way down to Perth. We had lunch
at Arrino, and Mrs. Cook gave me a sheep. I had, however, taken it out
of one of their flocks the night before, as we camped with some black
shepherds and shepherdesses, who were very pleased to see the camels,
and called them emus, a name that nearly all the West Australian
natives gave them.

After leaving Arrino we met Mr. Brooklyn and Mr. King, two Government
surveyors, at whose camp we rested a day. The heat was excessive, the
thermometer during that day going up 115 degrees in the shade. The
following day we reached a farm belongi