tion by farmers and small purchasers were
generally far in the interior. The sections were pointed out on the
maps, but the places themselves had never been trodden by a white man's
foot, and were held by tribes of hostile savages. Some, indeed, tried to
settle upon these distant regions, but they were lonely and isolated,
and many of them perished, either from disease and hunger, or by the
spears of the natives. Yet there were very few who made any attempt at
agriculture, and the costly ploughs and implements that had been
imported lay rusting on the beach. The horses and cattle died off, the
sheep that had been introduced at great expense were almost all killed
through feeding on a poisonous plant, which grew in patches over the
country; and the men themselves were forced to loiter at Perth,
consuming their provisions and chafing at their ruinous inaction.

#4. Mr. Peel.#--There was one gentleman who had spent fifty thousand
pounds in bringing with him to the colony everything that could be
required for farming and sheep-breeding on a magnificent scale. He
brought with him three hundred labourers; but the land was by no means
so fertile as he had imagined, and he had scarcely commenced his farming
operations when he found that his only escape from ruin was to enter,
single-handed, on the self-dependent life of the ordinary settler.

#5. Gloomy Prospects.#--Matters grew worse and worse, and those of the
disappointed colonists who had sufficient prudence to start before their
means were all exhausted either returned to Europe or sought the other
colonies, where several achieved success--notably the brothers Henty,
who settled at Launceston and established at Portland Bay the whaling
station already mentioned. The gloomy reports of those who reached
England prevented any further accession of immigrants, and in 1835 it
was rumoured, though erroneously, that the British Government intended
to abandon the place.

In the following year (1836) the colony of South Australia was founded;
and a great extent of territory previously marked as belonging to West
Australia was assigned to the new settlement. These two colonies, during
their early years, experienced trials and difficulties of the same kind;
but while South Australia, in a short time, emerged to a career of
brilliant prosperity through sturdy determination to make the land
productive, West Australia for forty years never enjoyed more than a
transitory gleam of su