ving an area of about one million square miles,--or, to
make a familiar comparison, it is eight times as large as the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It has but few towns, ports, or
settled districts, and Perth itself has less than eleven thousand
inhabitants. The city is represented to be an attractive place,
possessing a fine climate. Its oranges and tropical fruits generally are
said to be excellent. It is situated on the Swan River, better known
locally as Perth Waters. This river runs from Fremantle to Perth, and is
a noble water-way, commercially spoiled however by a dangerous ledge of
rocks about six feet under water, which shuts off the entrance from the
sea. Of course, in due time dynamite will settle the business for that
ledge.

The population of the entire colony known as West Australia is at the
present writing hardly forty thousand, scattered along the seaboard or
within a hundred miles of it. The results accomplished by this small
number of inhabitants show very clearly of what the country is capable,
and indicate what it would doubtless yield under more generous
cultivation. The colony exported last year over a million dollars' worth
of wool, besides copper, sandal-wood, timber, cattle, and so on. Late
statistics show that there are over two millions of sheep in this
section of the country, and we were told that it could support as many
more as are found in Queensland and New South Wales united.

Pearl-oysters abound on the coast of West Australia, and pearl-shells
are a ready source of income to the people, being exported in large
quantities. These are most freely procured at the north. There are
merchants in Sydney who annually fit out boats of from six to ten tons
each, and send them to this locality for the pearl-oyster fishing. This
is best prosecuted nearest to Torres Strait, which separates Australia
from New Guinea. Next to the great island-continent itself, New Guinea
is the largest island in the world, being three hundred and sixty miles
wide by thirteen hundred miles in length; but while Australia as a whole
is so remarkably healthy, not even the African Gold Coast is so
dangerous to health as New Guinea. Its flat, densely-wooded, swampy
coast is simply deadly to white men, and even the natives suffer
constantly from low fever. These natives are probably the most barbaric
of any savages living in this nineteenth century; they have no notion of
even the rudest agricultural operati