The country is being opened to the northward, but up to within the past few years the bulk of the settlement was in the south-western corner of the colony, in the neighbourhood of the Swan River--a stream which possesses the peculiarities of being short, broad, and shallow, and which, in consequence of its bar and its flats, is well-nigh useless as far as navigation is concerned. At the mouth of the river lies Fremantle, with a population of about 5000--the seaport of the colony. Ten miles higher up is Perth, the capital city, possessing 2000 more inhabitants than Fremantle. A like distance farther on is pretty Guildford, and seventy miles from the seaboard, separated from it by the Darling ranges, are the agricultural settlements in the Avon valley. The town of Bunbury lies on the western sea-coast; and Albany, a settlement of equal size on the southern coast, is indebted for its existence to its harbour--King George's Sound--being a place of call for the mail and numerous other steamers. Geraldton and Roebourne are northern ports--the latter the centre of the pearl fishery trade. Looking at its vast size, and the dispersion of its thin population--the whole not equal to that of a Melbourne suburb--Western Australia can only be described by one image--it is the giant skeleton of a colony. A clever Yankee once described the colony of Western Australia as having been run through an hour-glass. The American, however, possessed the failing common to many humorists: he economised the truth for the sake of uttering a smart saying. It is only to be expected that in a country like Western Australia, possessing an area of a million square miles, that sandy tracts are to be met with; but to assert that the colony is a vast sandy waste--a Sahara--is to convey a wrong impression of its physical features. In the far north the richest of Australian tropical vegetation exists; fine rivers flow through tracts of splendidly grassed territory, and the conformation of the country is bold. It is farther south, where the tropical growth gives place to level plains and bush vegetation, that the dreary sandy plains exist in parts, though not to the extent sometimes imagined.