Splendid horses and cattle of the finest breed had been brought out, but they wandered useless in the bush. For, till the country was surveyed, nothing could be done in the way of agriculture; and, even after the surveys were completed, owing to a regulation that those whose grants exceeded a square mile should be allowed the first choice, all the sections nearest to the town were obtained by officials and wealthy speculators, who had no intention of using them. Many of these persons held a district almost as large as an English county, and, therefore, the lands remaining for selection 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.