For myself, I must say that I spent my time in Perth very pleasantly. I remember being reminded once of the injustice done to a certain poor community by a traveller who had wandered thither and had received hospitable treatment. “They cannot be so poor,” the traveller had said, “because they gave me champagne every day.” Doing honour to the stranger, they had broached their last bottles of the generous wine, and, though poor, had put their best foot foremost in exercise of genuine hospitality. I was told how cruel this was. “We were poor,” said my informant, “but we gave what we had freely, and were then twitted with making false complaints.” I cannot but think of this as I tell my experiences of Perth. I heard very much of the poverty of Western Australia, but I found that people there lived as they do elsewhere. There were carriages and horses, and good dinners, and, if not liveried servants,--a class which is not common in the colonies,--men waiting with white cotton gloves, who in London would be presumed to be greengrocers, but who in Perth were probably “lags.” They seemed to hand the dishes very well. Of the other town, Freemantle, I have already spoken. I went also sixty miles up to the west, to Toodjay and Newcastle, which, from the returns showing the acres under cultivation and the produce, I find to be one of the best agricultural districts in the colony. It is surpassed only by the Greenough district. As to the prospects and past experiences of farmers in this and other parts of the colony, I found it very difficult to get information on which I could rely. I came across men who had been farmers, whose report was anything but good,--who said that to farm in Western Australia was simply to break the heart. And I came across others,--notably two old colonists in the Toodjay and Northam districts,--who assured me that they had done very well. In each of these cases the men had had sons capable of working with their own hands and not too proud to work. Hitherto I do not think that there has been scope for farmers who employed much outside labour. The labour has been dear and bad,--and money has been hard to get. There has always been and still is a great effort to pay labourers in produce,--but this cannot be done entirely, and the farmer who hires has drained from him almost all the money that he can earn.