The timber trade has thriven in Western Australia, and at the present moment is so much in request that complaints are made that the available labour of the colony is all taken into the bush, to the great detriment of the farmer. Hitherto the chief exportation has been of sandal-wood, which in 1871 amounted to £26,926. In 1869 it had risen to £32,998. This goes almost entirely to the east,--to Singapore and China,--and is, I am told, chiefly used there for incense. But the trade in jarrah-wood, which hitherto has been small, will probably soon take the lead. Tramroads are being laid down in two places, with the view of taking it out from the forests to the seacoast. The wood is very hard, and impervious to the white ants and to water. It is a question whether any wood has come into man’s use which is at the same time so durable and so easily worked. It may be that, after all, the hopes of the West Australian Micawbers will be realised in jarrah-wood. The first object of the first settlers was of course to grow wheat. In any country that will produce a sufficiency of wheat men may live and thrive. Western Australia will produce wheat, and contains many patches of country which, from the nature of the soil, seem to be specially fit for cereal crops. The heat on the western coast is not continuous, nor so intense as it is at the same latitudes in New South Wales and Queensland; but, nevertheless, failure in the wheat-crops has been one of the chief sources of misfortune and failure in the colony. One reads constantly of rust and moth, and of the insufficiency of the grain produced, and even of the difficulty of procuring seed. The farming has been thoroughly bad, and very bad it is still. From the commencement of the settlement up to the present day Western Australia has been a crown colony, or, in other words, has been subject to rule from home instead of ruling itself. A governor has been appointed to it, whose duty it has been to initiate such changes in the laws as have appeared necessary to him, and as have met with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He has had a Legislative Council, which was nominated by himself, and therefore subject to him; and, of course, an Executive Council, consisting of paid officers who have done the departmental work for him. Under this scheme of government the colonists themselves had nothing to do with the manner in which they were ruled. The governor was irresponsible to them, but responsible to the government at home. It may be that such a form of rule may be good for an infant community. For an adult colony it cannot be good. How far it has already been altered under the sanction of the present governor, Mr. Weld, I will endeavour to explain in another chapter, and will also speak of the further changes which are in prospect. The absolute power attaching to the governor of a crown colony is already, happily, a thing of the past in Western Australia.