The Western Australian Company's grant of land at Australind comprises 100,000 acres, among which there is a large quantity of excellent pasture and arable land. It is well watered, and generally well adapted for the site of a new settlement. The flats of the Brunswick and Collic rivers would supply the whole colony, if thoroughly peopled, with grain; and there is abundance of feed for sheep and cattle, even to the summits of the hills. A great portion of this grant has been purchased by the Company from Colonel Lautour, who, however, could not furnish a good title to it. Having never performed the necessary improvements which would entitle him to a deed of grant in fee-simple from the crown, his right of possession became forfeit; and in April, 1840, Governor Hutt, though much interested in the success of the Company, of which his brother, the member for Gateshead, was chairman, thought himself obliged, in the conscientious discharge of his duty, to resume the estate for the crown. This proved to be a most fatal proceeding. The Company's title to Colonel Lautour's grant had been confirmed by the Home-government in November 1839, but owing to the non-existence of regular post-office communication (that grand and inexcusable error, which allows the British Empire to be composed of a mass of unconnected settlements, dependent upon chance for intelligence and aid from the mother country), the news did not reach the colony until May or June following. Accounts of the resumption of the grant by the Governor reached England, and not only perplexed the Company, but greatly disquieted the minds of the numerous individuals to whom they had sold land, to the value of nearly 60,000 pounds. At this very time, too, unhappily, arrived Captain Grey in England, on his return from the expedition to the north-western side of New Holland, of which he has since published a clever and popular narrative. Captain Grey took an early opportunity of giving a somewhat lamentable account of the Company's land at Leschenault, or Australind, and a very glowing description of a district, many miles to the north of Perth, between Gantheaume Bay and the Arrowsmith River, which he had passed through on his disastrous return. He also expatiated, in most precise terms, upon a splendid harbour which he called Port Grey, and of which he made an elaborate sketch; and on the 26th of October, 1840, addressed to Lord John Russell "a detailed description of that portion of the western coast of Australia which lies between Gantheaume Bay and the River Arrowsmith, as it would be found useful in enabling persons, intending to occupy that tract of country, to arrive at correct conclusions regarding its capabilities." In the map of his route, published by Arrowsmith, Port Grey is laid down as a spacious, well-sheltered harbour, with a convenient point of land extending a couple of miles out to sea from its northern extremity, and having a