Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/347

318 our admiration and pity; mixed with vexation that the same persons who had shown such brave endurance should have afterwards stooped to mend their condition by asking the Home Government for convicts.

Governor Stirling did all that was possible to be accomplished under the difficult circumstances. He sent to the Cape for corn, and bought up all private stores of flour amongst the immigrants at a fixed rate; he also paid a visit to England in 1832, for the purpose of laying before the Colonial Office the deplorable state of the settlement, and his return to Swan River in the following year infused fresh courage into the disheartened band, and animated all to new exertion.

If the want of common sense that characterized the colonization of Swan River had not caused so much ruin and misery, it would be difficult to contemplate the landing of its first immigrants from any point of view but that of the absurd. The sort of goods with which the ships were freighted would almost lead one to suppose that the passengers had expected to step from their floating homes to a row of ready-built handsome houses, in which they would have nothing to do but sit down and unpack the furniture which they had brought with them. Every appurtenance of civilized life that could encumber a colony at its outset littered the beach after the vessels were unladen. Thus, for a country that had neither roads nor inns, one or two travelling carriages had been provided—pianos, of course, were not forgotten, and I even heard of a harp being brought ashore, which my informant was careful to add "had a gold ball at the top."

I am bound to confess that the owners of the equipages