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400 being served on him, or of any landlord's agent interfering with his method of cropping his land.

Another method of making a start in the world which was sometimes practised, and for which the assistance of the merchant or the landowner would be invoked, was the following. The labourer would engage to clear a plot of land, to the extent of forty or fifty acres, at a certain number of acres each year, on condition that rations were supplied and other assistance given by the employer for the first year or two, and that the whole of the land, as fast as it was cleared and fenced (the employer finding posts and rails) should be cultivated by the tenant for his own profit for a fixed number of years, rent free. In this case although the tenant had to turn out of the little farm, which he had cleared with his own hands, at the expiration of perhaps ten years, still he had enjoyed the use of the greater part of the land in its fresh vigour, and the crops which he had taken off were probably the best it would ever produce.

The merchant, then, who may think of carrying out a small capital to West Australia must be prepared to act in a variety of capacities, and to play the part not only of exporter and importer of goods, but also that of factor, agent, and banker to his customers; and very probably that of sheep-owner and squatter to a greater or less extent also, in cases where he may find it more to his interest to take into his own management the business and property of some of his larger debtors than to attempt to realize the assets, on which he has the largest claim, at a period probably of depression and panic.

To make money in this colony a man must learn to