Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/145

127 nobler hunt than this—a bull chase—as a wild bull was caught and killed the other day. The meat, (sold at 1s. 6d. per lb.), produced nearly £50; and a great sensation has been created by a rumour that thirty-six head of wild cattle has been seen. I doubt the truth of the report. Really this kangaroo-hunting is very important to the settlers in their present circumstances. Some of my friends have had fresh meat of this animal for three months together, when it would have required three casks of pork, at £10 each, to have supplied their establishment during the same period. Thus have their dogs saved them £30.

9th.—I have been preparing a statement of expenditure upon my grant, for the purpose of getting the fee-simple of it confirmed to me: the amount required is £675. The account has been submitted to two magistrates for approval, and has been drawn up according to a prescribed form. My expenditure amounts to £1306 13s.; the items are, buildings, £300; tillage £96; enclosures, £59 3s.: drains, £10; garden, £20; clearing, £206; and under the head of "miscellaneous," live stock, £245 10s.; crops, £210; machines, tools, implements, and iron work, £100; tent used at first settling, £10; wells, £10; improvement of pasture by manure, £30; wharf, £10—total, £1306 13s. I cleared to-day, with a good American axe, eleven hundred yards of a vista through the bush on my lower boundary line, and had entertained great hopes that a valley through which the Susannah River (Latour's Brook) issues from the hills, was on my share; but on getting a view through the vista, I fear that it is not. However, the brook traverses my grant twice, and makes the back ground valuable.

A soldier coming up yesterday from Perth was attacked by natives; he says that he shot two of them. It will be prudent on my part, when I set out to-morrow morning at daybreak, to arm myself with a double-barrelled gun and ball cartridges.