Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/334

 316 of expenditure for the police, so that no ordinance can be passed for this year's expenditure. Whale fishing here is very encouraging, and the prospects extremely promising. Two whales have been killed within the last week, and a whale calf also, besides the mother or cow whale, being wounded so severely, that it is thought she will be taken also. I have a gardener making a little plantation of flowers and shrubs in front of the house, and for that and half a day's work, planting potatoes, his charge is no less than £2. He supplied about twenty geraniums and stocks, and other things. Send me a light plough of wrought iron, with an extra mould board, which could be fitted as a double mould board plough (cast iron is worse then useless, for it snaps and cannot be mended); also the sides and iron work of a winnowing machine. I pay 10s. a day for the hire of one. I have a stack of wheat to be threshed out. Mr. Brockman wants four guineas a day for the use of his threshing machine, and you must pay eight men to attend to it.

July 8th.—I am not quite sure on what date I closed my last letter to go by the Abeona, via Van Diemen's Land, but it was about a week ago, I think. We have had a meeting of the Legislative Council since, and have just the same difference of opinion as on former occasions with the Governor about the expense of the police force. The weather has been extremely stormy for some time past. Our colonial vessel, the Champion, sailed for the Vasse and Port Augusta nearly a fortnight ago, but, after being a week at sea, was obliged to run back again to Cockburn Sound, with the loss of most of her sails. Some of the boats belonging to the whaling companies have also been injured. A rumour of a most melancholy nature is now current, to the effect that one boat with six men in it has been lost, and no lives saved. I trust it is only an unfounded report.

A King George's Sound native, who had been in the Champion went on shore one evening at Garden Island with two