Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/382

364 Monday.—Arranging to-day about getting a sermon preached in support of the mission, and in several affairs of that sort. Kept three natives picking caterpillars off the potato tops, which are almost completely destroyed. I am sorry to say that there are great complaints of the crops at York this year. The season has been unusually dry—less rain falls there than here.

Oct. 24th.—There was not very much to detain me this week, so I have been able to get home soon. Mr. Brown (Colonial Secretary) is to sleep here to-night, and the Governor is coming up on Saturday. There was a meeting about roads, &c., in Perth yesterday; much talk, and nothing done. People were not satisfied when the Government undertook the management of such things, and Mr. Roe and myself as commissioners, had to hear all the brunt of the clamour. Then an Act was passed, giving the management of it to the general body of landholders, and, though six months have elapsed, they have not been able to do anything but wonder what is to be done, and how much trouble it is. In my official character I had to file an information, in the nature of a bill for foreclosure. You would have been horrified to see the bill. As I had to do it all myself, and there was no object in having it long, and a good saving of trouble in having it short, I left out all the charging and confederating and interrogating parts, and did not make use of one word that was not absolutely necessary, so that the whole bill was contained in part of a sheet of paper. A very nice question is involved in it—whether a Mr. T holds an estate as the survivor of two joint tenants (my former travelling companion Mr. T being drowned), or whether an interest goes to the latter's heir, or to his executor if it was a commercial partnership. Hay harvest has begun up here.

Friday.—The Governor came up to breakfast this morning at Irwin's; then went round all the farms in the neighbourhood, on his way to Guildford to an agricultural meeting, it