Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/441

 423 Notwithstanding the privation, the poverty, the isolation, which those early colonists had to endure, their social life seems to have been full of compensation for their troubles. While they were digging and delving and toiling, on the one hand, on their little patches of ground, and looking after their small flocks of sheep, they were, on the other, dancing and dining, visiting and being visited, extending to one another a generous hospitality, and enjoying the pleasures of social intercourse in a "society" which, at that time, comprised nearly the whole of their number. The days of the early struggle were evidently by no means days wholly of gloom.

This journal, the publication of which we have just brought to a close, will be found of much value when the history of the colony comes to be written. And it certainly would be extremely desirable that there should be no delay in collecting materials for that history, and that the complete story of the early days of the colonization of Western Australia should be recorded before those who took part in it, and can assist by personal recollection, are departed. There is more than one "old settler" well fitted to undertake the task.