Page:Handbook of Western Australia.djvu/109

Rh other colonies, having become good housewives, able to make bread, cook, wash, cure fruit and meat, and use their needle well; some are now employed as school teachers. She also notes the fondness of the boys for mechanical arts. They are, she adds, easily taught to be neat and clean in their persons, being very observant and great admirers of dress.

The land of the Colony has been one principal source of income to the Government and of capital to the settler. That land was the possession of the natives, and was taken from them without payment or other consideration, nor even were reserves made for them as in North America. The proportion between the income derived from land and the expenditure on the natives was, from 1837 to 1845, one-sixth; from 1845 to 1855, one-third; from 1855 to 1865, one-tenth; and from 1865 to 1875, one-twentieth. In 1875 the receipts from land amounted to £33,286 0s. 7d., and the expenditure on natives to £803 0s. 9d. There were then, besides the large area held in fee simple, 21,315,290 acres held in lease for sheep and cattle runs. The revenue of the Colony was £141,180 14s. 5d. The imports were, in value, £349,840, and the exports £391,217 3s. 4d., which, without estimating the amount of wealth accumulated by the colonists in houses, fenced and cultivated lands, stock, machinery, &c., may give some indication of the profit derived from the labor and capital expended on the vast estate which has been taken from the aboriginal inhabitants. These figures would seem to show that the advantages which the settlers have derived from the natives have been much greater than any which the natives have received from them.

In these days, responsibilities so accruing are more generally acknowledged than formerly; yet, as has been