Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/134

 and bustling little place, more given over to commerce and its accompaniments than the placid metropolis—where nobody ever seems in a hurry—and is bound to grow in wealth and importance with the certain progress of the colony.

"Facility of communication both with and within the colony has made great strides during the last five years. The Govern­ment railways actually in operation have not, so far, yielded a profit on their construction; but they are limited in extent, and worked on conservative principles that no public company would entertain. The principal line, called the Eastern Rail­ way, starts from the port of Fremantle, and passes through Perth and Guildford easterly to York; there it takes a southernly bend to Beverley, where it junctions with the private line from Albany. With two short cockspurs into the rich agricultural districts of Newcastle and Northam, the entire mileage is about 130. On the line between the capital and the port, a distance of twelve miles, there are eight trains per day in each direction, at fares more than double those charged for similar distances in Victoria, and calculated to give pause to any enthusiast who contemplated building his suburban residence on the sandhills on the mouth of the Swan."

Mr. Turner then proceeds to treat of the railways constructed and in contemplation. Talking of the line from Perth to Bunbury, he speaks of it as connecting "the metropolis with the fine agricultural areas around Pinjarrah and Bunbury, where a temperate climate and an abundant rainfall offer the certainty of success to tens of thousands of settlers who have energy enough to wrestle with untamed nature. The other line," he continues, "starting eastward from York, will project itself towards the great unknown interior, and will pass through 180 miles of by no means promising country, mostly undulating sand plains. and hungry flats covered with granite boulders, to the recently discovered Yilgarn goldfield, where, over a vast extent of auriferous country, gold is being won from more than a dozen successful claims. Something like £50,000 worth of the precious metal has already found its way into Perth, and with improved facilities for transporting machinery to the field a great future is anticipated.