Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/31

 the Swan River Settlement, as marking the narrow limits at first assigned to it. Capt. Fremantle was sent in advance in 1829 in the Challenger to hoist the British flag, and was quickly followed by Capt. Stirling in the Parmelia. The latter landed on Garden Island, which lies off the coast between Fremantle and Rockingham, on June 1st, and this date is still celebrated year by year as the Foundation Day of the colony. The pioneer party comprised an official staff of eight persons, ten artisans and mechanics, with their wives and families and servants; also fifty-one head of cattle, two hundred sheep, thirty-three horses, and pigs and poultry on a similar scale. In July the first colonial chaplain, the Rev. J. B. Wittenoom, arrived, and on August 5th came the Callista, the first purely emigrant vessel. She was freighted with a human cargo of one hundred souls, comprising persons of both sexes and all classes and ages. Numbers of the tiny vessels in which the ancestors of the present colonists were not afraid to trust themselves for the long and dreary voyage, followed in the wake of the Callista; so that in January, 1830, the Governor of the settlement was able to report the British population in Western Australia as numbering 850 persons, an d the assessed value of property at £41,550. The present capital of the colony had in the meantime been founded on the north bank of the Swan River on August 12th, 1829, and by January, 1830, thirty-nine "locations," as they were called, had been effected by the principal settlers, round whom clustered the smaller fry. The number of cattle was, however, still only 204, the horses for riding and draught, 57, the sheep, 1,096, and the pigs, 106. The year 1830 brought an increased influx of emigrants, and in the same year the first settler was murdered by natives at the Murray River. In 1831, the first overland journey from Perth to King George's Sound was made by Capt. Bannister, and in December, 1832, that great symbol and promoter of progress, the first printing press, was landed from England. In 1840, the first newspaper, the Perth Inquirer, was printed, and in May, 1841, the financial requirements of the settlers were thought worthy of being specially catered for, by the opening of a bank.