Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/44

 return from the purchase moneys of alienated areas. No dividend was anticipated by the English speculators who found the needful capital—£300,000 in shares, and £500,000 in debentures—for a period of ten years, but it looks very much as if their period of patience would be considerably abridged at the rate things are going at present.

Travelling through the night we reached Beverley (evidently so named by some expatriated Yorkshireman reminiscent of his home in the old country) at about six o'clock in the morn­ing. Not having walked through the real "bush" since 1882, I spent the time whilst breakfast was being prepared in a ramble through the forest, encountering for the first time a genuine specimen or two of the West Australian aboriginal­ of course of the tame order-who are very much like the remnant of their brethren in the other colonies. There is great sameness about the scenery of the "bush," but its silence and its vastness are supremely impressive. The denizens of the "bush" are not, perhaps, able to gush about its charms, but they feel them all the same; and this will account for the love of the bush which those who have had to make their home in "Australian wilds" retain for it ever afterwards.

The Great Southern line is, as I have said, managed with a great regard to cheapness. The porterage is about in the same proportion to the traffic as the population of the colony to its acreage there being only one porter employed on the whole length of the line between Albany and Beverley. The station­ masters handle the goods, and their wives sell the tickets. There is thus an air of admirable domesticity about all the arrangements. To the casual voyager the stoppages seem unnecessarily prolonged, and better calculated to suit the convenience of the caterers along the line than of their customers, who desire to see the last of it. It must, however, be borne in mind that, as all the trains are "mixed," a great deal of shunting is involved in taking up and discharging goods, when­ ever there is anything to take in or to take out. On occasion, at some of the stations there is a dearth of either, but it would not do to alter the time-table, which must be regulated on the principle of the average strain. The run from Albany to