Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/48

 principal storm-water channels of the southern part of the colony, including the Swan River, the upper portion of which is called the Avon, and its branches. The Murray River, with the Hothams the Williams and affluents, break through the Darling Range by a series of gorges and canons, and empty themselves into the sea on the western coast. The Blackwood River, with the Arthur, the Beau­fort, and the Balgarrup, find the sea east of Cape Leeuwin, at Flinders Bay. The Frankland, with the Gordon as its main tributary, finds a mouth at Nornalup Inlet, near King George's Sound. The physical geography on this side of the Australian continent, in respect to the condition of its rivers or storm-water channels, shows a reverse to those of the eastern side, and which are found existing in most other parts of the globe. The so-called rivers merely serve to bear away seawards the surplus storm-waters from the by no means unfertile interior which they drain, which is a belt extending in different parts fifty miles in width up to a distance of two hundred miles from the sea coast. The best land is high up away from the coast, whilst in other countries the rivers have made the lowlands fertile by what they have borne from the highlands."

This, then, was the field of enterprise which attracted the eager mind of the late Mr. Anthony Hordern, a Sydney merchant whose aspirations soared far beyond the restricted limits of the ledger and counting-house. His prophetic eye saw in this neglected region vast future possibilities; and as he pondered its future over in his imaginative mind, he saw it peopled with a prosperous multitude who would hail his name as the founder of their fortunes. I have often sat with him in his dingy London office, and listened with somewhat too much of the scepticism of "the impartial critic," to the glowing picture which he painted of happy homes and prosperous settlements in the land which he looked on in the transfigured light of his sanguine but by no means wholly dreamy temperament. Perhaps he dwelt too much on the gardened and terraced city which he saw rearing its stately head as the centre and cynosure of the great settlement of his dreams. Hordernsville was, perhaps, somewhat of a chimera, and he possibly overlooked a