Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/82

 colonies. Amongst the advantages of Western Australia is its climate, which for the greater part of the year is one of blue skies and bright sunshine, enrapturing, indeed, to the unaccus­tomed Londoner, who might well put up with the three months of somewhat excessive summer heat for the sake of the splendid spring and autumn weather. Even the summer temperature presents the important alleviations of dryness during the day­ time and coolness at nights. Then, again, the rainfall is plentiful on the west and south-west coasts, and regular and sufficient for at least one hundred miles inland from, say, Gantheaume Bay on the former, to the mouth of the Fitzgerald River on the latter. The summer dryness of the atmosphere is an agreeable feature even in the north-west, and renders the tropical portions of the colony sufficiently bearable, droughts of the severity of those experienced in the eastern colonies being unknown. Whilst there is plenty of room for pastoralists with capital in the north-west, the small agriculturist may get good land in a temperate latitude on lower terms than would be the case in any other colony possessing a similar quality of soil. The latter has specially good prospects from the fact that the production of cereals has not yet outrun the local demand, nor does it seem likely to do so for a long time to come, if the promise of the large increase in the consuming population is borne out by the success of the Yilgarn goldfields and other mineral developments in various parts of the colony.

At present, as I have said before, very little is done by the Government in the way of subsidising immigration. The Immigration Board, to whom under the Act of 1883 the expenditure of the funds available is entrusted, have confined their operations of late to granting free passages to labourers from Europe nominated by their friends in the colony, and to paying half the passage money for labourers nominated by colonial employers desiring imported hands. In each case the nominators are required to enter in an undertaking to indemnify the Government against any expenses incurred between the debarkation and arrival at destination of the immigrant. It is also made a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of £50, with or without twelve months' imprisonment, for any free or