Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/15

 four to five years. He proceeded thither in command of the troops with the expedition that founded the colony in 1829; and, on Sir James Stirling’s return to England in August 1832, the government devolved upon him, which he continued to administer for upwards of a twelvemonth, leaving the colony the latter end of September, in the following year. In the course of his official duties, he visited more than once King George’s Sound, and the other stations on the coast, and in the interior. It may also be well to mention that he has held an arable farm for several years on the Swan, and has been a director of the Agricultural Society established in the colony: he is, consequently, enabled to speak on the subject of farming there, from some experience of his own. And lastly, since his return home, he has had, through both public and private channels, regular accounts of the progress of the settlement up to the latest arrivals.

Swan River district is situated in about 32° south latitude, and 116° east longitude. It resembles in temperature (to speak from the author’s recollections of his residence in those countries) the south of Italy, parts of Spain and Portugal, and the Cape of Good Hope.

A register of the weather on the Swan is furnished in the concluding pages of this pamphlet, and shows the extremes of temperature during a year. In that instance the thermometer was kept in a hut, and ranged fifteen degrees above the highest point it attained in a brick-house, which was 91°. It there appears that rain was plentiful for six months successively, and that partial showers fell