Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/19

 identical with the Swan. The Avon varies greatly in width. In some parts, where there are fine reaches of one or two miles in length, it is sixty and seventy paces broad, with high banks. Like the Swan and some other rivers on the coast, it is, in the dry season and towards its source, but a chain of pools, until filled by the winter torrents.

The climate of York is reckoned cooler than that of the Swan. There have been established in this district, for the space of several years, arable and grazing farms; and the proprietors find the country well suited for both, although the crops raised there are not equal in quantity to the produce of the rich alluvial plains of the Swan, Canning, and other rivers in the coast districts.

The fine condition of the herds, the last time the writer visited the district, showed the pasture to be good. Indeed, so very nutritious is the herbage, that a farmer there assured him, he gave no other food than the hay of that country to a team of English horses, which appeared in excellent condition, although employed in drawing heavy loads across the Darling Range.

But the interior of Western Australia is particularly valuable for its sheep pastures. These are extensive tracts of undulating surface, covered with a short sweet grass, and are found to be admirably suited for Merino flocks. Those of Messrs. Bland and Trimmer, which have been there some years, fully justify this assertion, from their rapid increase and healthy condition. Sheep are there exempt from a disease (supposed to originate from feeding in marshy pastures), from which several flocks to the west of the range have suffered severely. In a report printed in the Colonial Gazette of August last, we find Dr. Harris, a physician who is settled on the Swan, and has ably written on the disease alluded to, thus addresses the Agricultural Society of the colony:—“No country in the world can