Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/56

 him to bring out a wooden house, and whatever else was requisite for the convenience of his family. This man, whose trade was a good one, seemed a respectable and well-informed person; but, getting little business, and not embarking in agricultural pursuits, he soon became addicted to intemperance; and, shortly after, sold off the remainder of his property, and removed to the Cape of Good Hope. There—not contented with disseminating the worst reports of Western Australia, little of which, if any, he could have seen, except the sandy district of the coast—he industriously sought out those emigrants who touched at the Cape; and, after telling them he had but lately left Swan River, proceeded to give such a description of the country as was calculated to deter them from prosecuting their voyage thither.

A settler, who had suffered severely from confiding in the reports of this person and others, related to the author the following particulars:—He had left England for Western Australia in a ship chartered by himself, and freighted with his own establishment, stores of all kinds, and livestock—the latter, of choice breeds; and his people, amounting in number to seventy persons, or upwards. The reports he heard on his arrival at the Cape, deterred him from continuing his enterprise; and, in consequence, he discharged his ship, with a number of his people—sold most of his livestock at less than the English price; and then proceeded with his family, and remaining establishment, in another vessel bound to Van Diemen’s Land, with a view of settling there. Touching at the Swan, on his voyage, he had an opportunity of examining the country for himself; and, so pleased was he with it, that he resumed his purpose of settling there, although the step he had taken at the Cape had occasioned him a loss of, at least, several thousand pounds—and he has now, for some years, been located on the Swan.