Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/70

 horticulture, acquired by serving an apprenticeship to a market gardener. The spot he fixed upon for his first one was a somewhat elevated morass, on sloping ground, separated from the house by a ravine, and covered with rank vegetation, owing to latent springs. These, after burning off the surface, he dug out, and formed into circular wells of close and substantial brick-work, rising several layers above the surface: from these wells, at different elevations, he is enabled to conduct the water in channels to almost every part of the garden. When the last accounts left, he was constructing earthen pipes for the purpose of completing his plans of irrigation, and also for conveying water across the ravine to the height on which the house is situated. In this garden, and in another larger one, hereafter to be noticed, almost every kind of vegetable, and as many sorts of fruit-trees as have been introduced from tropical and extra-tropical countries, are found to flourish. Among the former was the mangel-wurzel, already mentioned as having a root six feet in circumference; the tomato grows here luxuriantly, weighed down with the load of its beautiful fruit, which gives so fine a flavour to sauces, soups, &c. Among the fruit-trees, he has raised many hundred almonds and Cape-gooseberries, the latter a delicious fruit, producing every month; and also figs and vines in abundance, the latter bearing grapes of a fine and rich flavour.

In front of the house are about two hundred acres of rich meadow, encircled nearly by the river. The situation of a part of this meadow attracted his notice, from its being inclosed between the river, and a natural moat of a semicircular form. This moat he dug out, to a considerable depth and breadth, throwing the soil on the inner banks of the inclosure, which he faced with a firm wall of green turf, and made to slope down gradually on the inner side. Along the whole extent of this sloping bank, which is of the finest