FARMS ON THE RIVER.
First impressions endure the longest, and are recalled with most
pleasure. Further acquaintance does not always give us a truer idea
of the value of the object, as familiarity frequently makes us
overlook as insignificant that which is constantly before us. It is
not the object that is proved to be really less valuable as we become
better acquainted with it, but our own views which change with our
position. My first impressions on visiting the various farms, or
rather gentlemen's residences, on the banks of the Swan, were
extremely agreeable. I thought nothing could be more delightful than
to live at one of those picturesque and lovely spots. If the romance
of that first feeling be now faded from my heart, it is not because I
have discovered that all which I then saw was an illusion, but
because a more sober state of mind -- that state into which the mind
settles as the excitement of sudden change and unwonted novelty
subsides -- teaches that happiness is not local, and that it is no
more likely to be found in the finest country residence than in the
main street of a town.
At the first view we are apt to imagine that people who live in one
of these pleasant retreats must needs be happier than ourselves, who
possess nothing but a miserable shilling.
This is the delusion; and when with increasing knowledge, we recover
from this, we cease to envy and to covet.
My first ride up the Swan was a most delightful one. No park in
England could be more beautiful than the grounds around some of the
dwellings.
The ride through the scattered village of Guildford, with a view of
the rich and extensive flats of Woodbridge, the property of Sir James
Stirling, and the frequent bends of the river, is a very agreeable
one. The whole country of the middle and upper Swan resembles a vast
English park. We passed the pretty country church of the Middle
Swan, with its modest parsonage beside it, and then proceeded through
wooded ravines along a pleasant drive to one of the most hospitable
mansions in the colony. Extensive stables, barns and out-buildings
occupied the back of the premises. As it was now too late in the
evening to see much of the surrounding scenery, we entered the house
of Samuel Moore, Esq., and sat down to an excellent dinner. In the
evening we had music -- pianos are as common in Western Australia as
in England. At night I occupied a sofa in the parlour. The
excitement and novelty of my present situation -- so many thousands
of leagues removed from the spot on which, only a few months before,
I had deemed I was to spend my life -- kept me wakeful; and about one
o'clock I arose, and opening the French window, stepped out into the
verandah. How solemn was the scene before me, faintly lighted by the
moon! In front of the house was a pretty sloping garden, and below
this stretched a broad clearing, now waving with corn, amidst which
rose up a number of scattered, lofty, dead trees, which had been
purposely killed by ringing the bark. How mournful they looked in
that gloomy light!
The river bounded this clearing, and beyond the river stretched its
high bank, covered with forest trees, the advanced lines, as it were,
of the vast wilderness which lay behind. From out the depths of
those woods rose the occasional shrieks of an owl, or other night
bird, and at intervals the long dismal howl of a wild dog -- the only
carnivorous animal indigenous in that country. The air was balmy,
but there was something in the mournful aspect of the scene that
weighed upon the spirits, and made one feel inexpressibly lonely in
the midst of that boundless wilderness of forest.
Time soon takes off the edge of novelty, and long ago I have learned
to feel perfectly at ease and cheerful, whilst lying in the midst of
much deeper solitude, with no companions but my horse grazing near
me, and the fire at my feet. There is no country in the world so
safe for the traveller as Western Australia.
The next day we went over the farm of our host. His best land was on
the flats at the river side, but his upland, by judicious
cultivation, is made productive and valuable. A carriage-drive
extends through the grounds and affords beautiful prospects of the
river, and of the estates through which it runs; and on the other
side, of the Darling Hills. The hedge-rows on this property are
planted with olive, almond, and peach trees -- an admirable policy,
which ought to be adopted throughout Australia. In a few years --
for the olive bears fruit much sooner here than in the south of
Europe -- a valuable traffic in olive-oil may be expected from this
colony.
The ingenious gentleman who owns this property (which is, in point of
soil, one of the worst farms on the Swan) continues annually to add
to its value by his persevering system of improvement. He has had a
steam-engine constructed on his own premises, and under his personal
superintendence; and he grinds his own flour as well as that of his
neighbours.
The neighbouring estate of W. L. Brockman, Esq., is a more valuable
property, and equally attractive in possessing a well-cultivated
farm, a beautiful situation, a comfortable residence, and an amiable
family.
With similar energy and savoir faire, all the beautiful farms on this
river might be made most enviable residences.
Whilst on the subject of farming, I may mention a reaping-machine
which has been introduced into this colony from South Australia,
where it was invented. It is only adapted to a very dry climate, but
there it is most valuable. A pair of horses push a machine before
them, which consists of a threshing-machine and a set of revolving
combs, some six feet wide. These combs, in their revolutions, catch
up the wheat, and tear off the ears from the stalks, throwing them
back into the threshing-machine. A field of wheat is thus reaped and
threshed as fast as the horses can walk over it. The straw is
afterwards mown.
The roads are hard and good in this neighbourhood, and some of the
settlers keep their open carriages.
I doubt whether I have conveyed to the reader a just idea of some of
the pleasantest spots which are to be met with in this colony; but I
would not have him (full of romantic thoughts and agricultural
purposes) rush hastily into the mart and sell his substance in order
to lead a life of tranquil retirement in this distant Eden. It
requires a good deal of philosophy to make a contented settler. Most
colonists leave England full of virtuous resolutions -- with bosoms
glowing with the ardent love of nature; and fully persuaded that they
need nothing to make them happy but a small farm, beautifully
situated, with its cottage ornee, and its spreading vines, and a
noble fig-tree, beneath which they are to sit in the cool of the
evening, with their little ones around them. All this they may
really possess; and for some time they are in raptures at the novel
feeling of being men of landed interest. This is always the first
ambition of a colonist -- to have some property which he may lawfully
call his own. And, indeed, the human heart never expands with more
satisfactory pride than in the breast of him whose territorial
possessions have hitherto been confined to a few flower-pots in his
parlour-window, but who now stands firmly beneath a lofty gum-tree,
and looking round him, murmurs "This is mine!" It is, indeed, a very
pleasant sensation, but, unfortunately, it is very short-lived.
Men do not come out to a colony to spend an income, but to make a
living. When once their capital is laid out in the acquisition of a
farm, and in the necessary purchase of stock, they have to raise
money out of it to pay their labourers' wages, and find their
households with tea, sugar, clothing, and "sundries." Many things
may be grown upon your farm, but not everything. At first, the
settler is satisfied with finding that he can sell sufficient produce
to enable him to pay his way, provided he practise the utmost
economy, and exhibit a reasonable degree of good management.
But soon there are extra expenses to be liquidated; a long illness in
his family brings him in debt to the doctor; or his neighbour has
injured him, and he has, thereupon, further injured himself by going
to law and avenging the wrong. He now becomes discontented, and
thinks he is as badly off as he was before he left England; or,
perhaps he may have sustained no losses, and is just able to live on
his property without getting into debt; he forgets, however, the
principles on which he came out to settle; he begins to complain that
he is not making money. It is true he leads an easier life than he
did in England; he is not striving and struggling for existence as he
was there, but he is making no money. His wife asks him daily, in
the pleasantest connubial key, why he brought them all from England,
to bury them there, and see nobody from morn till night? What, she
urges, is to become of their children? Will Jonadab, their
first-born, be a gentleman like his maternal ancestors? -- But how,
indeed should he, with the pursuits of a cow-boy and the hands of a
scavenger? It is very well for one who cares nothing for genteel
society, and whose bearish manners, in fact, unfit him for it, to
lead such a life; but is she to endure this for ever, and see her
daughters married to men who wear long beards and Blucher boots?
These incessant attacks at length overthrow the ennobling philosophy
of the colonist. He knows not where to procure more than he already
possesses, or he would gladly return to the country of his
fore-fathers; but alas! he sees no prospect of gaining even a bare
livelihood there. Without knowing, then, how or where to improve his
condition, he deplores the penury of his lot, and sighs for wealth
which he has no prospect of ever obtaining.
My own opinion has ever been that colonists, with few exceptions,
must always be poor men. They may possess large estates and numerous
herds; but the more numerous these herds, the less is their
marketable value: for population and demand can never increase in
equal ratio with the supply. A man, therefore, who possesses the
elements of wealth, may still be poor in the article of money.
Nor will his estates produce him more income than his herds; for in
most cases the only rent which his tenants can afford to pay is in
kind. 'The only real wealth to a colony is the incessant influx of
immigration, combining capital and labour.'
There are some of us, happily, who still retain the ancient
philosophy. We have not thought of pecuniary wealth, and are content
to live easily, with those moderate blessings which attach to a
beneficent climate and a simple mode of life.
So very little is required which money can buy, that men seem to be
annoyed at the fact, and insist upon creating new wants.
A great deal of discontent and repining generally prevails in a
colony. People who have lived miserably in England, who have long
doubtfully hovered between suicide and highway robbery, determine at
length to adopt the still more melancholy alternative of emigration.
After bequeathing a few tender sighs to the country which they have
hitherto regarded rather as a step-mother than a parent; and having
pathetically solicited the sympathy of those who more readily bestow
upon them a few pounds than a few tears, in the pious hope of never
seeing them more, our emigrants betake themselves to the favoured
land of their adoption, in the full and confident belief that they
have nothing now to do, but live "like gentlemen," though without the
means, or any other qualifications of that class. Their Faith is of
that affecting and unlimited description, as to lead them to suppose
that He who beneficently feeds the ravens will not neglect the rooks
or the drones.
In a very short time, however, they find that they are no better off
in the new than they were in the old country. The gum-trees do not
produce bread, nor the banksias shoulders of mutton; and,
consequently, their hopes have been miserably disappointed, and they
loudly proclaim their wants and sorrows in the streets. There are
unfortunately in all colonies -- those 'refugia peccatorum' -- many
emigrants of this class, idle and worthless, who have never done
well, and never will succeed in any part of the world.
A colonial life is not for these men, and we recommend them to pass
on to some other region as quickly as possible.