a most favourable account of
a large river he had seen on his voyage. He was not the first discoverer
of this river, which, as early as 1697, had been visited by a Dutch
navigator, named Vlaming, who was sailing in quest of a man-of-war
supposed to have been wrecked on these shores. Vlaming had seen this
stream, and, astonished by the wonderful sight of thousands of jet black
swans on its surface, had given to it the name of Swan River. But it had
remained unthought of till Captain Stirling, by his report, awakened a
warm and hopeful interest in this district.

Shortly afterwards the British Government resolved to found a colony on
the banks of this river, and Captain Fremantle arrived as the pioneer of
the intended settlement. When he landed on the shore, he found that a
nearer view of the country was far from realising the expectations
formed by those who had viewed it merely from the open sea. He began to
have forebodings, but it was now too late--the ships, containing eight
hundred of the first settlers, were already close at hand; and, in the
course of a week or two, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the reefs
along the shore, they landed Captain Stirling, the first Governor, with
his little band, on the wilderness of Garden Island. Here, in this
temporary abode, the colonists remained for several months--sheltering
themselves in fragile tents, or in brushwood huts, from the rough blasts
and the rains that beat in from the winter storms of the Indian Ocean.
Exploring parties set out from time to time to examine the adjoining
mainland; but, however fair it seemed from a distance, they found it to
be merely a sandy region, covered with dense and scrubby thickets. The
only port was at a place called Fremantle, where there was but little
shelter from the storms of the open ocean; and the only place suitable
for a town was several miles up the Swan River, where the waters expand
into broad but shallow lagoons. Here the colonists determined to build
their city, to which they gave the name of Perth. But the site was not
favourable to enterprise; an impassable bar stretched across the mouth
of the river, which was, therefore, inaccessible to vessels. The goods
of the colonists had to be landed on an exposed beach at Fremantle, and
then carried overland through miles of sand and scrub.

In 1830 about a thousand new immigrants arrived; and towards the end of
this year the colonists succeeded in settling down in their new