While we hail with gladness the good spirit which has been shown in
raising so much money for religious objects in the very infancy of the
settlement, let us hope, that the "places of worship" may diminish in
number, while the churches increase, and that the country districts may
have a larger share of assistance than they can now receive out of what
remains of 1200_l._ a year, after Adelaide and its _ten_ or _twelve
clergymen_ have been supplied.[159] Undoubtedly, in this province of
Australia there is much zeal and good feeling awakened, and the efforts
of the South Australian Church Building Society are deserving of every
success. To the members of this Society it must be indeed a cause of
thankfulness and joy, that they can call to mind during the lapse of
only four years, the quick succession of an open spot, a tent, a reed
hut, a wooden shed, and lastly, a church capable of holding six hundred
persons, being respectively used for places of divine worship. And now,
not only do they see one church finished, but two others are, ere this
time, no doubt completed.[160]

[159] For the facts here noticed, see the Australian and New Zealand
Magazine, No. 1. p. 53.

[160] See Report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for
1842, p. 57.

The British colony in the great southern land to which the attention of
the reader may next be directed, is that of Western Australia; or,
as it was called in its earlier days, during its first struggles into
existence, the Swan River Settlement. This is situated upon the coast of
New Holland, opposite to the colony of New South Wales, lying in nearly
the same latitude, but thirty-four or thirty-six degrees of longitude to
the west of it. The first discovery of this spot was made by a Dutchman,
Vlaming, in 1697, who named the stream Black Swan River, from the black
swans, which were then seen for the first time by Europeans, and two of
which were taken alive to Batavia.[161] The banks of the Swan River were
first colonized in 1830, and the mode in which this was effected is
peculiar and different from the usual course. A few gentlemen of large
property undertook to found the colony, at little or no expense to the
mother country, receiving immense grants of land in return for the
expenses incurred by them in this attempt; which grants, however, were
to revert to government, unless they were cultivated and improved under
certain conditions and in a given time. Great diff