WESTERN AUSTRALIA"

ONE defect in Darwin's theory of selection is, that circumstances might tend to a downward course in the higher organizations, as well as to an upward in the lower. The careful and anxious critic will, for instance, inevitably in time change his eyes, how- ever full of human expression, for the green and oblique organ of the lynx. There is, of course, some compensation in the animal joy with which we spy out our prey and dart at once upon it, exposing it and pulling it to pieces. But in the object now before us we are denied any such compensation. There is scarcely a weak spot to pounce upon in the whole big book. More to prove that our lynx eyes have been on the alert than to find fault, we will here parade the very slight defects of any kind which we have been able to detect in this book. The first perhaps we may call somewhat serious. There is no map. We have so often pointed out the incompleteness of a book of this kind without a map, and reminded travellers how few readers have satisfactory atlases of the little-known regions of the globe at their command, that we will not prose away about it again, but only remark that we are more grieved than angry with Mrs. Millett, whose education and ability make her less excusable for shirking the evident duty of providing her readers with a plan,—if not to scale, at any rate showing the relative positions of Fremantle, Perth, Barladong, &c. It is provoking, when reading, to find ourselves on the left bank of a river when we thought we were on the right, and with no bridge within twenty miles by which to cross. We care nothing for the frontispiece of Government house, but a map would have been thoroughly appreciated. Next, Mrs. Millett is mysterious about the name of the vessel in which she went out, and raises a wild curi- osity in us on the subject. She tells us that the parents of a child born during the voyage wished to have it named after the ship, and adds, "but as in this case the child would have had to bear a name making it a certain butt for small wits all its life long, my husband persuaded them to give up the notion." We look in vain for the name ; even when her feelings must have been torn in parting from the good ship, she commands them and makes no sign; nor is there ever after any inadvertent mention of it. Once, only once, we actually detect slowness of observation or thought,—Mrs. Millett cannot conceive the origin of the expression to "turn one's self round." She says, "We had now taken sufficient time to 'turn ourselves round,' as the old phrase goes, though what con- nection self-rotation should have with the endeavour to settle down in a new home I could never understand." We would sug- gest to her to watch, when the next opportunity occurs of seeing a dog settle down for a nap, and she will be at no loss to understand the meaning of the homely, comfortable phrase. But these remarks are little more than spiteful kicks at anything so perfect. The book is a delightful one, it is useful without being dull, and entertaining without being facetious. We opened the great volume with a weary sigh wondering what good thing could come out of what we ignorantly judged to be sandy, arid, thinly popu- lated, unintelligent-natived Western Australia, and then glanced at the end, in the hope that there were not,so very many pages— perhaps it was loosely bound—and when we found four hundred and nine we still fell back with satisfaction on the type. But all our terror of the size vanished as we turned page after page, just, as pain loses itself imperceptibly in the return of ease.

Mrs. Millett has a keen and lively observation, an unusually cultivated pen and a judgment which has arranged her materials not only with order, but with skill. She does not push out into a history of the settlement and an account of missions (both far from wearisome) till she has first created an interest, individual and local, in themselves and their neighbourhood ; and in doing this there is no egotism and nothing even professional ; nothing, that is, that we are so accustomed to expect and to find in the books of chaplains and missionaries and their wives. And while the kindly, charitable, Christian spirit pervades everything she tells us of settlers, convicts, or natives, there is only one passage in which the reserve generally—perhaps too generally—practised in speak- ing of direct communion with God is broken through, and that records gratitude for a very special deliverance from danger.

To the proposing emigrant the whole book will be full of interest ; it will enable him to realize the sort of society existing there, and post him up in the advantages of climate, soil, and timber, and the disadvantages of drought, poisonous plants, distances, and con- victs. To the settler himself, who knows all this, probably the most valuable chapters will be those on the history, and the suggestions on the future improvement, of the colony. Even greater

• sin Australian Parsonage. By Mrs. Edward =lett. London: Edward Stanford.

than the drought or poisonous plants, and far greater than the natives difficulty, seem the evils arising from the large propor- tion of convict and expiree (the name given to those whose term of punishment is over) population, which lowers so terribly the moral standard, and makes everything but what the law punishes as crime appear to be allowable, and even innocent. These evils,

however, must have already partially disappeared since the cessation of transportation in 1868.

But to the general English reader, who neither is, nor proposes to become, a settler, the main interest of the book centres in the quaint life of the cultivated authoress and her husband in a region so far off and strange ; in their picturesque, simple, wooden house, open almost night and day, and their lovely climate and flowers ; in their native proteges and volunteer native servants ; in their animal pets ; in the coming and going of the natives on their strange errands, nocturnal as well as diurnal ; in their necessary make-shift life ; in their adventures in the labyrinth of the trackless bush, and their perplexities during floods, and in constant meet- ings with the melancholy convict road-parties,—one of the most painful characteristics of Swan-river life. Mrs. Millett tells us that the chaplains have but little chance of doing much good to these unfortunates—employed in making and repairing roads— from the great distances to be travelled to visit them, from the time occupied in filling up endless Government returns, and still more from the difficulty of ever seeing the men in private. And if we may judge by the following passage, our authoress cannot be mistaken

"The chaplain rides up, the warder summons the man—' Attention, get your books for service '—the short service is over, and the chaplain says to his congregation, of perhaps ten Protestants out of the sixteen men who may compose the party, 'Well, men, any wish to express, any question to ask ?"No, sir, except you could lend us some books.' After the party has asked the chaplain any little favours, such as to get them a slate or a pencil, or a sheet of paper, the chaplain tells the warder to dismiss ; the warder says, 'Attention, put back your books, break off ;' the men yawn, and dawdle slowly back to their work, looking as dull and stolid as if they were about to expire of utter laziness."

But the convict difficulty, as we have said, will be less every year, and we fear the native one also, though, says Mrs. Millett, their "feelings are very strong with respect to ownership in the soil, and some of them will still point to certain spots as theirs which have long been cleared and occupied by Englishmen." When we read of these wholesale " annexations " of land, carried on by our fellow- Christians—who are so stern, meanwhile, to punish the native

who walks off with the spade that is to make it productive—we are reminded of the poor black man's résumé of his view of Christi- anity :—" Mish'nary tell black man, 'Look up see him God.' While black man look up see him God, mish'nary grab him land." But we must hasten on ; we cannot even glance at more than a few points in this interesting volume, but strongly recommend our readers to peruse it for themselves. The style is so bright and clever, that it will be found a delightful book either to "read up" in the family circle, or for personal perusal. The account of the climate interests us much. Mrs. Millett tells us that she "could at least say of it, as the Roman girl said of her country, 4 Thou hast thy skies!' Often on summer nights we used to spread out an opossum-rag in the garden, and sitting upon it, watch the stars, the clear air giving them a size and brilliancy which Michael Lambourne in Kenilworth did not exaggerate when he

said that our' Northern blinkers are but farthing candles compared with those that sparkle in the South.'" And she speaks of the "elastic air and bright skies of West Australia," and assures us that the dryness of the air is such that neither heat nor rain seems injurious ; the intensity of the former scarcely ever causing

sunstroke or illness of any kind, and the severity of the latter seldom making it impossible, or even disagreeable or unwise, to pass the night in the open air at any season of the year. Bat summer is the trying time, the heat bringing drought and insects. The winter, on the contrary, is the season for flowers and beauty, and refreshing rains and cool nights :- "With the first commencement of rainy weather the mignonette would

begin to flower and the peach-trees to blossom in our garden As the rainy weather continues, flowering bulbs of all kinds, which have been imported from England and the Cape, ixias especially, appear in the greatest beauty ; both they and the annuals which we are accus- tomed to see at home, as well as the large scarlet geraniums, revelling in a season which though possessing the name of winter has none of its home characteristics. Whilst this transformation was effecting in the -gardens, which had lately looked so desolate, the bush was not behind- hand in assuming a new appearance. The wattle, which is one species -of the many kinds of Australian acacia, led the van amongst the indige- nous flowering trees, and showed its pale yellow blossoms before May was over. Later in the rainy season the wattle was outvied by the acacia called the • raspberry jam,' the flowers of which are of the brightest gold colour and grow in such abundant clusters that some of these trees

appear better furnished with flowers than leaves. One variety droopa like a weeping willow, so that when in bloom every separate spray is a long hanging wreath, 'waving its yellow hair,' as Moore says of the acacias in Arabia. All the jam-trees are in their chief beauty in Sep- tember, a time of year when heavy westerly gales often occur, bringing with them sharp sudden storms of rain, broken by bright gleams of sun- shine. On such days to stand upon a hill-side that commands a tract covered with these trees, their flowers at one moment obscured by the driving rain and wind, and at the next brilliantly lighted up by the sun, is a sight not soon to be forgotten. Many of the acacias which I have been describing reach the height of 40 feet at least, and are sometimes much overgrown by a thick parasite with long trailing twigs, bearing a red waxy-looking flower at Christmas-time,"

The natural-history chapters are moat especially delightful, though our authoress modestly invites her readers to skip them. If they do, they will miss some of the pleasantest and most amusing passages, as we will proceed to show, by one or two meagre extracts from fifty or so very interesting pages :—

"A pair of kangaroo rats were brought to me late one evening as a gift, and though I saw my dog looking at them sideways in a manner which was inhospitable, to say the least of it, yet, as she had always bestowed similar glances on all the other pets that we had ever possessed, I forgot what her sense of duty in this particular case might be, and carelessly left the rats that night in the kitchen. As might have been expected, both were found next morning very neatly shaken to death, the terrier's ideas of strict justice being quite above making scientific distinctions between rats with pouches and rats without. The next rat that was given to me I introduced to the dog with a solemn injunc- tion that the new-comer should be allowed an unmolested existence. But the rat repaid the dog's sufferance by giving himself great airs, behaving as though he was master of the house, and resenting with truculent kicks from his long hind legs the slightest difference of opinion between himself and any one of us."

"The ems; is a bird very easily tamed, but we would not enrol one of the race amongst our favourites, on account of the rooted idea pre- valent amongst these birds that everything which they can see about a house is an article of provender. Back-combs, tobacco-pipes, two-inch nails, screws, and screw-drivers are swallowed by him between his regular meals as light restoratives, which sort of fillip his constitution appears to require so often that he is soon held responsible for all dis- appearances whatsoever upon the premises, and thus becomes a far worse domestic scourge than any landlady's cat that ever was fabled. Nevertheless he fattens on the diet, and emu-grease is held in great esteem by both colonists and natives as a cure for bruises and rheumatism."

The account of a pet little opossum is quite touching, as well as amusing, but is too long for more than an extract :- "If the doors stood open on account of the heat, she would awaken me with springing on the bed to let me know that she was come in, and once I was startled out of my sleep with the noise that she made in trying to lift off the lid of the sugar-basin, with which she was well acquainted, by sticking her sharp-pointed nose through the handle. In winter-time, when the doors were not open at all hours of the twenty- four, she did not so easily get out without leave ; and it was by no means unusual, if I went from one room to another in the dark, to find her drop upon me suddenly from the roof, alighting on my shoulder or my head, like a soft heavy bundle, and steadying herself by wrapping her tail round my face or my throat Possie had been our playfellow for about two years when we began to notice that her pouch contained a tenant. This was especially perceptible whenever she ran up and down a long bamboo rod that served as a staircase to her favourite hole in the roof; and the matter was placed beyond doubt, one day, by the appear- ance of a little hind leg, which she put back again in a great hurry. Some time afterwards, in the month of August, in rainy, gloomy weather, I found her very comfortably established behind a curtain with her young one sitting in front of her ; and whereas the little leg that I had seen at first was as bare of covering as is a new-born rat or rabbit, its whole little person was now dressed in a beautiful fur coat. I put mother and child into the carpet bag, and for nearly two days Possie never left it, seeming meanwhile scarcely to care for eating or drinking,

and giving a little low hiss if I touched her." •

The natives are another subject of general interest, on which Mrs. Millett has written as amusingly as intelligently. Their habits, customs, superstitions, and relations to each other—especially that of the poor drudge of a wife to her husband—being treated of not formally or drily, but naturally, as they respectively become prominent from time to time in the course of the narrative. It is, however, far too extensive a field to enter upon now, and we have already been tempted to occupy more space than we can well afford.