with business, and a ball, given on board one of the temperance whalers and described to us as being "coffee and cakes all night long" seemed to have been an epoch in the life of our acquaintance and her friend, whom the polite givers of the entertainment had brought from the shore in their own long boat.
Amongst the signs which may now be noticed of a general wakening up of the West Australians is the fact that the Perth journalists are beginning to call attention to the whale fisheries, and to suggest that it might be as well if the colonists reaped the benefit of them for themselves. That the harvest would be an abundant one may be judged from the report of the colonial Registrar-General, who states, in the census of 1870, that "from Camden Harbour in the north to the extreme boundaries of the colony on the southern coast, whales are to be found in great numbers, the right whales on the feeding grounds in the bays, and the sperm in large schools off the shore." The Registrar also adds that "American whale ships, engaged in sperm whaling, have taken, during the past two seasons, about four thousand barrels of oil, the value of which is from forty to fifty thousand pounds." After this statement it is consolatory to find, in the same report, that "a gentleman from Tasmania" is about to establish himself at Albany, in Western Australia, in order to fit out a vessel from that port for whaling operations.
Perhaps, however, no event of greater importance has occurred in the colony, since our return to England, than the carrying out of the long-desired wish that an exploring party should cross the territory, hitherto scarcely trodden by the foot of man, that lies between the settled districts
