Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/27

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INTRODUCTION.

feeling of the settlement? If the intrusion of criminals into the presence of the settlers be too irksome to be borne, let their labour be expended on those portions of each line of road most remote from the established settlement, while the termination adjacent to each town shall be formed by free-labourers, remunerated, as may be arranged, amongst the inhabitants. It is probable, too, that, after some of the principal and most necessary lines shall have been completed, the natives will bring their labour into market, at rates more reasonable than the free whites, and under circumstances more comfortable than would attend the employment of convicts.

Whenever the interior shall be rendered accessible by lines of road, the settlers may call to mind with gratitude, the vast natural resources that have lain for so many ages concealed within. Then may their opening prospects be compared to the natural formation of the great region of Australia, surrounded by low-lying sand-banks and forbidding coasts, that alarm the emigrant at his first approach, but when once the breakers are cleared, and a safe asylum reached within, all is beautiful, and bright, and happy-looking.

The peculiar manner in which the surface is timbered presents features both beautiful and ad-