XVIII.
A Land Boom in Perth—An Aristocratic Viticulturist—Typical "Younger Sons."
There was something in the way of a land "boom" in town allotments when I left Perth, especially in the main residential and professional street, St. George's Terrace, as well as in Hay Street, the main thoroughfare for retail business. In the former the late Earl of Carnarvon, with a prescient eye to the future, invested some £20,000 a few years ago, and his representatives still hold the property, which was purchased by the present Premier of Western Australia on Lord Carnarvon's behalf. Probably no very great advance could be got on the original purchase-money just now, but it may be regarded as what auctioneers call "an improving investment." Talking of English "big-wigs," it is curious how one runs across their traces in the most out-of-the-way locations. The "Upper Ten" are not likely to become wholly effete whilst one sees so many evidences of their enterprise in the "waste places of the earth"—a term which I use of Western Australia in an entirely Pickwickian sense. The President of the Legislative Council, Sir Thomas Cockburn Campbell, for example, represents a baronetcy won in the Napoleonic wars; whilst the Speaker of the Lower House is a scion of one of the oldest and most respected of Surrey families. A promising settler whom I met in Perth is a younger son of the late Right. Hon. W. P. Adam, who is still remembered in the House of Commons and elsewhere as the Government Whip of the later Palmerstonian and early Gladstonian period. His father died Governor of Madras, and the son is now feeling his way to fortune as a runholder in the Western Australian jungle, if I may so style
