knowing exactly what to do, but with a general impression that water was good in all cases of fire, had flung the contents of a large pitcher over the burning logs, and had thus, by the sudden production of a cloud of steam, caused the happy and unlooked-for phenomenon. After this fright it is perhaps needless to add that thenceforth our chimneys were swept with the greatest regularity.
To continue my subject of fires and fuel: if a piece of sandalwood is thrown upon the hearth, the perfume is almost overpowering and apt to cause severe headache; and on the other hand, the burning of even a small bit of the tree commonly called "stink-wood" will make the inmates of a room fly out of it, to avoid the terrible odour.
Sandalwood is, as I have already said, one of the chief exports of the colony, and it is often the practice to store the logs in large heaps in the forest until a convenient opportunity for carting it to Perth or Guildford shall occur. An accumulation of this kind belonging to one of our friends, which had reached the value of a hundred pounds, was entirely consumed in a bush-fire shortly before we left Western Australia. Anyone is at liberty to carry away fuel from the bush, provided it be dead or fallen wood; but to cut growing timber requires a licence of ten shillings per month. The quantities of dead trees scattered all over the bush are enormous, and when allowed, as is sometimes the case, to lie on the ground near a habitation of the better class, they are very disfiguring to an English eye, though, generally speaking, the colonists leave no trees, living or dead, standing in immediate proximity to their houses. This custom, which at first I deplored as involving a wilful disregard of the
