article of export because it could be packed and shipped without much trouble, whereas they would long ago have ceased to deplore the "poison," which limits the size of their sheep-runs, could any easy transmission have been found for the innumerable horses which might have been bred upon the same ground which has proved so fatal to their flocks.
If an easy land communication existed between Perth and Adelaide a lively picture might be drawn of the position which Western Australia would assume. Rich in lead, copper, and ironstone, with forests equivalent to unlimited beds of coal, she might be the manufacturing district to the whole of Australia, whilst at the same time its granary and vineyard. Instead of importing salt she might supply it to other countries from her salt lakes, and a colonial Wedgwood would possibly find a better use for kaolin than that of whitening a kitchen chimney. The mulberry-trees would be filled with silkworms, and olive oil, instead of travelling to West Australia from Italy via England, would be produced from the abundant berries which drop from the colonial olive-trees, unregarded at present by any but pigs and children. But articles of commerce which there is no means of carrying to market, are as useless to their owners as the Spanish gold pieces were to Robinson Crusoe upon his desert island; and the colonists, after struggling with their ill-luck for twenty years, devised a plan which they were fain to think would bring a market to their own very doors.
It was plain that, in spite of the "poison," a great deal more mutton could be grown in the colony than was needed for the consumption of its inhabitants, and if an
