This page has been validated.
32
SKETCHES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

most of them, although he may have his meals in private if he prefers to do so; or, if he desires to obtain lodgings in a private house, he will not find much difficulty in procuring accommodation of a respectable and convenient character.

There was, however, another public building which we were anxious to visit before we left Perth for the interior, and that was the "Home." This is a Government asylum, established as a respectable refuge for all those migrants from England who may not have succeeded in obtaining employment immediately after landing; and it is also used as a sort of almshouse or workhouse for those old people who may have fallen into poverty, and for whom Government aid has become indispensable. Purists, in language insist upon calling this building the Immigrants' Home, whilst others, who remember that its especial purpose is to provide a shelter for those new-comers who have not as yet been able to convert themselves into dwellers in the new country, in any useful sense of the term, but are still as waifs and strays cast upon its shore, consider that Emigrants' Home is the more legitimate title for the abode of those unlucky exports from England who have not at once been able to obtain admission into the human circulation of the new country, but are still, as it were, in store at the place of landing.

On inquiring at the "Home" as to the fate of our old acquaintances on board ship, we learned that our Yorkshire friend, the successful cake maker, had been joined on landing by a very decent-looking man who was doing well as a shoemaker, and who seemed, though a convict, to be respected as a man of business. He had prepared