question that the native mahogany, with which rooms are always boarded in Swan River, if they are so fortunate as to be boarded at all, would be the handsomest flooring of any, provided that it was kept bright with constant rubbing. The colonists would probably take fright at the idea of the labour involved in keeping up a polished floor, but if the French fashion of fastening brushes to the feet of the floor cleaner was adopted, all difficulties would be obviated.
On one of our floors we pursued the plan of polishing the mahogany with beeswax, and the effect resembled that of the finest old dark oak. I soon discovered that the practice was unusual, by observing the extreme interest with which one of my visitors regarded its results; and her explanation that the polished boards "reminded her of Windsor Castle," sounded to us as the best instance that we had ever heard of lucus a non lucendo. But absurd as it seemed to us, there was reason for what she said. As a child she had lived in the town of Windsor, and until that moment she had never seen a bright floor since certain well-remembered peeps that she had had of the apartments in the Castle, in virtue of the employment that her father had held as one of George the Third's domestics. Windsor traditions were still dear to her, and one of her Australian-born children had been christened Amelia, in memory of the old king's favourite daughter.
We had now taken sufficient time to "turn ourselves round," as the old phrase goes, within doors, and we next proceeded to apply the same gyratory process to our outward premises, though what connection self-rota-
