I visited Albany on my return journey. It struck me that in "Sleepy Hollow" 90 per cent. of the natives were in bed and the other 10 per cent. were dozing on the seats on the parade.
When I started for the Antipodes the place that I looked forward to seeing more than any other was Western Australia. It is the part of Australia most discussed at home, where it is being boomed with all the artifice of the promoter's gang. Every ship brings living cargoes to Western Australia; every newspaper is full of Western Australia. On the front page are shipping advertisements offering every facility for quick and cheap transit; in the centre of the paper leading articles appear to ventilate the wonders of the West; towards the end of the paper—in the City news—thousands eagerly scan the Stock Exchange for prices of Western Australia. There is another column still in which one might find interesting news concerning Western Australia—the deaths column.
When I arrived in Australia the one place that I determined nothing should drag me to was Western Australia. No, not all the gold in the mines would get me to that pestilential plague spot. Here is a place boomed "at home" and abroad at the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, when nightly speeches were made at banquets glorifying the charms of the speculators' Eldorado, Western Australia—when columns were written of its boasted civilisation, and cheers were given when "Advance Australia" was roared out, and bumpers were drunk by the stop-at-home wirepullers. Just read the following, published at the moment:—
"A WESTERN PLAGUE SPOT.
"How Fever Is Raging in Perth.
"Various visitors to Perth have expressed their opinions upon the awful conditions, from a sanitary point of view, of the Western city, and almost daily news is telegraphed across of the ravages from typhoid, pneumonia, and other diseases in consequence.
"That the state of affairs is in no way exaggerated by prejudiced outsiders is proved by a full-page account in a recent issue of the Perth Herald, and which is headed: 'Typhoid Fever in Perth; An Alarming Situation; The Position of Affairs Grows Worse.'
"The opinions of doctors, nurses, experts, and others are published, all going to show that public and private action is almost in every case as if the one aim was to increase the death-rate to the highest possible figures.
"The water supply is contaminated; drainage runs into the catchment area, and even fæcal matter is plainly evident in the samples analysed; there is no supervision of the milk supply; vegetables are grown under most dangerous conditions; stagnant drains are in almost all the streets; about public places of recreation there are fever beds; many of the population are crowded in small boarding-houses like rabbits, and ordinary precautions for the removal of filth neglected, even if that were enough in itself; houses are built on pestilential swamps; the wind blows the dust about spots where the typhoid excrement has been deposited to breed germs by the million; and bread, meat, and other food carts go about uncovered to collect it, as if to make sure that any who escaped all other sources of the danger should not be allowed to escape the plague.
"Even the public esplanade has to be shunned, the silt from the sewer which is being used for reclaiming being a mass of foul matter.