Passing over the foul ground extending off the Stragglers, we ran into Owen's anchorage during the first watch. Whilst waiting to rate the chronometers several soundings were added to our plan of this place, and a three-fathom patch, about a quarter of a mile in extent, was discovered, with nine on either side of it, lying nearly two miles and a quarter North 39 degrees West from Fremantle gaol.
PENAL ESTABLISHMENT.
We also visited Rottnest to inspect the establishment. It had now been a penal settlement for four years; besides erecting the buildings, the aboriginal labourers had cleared thirty-four acres of land, chiefly in detached valleys. These grew thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre (in the Port Phillip district the return is about five more to the acre) and from thirty-four to forty bushels of barley. There are about two thousand acres of available land in the whole island. The average number of native convicts is about seventeen, and the expense of the whole establishment to Government is about 200 pounds per annum; but, under the good management of superintendent Vincent, it has realized 1500 pounds by the sale of corn and salt, and allowing for the value of the buildings erected.
His Excellency Governor Hutt had done a great deal for the improvement of the natives; the schools established for their instruction work exceedingly well; and I am happy to see that a most important step towards civilizing them has since been made, a white having taken a native woman as his wife. This may be regarded as in a great measure the result of the notice bestowed on them.
No opportunity occurred during our stay of adding to the observations I had previously made for the longitude of Fremantle (Scott's Jetty); which, however, is the only part of the continent absolutely determined during the Beagle's voyage. It is considered to be in longitude 115 degrees 47 minutes 50 seconds East.
Before leaving we received a letter of thanks from his Excellency and the members of the Legislative Council for the services we had rendered the colony. My friend Lieutenant Roe presented me, also, with two specimens of the Spined Lizard Moloch horridus, which I intended to present to Her Majesty; but, unfortunately, I did not succeed in bringing either of them alive to England; one, however, lived beyond the Western Islands.
DEPARTURE FROM WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
We left Swan River on the evening of the 6th of May, 1843, running out with a moderate North-East breeze. Everything seemed auspicious. The water was smooth, and the sails, as they slept in the breeze, echoed back the sounds of the well-known song, We are homeward bound, that was sung with an earnestness that could not be mistaken. I fancied I could discern, in the rough tones of the crew under my command, the existence of the same emotions that swelled in my own breast at this moment. For seamen, high and low, though content to pass the greater portion of their lives upon the world of waters, can never entirely suppress that yearning for home, which, perhaps, after all, is one of the finest traits in human nature. And now that it might be legitimately indulged, I was not sorry to see such strong evidences of its existence.
Ere the last vestige of day had passed, the coast of Australia had faded from our sight, though not from our memory; for, however much thoughts of the land to which we were returning crowded on our minds, they could not as yet entirely obliterate the recollection of that we were quitting. The Swan River colony--its history, its state, its prospects--naturally occupied much of our mind. What a change had come over it even since our visit! From a happy little family, if I may use the expression, it had grown into a populous colony, in which all the passions, the rivalries, the loves and the hates of the mother country were in some sort represented. And yet there remained still much of that old English hospitality, which rendered our first stay so pleasant, and which almost made us desire to prolong our last. The alteration that had taken place was rather to be referred to the increasing number of settlers, which rendered inevitable the formation of circles more or less exclusive, and which, with the forms of European society, promised to introduce many of its defects.
But our thoughts wandered, from time to time, over the whole of this extraordinary continent, which we saw for the first time in November 1837, at the point from which we took our departure, in May, 1843. The strange contrasts to the rest of the world which it affords were enumerated and commented upon--its cherries with their stones growing outside--its trees, which shed their bark instead of their leaves--its strange animals--its still stranger population--its mushroom cities--and, finally, the fact that the approach to human habitations is not announced by the barking of dogs, but by the barking of trees!*