would have judged it to be poor in capability also, if, on further
experience, a vitality had not appeared which seemed to electrify the
soil on the touch of colonisation. Imported animals, trees, and plants
lived and flourished among the dingy forests, which barely yielded food
enough for a few wandering savages.

"The farther they went, the greater contrast appeared, more drought and
better country; and in later times, as the last of enigmas, a change of
vegetation and climate seemed to follow the settler with his flocks and
herds. After a few years' feeding with stock, water has been found
permanently standing in country where it never stood before, and
sometimes the tufty herbage has changed into a sward. The flats that used
in one season to show a succession of swamps, and in another a surface of
bare dusty soil, rifted with yawning cracks, has often become good level
turf, intersected with runnels cut by the hoofs of the sheep and cattle."

The first invasion of the new territory across the range led to a
terrible feeling of disappointment; true, that on at once crossing the
crest of the watershed country was found, which being partly within the
influence of the heavier fall of rain, approached in every way the
perfection dreamt of by the explorers; but as progress inland was made, a
change was found to take place, and, above all, the familiar indigenous
grasses were lost, and replaced by what the settlers took to be nothing
but worthless weeds. All the now prized edible shrubs, such as the many
kinds of saltbush, the cotton-bush, &c., were amongst these despised
plants; and even the very stock did not take to them, until some years of
use had rendered them familiar. These drought-resisting plants were at
first supposed to be confined to the inner slope of the range, but the
extended exploration of the continent shows us that where the coast range
loses its character of a pronounced range, and is only represented by an