logs into the room, and piling them upon the hearth. As we looked
around we felt that we had now indeed commenced a new life. For some
months, at any rate, we were to do without those comforts and
luxuries which Englishmen at home, of every rank above the entirely
destitute, deem so essential to bodily ease and happiness.

We were to sleep on the floor, to cook our own victuals, and make our
own beds. This was to be our mode of acquiring a settlement in this
land of promise. Still there was an air of independence about it,
and we felt a confidence in our own energies and resources that made
the novelty of our position rather agreeable than otherwise.

There was something exhilarating in the fresh sea-breeze; there was
something very pleasing in the gay appearance of the shrubs that
surrounded us -- in the broad expanse of the river, with its
occasional sail, and its numerous birds passing rapidly over it on
their way to the islands where they roosted, or soaring leisurely to
and fro, with constant eyes piercing its depths, and then suddenly
darting downwards like streams of light into the flood, and emerging
instantly afterwards with their finny prey. The opposite bank of the
river displayed a sandy country covered with dark scrub; and beyond
this was the sea, with a view of Rottnest and the Straggler rocks. A
few white cottages relieved the sombre and death-like appearance of
that opposite shore. Unpromising as was the aspect of the country,
it yet afforded sufficient verdure to support in good condition a
large herd of cattle, which supplied Fremantle with milk and food.

Here, then, the reader may behold us for the first time in our
character of settlers. He may behold three individuals in light
shooting coats and cloth caps, standing upon the bank before their