here would be preserved for the use of the British ships. Albany lives in continual fear of being superseded, as a port of call for the mail steamer, by Fremantle; and indeed it cannot be looked on, at present, as offering a favourable field for the investor in corner allotments.
To reach Perth, the capital city of the colony, a railway journey of some thirty hours in a north-westerly direction is necessary. This line was constructed by the West Australian Land Company, and was opened in 1889. The company received from the Government a grant of 12,000 acres of land for every mile constructed, to be selected within a distance of 40 miles on either side of the line, with half the frontage to the railway reserved to the Government. The line has recently been taken over by the Government for £1,100,000. There are other private, or land-grant lines in the colony, chief amongst which is the Midland Railway, running back north to Geraldton. But the system has in most cases given dissatisfaction to all parties concerned—Government, investors, settlers, and the travelling public.
Whilst Sir John Forrest is in power, it will be utterly useless for the most philanthropic of concessionaires to propose to build railways for the colony. The colony has undertaken the work itself, through contractors, and has achieved an astonishing record for cheapness and celerity of construction. The gauge is 3 ft. 6 in. in all cases, and the line was open in March 1898 as far as Menzies, a mining town to the north of Kalgoorlie, 450 miles away in the interior of the Eastern Desert. Warned by the extravagance which some of the other colonies have displayed in regard to the cost of their earlier railways, and assisted, no doubt, by the absence of all physical difficulties except the scarcity of water, the Government has so contrived that its railways are run
