water was considered the prettier. We therefore sent our lighter luggage to the river pier, to be embarked on board the primitive-looking little steamboat, and joined her ourselves an hour afterwards.
It naturally strikes a new-comer with surprise to notice that the early colonial authorities, who decided on the locality of Perth, have not built their city upon the same side of the river as that on which Fremantle is situated. One could almost suppose that the founders of the capital had been enthusiastic engineers of the Brindley type, and that in the same manner as he believed rivers to have been created "to feed canals," they must have entertained the idea that the special object of a stream was to afford an opportunity for a bridge. At all events the placing of Perth on the northern bank of the Swan has been attended with very inconvenient and costly results. The rocky bar at the entrance of the river is no sooner crossed than the stream expands into a wide estuary, and any bridge built to connect the two banks must be not only of great width, but also of sufficient height to allow the masts of small vessels to pass beneath its road-way. Even the founders of Perth themselves, perhaps, never contemplated the carrying of a road across this part of the Swan, but during our stay in the colony a fine timber bridge, upwards of 300 yards in length, and answering all requisites in height, was not only begun but completed. The work was carried out entirely by convict labour—the only manner in which such an undertaking could ever have been effected in so thinly peopled a colony. Up to the time that this bridge was erected the banks
