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pleased with the country. Every morning, when I am in Perth, I devote a couple of hours with the Governor and the interpreter to the formation of a vocabulary of the native language. Our progress is slow, but deliberate. We have discovered a tolerably regular conjugation of their verbs, consisting of present and past tense and participle,—for instance, booma, booma-ing, boomaga, respectively stand for beat, beating (or beat), beaten. We are also trying to collect and arrange all the minerals of the colony, and have made a tolerable show already. Mr. Preiss, a German, has discovered, in the Toodyay district, something of a fossil nature, which, I think, is an "encrinite," and is the first of the transition or secondary formation (if it be of one or the other), which has been found here. This gives hope of coming to a coal formation. The Governor has offered a grant of 2560 acres to any one who may first discover a coal field.
The natives have been very troublesome and daring of late. They have killed several pigs in this neighbourhood, and were caught in the act of driving away 150 sheep from a flock next to my grant at York. Six of them have been arrested. The week now approaching—Easter week though it be—will be a busy one with me. On Tuesday we had a very long and important Legislative Council to prepare our Budget. I have also another Act to get ready in the meantime. Then on Wednesday there is our criminal sessions, with some heavy cases to be tried; on Thursday our Legislative Council, with all one's ordinary business besides. This is beginning to be rather hard work.
Good Friday.—It ought to be a hallowed day, but is it so? We had service this morning at Henley Park, and sacrament will be administered next Sunday by Mr. Mitchell. There has been much rain these two days past, and very high wind. I have some trees burning near this, and the sparks are driven by the wind at an alarming rate, considering that our roofs are thatched.
