'Good boy Khourabene,' and give me three sticks of tobacco."
The history of this "old master," as Khourabene called him, who made the natives so merry at Christmas, was an example of the success which seldom fails in a new country to await on the industry of those to whom agricultural labour has been familiar from their childhood. He had left England as a lad, and had come out to Western Australia in a humble capacity a few years after the first foundation of the Swan River Settlement. By degrees his honesty of purpose and steady industry had enabled him to work his way upwards until he became the upper servant or bailiff to one of the more wealthy of the settlers. Now at that period money, which had been plentiful enough quite at the commencement, had become so scarce, owing to the complete failure of the plans upon which the colony had depended for success, that it was out of the power of even the larger landowners to liquidate their servants' wages in cash, and the payments were of necessity postponed.
The consequence of this state of things (some twenty years ago) was as follows:—The wages accumulated, as a debt due from the master, until they amounted to a considerable sum, and when payment was made it was almost invariably in kind. Perhaps ten or twenty head of cattle would be paid as wages to a shepherd or a stockman for two or three years' service, the bargain including the right to run the cattle with the master's herd. Moreover, as all stock had diminished in value, owing to the great depression in which everything was involved, and as the sheep and cattle were taken by the servants at
