turned them to good accont for they slept inside them after landing—pianos, too, were of use for the sake of their packing-cases in a country where the natural woods are so hard that a bit of soft deal is a great prize. But the line of utility, stretch and extend it how one would, could not be made to comprehend harps, and the instrument with its gold ball was re-shipped, and finally found a resting-place in the Isle of France.
The greater part of the immigrants bivouacked under tents, but many of them had not even the protection of canvas, and crept for shelter into the caves upon the seashore, in one of which I was told that a family had lived for a fortnight and that the mother lost the use of her limbs from rheumatism in consequence.
Winter in Swan River is a very windy time, and one of the annoyances of living in tents was the frequent necessity for running out in the middle of the night to secure such ropes as the wind had blown loose. The insecurity of the tents in the strong winter gales was a fact to which I often heard the older colonists allude as one of their miseries, suggesting to my mind that the piano, on which a lady assured me that she had been used to play whilst she lived under canvas, must have been very much out of tune.
One of the settlers, who had landed as a boy, told me that the duty of fastening the ropes of the family tent had devolved upon himself and his brother, and that on one especial night when they had to leave their beds on this service, they were rendered more wakeful than usual by the sound of signal guns from a ship in distress. The boys made their way to the beach, where, distinguishing
