Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/303

274 description of the Benedictine Mission in Western Australia, and of the causes of its success in dealing with a people to whom the credit has erroneously been given of turning the edge of all tools that were ever used in promoting its civilization. No biographies are said to be so perfect as those that betray the author's affection for his subject, and the bishop's pen runs con amore in discussing the topic of his beloved savages, and speaking of their docility and intelligence.

The gradually decreasing numbers of the natives indicate sadly yet surely that they are not destined to share any exemption from that fate, which has already befallen so many aboriginal races, of dying out whenever the white man erects his dwelling amongst them. The West Australian, however, will not have passed from the earth's families without a chronicler, and the pages in which Bishop Salvado has enshrined his recollections of this simple people may be compared to the stones of a little cairn heaped beforehand to its memory. The book was originally written in Italian, and was afterwards translated into Spanish, which is the native language of the author; and I have ventured to make the following sketch of the information to be derived from its most interesting contents.

Twelve years had elapsed, since the foundation of the Swan River settlement in 1829, when its Roman Catholic inhabitants addressed an urgent entreaty to their bishop at Sydney that he would confer on them the boon of a minister of their own religion. At the time that the letter containing this request arrived at Sydney the bishop, Dr.