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Rh as he says, from his mind's eye "the picture of my four poor brothers, dying of hunger in the bush."

With the proceeds of the concert he was enabled not only to purchase provisions of all kinds, but also a yoke of oxen for ploughing—a grand safeguard against future want. The help, however, arrived too late for all to share in it. Before he could reach the Mission the poor young catechist was dead, and the mind of the French novice was so much shaken that it was judged best to send him back to Perth under the escort of a kind-hearted Frenchman who had accompanied Father Salvado on his return journey to lend his assistance in the toil of clearing the land. The two monks were thus left to carry on the work as best they could, which proved such a sore task (in every sense of the word) to barefooted men, that they now contrived for themselves wooden shoes covered with fur. They also patched their ragged monastic habits with the same material, and supplied lost buttons by strings made of the sinews of the kangaroo.

The wheat began to sprout in September, but the old saying held good, that "while the grass grows the steed starves"; and for twenty-nine days in October the Fathers never tasted bread. This state of want was relieved by the arrival of two natives with a present of fourteen pounds of flour, sent by a poor Irish servant at Captain Scully's whom the natives had acquainted with the poverty at the Mission, and whose name of "Elinor" is gratefully recorded by Father Salvado. To the two good fellows who carried her gift thanks were also due, but in a less degree, as whenever the missionaries had bread they always shared it freely with the natives.