Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/114

 common mortals bear sixty, showed us over the garden, with its acres of vines, its golden orange and lemon trees, its flourishing tobacco plants, which supply snuff to the brethren, and its wealth of various kinds of healthy vegetables. Wheat cultivation is carried on over a large area, but the sheep are the mainstay of the mission, the wool-money supplying funds for the purchase of clothing, farming utensils, and other things which are not producible on the spot. Horse-breeding is also found profitable. There are a score or so of married aborigines about the place, each of whom is provided with a separate cottage and paid an average wage of £1 a week. Having full liberty to leave when they like, they rarely or never exercise the privilege, and the mere threat of banishment is nearly always enough to restore them to order in cases when they display a disposition to be refractory. Besides these married couples there are a number of orphans and foundlings at the mission, the sexes being housed separately and taught useful trades and handicrafts, as well as the usual rudiments of secular and religious education. There are about 120 natives at the mission of all ages, and the tillage of the young minds and of the far-spreading lands of the community is carried on by about half-a-dozen fathers and seventy lay brethren, nearly all drawn from sunny Spain. One wonders what can have been the influence which made them give up country and home and every hope of domestic joys to settle in a strange land, under stringent rules, and with nothing in the way of remuneration for a life of unremitting toil beyond a bare subsistence, the least possible amount of sleep, and only the absolutely necessary modicum of bodily raiment. If one could be convinced that this life of sacrifice had been of practical avail, one would feel less grudging of its cost in narrowed lives and depleted human sympathies. But though I have spoken of the New Norcia Mission as being the most successful ever established in Australia, the expression really means very little, especially when one regards Bishop Salvado's attempt as the high-water mark of what has been done to civilise and regenerate the remnant of the dispossessed race. He has certainly been the means of a few families who might otherwise have gone to the