Opinion of our shipmate on the subject of educating natives—Success of Roman Catholic bishop—Wesleyan Mission School—Its failure—Mrs. Gamfield—Causes of her success with natives—Her difficulty in establishing her pupils in life—Anxiety of the Bishop of Perth to undertake guidance of institution at Albany, and to resign his See for that purpose—Petition to abandon project of resignation—Our inability to undertake missionary work at Barladong—Mingee and her mother—Protest against name of Sally—Mingee handed over to her betrothed—Mingee elopes with half-caste—Family complications—Khourabene left in charge of Parsonage—Dying native woman—Binnahan—Khourabene's opinion of legs—Native funeral—Hasty interment—Going to school—Hen and duckling—Quickness in learning to read—Backwardness in sewing—"Squeak" in boots—Forlorn little native—Names suitable to good society.
On board our ship, in the voyage to Western Australia, there had been an intermediate passenger who was returning thither after a few years' residence in England, and whom I often interrogated concerning the natives of the new country to which we were sailing. I was curious to know whether the "aborigines," as they are now styled, whom Captain Cook would in his older time have called "Indians," were capable of being taught and improved, and our shipmate answered that they could learn extremely well, "though it was but labour lost to educate them, as they were no sooner of an age to marry than they would run away from their instructors, and be off again to the bush." He added that the Roman Catholics had done more for the natives, and had obtained a greater
