general, for no chapel had ever been attached to the institution. To the conscientiously sincere members of the sect, the failure of this school was so painful, that two of them whom I questioned on the subject told me plainly that they could not bear to think or speak about it.
We next learned that in the southern extremity of the colony, Mrs. Camfield, the wife of the resident magistrate of Albany, a town which is situated on the harbour of King George's Sound, had devoted many years of her life to the education of the native children, and that, after having commenced the good work unaided, she had been enabled to continue it by the help of a yearly grant from Government. The custom of early betrothals that prevails amongst the natives has been a great stumbling-block to their permanent improvement, and it is the necessary fulfilment of these imperative family contracts that has caused that constant disappointment of philanthropic schemes to which our fellow-passenger alluded when he said that as soon as boys and girls were past childhood they would invariably leave those who had brought them up, to run away into the bush.
But the natives, if strict in exacting the fulfilment of a promise to themselves, understand also how to keep one made to others, and Mrs. Camfield's invariable stipulation, in undertaking the charge of a child, is that its parents shall not at any future time demand it back, an agreement which is rendered binding in their opinion by a present of flour, or a small piece of money, as earnest or pledge of the bargain. I was told that she began by adopting one little native girl, and that she afterwards
