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BISHOP'S LETTER.
133

exception of that at Albany, neither had either of the two great societies, the Church Missionary and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, founded any stations there. "It looks strange," wrote one of our correspondents, "to see no account of what is doing in Perth in the S. P. G. annual reports, every other colonial diocese being there mentioned."

Since our return to England, however, this neglect of the natives has weighed so heavily on the mind of the Bishop of Perth, that he has been anxious to resign his bishopric in order that he might place himself at the head of an earnest effort to gather in a flock of poor Western Australians, who might be Christianized and civilized in an establishment such as the one with which he was formerly connected at Poonindee in South Australia.

The school at Albany is rapidly dwindling away of late, and contained but fourteen children at the census of 1870. I believe that not only has the Government aid been withdrawn, but that Mrs. Camfield, who was the guiding spirit of the whole, has been unable to continue the good work which she had carried on so long and so well.

To quote the Bishop's words in the letter in which he announced his intention of resigning the see:—"I will mention first then, the great uneasiness of mind which I have always felt with reference to the native population of this colony, and the sanguine hope which I entertain that my removal to Albany may have the effect of not only preserving the native institution there from the extinction which seems now to be impending over it, but I think I may be enabled, under God's blessing, to give it something more than revived activity, and to