bad living in comparative decency and happiness according to European ideas. But upon the mass of the genuine aborigines throughout the country the Benedictine Mission has prod11ced no more effect than if it had never existed. The little leaven has not leavened the whole lump. The New Norcia aborigines are mostly half-castes already, and will become more so as time goes on, and either be absorbed into the mass of the population or die out altogether. Upon the genuine aboriginal of the bush the Church has gained no hold through any efforts of Bishop Salvado. The Christianisation of the natives as natives has proved a complete failure, and it might seem that the Bishop had been merely beating the air all through his forty years of travail in the West Australian wilds. But it is at least something to have lifted the banner of the higher life, and to have lived it, too, all through these long years and amidst these rough surroundings, as rough almost for the pioneering whites as for the expatriated blacks. Hardly a West Australian exists who does not know Bishop Salvado, and the stranger who comes into the country must be a stranger indeed if he does not hear of him within the first week of his arrival. In his regard sectarian intolerance has absolutely no existence, and the most puritan Protestant unites with the most pious Catholic in extolling his virtues, and belauding his hospitality, which is extended without question to every visitor of whatever rank, race, or religion. Taking him all in all he may be regarded as the most striking individuality who has ever held episcopal rank in the Roman Catholic Church in Australia. Men of greater ability there have been, but none have impressed themselves in the same manner on the popular imagination. His powers of organisation must be very great, as, though at one time large subsidies came from Spain, the community, with its couple of hundred or so of regular inmates and its hundreds of yearly guests, is now virtually self-supporting; and this despite the fact that the Bishop has learned farming, as he did the English language, as he went along, and without any previous training or experience.
Rosendo Salvado, to give him his secular name, comes of a family of high position, and was formerly organist at the Court
