what he would buy, before dropping it into the chest; nor did the benefit stop here, for, if a native idled over his work, the reminding him of pay-day was quite enough to rouse him to exertion. The adage too seemed verified of "things mending when they come to their worst," for Billiagoro of cannibal experience was the first native at the Mission who commenced cattle-keeping on his own account, having became possessor of a heifer calf which, by the way, he named after himself.
On no point does Father Salvado insist so strenuously as on the folly of saying that the Australian native cannot appreciate the value of money or property: "he acquires a just idea of both in a short time, and diligently studies, thenceforth, how he may better his condition; but if he is only made to feel the burdens of civilization without its advantages, (the wages paid him being so insignificant as to disgust him with labour,) he prefers the freedom of a wild life, and returns to the bush."
Father Salvado also quotes from a report of a commission which sat at Sydney in consequence of Lord Stanley's desire that a plan should be devised for ameliorating the condition of the aborigines; on that occasion a missionary who had been asked for a suggestion replied that he knew not how to make one, so many schemes having already been tried without success, although the question "had the natives ever been paid in money for their work?" had received an answer in the negative. "It, would therefore appear," says the Father, "that though no fresh system could be proposed, there had not, as yet, been any trial made of what might be effected with the natives by the motive of self-interest."
