done marvellous things. You have persuaded us to labour, yea, to make
roads which we knew would lead to the conquest of our country. But you
had better rest and be content, not allowing success in other things to
induce you to enter upon what no man can accomplish. If you attempt, O
Governor, to wage war with woman and her love of ornament, you will
assuredly fail.'

'The assembled chiefs,' Sir George wound up the tale, 'roared with
delight at this answer, which really left me without a word to say.'

In South Australia he established one of his first schools, and the
lessons obtained from it were widely useful. They suggested the
difficulties that had to be overcome, wherever the alphabet was spread
before the Aborigine. Children made bright pupils, but, as they grew up,
were apt to go back on what they had learned. The reason was not far to
seek. An educated native found himself out of touch with his uneducated
fellows; education made a barrier. He was not the equal of the Europeans,
and could form no friendships with them. Neither was he happy with his
own people, whom he had passed in civilisation. He swung between two
poles, and very frequently was dragged back into the volume of native
life.

'You see the difficulty,' Sir George pointed out, 'as one that is
necessarily present with regard to all savage races. But it has its cure,
which I put into practice, namely, to provide males and females with an
equally good education. Especially, I mean a technical education, the
learning of some trade or art, for that was all important. Natives, on
leaving school, could then make a living by plying among the Europeans
the industry they had learned. Should a native learn shoemaking, he could
find a wife in a girl trained to domestic service. Such a couple were not
compelled to return to their own people, and they were independent of the
Europeans. It was lifting a race by its two halves, these being essential
to each other, not leaving one of them behind.'

Next, a picture in black and white. It wandered into the gallery of Sir
George's Pro-Consulship in South Australia. At the entrance to Spencer's
Gulf lies an island, on which a fortuitous little colony had established
itself. The colonists were mostly escaped convicts, from the penal
settlements of Australia and Van Diemen's Land, or sailors who had
deserted their ships. The men killed the seals which frequented the
island, trading in their skins with vessels that now