THE AUSTRALIAN BLACK : A STRENUOUS MISSION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 26, 1 July 1909, Page 1021

THE AUSTRALIAN BLACK : A STRENUOUS MISSION

fN 'The Well and 'the Tree,' the Poet of the. Sierras sang how ' An Arab Sheik in deserts wide Once sorrowed so for thirsting man, He led before the caravan, And,- digging wells, he/ thirsting, died. 'He died of thirst ! The wells remain ! Oh, darling, patient Pioneer ! God's angels, what a .triumph here, To know no well is digged in vain !' The 'darling, patient Pioneers' of the. Benedictine Order sought, too, the deserts wide / against the sunset gold ' of the Commonwealth, and, filled with sorrow for the hard lot of- the mysterious dark man, toiled on and on to give him to drink of the Waters of Life. They planted, too. a tree ' Of knowledge in the westmost West,'

and tended it till it grew and gave welcome fruit and grateful shade to nomad tribes that' had been sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. * An Irish secular priest, who modestly conceals his name, has told, in his New Norcia, the noble story of how those brave pioneers blazed out a new track for the Faith in the Golden West. A} little part of that history of noble endeavor we have compressed, in tabloid form, inside the columns of a single article. A few more brief extracts from that interesting record of dire trial and high achievement will, no doubt, be welcome to our readers. Here, for instance, is how the author describes one of the many trials that befel Father Salvado — founder of the mission, bullock-driver, ploughman, and ex-Spanish Grandee — on one of his toilsome journeys to Perth for supplies of necessaries : 'He lost his bullocks in the night time, and had to keep walking for days in search of them His worn-out boots soon fell off his feet; the thorny scrub had torn his clothes to shreds, and he was dying of hunger. In this unpleasant predicament, " a spectacle for men and angels," he reached the outposts of Perth, but decency forbade his entering the city in his unkempt condition. He had first to send and ask Bishop Brady for a pair of boots and a suit of clothes.' Some timely aid from Propaganda (Rome) enabled him to purchase ' provisions, a few cattle, a good dray, and some agricultural implements, with a handmill for grinding wheat into flour. And when he returned,* only to find his whole crop destroyed during his absence by kangaroos and other wild creatures, the undaunted Spanish hidalgo, simply exclaimed : ' Well ! Well ! Let us begin again, in the name of God.' * 'Things' may.be expected to happen when a Spanish Grandee suddenly turns ploughman. And there was a comical pathos in tile maiden efforts of Father Salvado to plough the twenty acres of a Government grant accorded to the mission, and cleared of bush by the dire toil of the monks. An old settler — an eye-witness — told the tale to the author. ' Neither the ploughman nor the driver had any knowledge of the work they were engaged in. The bullocks were yoked in any fashion but the right one, and tied to the plough by ropes thick enough for a ship's cable. Neither could the bullocks understand the polite language of their reverend driver. They went leisurely along, stopping altogether at short intervals. The ploughman, on his side, could not keep the plough in the ground ; and the furrows were as crooked as furrows could be. However, they somehow got over the field, though not more than half of it was fully turned up. Whilst engaged in this trying job, <fche coulter of the plough broke, and brought them to a prolonged standstill. The plough was a very heavy one, three times tho usual weight. Putting some rations in a, bag under his arm, and the ploughshare on his shoulder, Father Salvado started for Newcastle — a distance of fifty-five miles. On arriving at the blacksmith's shop there, he was so weatherbeaten, wearied, and poverty-stricken, both in appearance ,and reality, that the blacksmith would have nothing to do with him. Disappointed, but not discouraged, ho thereupon begged for the loan of an anvil and tools, saying he would try to do the job himself. The blacksmith kindly agreed; and, considering it was the first time Father Salvado had wielded a blacksmith's hammer, he himself wondered how he did the job so well. The fiftyfive miles' walk home completed what he called a " hard 'experience." ' The day's toil in the field was often followed by a hungry night. ' Often for days,' says the author, ' and even weeks, they had neither meat nor bread ; they lived on rice, reptiles, and roots. "At first," Father 'Salvado used to say, "my stomach revolted at it all; but after a> few days' fasting I found a grilled lizard, or an opossum haunch cooked in the ashes in an envelope of green leaves [in the aboriginal fashion], 'to be anything but unpalatable." ' The evenings were devoted to ' instructing the blacks around the bush fire, where they regularly assembled after dusk to listen to their teachers.' Brief hours of rest were spent by the monks in the rude hut which had replaced their shed of boughs. The foundations of the present mission were laid on March 1, 1847, in the presence of white friends and of a large assembly of 'the dark-skinned tribesfolk. Less than t>v> months sufficed to complete it. ' The institution or place was called " New Norcia," in remembrance of Norcia, a town in Central Italy, the birthplace of St. Benedict, the patriarch and founder of the Benedictine Order.' December B—the8 — the feast of the Immaculate — in that same year (1847) was a red-letter day in the annals of New Norcia. Three aboriginal boys were handed over by their parents to the care of the monks, and the mission school was started. Many others were similarly consigned to the Fathers as the years went on. And thus was sown the seed of Christianity and civilisation which has pro-

duced such an abundant fruit of blessing for the aboriginal of the Golden West. 'So here we set this little seed, _ » And trust its tender boughs to Time; To grow to touch the stars sublime, As grows and grows some small, good deed.' The well was not digged, nor was the tree planted, in vain.