is there that disinclination
on the part of the elder children to resume their former mode of
life and customs that might perhaps have been expected; for whilst
still at school they see and participate enough in the sports,
pleasures, or charms of savage life to prevent their acquiring a distaste
to it; and when the time arrives for their departure, they are generally
willing and anxious to enter upon the career before them, and take their
part in the pursuits or duties of their tribe. Boys usually leave school
about fourteen, to join in the chase, or learn the practice of war. Girls
are compelled to leave about twelve, through the joint influence of
parents and husbands, to join the latter; and those only who have been
acquainted with the life of slavery and degradation a native female is
subject to, can at all form an opinion of the wretched prospect before
her.

[Note 108: The importance of a change in the system and policy adopted
towards the Aborigines, and the urgent necessity for placing the schools
upon a different and better footing, appears from the following extract
from a despatch from Governor Hutt to Lord Stanley, 21st January, 1843, in
which the difficulties and failure attending the present system are
stated. Mr. Hutt says (Parliamentary Reports, p. 416). "It is to the
schools, of course, that we must look for any lasting benefit to be
wrought amongst the natives, and I regret most deeply the total
failure of the school instituted at York, and the partial failure
of that at Guilford, both of which at FIRST promised so well. The
fickle disposition of these people, in youth as in older years,
incapacitate them from any long continued exertions, whether of
learning or labour, whilst from the roving lives of the parents in
search of food, the children, if received into the schools, must
be entirely supported at the public expense. This limits the sphere
of our operations, by restricting the number of the scholars who
can thus be taken charge of. Through the kindly co-operation of the
Wesleyan Society at Perth, and the zealous pastoral exertions of the Rev.
Mr. King at Fremantle, the schools at both these places have been
efficiently maintained; but in the country, and apart from the large
towns, to which the Aborigines have an interest in resorting in large
numbers for food and money, the formation of schools of a lasting
character will be for some time a work of doubt and of difficulty."]

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