I9 i 4 ] In West Australia 



From Fremantle I visited Perth, where a new 

 municipal university was struggling into existence. f Perth 

 For the citizens of that forceful but unsophisticated 

 frontier town had little conception of the cost of 

 such an institution, its necessary buildings and 

 equipment, or the way in which it should be managed. 

 Thus the faculty, brought from Britain, had difficulty 

 not only in "making both ends meet" but in achiev- 

 ing any ends at all. The young professor of Zoology, 

 W. G. Lakin, had his troubles with the rest, but 

 found opportunity to do an excellent piece of original 

 work, the exploration of the coral islands to the 

 northwest known as "Houtman's Abrolhos." 



At Adelaide I greeted old friends and met also a Australian 

 full-blooded Australian "Black," David Unaipon, a Blacks 

 successful mechanical engineer engaged in an effort 

 to solve "the problem of obtaining the maximum use 

 of gravitation as a motive power." His race is 

 commonly regarded as the most primitive among 

 existing peoples. Apparently, however, the Blacks 

 are of Aryan stock, their nearest relatives being found 

 among the tribes of India; and while most of them 

 are still barbarous, some are evidently susceptible to 

 modern training. 



My business was to confer with Welton Stanford at 

 Melbourne in behalf of the University, of which he St f a " rd 

 had been for ten years a trustee, in order to confirm 

 him in the intention expressed to me in 1907 of leaving 

 his estate to the institution. In this mission, which 

 may have been unnecessary, I was successful, for 

 (as previously stated) he bequeathed the whole, a few 

 minor legacies excepted, for research and instruction 



C5653 



