There are 33 consecrated churches, and 25 schoolrooms and private houses in which Divine Service is celebrated. There are 12 parsonages, and the Bishop's House. The ecclesiastical edifices, while they display for the most part (as must be the case in the early days of every struggling Colony) a great absence of resources both in money and art, are sufficiently numerous and substantial to show the earnestness and zeal of the church people in securing the ministrations of religion.
A brief sketch of the history of the Church in this Colony may be interesting. The first clergyman officially connected with the Colony was the Rev. John Burdett Wittenoom, M.A., of Brasenose College, Oxon, who came here shortly after the Colony was founded, and held the Colonial Chaplaincy in Perth until his death at the close of 1854. Upon the constitution of the See of Adelaide, Western Australia was attached to that diocese, and formed a separate Archdeaconry, to which the Rev. John R. Wollaston, M.A., Christ College, Cambridge, was appointed. By the aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and of the Colonial Church and School Society, as the latter was then called, supplemented by the Local Government, the number of the clergy was increased. Some of those whose services were thus engaged had received ordination at home, while two of the early settlers in the Colony received ordination from Bishop Short. The introduction of convicts in 1850 made the country settlers anxious to obtain more efficient spiritual oversight, and in answer to their appeal the Imperial Government, in 1852, sent out three Chaplains, one to Fremantle, one to York, and the other to Bunbury. From that date, the Imperial Government for many years made all appointments to
