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Title: The Garotters
Author: William D. Howells
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*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
This Book Is Affectionately Inscribed
To My Young Friend
Harry Rogers
With Recognition
Of What He Is,
And Apprehension Of What He May Become
Unless He Form Himself A Little More Closely
Upon The Model Of
The Author.
The Pudd'nhead Maxims.
These Wisdoms Are For The Luring Of Youth Toward
High Moral Altitudes.
The Author Did Not
Gather Them From Practice,
But From Observation.
To Be Good Is Noble;
But To Show Others How
To Be Good Is Nobler
And No Trouble.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
The Party--
Across America to Vancouver--
On Board the Warrimo--
Steamer Chairs--
The Captain--
Going Home under a Cloud--
A Gritty Purser--
The Brightest Passenger--
Remedy for Bad Habits--
The Doctor and the Lumbago--
A Moral Pauper--
Limited Smoking--
Remittance
CHAPTER II.
Change of Costume--
Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories--
Tests of Memory--
A Brahmin Expert--
General Grant's Memory--
A Delicately Improper Tale
CHAPTER III.
Honolulu--
Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands--
King Liholiho and His
Royal Equipment--
The Tabu--
The Population of the Island--
A Kanaka Diver--
Cholera at Honolulu--Honolulu;
Past and Present--
The Leper Colony
CHAPTER IV.
Leaving Honolulu--
Flying-fish--
Approaching the Equator--
Why the Ship Went Slow--
The Front Yard of the Ship--
Crossing the Equator--
Horse Billiards or Shovel Board--
The Waterbury Watch--
Washing Decks--
Ship Painters--The Great Meridian--
The Loss of a Day--
A Babe without a Birthday
CHAPTER V.
A lesson in Pronunciation--
Reverence for Robert Burns--
The Southern Cross--
Troublesome Constellations--
Victoria for a Name--
Islands on the Map--
Alofa and Fortuna--
Recruiting for the Queensland Plantations--
Captain Warren's NoteBook--
Recruiting not thoroughly Popular
CHAPTER VI.
Missionaries Obstruct Business--
The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka--
The Planter's View--
Civilizing the Kanaka The Missionary's View--
The Result--
Repentant Kanakas--
Wrinkles--
The Death Rate in Queensland
CHAPTER VII.
The Fiji Islands--
Suva--
The Ship from Duluth--
Going Ashore--
Midwinter in Fiji--
Seeing the Governor--
Why Fiji was Ceded to England--
Old time Fijians--
Convicts among the Fijians--
A Case Where Marriage was a Failure
Immortality with Limitations .
CHAPTER VIII.
A Wilderness of Islands--
Two Men without a Country--
A Naturalist from New Zealand--
The Fauna of Australasia--
Animals, Insects, and Birds--The
Ornithorhynchus--
Poetry and Plagiarism
CHAPTER IX.
Close to Australia--
Porpoises at Night--
Entrance to Sydney Harbor--
The Loss of the Duncan Dunbar--
The Harbor--
The City of Sydney--
Spring-time in Australia--
The Climate--
Information for Travelers--
The Size of Australia--
A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind
CHAPTER X.
The Discovery of Australia--
Transportation of Convicts--
Discipline--
English Laws, Ancient and Modern--
Flogging Prisoners to Death--
Arrival of Settlers--
New South Wales Corps--
Rum Currency--
Intemperance Everywhere $100,000 for One Gallon of Rum--
Development of the Country--
Immense Resources
CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality of English-speaking People--
Writers and their Gratitude--
Mr. Gane and the Panegyrics--
Population of Sydney An English City with American Trimming--
"Squatters"--
Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms--
Wool and Mutton--
Australians and Americans--
Costermonger Pronunciation--
England is "Home"--
Table Talk--
English and Colonial Audiences 124
CHAPTER XII.
Mr. X., a Missionary--
Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India--
A Large Dream--
Hindoo Miracles and Legends--
Sampson and Hanuman--
The Sandstone Ridge--
Where are the Gates?
CHAPTER XIII.
Public Works in Australasia--
Botanical Garden of Sydney--
Four Special Socialties--
The Government House--
A Governor and His Functions--
The Admiralty House--
The Tour of the Harbor--
Shark Fishing--
Cecil Rhodes' Shark and his First Fortune--
Free Board for Sharks.
CHAPTER XIV.
Bad Health--
To Melbourne by Rail--
Maps Defective--
The Colony of Victoria--
A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney--
Change Cars, from Wide to Narrow
Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury--
Customs-fences--
"My Word"--
The Blue
Mountains--
Rabbit Piles--
Government R. R. Restaurants--
Duchesses for
Waiters--
"Sheep-dip"--
Railroad Coffee--
Things Seen and Not Seen
CHAPTER XV.
Wagga-Wagga--
The Tichborne Claimant--
A Stock Mystery--
The Plan of the
Romance--
The Realization--
The Henry Bascom Mystery--
Bascom Hall--
The Author's Death and Funeral
CHAPTER XVI.
Melbourne and its Attractions--
The Melbourne Cup Races--
Cup Day--
Great
Crowds--
Clothes Regardless of Cost--
The Australian Larrikin--
Is He Dead?
Australian Hospitality--
Melbourne Wool-brokers--
The Museums--
The Palaces--
The Origin of Melbourne
CHAPTER XVII.
The British Empire--
Its Exports and Imports--
The Trade of Australia--
To Adelaide--
Broken Hill Silver Mine--
A Roundabout road--
The Scrub and its Possibilities for the Novelist--
The Aboriginal Tracker--
A Test Case--
How Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Gum Trees--
Unsociable Trees--
Gorse and Broom--
A universal Defect--
An Adventurer--
Wanted L200, got L20,000,000--
A Vast Land Scheme--
The Smash-up--
The Corpse Got Up and Danced--
A Unique Business by One Man--
Buying the Kangaroo Skin--
The Approach to Adelaide--
Everything Comes to Him who Waits--
A Healthy Religious sphere--
What is the Matter with the Specter?
CHAPTER XIX.
The Botanical Gardens--
Contributions from all Countries--
The Zoological Gardens of Adelaide--
The Laughing Jackass--
The Dingo--
A Misnamed Province--
Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco--
A Mania for Holidays--
The Temperature--
The Death Rate--
Celebration of the Reading of the Proclamation of 1836--
Some old Settlers at the Commemoration--
Their Staying Powers--
The Intelligence of the Aboriginal--
The Antiquity of the Boomerang
CHAPTER XX.
A Caller--
A Talk about Old Times--
The Fox Hunt--
An Accurate Judgment of an Idiot--
How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy
CHAPTER XXI.
The"Weet-Weet"--
Keeping down the Population--
Victoria--
Killing the Aboriginals--
Pioneer Days in Queensland--
Material for a Drama--
The Bush--
Pudding with Arsenic Revenge--
A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method--
Death of Donga Billy
CHAPTER XXII.
Continued Description of Aboriginals--
Manly Qualities--
Dodging Balls--
Feats of Spring--
Jumping--
Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art 'Well Digging--
Endurance--
Surgery--
Artistic Abilities--
Fennimore Cooper's Last Chance--
Australian Slang
CHAPTER XXIII.
To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)--
Description of Horsham--
At the Hotel--
Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils--
High Temperature--
Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.--
The Bird with a Forgettable Name--
The Magpie and the Lady--
Fruit Trees--
Soils--
Sheep Shearing--
To Stawell--
Gold Mining Country--
$75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep House--
Fine Grapes and Wine--
The Dryest Community on Earth--
The Three Sisters--
Gum Trees and Water
CHAPTER XXIV.
Road to Ballarat--
The City--
Great Gold Strike, 1851--
Rush for Australia--
"Great Nuggets"--
Taxation--
Revolt and Victory--
Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade--
"Pencil Mark"--
Fine Statuary at Ballarat--
Population--
Ballarat English
CHAPTER XXV.
Bound for Bendigo--
The Priest at Castlemaine--
Time Saved by Walking--
Description of Bendigo--
A Valuable Nugget--
Perseverence and Success--
Mr. Blank and His Influence--
Conveyance of an Idea--
I Had to Like the Irishman--
Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club--
My Bascom Mystery Solved
CHAPTER XXVI.
Where New Zealand Is--
But Few Know--
Things People Think They Know--
The Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The South Pole Swell--
Tasmania--
Extermination of the Natives--
The Picture Proclamation--
The Conciliator--
The Formidable Sixteen
CHAPTER XXVIII.
When the Moment Comes the Man Appears--
Why Ed. Jackson called on Commodore Vanderbilt--
Their Interview--
Welcome to the Child of His Friend--
A Big Time but under Inspection--
Sent on Important Business--
A Visit to the Boys on the Boat
CHAPTER XXIX:
Tasmania, Early Days--
Description of the Town of Hobart--
An Englishman's Love of Home Surroundings--
Neatest City on Earth--
The Museum--
A Parrot with an Acquired Taste--
Glass Arrow Beads--
Refuge for the Indigent too healthy
CHAPTER XXX.
Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.--
Where the Rabbit Plague Began--
The Natural Enemy of the Rabbit--
Dunedin--
A Lovely Town--
Visit to Dr. Hockin--
His Museum--
A Liquified Caterpillar--
The Unperfected Tape Worm--
The Public Museum and Picture
CHAPTER XXXI. The Express Train--
"A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough"--
Clocks and Bells--
Railroad Service.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Description of the Town of Christ Church--
A Fine Museum--
Jade-stone Trinkets--
The Great Man--
The First Maori in New Zealand--
Women Voters--
"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman--
Taming an Ornithorhynchus--
A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton--
Cattle Stalls for Everybody--
A Wonderful Time.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Town of Nelson--
"The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the Town--
Burgess' Confession--
Summit of Mount Eden--
Rotorua and the Hot Lakes and Geysers--
Thermal Springs District--
Kauri Gum--
Tangariwa Mountains .
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Bay of Gisborne--
Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm--
The Green Ballarat Fly--
False Teeth--
From Napier to Hastings by the Ballarat Fly Train--
Kauri Trees--
A Case of Mental Telegraphy
CHAPTER XXXV.
Fifty Miles in Four Hours--
Comfortable Cars--
Town of Wauganui--
Plenty of Maoris--
On the Increase--
Compliments to the Maoris--
The Missionary Ways all Wrong--
The Tabu among the Maoris--
A Mysterious Sign--
Curious War-monuments--
Wellington .
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Poems of Mrs. Moore--
The Sad Fate of William Upson--
A Fellow Traveler Imitating the Prince of Wales--
A Would-be Dude--
Arrival at Sydney--
Curious Town Names with Poem
CHAPTER XXXVII.
From Sydney for Ceylon--
A Lascar Crew--
A Fine Ship--
Three Cats and a Basket of Kittens--
Dinner Conversations--
Veuve Cliquot Wine--
At Anchor in King George's Sound Albany Harbor--
More Cats--
A Vulture on Board--
Nearing the Equator again--
Dressing for Dinner--
Ceylon, Hotel Bristol--
Servant Brampy--
A Feminine Man--
Japanese Jinriksha or Cart--
Scenes in Ceylon--
A Missionary School--
Insincerity of Clothes
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Steamer Rosettes to Bombay--
Limes 14 cents a Barrel--
Bombay, a Bewitching City--
Descriptions of People and Dress--
Woman as a Road Decoration--
India, the Land of Dreams and Romance--
Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage-
-Correcting a Servant--
Killing a Slave--
Arranging a Bedroom--
Three Hours' Work and a Terrible Racket--
The Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow
CHAPTER XXXIX.
God Vishnu, 108 Names--
Change of Titles or Hunting for an Heir--
Bombay as a Kaleidoscope--
The Native's Man Servant--
Servants' Recommendations--
How Manuel got his Name and his English--
Satan--
A Visit from God
CHAPTER XL.
The Government House at Malabar Point--
Mansion of Kumar Shri Samatsin Hji Bahadur--
The Indian Princess--
A Difficult Game--
Wardrobe and Jewels--
Ceremonials--
Decorations when Leaving--
The Towers of Silence--
A Funeral
CHAPTER XLI.
Jain Temple--
Mr. Roychand's Bungalow--
A Decorated Six-Gun Prince--
Human Fireworks--
European Dress, Past and Present--
Complexions--
Advantages with the Zulu--
Festivities at the Bungalow-Nautch Dancers--
Entrance of the Prince--
Address to the Prince
CHAPTER XLII.
A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of the Bride of Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy--
Illumination Nautch Girls--
Imitating Snakes--
Later--
Illuminated Porch Filled with Sleepers--
The Plague .
CHAPTER XLIII
Murder Trial in Bombay--
Confidence Swindlers--
Some Specialities of India--The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc.--
Everything on Gigantic Scale --
India First in Everything--
80 States, more Custom Houses than Cats--
Rich Ground for Thug Society
CHAPTER XLIV.
Thug Book--
Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other Freight--
Scene at Railway Station--
Making Way for White Man--
Waiting Passengers, High and Low Caste, Touch in the cars--
Our Car--
Beds made up--
Dreaming of Thugs--
Baroda--
Meet Friends--
Indian Well--
The Old Town--
Narrow Streets--
A Mad Elephant
CHAPTER XLV.
Elephant Riding--
Howdahs--
The New Palace--
The Prince's Excursion--
Gold and Silver Artillery--
A Vice-royal Visit--
Remarkable Dog--
The Bench Show--
Augustin Daly's Back Door--
Fakeer
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Thugs--
Government Efforts to Exterminate them--
Choking a Victim A Fakeer Spared--
Thief Strangled
CHAPTER XLVII.
Thugs, Continued--
Record of Murders--
A Joy of Hunting and Killing Men--
Gordon Gumming--
Killing an Elephant--
Family Affection among Thugs--
Burial Places
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Starting for Allahabad--
Lower Berths in Sleepers--
Elderly Ladies have Preference of Berths--
An American Lady Takes One Anyhow--
How Smythe Lost his Berth--
How He Got Even--
The Suttee
CHAPTER XLIX.
Pyjamas--
Day Scene in India--
Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket Handkerchief--
Land Parceled Out--
Established Village Servants--
Witches in Families--
Hereditary Midwifery--
Destruction of Girl Babies--
Wedding Display--
Tiger-Persuader--
Hailstorm Discourages--
The Tyranny of the Sweeper--
Elephant Driver--
Water Carrier--
Curious Rivers--
Arrival at Allahabad--
English Quarter--
Lecture Hall Like a Snowstorm--
Private Carriages--
A Milliner--
Early Morning--
The Squatting Servant--
A Religious Fair
CHAPTER L.
On the Road to Benares--
Dust and Waiting--
The Bejeweled Crowd--
A Native Prince and his Guard--
Zenana Lady--
The Extremes of Fashion--
The Hotel at Benares--
An Annex a Mile Away--
Doors in India--
The Peepul Tree--
Warning against Cold Baths--
A Strange Fruit--
Description of Benares--
The Beginning of Creation--
Pilgrims to Benares--
A Priest with a Good Business Stand--
Protestant Missionary--
The Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu--
Religion the Business at Benares
CHAPTER LI.
Benares a Religious Temple--
A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time in Securing Salvation
CHAPTER LII.
A Curious Way to Secure Salvation--
The Banks of the Ganges--
Architecture Represents Piety--
A Trip on the River--
Bathers and their Costumes--
Drinking the Water--
A Scientific Test of the Nasty Purifier--
Hindoo Faith in the Ganges--
A Cremation--
Remembrances of the Suttee--
All Life Sacred Except Human Life--
The Goddess Bhowanee, and the Sacrificers--
Sacred Monkeys--
Ugly Idols Everywhere--
Two White Minarets--
A Great View with a Monkey in it--
A Picture on the Water
CHAPTER LIII.
Still in Benares--
Another Living God--
Why Things are Wonderful--
Sri 108 Utterly Perfect--
How He Came so--
Our Visit to Sri--
A Friendly Deity Exchanging Autographs and Books--
Sri's Pupil--
An Interesting Man--
Reverence and Irreverence--
Dancing in a Sepulchre
CHAPTER LIV.
Rail to Calcutta--
Population--
The "City of Palaces"--
A Fluted Candle-stick--
Ochterlony--
Newspaper Correspondence--
Average Knowledge of Countries--
A Wrong Idea of Chicago--
Calcutta and the Black Hole--
Description of the Horrors--
Those Who Lived--
The Botanical Gardens--
The Afternoon Turnout--
Grand Review--
Military Tournament--
Excursion on the Hoogly--
The Museum--
What Winter Means Calcutta .
CHAPTER LV
On the Road Again--
Flannels in Order--
Across Country--
From Greenland's Icy Mountain--
Swapping Civilization--
No Field women in India--
How it is in Other Countries--
Canvas-covered Cars--
The Tiger Country--
My First Hunt Some Elephants Get Away--
The Plains of India--
The Ghurkas--
Women for Pack-Horses--
A Substitute for a Cab--
Darjeeling--
The Hotel--
The Highest Thing in the Himalayas--
The Club--
Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest--
Thibetans--
The Prayer Wheel--
People Going to the Bazar
CHAPTER LVI.
On the Road Again--
The Hand-Car--
A Thirty-five-mile Slide--
The Banyan Tree--
A Dramatic Performance--
The Railroad--
The Half-way House--
The Brain Fever Bird--
The Coppersmith Bird--
Nightingales and Cue Owls
CHAPTER LVII.
India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth--
Nothing Forgotten--
The Land of Wonders--
Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence--
Tiger vs. Man--
A Handsome Fight--
Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing--
Other Animals--
Snakes--
Insurance and Snake Tables--
The Cobra Bite--
Muzaffurpore--
Dinapore--
A Train that Stopped for Gossip--
Six Hours for Thirty-five Miles--
A Rupee to the Engineer--
Ninety Miles an Hour--
Again to Benares, the Piety Hive To Lucknow
CHAPTER LVIII.
The Great Mutiny--
The Massacre in Cawnpore--
Terrible Scenes in Lucknow--
The Residency--
The Siege
CHAPTER LIX.
A Visit to the Residency--
Cawnpore--
The Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo Corpse--
The Tai Mahal--
The True Conception--
The Ice Storm--
True Gems--
Syrian Fountains--
An Exaggerated Niagara
CHAPTER LX.
To Lahore--
The Governor's Elephant--
Taking a Ride-No Danger from Collision--
Rawal Pindi--
Back to Delhi--
An Orientalized Englishman--
Monkeys and the Paint-pot--
Monkey Crying over my Note-book--
Arrival at Jeypore--
In Rajputana--
Watching Servants--
The Jeypore Hotel--
Our Old and New Satan--
Satan as a Liar--
The Museum--
A Street Show--
Blocks of Houses--
A Religious Procession
CHAPTER LXI.
Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums--
Methods in the Public Schools--
A Letter from a youth in Punjab--
Highly Educated Service--
A Damage to the Country--
A Little Book from Calcutta--
Writing Poor English--
Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl--
A Specimen Letter--
An Application for Employment--
A Calcutta School Examination--
Two Samples of Literature
CHAPTER LXII.
Sail from Calcutta to Madras--
Thence to Ceylon--
Thence for Mauritius--
The Indian Ocean--
Our Captain's Peculiarity The Scot Has one too--
The Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field--
Fined for Smuggling--
Lots of pets on Board--
The Color of the Sea--
The Most Important Member of Nature's Family--
The Captain's Story of Cold Weather--
Omissions in the Ship's Library--
Washing Decks--
Pyjamas on Deck--
The Cat's Toilet--
No Interest in the Bulletin--
Perfect Rest--
The Milky Way and the Magellan Clouds--
Mauritius--
Port Louis--
A Hot Country--
Under French Control--
A Variety of People and Complexions--
Train to Curepipe--
A Wonderful Office-holder--
The Wooden Peg Ornament--
The Prominent Historical Event of Mauritius--
"Paul and Virginia"--
One of Virginia's Wedding Gifts--
Heaven Copied after Mauritius--
Early History of Mauritius--
Quarantines--
Population of all Kinds--
What the World Consists of--
Where Russia and Germany are--
A Picture of Milan Cathedral--
Newspapers--
The Language--
Best Sugar in the World--
Literature of Mauritius
CHAPTER LXIII.
Port Louis--
Matches no Good--
Good Roads--
Death Notices--
Why European Nations Rob Each Other--
What Immigrants to Mauritius Do--
Population--
Labor Wages--
The Camaron--
The Palmiste and other Eatables--
Monkeys--
The Cyclone of 1892--
Mauritius a Sunday Landscape
CHAPTER LXIV.
The Steamer "Arundel Castle"--
Poor Beds in Ships--
The Beds in Noah's Ark--
Getting a Rest in Europe--
Ship in Sight--
Mozambique Channel--
The Engineer and the Band--
Thackeray's "Madagascar"--
Africanders Going Home--
Singing on the After Deck--
An Out-of-Place Story--
Dynamite Explosion in Johannesburg--
Entering Delagoa Bay--
Ashore--
A Hot Winter--
Small Town--
No Sights--
No Carriages--
Working Women--
Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's Birthplace, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument--
Arrival at Durban
CHAPTER LXV.
Royal Hotel Durban--
Bells that Did not Ring--
Early Inquiries for Comforts--
Change of Temperature after Sunset-Rickhaws--
The Hotel Chameleon--
Natives not out after the Bell--
Preponderance of Blacks in Natal--
Hair Fashions in Natal--
Zulus for Police--
A Drive round the Berea--
The Cactus and other Trees--
Religion a Vital Matter--
Peculiar Views about Babies--
Zulu Kings--
A Trappist Monastery--
Transvaal Politics--
Reasons why the Trouble came About
CHAPTER LXVI.
Jameson over the Border--
His Defeat and Capture--
Sent to England for Trial--
Arrest of Citizens by the Boers--
Commuted sentences--
Final Release of all but Two--
Interesting Days for a Stranger--
Hard to Understand Either Side--
What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish--
How They Proposed to do it--
Testimonies a Year Later--
A "Woman's Part"--
The Truth of the South African Situation--
"Jameson's Ride"--
A Poem
CHAPTER LXVIL
Jameson's Raid--
The Reform Committee's Difficult Task--
Possible Plans--
Advice that Jameson Ought to Have--
The War of 1881 and its Lessons--
Statistics of Losses of the Combatants--
Jameson's Battles--
Losses on Both Sides--
The Military Errors--
How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on to Be Successful
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Judicious Mr. Rhodes--
What South Africa Consists of--
Johannesburg--
The Gold Mines--
The Heaven of American Engineers--
What the Author Knows about Mining--
Description of the Boer--
What Should be Expected of Him--
What Was A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes--
Taxes--
Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native Population--
Journeying in Cape Colony--
The Cars--
The Country--
The Weather--
Tamed Blacks--
Familiar Figures in King William's Town--
Boer Dress--
Boer Country Life--
Sleeping Accommodations--
The Reformers in Boer Prison--
Torturing a Black Prisoner
CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty--
The Kimberley Diamond Mines--
Discovery of Diamonds--
The Wronged Stranger--
Where the Gems Are--
A Judicious Change of Boundary--
Modern Machinery and Appliances--
Thrilling Excitement in Finding a Diamond--
Testing a Diamond--
Fences--
Deep Mining by Natives in the Compound--
Stealing--
Reward for the Biggest Diamond--
A Fortune in Wine--
The Great Diamond--
Office of the De Beer Co.--
Sorting the Gems--
Cape Town--
The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--
Various Reasons for his Supremacy--
How He Makes Friends
CONCLUSION.
Table Rock--
Table Bay--
The Castle--
Government and Parliament--
The Club--
Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--
Dr. John Barry and his Doings--
On the Ship Norman--
Madeira--
Arrived in Southampton .
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.
We sailed
for America,
and there made certain preparations.
This took but little time.
Two members of my family elected
to go
with me.
Also a carbuncle.
The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel.
Humor is out of place in a dictionary.
We started westward from New York in midsummer,
with Major Pond
to manage the platform-business as far as the Pacific.
It was warm work,
all the way,
and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky,
for in Oregon and Columbia the forest fires were raging.
We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard,
where we were obliged awhile
for our ship.
She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke,
and she had
to be docked and repaired.
We sailed at last;
and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
which had lasted forty days.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea;
an enticing sea,
a clean and cool sea,
and apparently a welcome sea
to all on board;
it certainly was
to the distressful dustings and smokings and swelterings of the past weeks.
The voyage would furnish a three-weeks holiday,
with hardly a break in it.
We had the whole Pacific Ocean in front of us,
with nothing
to do but do nothing and be comfortable.
The city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud,
and getting ready
to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace.
But they went
to wreck and ruin under us and brought us
to shame before all the passengers.
They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing house in Victoria,
and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen,
though they had cost us the price of honest chairs.
In the Pacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without,
just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times--those Dark Ages of sea travel.
Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship,
with the customary sea-going fare --plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil.
The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The ship was not very well arranged
for tropical service;
but that is nothing,
for this is the rule
for ships which ply in the tropics.
She had an over-supply of cockroaches,
but this is also the rule
with ships doing business in the summer seas--at least such as have been long in service.
Our young captain was a very handsome man,
tall and perfectly formed,
the very figure
to show up a smart uniform's best effects.
He was a man of the best intentions and was polite and courteous even
to courtliness.
There was a soft and finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened
to be in seem
for the moment a drawing room.
He avoided the smoking room.
He had no vices.
He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff ;
he did not swear,
or use slang or rude,
or coarse,
or indelicate language,
or make puns,
or tell anecdotes,
or laugh intemperately,
or raise his voice above the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form.
When he gave an order,
his manner modified it into a request.
After dinner he and his officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies'
saloon,
and shared in the singing and piano playing,
and helped turn the music.
He had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice,
and used it
with taste and effect the music he played whist there,
always
with the same partner and opponents,
until the ladies'
bedtime.
The electric lights burned there as late as the ladies and their friends might desire;
but they were not allowed
to burn in the smoking-room after eleven.
There were many laws on the ship's statute book of course;
but so far as I could see,
this and one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced.
The captain explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the smoking-room,
and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick.
I did not see how our smoke could reach him,
for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upper deck,
targets
for all the winds that blew;
and besides there was no crack of communication between them,
no opening of any sort in the solid intervening bulkhead.
Still,
to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain,
with his gentle nature,
his polish,
his sweetness,
his moral and verbal purity,
seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and autocratic vocation.
It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud.
The passengers knew about his trouble,
and were sorry
for him.
Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely befogged
with smoke from the forest fires,
he had had the ill-luck
to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error
with you and me;
it ranks as a crime
with the directors of steamship companies.
The captain had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver,
and its verdict had acquitted him of blame.
But that was insufficient comfort.
A sterner court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors,
the lords of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of years.
This was his first voyage as captain.
The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men,
and they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass the time.
Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursions
for all hands.
Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped
with a grit that was remarkable.
He was an invalid,
and looked it,
as far as his body was concerned,
but illness could not subdue his spirit.
He was full of life,
and had a gay and capable tongue.
To all appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it,
for he did not talk about his ailments,
and his bearing and conduct were those of a person in robust health;
yet he was the prey,
at intervals,
of ghastly sieges of pain in his heart.
These lasted many hours,
and while the attack continued he could neither sit nor lie.
In one instance he stood on his feet twenty-four hours fighting
for his life
with these sharp agonies,
and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing had happened.
The brightest passenger in the ship,
and the most interesting and felicitous talker,
was a young Canadian who was not able
to let the whisky bottle alone.
He was of a rich and powerful family,
and could have had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have conquered his appetite
for drink;
but he could not do it,
so his great equipment of talent was of no use
to him.
He had often taken the pledge
to drink no more,
and was a good sample of what that sort of unwisdom can do
for a man--for a man
with anything short of an iron will.
The system is wrong in two ways:
it does not strike at the root of the trouble,
for one thing,
and
to make a pledge of any kind is
to declare war against nature;
for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble,
and I venture
to repeat that.
The root is not the drinking,
but the desire
to drink.
These are very different things.
The one merely requires will--and a great deal of it,
both as
to bulk and staying capacity--the other merely requires watchfulness--and
for no long time.
The desire of course precedes the act,
and should have one's first attention;
it can do but little good
to refuse the act over and over again,
always leaving the desire unmolested,
unconquered;
the desire will continue
to assert itself,
and will be almost sure
to win in the long run.
When the desire intrudes,
it should be at once banished out of the mind.
One should be on the watch
for it all the time--otherwise it will get in.
It must be taken in time and not allowed
to get a lodgment.
A desire constantly repulsed
for a fortnight should die,
then.
That should cure the drinking habit.
The system of refusing the mere act of drinking,
and leaving the desire in full force,
is unintelligent war tactics,
it seems
to me.
I used
to take pledges--and soon violate them.
My will was not strong,
and I could not help it.
And then,
to be tied in any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want
to get his liberty.
But when I finally ceased from taking definite pledges,
and merely resolved that I would kill an injurious desire,
but leave myself free
to resume the desire and the habit whenever I should choose
to do so,
I had no more trouble.
In five days I drove out the desire
to smoke and was not obliged
to keep watch after that;
and I never experienced any strong desire
to smoke again.
At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began
to write a book,
and presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant
to go.
I tried a smoke
to see if that would help me out of the difficulty.
It did.
I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day
for five months;
finished the book,
and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another book had
to be begun.
I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time,
and without discomfort or inconvenience.
I think that the Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out the desire
to eat,
in the beginning,
and that after a few hours the desire is discouraged and comes no more.
Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way.
I had been confined
to my bed several days
with lumbago.
My case refused
to improve.
Finally the doctor said,--
"My remedies have no fair chance.
Consider what they have
to fight,
besides the lumbago.
You smoke extravagantly,
don't you?"
"Yes."
"You take coffee immoderately?"
"Yes."
"And some tea?"
"Yes."
"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied
with each other's company?"
"Yes."
"You drink two hot Scotches every night?"
"Yes."
"Very well,
there you see what I have
to contend against.
We can't make progress the way the matter stands.
You must make a reduction in these things;
you must cut down your consumption of them considerably
for some days."
"I can't,
doctor."
"Why can't you."
"I lack the will-power.
I can cut them off entirely,
but I can't merely moderate them."
He said that that would answer,
and said he would come around in twenty-four hours and begin work again.
He was taken ill himself and could not come;
but I did not need him.
I cut off all those things
for two days and nights;
in fact,
I cut off all kinds of food,
too,
and all drinks except water,
and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago was discouraged and left me.
I was a well man;
so I gave thanks and took
to those delicacies again.
It seemed a valuable medical course,
and I recommended it
to a lady.
She had run down and down and down,
and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her.
I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week.
It brightened her up,
it filled her
with hope,
and she said she would do everything I told her
to do.
So I said she must stop swearing and drinking,
and smoking and eating
for four days,
and then she would be all right again.
And it would have happened just so,
I know it;
but she said she could not stop swearing,
and smoking,
and drinking,
because she had never done those things.
So there it was.
She had neglected her habits,
and hadn't any.
Now that they would have come good,
there were none in stock.
She had nothing
to fall back on.
She was a sinking vessel,
with no freight in her
to throw over lighten ship withal.
Why,
even one or two little bad habits cou1d have saved her,
but she was just a moral pauper.
When she could have acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents,
who were ignorant people though reared in the best society,
and it was too late
to begin now.
It seemed such a pity;
but there was no help
for it.
These things ought
to be attended
to while a person is young;
otherwise,
when age and disease come,
there is nothing effectual
to fight them with.
When I was a youth I used
to take all kinds of pledges,
and do my best
to keep them,
but I never could,
because I didn't strike at the root of the habit--the desire;
I generally broke down within the month.
Once I tried limiting a habit.
That worked tolerably well
for a while.
I pledged myself
to smoke but one cigar a day.
I kept the cigar waiting until bedtime,
then I had a luxurious time
with it.
But desire persecuted me every day and all day long;
so,
within the week I found myself hunting
for larger cigars than I had been used
to smoke;
then larger ones still,
and still larger ones.
Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made
for me--on a yet larger pattern.
They still grew and grew in size.
Within the month my cigar had grown
to such proportions that I could have used it as a crutch.
It now seemed
to me that a one-cigar limit was no real protection
to a person,
so I knocked my pledge on the head and resumed my liberty.
To go back
to that young Canadian.
He was a
"remittance man,"
the first one I had ever seen or heard of.
Passengers explained the term
to me.
They said that dissipated ne'er-do-wells belonging
to important families in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was any hope of reforming them,
but when that last hope perished at last,
the ne'er-do-well was sent abroad
to get him out of the way.
He was shipped off
with just enough money in his pocket--no,
in the purser's pocket--for the needs of the voyage--and when he reached his destined port he would find a remittance awaiting him there.
Not a large one,
but just enough
to keep him a month.
A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.
It was the remittance-man's custom
to pay his month's board and lodging straightway--a duty which his landlord did not allow him
to forget--then spree away the rest of his money in a single night,
then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came.
It is a pathetic life.
We had other remittance-men on board,
it was said.
At least they said they were R.
M.'
s.
There were two.
But they did not resemble the Canadian;
they lacked his tidiness,
and his brains,
and his gentlemanly ways,
and his resolute spirit,
and his humanities and generosities.
One of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty,
and he was a good deal of a ruin,
as
to clothes,
and morals,
and general aspect.
He said he was a scion of a ducal house in England,
and had been shipped
to Canada
for the house's relief,
that he had fallen into trouble there,
and was now being shipped
to Australia.
He said he had no title.
Beyond this remark he was economical of the truth.
The first thing he did in Australia was
to get into the lockup,
and the next thing he did was
to proclaim himself an earl in the police court in the morning and fail
to prove it.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt,
tell the truth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather,
and all the male passengers put on white linen clothes.
One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude,
and then,
by order,
the officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones.
All the ladies were in white by this time.
This prevalence of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool,
and cheerful and picnicky aspect.
>From my diary:
There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can never escape altogether,
let him journey as far as he will.
One escapes from one breed of an ill only
to encounter another breed of it.
We have come far from the snake liar and the fish liar,
and there was rest and peace in the thought;
but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang liar,
and sorrow is
with us once more.
The first officer has seen a man try
to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree;
but the enemy sent his boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree;
then it turned,
descended,
and killed the man.
The Australian passenger has seen this thing done
to two men,
behind two trees--and by the one arrow.
This being received
with a large silence that suggested doubt,
he buttressed it
with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird away off a hundred yards and bring it
to the thrower.
But these are ills which must be borne.
There is no other way.
The talk passed from the boomerang
to dreams--usually a fruitful subject,
afloat or ashore--but this time the output was poor.
Then it passed
to instances of extraordinary memory--with better results.
Blind Tom,
the negro pianist,
was spoken of,
and it was said that he could accurately play any piece of music,
howsoever long and difficult,
after hearing it once;
and that six months later he could accurately play it again,
without having touched it in the interval.
One of the most striking of the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on the staff of the Viceroy of India.
He read the details from his note-book,
and explained that he had written them down,
right after the consummation of the incident which they described,
because he thought that if he did not put them down in black and white he might presently come
to think he had dreamed them or invented them.
The Viceroy was making a progress,
and among the shows offered by the Maharajah of Mysore
for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition.
The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row,
and the memory- expert,
a high-caste Brahmin,
was brought in and seated on the floor in front of them.
He said he knew but two languages,
the English and his own,
but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests
to be applied
to his memory.
Then he laid before the assemblage his program-- a sufficiently extraordinary one.
He proposed that one gentleman should give him one word of a foreign sentence,
and tell him its place in the sentence.
He was furnished
with the French word
'est',
and was told it was second in a sentence of three words.
The next,
gentleman gave him the German word
'verloren'
and said it was the third in a sentence of four words.
He asked the next gentleman
for one detail in a sum in addition;
another
for one detail in a sum of subtraction;
others
for single details in mathematical problems of various kinds;
he got them.
Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek,
Latin,
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Italian,
and other languages,
and told him their places in the sentences.
When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem,
he went over the ground again,
and got a second word and a second figure and was told their places in the sentences and the sums;
and so on and so on.
He went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all the parts of the sentences--and all in disorder,
of course,
not in their proper rotation.
This had occupied two hours.
The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking,
a while,
then began and repeated all the sentences,
placing the words in their proper order,
and untangled the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers
to them all.
In the beginning he had asked the company
to throw almonds at him during the two hours,
he
to remember how many each gentleman had thrown;
but none were thrown,
for the Viceroy said that the test would be a sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden
to it.
General Grant had a fine memory
for all kinds of things,
including even names and faces,
and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had thought of it.
The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term as President.
I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast,
a stranger and wholly unknown
to the public,
and was passing the White House one morning when I met a friend,
a Senator from Nevada.
He asked me if I would like
to see the President.
I said I should be very glad;
so we entered.
I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a crowd,
and that I could look at him in peace and security from a distance,
as another stray cat might look at another king.
But it was in the morning,
and the Senator was using a privilege of his office which I had not heard of--the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's working hours.
Before I knew it,
the Senator and I were in the presence,
and there was none there but we three.
General Grant got slowly up from his table,
put his pen down,
and stood before me
with the iron expression of a man who had not smiled
for seven years,
and was not intending
to smile
for another seven.
He looked me steadily in the eyes--mine lost confidence and fell.
I had never confronted a great man before,
and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency.
The Senator said:--
"Mr.
President,
may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?"
The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it.
He did not say a word but just stood.
In my trouble I could not think of anything
to say,
I merely wanted
to resign.
There was an awkward pause,
a dreary pause,
a horrible pause.
Then I thought of something,
and looked up into that unyielding face,
and said timidly:--
"Mr.
President,
I--I am embarrassed.
Are you?"
His face broke--just a little--a wee glimmer,
the momentary flicker of a summer-lightning smile,
seven years ahead of time--and I was out and gone as soon as it was.
Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time.
Meantime I was become better known;
and was one of the people appointed
to respond
to toasts at the banquet given
to General Grant in Chicago--by the Army of the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world.
I arrived late at night and got up late in the morning.
All the corridors of the hotel were crowded
with people waiting
to get a glimpse of General Grant when he should pass
to the place whence he was
to review the great procession.
I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms,
and at the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy platform decorated
with flags,
and carpeted.
I stepped out on it,
and saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets,
and other millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops around.
These masses took me
for General Grant,
and broke into volcanic explosions and cheers;
but it was a good place
to see the procession,
and I stayed.
Presently I heard the distant blare of military music,
and far up the street I saw the procession come in sight,
cleaving its way through the huzzaing multitudes,
with Sheridan,
the most martial figure of the War,
riding at its head in the dress uniform of a Lieutenant- General.
And now General Grant,
arm-in-arm
with Major Carter Harrison,
stepped out on the platform,
followed two and two by the badged and uniformed reception committee.
General Grant was looking exactly as he had looked upon that trying occasion of ten years before--all iron and bronze self- possession.
Mr.Harrison came over and led me
to the General and formally introduced me.
Before I could put together the proper remark,
General Grant said--
"Mr.
Clemens,
I am not embarrassed.
Are you?"
--and that little seven- year smile twinkled across his face again.
Seventeen years have gone by since then,
and to-day,
in New York,
the streets are a crush of people who are there
to honor the remains of the great soldier as they pass
to their final resting-place under the monument;
and the air is heavy
with dirges and the boom of artillery,
and all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the Union and the flag,
and gave
to democratic government a new lease of life,
and,
as we may hope and do believe,
a permanent place among the beneficent institutions of men.
We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer--at least it was at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from the day's monotonies and dullnesses.
It was the completing of non- complete stories.
That is
to say,
a man would tell all of a story except the finish,
then the others would try
to supply the ending out of their own invention.
When every one who wanted a chance had had it,
the man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending--then you could take your choice.
Sometimes the new endings turned out
to be better than the old one.
But the story which called out the most persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no ending,
and so there was nothing
to compare the new-made endings with.
The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up
to a certain point only,
because that was as much of the tale as he knew.
He had read it in a volume of `sketches twenty-five years ago,
and was interrupted before the end was reached.
He would give any one fifty dollars who would finish the story
to the satisfaction of a jury
to be appointed by ourselves.
We appointed a jury and wrestled
with the tale.
We invented plenty of endings,
but the jury voted them all down.
The jury was right.
It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed satisfactorily,
and if he really had that good fortune I would like
to know what the ending was.
Any ordinary man will find that the story's strength is in its middle,
and that there is apparently no way
to transfer it
to the close,
where of course it ought
to be.
In substance the storiette was as follows:
John Brown,
aged thirty-one,
good,
gentle,
bashful,
timid,
lived in a quiet village in Missouri.
He was superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday-school.
It was but a humble distinction;
still,
it was his only official one,
and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted
to its work and its interests.
The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all;
in fact,
people said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness;
that he could always be counted upon
for help when it was needed,
and
for bashfulness both when it was needed and when it wasn't.
Mary Taylor,
twenty-three,
modest,
sweet,
winning,
and in character and person beautiful,
was all in all
to him.
And he was very nearly all in all
to her.
She was wavering,
his hopes were high.
Her mother had been in opposition from the first.
But she was wavering,
too;
he could see it.
She was being touched by his warm interest in her two charity- proteges and by his contributions toward their support.
These were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm.
One of the sisters was crazy,
and sometimes a little violent,
but not often.
At last the time seemed ripe
for a final advance,
and Brown gathered his courage together and resolved
to make it.
He would take along a contribution of double the usual size,
and win the mother over;
with her opposition annulled,
the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.
He took
to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the soft Missourian summer,
and he was equipped properly
for his mission.
He was clothed all in white linen,
with a blue ribbon
for a necktie,
and he had on dressy tight boots.
His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable could furnish.
The lap robe was of white linen,
it was new,
and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region
for beauty and elaboration.
When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse over a wooden bridge,
his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek,
and floated down and lodged against a bar.
He did not quite know what
to do.
He must have the hat,
that was manifest;
but how was he
to get it?
Then he had an idea.
The roads were empty,
nobody was stirring.
Yes,
he would risk it.
He led the horse
to the roadside and set it
to cropping the grass;
then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy,
petted the horse a moment
to secure its compassion and its loyalty,
then hurried
to the stream.
He swam out and soon had the hat.
When he got
to the top of the bank the horse was gone! His legs almost gave way under him.
The horse was walking leisurely along the road.
Brown trotted after it,
saying,
"Whoa,
whoa,
there's a good fellow;"
but whenever he got near enough
to chance a jump
for the buggy,
the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him.
And so this went on,
the naked man perishing
with anxiety,
and expecting every moment
to see people come in sight.
He tagged on and on,
imploring the horse,
beseeching the horse,
till he had left a mile behind him,
and was closing up on the Taylor premises;
then at last he was successful,
and got into the buggy.
He flung on his shirt,
his necktie,
and his coat;
then reached for--but he was too late;
he sat suddenly down and pulled up the lap-robe,
for he saw some one coming out of the gate--a woman;
he thought.
He wheeled the horse
to the left,
and struck briskly up the cross-road.
It was perfectly straight,
and exposed on both sides;
but there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead,
and he was very grateful when he got there.
As he passed around the turn he slowed down
to a walk,
and reached
for his tr----too late again.
He had come upon Mrs. Enderby,
Mrs.Glossop,
Mrs.Taylor,
and Mary.
They were on foot,
and seemed tired and excited.
They came at once
to the buggy and shook hands,
and all spoke at once,
and said eagerly and earnestly,
how glad they were that he was come,
and how fortunate it was.
And Mrs. Enderby said,
impressively:
"It looks like an accident,
his coming at such a time;
but let no one profane it
with such a name;
he was sent--sent from on high."
They were all moved,
and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:
"Sarah Enderby,
you never said a truer word in your life.
This is no accident,
it is a special Providence.
He was sent.
He is an angel--an angel as truly as ever angel was--an angel of deliverance.
I say angel,
Sarah Enderby,
and will have no other word.
Don't let any one ever say
to me again,
that there's no such thing as special Providences;
for if this isn't one,
let them account
for it that can."
"I know it's so,"
said Mrs. Taylor,
fervently.
"John Brown,
I could worship you;
I could go down on my knees
to you.
Didn't something tell you?-- didn't you feel that you were sent?
I could kiss the hem of your laprobe."
He was not able
to speak;
he was helpless
with shame and fright.
Mrs.Taylor went on:
"Why,
just look at it all around,
Julia Glossop.
Any person can see the hand of Providence in it.
Here at noon what do we see?
We see the smoke rising.
I speak up and say,
'That's the Old People's cabin afire.'
Didn't I,
Julia Glossop?"
"The very words you said,
Nancy Taylor.
I was as close
to you as I am now,
and I heard them.
You may have said hut instead of cabin,
but in substance it's the same.
And you were looking pale,
too."
"Pale?
I was that pale that if--why,
you just compare it
with this laprobe.
Then the next thing I said was,
'Mary Taylor,
tell the hired man
to rig up the team-we'll go
to the rescue.'
And she said,
'Mother,
don't you know you told him he could drive
to see his people,
and stay over Sunday?'
And it was just so.
I declare
for it,
I had forgotten it.
'Then,'
said I,
'we'll go afoot.'
And go we did.
And found Sarah Enderby on the road."
"And we all went together,"
said Mrs. Enderby.
"And found the cabin set fire
to and burnt down by the crazy one,
and the poor old things so old and feeble that they couldn't go afoot.
And we got them
to a shady place and made them as comfortable as we could,
and began
to wonder which way
to turn
to find some way
to get them conveyed
to Nancy Taylor's house.
And I spoke up and said--now what did I say?
Didn't I say,
'Providence will provide'?"
"Why sure as you live,
so you did! I had forgotten it."
"So had I,"
said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor;
"but you certainly said it.
Now wasn't that remarkable?
"
"Yes,
I said it.
And then we went
to Mr. Moseley's,
two miles,
and all of them were gone
to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork;
and then we came all the way back,
two miles,
and then here,
another mile--and Providence has provided.
You see it yourselves"
They gazed at each other awe-struck,
and lifted their hands and said in unison:
"It's per-fectly wonderful."
"And then,"
said Mrs. Glossop,
"what do you think we had better do let Mr. Brown drive the Old People
to Nancy Taylor's one at a time,
or put both of them in the buggy,
and him lead the horse?"
Brown gasped.
"Now,
then,
that's a question,"
said Mrs. Enderby.
"You see,
we are all tired out,
and any way we fix it it's going
to be difficult.
For if Mr. Brown takes both of them,
at least one of us must,
go back
to help him,
for he can't load them into the buggy by himself,
and they so helpless."
"That is so,"
said Mrs. Taylor.
"It doesn't look-oh,
how would this do?
--one of us drive there
with Mr. Brown,
and the rest of you go along
to my house and get things ready.
I'll go
with him.
He and I together can lift one of the Old People into the buggy;
then drive her
to my house and----
"But who will take care of the other one?"
said Mrs. Enderby.
"We musn't leave her there in the woods alone,
you know--especially the crazy one.
There and back is eight miles,
you see."
They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy
for a while,
now,
trying
to rest their weary bodies.
They fell silent a moment or two,
and struggled in thought over the baffling situation;
then Mrs. Enderby brightened and said:
"I think I've got the idea,
now.
You see,
we can't walk any more.
Think what we've done:
four miles there,
two
to Moseley's,
is six,
then back
to here--nine miles since noon,
and not a bite
to eat;
I declare I don't see how we've done it;
and as
for me,
I am just famishing.
Now,
somebody's got
to go back,
to help Mr. Brown--there's no getting mound that;
but whoever goes has got
to ride,
not walk.
So my idea is this:
one of us
to ride back
with Mr. Brown,
then ride
to Nancy Taylor's house
with one of the Old People,
leaving Mr. Brown
to keep the other old one company,
you all
to go now
to Nancy's and rest and wait;
then one of you drive back and get the other one and drive her
to Nancy's,
and Mr. Brown walk."
"Splendid!"
they all cried.
"Oh,
that will do--that will answer perfectly."
And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head
for planning,
in the company;
and they said that they wondered that they hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves.
They hadn't meant
to take back the compliment,
good simple souls,
and didn't know they had done it.
After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back
with Brown,
she being entitled
to the distinction because she had invented the plan.
Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and settled,
the ladies rose,
relieved and happy,
and brushed down their gowns,
and three of them started homeward;
Mrs.Enderby set her foot on the buggy-step and was about
to climb in,
when Brown found a remnant of his voice and gasped out--
"Please Mrs. Enderby,
call them back -I am very weak;
I can't walk,
I can't,
indeed."
"Why,
dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale;
I am ashamed of myself that I didn't notice it sooner.
Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well.
Is there anything I can do
for you,
Mr.Brown?--I'm real sorry.
Are you in pain?"
"No,
madam,
only weak;
I am not sick,
but only just weak--lately;
not long,
but just lately."
The others came back,
and poured out their sympathies and commiserations,
and were full of self-reproaches
for not having noticed how pale he was.
And they at once struck out a new plan,
and soon agreed that it was by far the best of all.
They would all go
to Nancy Taylor's house and see
to Brown's needs first.
He could lie on the sofa in the parlor,
and while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People,
and leave one of themselves
with the other one,
and---- By this time,
without any solicitation,
they were at the horse's head and were beginning
to turn him around.
The danger was imminent,
but Brown found his voice again and saved himself.
He said--
"But ladies,
you are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable.
You see,
if you bring one of them home,
and one remains behind
with the other,
there will be three persons there when one of you comes back
for that other,
for some one must drive the buggy back,
and three can't come home in it."
They all exclaimed,
"Why,
sure-ly,
that is so!"
and they were,
all perplexed again.
"Dear,
dear,
what can we do?"
said Mrs. Glossop;"
it is the most mixed- up thing that ever was.
The fox and the goose and the corn and things-- oh,
dear,
they are nothing
to it."
They sat wearily down once more,
to further torture their tormented heads
for a plan that would work.
Presently Mary offered a plan;
it was her first effort.
She said:
"I am young and strong,
and am refreshed,
now.
Take Mr. Brown
to our house,
and give him help--you see how plainly he needs it.
I will go back and take care of the Old People;
I can be there in twenty minutes.
You can go on and do what you first started
to do--wait on the main road at our house until somebody comes along
with a wagon;
then send and bring away the three of us.
You won't have
to wait long;
the farmers will soon be coming back from town,
now.
I will keep old Polly patient and cheered up--the crazy one doesn't need it."
This plan was discussed and accepted;
it seemed the best that could be done,
in the circumstances,
and the Old People must be getting discouraged by this time.
Brown felt relieved,
and was deeply thankful.
Let him once get
to the main road and he would find a way
to escape.
Then Mrs. Taylor said:
"The evening chill will be coming on,
pretty soon,
and those poor old burnt-out things will need some kind of covering.
Take the lap-robe
with you,
dear."
"Very well,
Mother,
I will."
She stepped
to the buggy and put out her hand
to take it---- That was the end of the tale.
The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that point--the train jumped off a bridge.
At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily,
and we set
to work
with confidence;
but it soon began
to appear that it was not a simple thing,
but difficult and baffling.
This was on account of Brown's character--great generosity and kindliness,
but complicated
with unusual shyness and diffidence,
particularly in the presence of ladies.
There was his love
for Mary,
in a hopeful state but not yet secure--just in a condition,
indeed,
where its affair must be handled
with great tact,
and no mistakes made,
no offense given.
And there was the mother wavering,
half willing-by adroit and flawless diplomacy
to be won over,
now,
or perhaps never at all.
Also,
there were the helpless Old People yonder in the woods waiting-their fate and Brown's happiness
to be determined by what Brown should do within the next two seconds.
Mary was reaching
for the lap-robe;
Brown must decide-there was no time
to be lost.
Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury;
the finish must find Brown in high credit
with the ladies,
his behavior without blemish,
his modesty unwounded,
his character
for self sacrifice maintained,
the Old People rescued through him,
their benefactor,
all the party proud of him,
happy in him,
his praises on all their tongues.
We tried
to arrange this,
but it was beset
with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties.
We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow him
to give up the lap-robe.
This would offend Mary and her mother;
and it would surprise the other ladies,
partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People would be out of character
with Brown,
and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so.
If asked
to explain his conduct,
his shyness would not allow him
to tell the truth,
and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash.
We worked at the troublesome problem until three in the morning.
Meantime Mary was still reaching
for the lap-robe.
We gave it up,
and decided
to let her continue
to reach.
It is the reader's privilege
to determine
for himself how the thing came out.
CHAPTER III.
It is more trouble
to make a maxim than it is
to do right.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head,
a piece of this world which I had not seen before
for twenty-nine years.
So we were nearing Honolulu,
the capital city of the Sandwich Islands--those islands which
to me were Paradise;
a Paradise which I had been longing all those years
to see again.
Not any other thing in the world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.
In the night we anchored a mile from shore.
Through my port I could see the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range that stretched away right and left.
I could not make out the beautiful Nuuana valley,
but I knew where it lay,
and remembered how it used
to look in the old times.
We used
to ride up it on horseback in those days --we young people--and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought.
He was a remarkable man,
for a king;
and he was also a remarkable man
for a savage.
He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of Captain Cook's arrival in 1788;
but about four years afterward he conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence.
That is a courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor--for your neighbor's benefit;
and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa.
Kamehameha went
to war,
and in the course of ten years he whipped out all the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that form the group.
But he did more than that.
He bought ships,
freighted them
with sandal wood and other native products,
and sent them as far as South America and China;
he sold
to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships,
and started the march of civilization.
It is doubtful if the match
to this extraordinary thing is
to be found in the history of any other savage.
Savages are eager
to learn from the white man any new way
to kill each other,
but it is not their habit
to seize
with avidity and apply
with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them.
The details of Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready
to examine the white man's ideas,
and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in making his selections from the samples placed on view.
A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor,
Liholiho,
I think.
Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer,
perhaps,
but as a king he was a mistake.
A mistake because he tried
to be both king and reformer.
This is mixing fire and gunpowder together.
A king has no proper business
with reforming.
His best policy is
to keep things as they are;
and if he can't do that,
he ought
to try
to make them worse than they are.
This is not guesswork;
I have thought over this matter a good deal,
so that if I should ever have a chance
to become a king I would know how
to conduct the business in the best way.
When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have known how
to husband,
and judiciously employ,
and make profitable.
The entire country was under the one scepter,
and his was that scepter.
There was an Established Church,
and he was the head of it.
There was a Standing Army,
and he was the head of that;
an Army of 114 privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal.
There was a proud and ancient Hereditary Nobility.
There was still one other asset.
This was the tabu--an agent endowed
with a mysterious and stupendous power,
an agent not found among the properties of any European monarch,
a tool of inestimable value in the business.
Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu.
The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that has ever been devised
for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted.
It required the sexes
to live in separate houses.
It did not allow people
to eat in either house;
they must eat in another place.
It did not allow a man's woman-folk
to enter his house.
It did not allow the sexes
to eat together;
the men must eat first,
and the women must wait on them.
Then the women could eat what was left--if anything was left--and wait on themselves.
I mean,
if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort was left,
the women could have it.
But not the good things,
the fine things,
the choice things,
such as pork,
poultry,
bananas,
cocoanuts,
the choicer varieties of fish,
and so on.
By the tabu,
all these were sacred
to the men;
the women spent their lives longing
for them and wondering what they might taste like;
and they died without finding out.
These rules,
as you see,
were quite simple and clear.
It was easy
to remember them;
and useful.
For the penalty
for infringing any rule in the whole list was death.
Those women easily learned
to put up
with shark and taro and dog
for a diet when the other things were so expensive.
It was death
for any one
to walk upon tabu'd ground;
or defile a tabu'd thing
with his touch;
or fail in due servility
to a chief;
or step upon the king's shadow.
The nobles and the King and the priests were always suspending little rags here and there and yonder,
to give notice
to the people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu,
and death lurking near.
The struggle
for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those days.
Thus advantageously was the new king situated.
Will it be believed that the first thing he did was
to destroy his Established Church,
root and branch?
He did indeed do that.
To state the case figuratively,
he was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took
to a raft.
This Church was a horrid thing.
It heavily oppressed the people;
it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings;
it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone;
it cowed them,
it terrorized them,
it made them slaves
to its priests,
and through the priests
to the king.
It was the best friend a king could have,
and the most dependable.
To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating a power as this Church,
reverence and praise would be due;
but
to a king who should do it,
could properly be due nothing but reproach;
reproach softened by sorrow;
sorrow
for his unfitness
for his position.
He destroyed his Established Church,
and his kingdom is a republic today,
in consequence of that act.
When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing
for civilization and
for his people's weal--but it was not
"business."
It was unkingly,
it was inartistic.
It made trouble
for his line.
The American missionaries arrived while the burned idols were still smoking.
They found the nation without a religion,
and they repaired the defect.
They offered their own religion and it was gladly received.
But it was no support
to arbitrary kingship,
and so the kingly power began
to weaken from that day.
Forty-seven years later,
when I was in the islands,
Kainehameha V.
was trying
to repair Liholiho's blunder,
and not succeeding.
He had set up an Established Church and made himself the head of it.
But it was only a pinchbeck thing,
an imitation,
a bauble,
an empty show.
It had no power,
no value
for a king.
It could not harry or burn or slay,
it in no way resembled the admirable machine which Liholiho destroyed.
It was an Established Church without an Establishment;
all the people were Dissenters.
Long before that,
the kingship had itself become but a name,
a show.
At an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like a republic;
and here lately the business whites have turned it into something exactly like it.
In Captain Cook's time
(1778),
the native population of the islands was estimated at 400,000;
in 1836 at something short of 200,000,
in 1866 at 50,000;
it is to-day,
per census,
25,000.
All intelligent people praise Kamehameha I.
and Liholiho
for conferring upon their people the great boon of civilization.
I would do it myself,
but my intelligence is out of repair,
now,
from over-work.
When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago,
I was acquainted
with a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably companionable
with me,
because he knew no English.
He had played from his birth
with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation,
and had preferred their language and would learn no other.
The family removed
to America a month after I arrived in the islands,
and straightway the boy began
to lose his Kanaka and pick up English.
By the time he was twelve be hadn't a word of Kanaka left;
the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from his comprehension.
Nine years later,
when he was twenty-one,
I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York,
and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having.
By trade he was now a professional diver.
A passenger boat had been caught in a storm on the lake,
and had gone down,
carrying her people
with her.
A few days later the young diver descended,
with his armor on,
and entered the berth-saloon of the boat,
and stood at the foot of the companionway,
with his hand on the rail,
peering through the dim water.
Presently something touched him on the shoulder,
and he turned and found a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly.
He was paralyzed
with fright.
His entry had disturbed the water,
and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making
for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying
to dance.
His senses forsook him,
and in that condition he was drawn
to the surface.
He was put
to bed at home,
and was soon very ill.
During some days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time;
and while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly;
and Kanaka only.
He was still very ill,
and he talked
to me in that tongue;
but I did not understand it,
of course.
The doctor-books tell us that cases like this are not uncommon.
Then the doctors ought
to study the cases and find out how
to multiply them.
Many languages and things get mislaid in a person's head,
and stay mislaid
for lack of this remedy.
Many memories of my former visit
to the islands came up in my mind while we lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night.
And pictures--pictures pictures--an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient
for the morning
to come.
When it came it brought disappointment,
of course.
Cholera had broken out in the town,
and we were not allowed
to have any communication
with the shore.
Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go
to ruin.
Messages came from friends,
but the friends themselves I was not
to have any sight of.
My lecture-hall was ready,
but I was not
to see that,
either.
Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu,
and these were sent ashore;
but nobody could go ashore and return.
There were people on shore who were booked
to go
with us
to Australia,
but we could not receive them;
to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney.
They could have escaped the day before,
by ship
to San Francisco;
but the bars had been put up,
now,
and they might have
to wait weeks before any ship could venture
to give them a passage any whither.
And there were hardships
for others.
An elderly lady and her son,
recreation-seekers from Massachusetts,
had wandered westward,
further and further from home,
always intending
to take the return track,
but always concluding
to go still a little further;
and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu positively their last westward-bound indulgence--they had made up their minds
to that--but where is the use in making up your mind in this world?
It is usually a waste of time
to do it.
These two would have
to stay
with us as far as Australia.
Then they could go on around the world,
or go back the way they had come;
the distance and the accommodations and outlay of time would be just the same,
whichever of the two routes they might elect
to take.
Think of it:
a projected excursion of five hundred miles gradually enlarged,
without any elaborate degree of intention,
to a possible twenty-four thousand.
However,
they were used
to extensions by this time,
and did not mind this new one much.
And we had
with us a lawyer from Victoria,
who had been sent out by the Government on an international matter,
and he had brought his wife
with him and left the children at home
with the servants and now what was
to be done?
Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks?
Most certainly not.
They decided
to go on,
to the Fiji islands,
wait there a fortnight
for the next ship,
and then sail
for home.
They couldn't foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again
for six weeks,
and that no word could come
to them from the children,
and no word go from them
to the children in all that time.
It is easy
to make plans in this world;
even a cat can do it;
and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about the same.
There is much the same shrinkage in both,
in the matter of values.
There was nothing
for us
to do but sit about the decks in the shade of the awnings and look at the distant shore.
We lay in luminous blue water;
shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant;
at the shore itself it broke in a long white ruffle,
and
with no crash,
no sound that we could hear.
The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked like a cushion of moss.
The silky mountains were clothed in soft,
rich splendors of melting color,
and some of the cliffs were veiled in slanting mists.
I recognized it all.
It was just as I had seen it long before,
with nothing of its beauty lost,
nothing of its charm wanting.
A change had come,
but that was political,
and not visible from the ship.
The monarchy of my day was gone,
and a republic was sitting in its seat.
It was not a material change.
The old imitation pomps,
the fuss and feathers,
have departed,
and the royal trademark--that is about all that one could miss,
I suppose.
That imitation monarchy,
was grotesque enough,
in my time;
if it had held on another thirty years it would have been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.
We had a sunset of a very fine sort.
The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors:
great stretches of dark blue,
others of purple,
others of polished bronze;
the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens,
blues and purples and blacks,
and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want
to stroke them,
as one would the sleek back of a cat.
The long,
sloping promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and spectral,
then became suffused
with pink--dissolved itself in a pink dream,
so
to speak,
it seemed so airy and unreal.
Presently the cloud- rack was flooded
with fiery splendors,
and these were copied on the surface of the sea,
and it made one drunk
with delight
to look upon it.
>From talks
with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu,
and from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H.
Krout,
I was able
to perceive what the Honolulu of to-day is,
as compared
with the Honolulu of my time.
In my time it was a beautiful little town,
made up of snow-white wooden cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs;
and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth,
and as white as the houses.
The outside aspects of the place suggested the presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity--a general prosperity-- perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal.
There were no fine houses,
no fine furniture.
There were no decorations.
Tallow candles furnished the light
for the bedrooms,
a whale-oil lamp furnished it
for the parlor.
Native matting served as carpeting.
In the parlor one would find two or three lithographs on the walls--portraits as a rule:
Kamehameha IV.,
Louis Kossuth,
Jenny Lind;
and may be an engraving or two:
Rebecca at the Well,
Moses smiting the rock,
Joseph's servants finding the cup in Benjamin's sack.
There would be a center table,
with books of a tranquil sort on it:
The Whole Duty of Man,
Baxter's Saints'
Rest,
Fox's Martyrs,
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy,
bound copies of The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend.
A melodeon;
a music stand,
with
'Willie,
We have Missed You',
'Star of the Evening',
'Roll on Silver Moon',
'Are We Most There',
'I Would not Live Alway',
and other songs of love and sentiment,
together
with an assortment of hymns.
A what-not
with semi-globular glass paperweights,
enclosing miniature pictures of ships,
New England rural snowstorms,
and the like;
sea-shells
with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style;
native curios;
whale's tooth
with full-rigged ship carved on it.
There was nothing reminiscent of foreign parts,
for nobody had been abroad.
Trips were made
to San Francisco,
but that could not be called going abroad.
Comprehensively speaking,
nobody traveled.
But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then,
and of course wealth has introduced changes;
some of the old simplicities have disappeared.
Here is a modern house,
as pictured by Mrs. Krout:
"Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brilliant hibiscus.
"The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished;
the floors are either of hard wood covered
with rugs or
with fine Indian matting,
while there is a preference,
as in most warm countries,
for rattan or bamboo furniture;
there are the usual accessories of bric- a-brac,
pictures,
books,
and curios from all parts of the world,
for these island dwellers are indefatigable travelers.
"Nearly every house has what is called a lanai.
It is a large apartment,
roofed,
floored,
open on three sides,
with a door or a draped archway opening into the drawing-room.
Frequently the roof is formed by the thick interlacing boughs of the hou tree,
impervious
to the sun and even
to the rain,
except in violent storms.
Vines are trained about the sides--the stephanotis or some one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound in the islands.
There are also curtains of matting that may be drawn
to exclude the sun or rain.
The floor is bare
for coolness,
or partially covered
with rugs,
and the lanai is prettily furnished
with comfortable chairs,
sofas,
and tables loaded
with flowers,
or wonderful ferns in pots.
"The lanai is the favorite reception room,
and here at any social function the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served;
here morning callers are received,
or gay riding parties,
the ladies in pretty divided skirts,
worn
for convenience in riding astride,-- the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans,
as well as by the natives.
"The comfort and luxury of such an apartment,
especially at a seashore villa,
can hardly be imagined.
The soft breezes sweep across it,
heavy
with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia,
and through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains,
their summits veiled in clouds,
of purple sea
with the white surf beating eternally against the reefs,
whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of the tropics."
There:
rugs,
ices,
pictures,
lanais,
worldly books,
sinful bric-a-brac fetched from everywhere.
And the ladies riding astride.
These are changes,
indeed.
In my time the native women rode astride,
but the white ones lacked the courage
to adopt their wise custom.
In my time ice was seldom seen in Honolulu.
It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New England as ballast;
and then,
if there happened
to be a man-of-war in port and balls and suppers raging by consequence,
the ballast was worth six hundred dollars a ton,
as is evidenced by reputable tradition.
But the ice-machine has traveled all over the world,
now,
and brought ice within everybody's reach.
In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native ice in our day,
except the bears and the walruses.
The bicycle is not mentioned.
It was not necessary.
We know that it is there,
without inquiring.
It is everywhere.
But
for it,
people could never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc;
before its day,
property up there had but a nominal value.
The ladies of the Hawaiian capital learned too late the right way
to occupy a horse--too late
to get much benefit from it.
The riding-horse is retiring from business everywhere in the world.
In Honolulu a few years from now he will be only a tradition.
We all know about Father Damien,
the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went
to the leper island of Molokai
to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there,
in slow-consuming misery,
for death
to cone and release them from their troubles;
and we know that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen,
did happen:
that he became a leper himself,
and died of that horrible disease.
There was still another case of self-sacrifice,
it appears.
I asked after
"Billy"
Ragsdale,
interpreter
to the Parliament in my time--a half-white.
He was a brilliant young fellow,
and very popular.
As an interpreter he would have been hard
to match anywhere.
He used
to stand up in the Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian speeches into English
with a readiness and a volubility that were astonishing.
I asked after him,
and was told that his prosperous career was cut short in a sudden and unexpected way,
just as he was about
to marry a beautiful half-caste girl.
He discovered,
by some nearly invisible sign about his skin,
that the poison of leprosy was in him.
The secret was his own,
and might be kept concealed
for years;
but he would not be treacherous
to the girl that loved him;
he would not marry her
to a doom like his.
And so he put his affairs in order,
and went around
to all his friends and bade them good-bye,
and sailed in the leper ship
to Molokai.
There he died the loathsome and lingering death that all lepers die.
In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from 11 The Paradise of the Pacific"
(Rev.
H.
H.
Gowen)--
"Poor lepers! It is easy
for those who have no relatives or friends among them
to enforce the decree of segregation
to the letter,
but who can write of the terrible,
the heart-breaking scenes which that enforcement has brought about?
"A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest,
leaving behind him a helpless wife about
to give birth
to a babe.
The devoted wife
with great pain and risk came the whole journey
to Honolulu,
and pleaded until the authorities were unable
to resist her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper
with her leper husband.
"A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an incipient leper,
suddenly removed from her home,
and her husband returns
to find his two helpless babes moaning
for their lost mother.
"Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard,
but its bitterness is a trifle--less than a trifle--less than nothing--compared
to what the mother must suffer;
and suffer minute by minute,
hour by hour,
day by day,
month by month,
year by year,
without respite,
relief,
or any abatement of her pain till she dies.
"One woman,
Luka Kaaukau,
has been living
with her leper husband in the settlement
for twelve years.
The man has scarcely a joint left,
his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps,
for four years his wife has put every particle of food into his mouth.
He wanted his wife
to abandon his wretched carcass long ago,
as she herself was sound and well,
but Luka said that she was content
to remain and wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be freed from its burden.
"I myself have known hard cases enough:--of a girl,
apparently in full health,
decorating the church
with me at Easter,
who before Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper;
of a mother hiding her child in the mountains
for years so that not even her dearest friends knew that she had a child alive,
that he might not be taken away;
of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and family,
and compelled
to become a dweller in the Leper Settlement,
where he is counted dead,
even by the insurance companies."
And one great pity of it all is,
that these poor sufferers are innocent.
The leprosy does not come of sins which they committed,
but of sins committed by their ancestors,
who escaped the curse of leprosy! Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance.
Would you expect
to find in that awful Leper Settlement a custom worthy
to be transplanted
to your own country?
They have one such,
and it is inexpressibly touching and beautiful.
When death sets open the prison- door of life there,
the band salutes the freed soul
with a burst of glad music! CHAPTER IV.
A dozen direct censures are easier
to bear than one morganatic compliment.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sailed from Honolulu.- From diary:
Sept.
2.
Flocks of flying fish-slim,
shapely,
graceful,
and intensely white.
With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver fruit- knives.
They are able
to fly a hundred yards.
Sept.
3.
In 9 deg.
50'
north latitude,
at breakfast.
Approaching the equator on a long slant.
Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited.
I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world.
We entered the
"doldrums"
last night--variable winds,
bursts of rain,
intervals of calm,
with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion
to the ship--a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes,
but present in the doldrums always.
The globe- girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide,
and the thread called the equator lies along the middle of it.
Sept.
4.
Total eclipse of the moon last night.
At 1.30 it began
to go off.
At total--or about that--it was like a rich rosy cloud
with a tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it--a bulge of strawberry-ice,
so
to speak.
At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded acorn in its cup.
Sept.
5.
Closing in on the equator this noon.
A sailor explained
to a young girl that the ship's speed is poor because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe;
but that when we should once get over,
at the equator,
and start down-hill,
we should fly.
When she asked him the other day what the fore-yard was,
he said it was the front yard,
the open area in the front end of the ship.
That man has a good deal of learning stored up,
and the girl is likely
to get it all.
Afternoon.
Crossed the equator.
In the distance it looked like a blue ribbon stretched across the ocean.
Several passengers kodak'd it.
We had no fool ceremonies,
no fantastics,
no horse play.
All that sort of thing has gone out.
In old times a sailor,
dressed as Neptune,
used
to come in over the bows,
with his suite,
and lather up and shave everybody who was crossing the equator
for the first time,
and then cleanse these unfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them three times in the sea.
This was considered funny.
Nobody knows why.
No,
that is not true.
We do know why.
Such a thing could never be funny on land;
no part of the old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard
to celebrate the passage of the line would ever be funny on shore--they would seem dreary and less
to shore people.
But the shore people would change their minds about it at sea,
on a long voyage.
On such a voyage,
with its eternal monotonies,
people's intellects deteriorate;
the owners of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem
to prefer childish things
to things of a maturer degree.
One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea,
and the interest they take in them,
and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.
This is on long voyages only.
The mind gradually becomes inert,
dull,
blunted;
it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things;
nothing but horse-play can rouse it,
nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries can entertain it.
On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself;
it hasn't time
to slump down
to this sorrowful level.
The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of
"horse-billiards"--shovel-board.
It is a good game.
We play it in this ship.
A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck.
The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle
with a quarter-moon of wood fastened
to the end of it.
With this he shoves wooden disks the size of a saucer--he gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it fifteen or twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if he can.
If it stays there till the inning is played out,
it will count as many points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in represents.
The adversary plays
to knock that disk out and leave his own in its place--particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10 or some other of the high numbers;
but if it rests in the
"10off"
he backs it up--lands his disk behind it a foot or two,
to make it difficult
for its owner
to knock it out of that damaging place and improve his record.
When the inning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed his four disks where they count;
it may be found that some of them are touching chalk lines and not counting;
and very often it will be found that there has been a general wreckage,
and that not a disk has been left within the diagram.
Anyway,
the result is recorded,
whatever it is,
and the game goes on.
The game is 100 points,
and it takes from twenty minutes
to forty
to play it,
according
to luck and the condition of the sea.
It is an exciting game,
and the crowd of spectators furnish abundance of applause
for fortunate shots and plenty of laughter
for the other kind.
It is a game of skill,
but at the same time the uneasy motion of the ship is constantly interfering
with skill;
this makes it a chancy game,
and the element of luck comes largely in.
We had a couple of grand tournaments,
to determine who should be
"Champion of the Pacific";
they included among the participants nearly all the passengers,
of both sexes,
and the officers of the ship,
and they afforded many days of stupendous interest and excitement,
and murderous exercise--for horse-billiards is a physically violent game.
The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the first tournament will show,
better than any description,
how very chancy the game is.
The losers here represented had all been winners in the previous games of the series,
some of them by fine majorities:
Chase,102 Mrs. D.,57 Mortimer,
105 The Surgeon,
92 Miss C.,105 Mrs. T.,9 Clemens,
101 Taylor,92 Taylor,109 Davies,95 Miss C.,
108 Mortimer,55 Thomas,102 Roper,76 Clemens,
111 Miss C.,89 Coomber,
106 Chase,98 And so on;
until but three couples of winners were left.
Then I beat my man,
young Smith beat his man,
and Thomas beat his.
This reduced the combatants
to three.
Smith and I took the deck,
and I led off.
At the close of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had scored 7.
The luck continued against me.
When I was 57,
Smith was 97-- within 3 of out.
The luck changed then.
He picked up a 10-off or so,
and couldn't recover.
I beat him.
The next game would end tournament No.
1.
Mr.Thomas and I were the contestants.
He won the lead and went
to the bat--so
to speak.
And there he stood,
with the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the ship rose slowly up,
sank slowly down,
rose again,
sank again.
She never seemed
to rise
to suit him exactly.
She started up once more;
and when she was nearly ready
for the turn,
he let drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the 10.
(Applause).
The umpire proclaimed
"
a good 10,"
and the game-keeper set it down.
I played:
my disk grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk,
and went out of the diagram.
(No applause.)
Mr.Thomas played again--and landed his second disk alongside of the first,
and almost touching its right-hand side.
"
Good 10."
(Great applause.)
I played,
and missed both of them.
(No applause.)
Mr.Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right of the other two.
"
Good 10."
(Immense applause.)
There they lay,
side by side,
the three in a row.
It did not seem possible that anybody could miss them.
Still I did it.
(Immense silence.)
Mr.Thomas played his last disk.
It seems incredible,
but he actually landed that disk alongside of the others,
and just
to the right of them-a straight solid row of 4 disks.
(Tumultuous and long-continued applause.)
Then I played my last disk.
Again it did not seem possible that anybody could miss that row--a row which would have been 14 inches long if the disks had been clamped together;
whereas,
with the spaces separating them they made a longer row than that.
But I did it.
It may be that I was getting nervous.
I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the history of horse-billiards.
To place the four disks side by side in the 10 was an extraordinary feat;
indeed,
it was a kind of miracle.
To miss them was another miracle.
It will take a century
to produce another man who can place the four disks in the 10;
and longer than that
to find a man who can't knock them out.
I was ashamed of my performance at the time,
but now that I reflect upon it I see that it was rather fine and difficult.
Mr.Thomas kept his luck,
and won the game,
and later the championship.
In a minor tournament I won the prize,
which was a Waterbury watch.
I put it in my trunk.
In Pretoria,
South Africa,
nine months afterward,
my proper watch broke down and I took the Waterbury out,
wound it,
set it by the great clock on the Parliament House
(8.05),
then went back
to my room and went
to bed,
tired from a long railway journey.
The parliamentary clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the time-- a peculiarity which exists in no other clock,
and would not exist in that one if it had been made by a sane person;
on the half-hour it strikes the succeeding hour,
then strikes the hour again,
at the proper time.
I lay reading and smoking awhile;
then,
when I could hold my eyes open no longer and was about
to put out the light,
the great clock began
to boom,
and I counted ten.
I reached
for the Waterbury
to see how it was getting along.
It was marking 9.30.
It seemed rather poor speed
for a three- dollar watch,
but I supposed that the climate was affecting it.
I shoved it half an hour ahead;
and took
to my book and waited
to see what would happen.
At 10 the great clock struck ten again.
I looked--the Waterbury was marking half-past 10.
This was too much speed
for the money,
and it troubled me.
I pushed the hands back a half hour,
and waited once more;
I had to,
for I was vexed and restless now,
and my sleepiness was gone.
By and by the great clock struck 11.
The Waterbury was marking 10.30.
I pushed it ahead half an hour,
with some show of temper.
By and by the great clock struck 11 again.
The Waterbury showed up 11.30,
now,
and I beat her brains out against the bedstead.
I was sorry next day,
when I found out.
To return
to the ship.
The average human being is a perverse creature;
and when he isn't that,
he is a practical joker.
The result
to the other person concerned is about the same:
that is,
he is made
to suffer.
The washing down of the decks begins at a very early hour in all ships;
in but few ships are any measures taken
to protect the passengers,
either by waking or warning them,
or by sending a steward
to close their ports.
And so the deckwashers have their opportunity,
and they use it.
They send a bucket of water slashing along the side of the ship and into the ports,
drenching the passenger's clothes,
and often the passenger himself.
This good old custom prevailed in this ship,
and under unusually favorable circumstances,
for in the blazing tropical regions a removable zinc thing like a sugarshovel projects from the port
to catch the wind and bring it in;
this thing catches the wash-water and brings it in,
too--and in flooding abundance.
Mrs.L,
an invalid,
had
to sleep on the locker--sofa under her port,
and every time she over-slept and thus failed
to take care of herself,
the deck-washers drowned her out.
And the painters,
what a good time they had! This ship would be going into dock
for a month in Sydney
for repairs;
but no matter,
painting was going on all the time somewhere or other.
The ladies'
dresses were constantly getting ruined,
nevertheless protests and supplications went
for nothing.
Sometimes a lady,
taking an afternoon nap on deck near a ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting,
would wake up by and by and find that the humorous painter had been noiselessly daubing that thing and had splattered her white gown all over
with little greasy yellow spots.
The blame
for this untimely painting did not lie
with the ship's officers,
but
with custom.
As far back as Noah's time it became law that ships must be constantly painted and fussed at when at sea;
custom grew out of the law,
and at sea custom knows no death;
this custom will continue until the sea goes dry.
Sept.
8.--Sunday.
We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about two meridians of longitude a day.
This morning we were in longitude 178 west from Greenwich,
and 57 degrees west from San Francisco.
To-morrow we shall be close
to the center of the globe--the 180th degree of west longitude and 180th degree of east longitude.
And then we must drop out a day-lose a day out of our lives,
a day never
to be found again.
We shall all die one day earlier than from the beginning of time we were foreordained
to die.
We shall be a day behindhand all through eternity.
We shall always be saying
to the other angels,
"Fine day today,"
and they will be always retorting,
"But it isn't to-day,
it's tomorrow."
We shall be in a state of confusion all the time and shall never know what true happiness is.
Next Day.
Sure enough,
it has happened.
Yesterday it was September 8,
Sunday;
to-day,
per the bulletin-board at the head of the companionway,
it is September 10,
Tuesday.
There is something uncanny about it.
And uncomfortable.
In fact,
nearly unthinkable,
and wholly unrealizable,
when one comes
to consider it.
While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were,
and Tuesday in the bow where I was.
They were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th,
and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the 10th--and I could notice how stale it was,
already.
The family were the same age that they were when I had left them five minutes before,
but I was a day older now than I was then.
The day they were living in stretched behind them half way round the globe,
across the Pacific Ocean and America and Europe;
the day I was living in stretched in front of me around the other half
to meet it.
They were stupendous days
for bulk and stretch;
apparently much larger days than we had ever been in before.
All previous days had been but shrunk-up little things by comparison.
The difference in temperature between the two days was very marked,
their day being hotter than mine because it was closer
to the equator.
Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child was born in the steerage,
and now there is no way
to tell which day it was born on.
The nurse thinks it was Sunday,
the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday.
The child will never know its own birthday.
It will always be choosing first one and then the other,
and will never be able
to make up its mind permanently.
This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its opinions about religion,
and politics,
and business,
and sweethearts,
and everything,
and will undermine its principles,
and rot them away,
and make the poor thing characterless,
and its success in life impossible.
Every one in the ship says so.
And this is not all--in fact,
not the worst.
For there is an enormously rich brewer in the ship who said as much as ten days ago,
that if the child was born on his birthday he would give it ten thousand dollars
to start its little life with.
His birthday was Monday,
the 9th of September.
If the ships all moved in the one direction--westward,
I mean--the world would suffer a prodigious loss--in the matter of valuable time,
through the dumping overboard on the Great Meridian of such multitudes of days by ships crews and passengers.
But fortunately the ships do not all sail west,
half of them sail east.
So there is no real loss.
These latter pick up all the discarded days and add them
to the world's stock again;
and about as good as new,
too;
for of course the salt water preserves them.
CHAPTER V.
Noise proves nothing.
Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
WEDNESDAY,
Sept.
11.
In this world we often make mistakes of judgment.
We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole,
but sometimes we do.
At dinner yesterday evening-present,
a mixture of Scotch,
English,
American,
Canadian,
and Australasian folk--a discussion broke out about the pronunciation of certain Scottish words.
This was private ground,
and the non-Scotch nationalities,
with one exception,
discreetly kept still.
But I am not discreet,
and I took a hand.
I didn't know anything about the subject,
but I took a hand just
to have something
to do.
At that moment the word in dispute was the word three.
One Scotchman was claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three,
his adversaries claimed that they didn't--that they pronounced it
'thraw'.
The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it,
so I thought I would enrich him
with my help.
In my position I was necessarily quite impartial,
and was equally as well and as ill equipped
to fight on the one side as on the other.
So I spoke up and said the peasantry pronounced the word three,
not thraw.
It was an error of judgment.
There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence,
then weather ensued.
The storm rose and spread in a surprising way,
and I was snowed under in a very few minutes.
It was a bad defeat
for me--a kind of Waterloo.
It promised
to remain so,
and I wished I had had better sense than
to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise.
But just then I had a saving thought--at least a thought that offered a chance.
While the storm was still raging,
I made up a Scotch couplet,
and then spoke up and said:
"Very well,
don't say any more.
I confess defeat.
I thought I knew,
but I see my mistake.
I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets."
"A Scotch poet! O come! Name him."
"Robert Burns."
It is wonderful the power of that name.
These men looked doubtful--but paralyzed,
all the same.
They were quite silent
for a moment;
then one of them said--with the reverence in his voice which is always present in a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name.
"Does Robbie Burns say--what does he say?"
"This is what he says:
'"There were nae bairns but only three-- Ane at the breast,
twa at the knee."
'
It ended the discussion.
There was no man there profane enough,
disloyal enough,
to say any word against a thing which Robert Burns had settled.
I shall always honor that great name
for the salvation it brought me in this time of my sore need.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation,
played
with confidence,
stands a good chance
to deceive.
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy.
This is a superstition;
there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
We are moving steadily southward-getting further and further down under the projecting paunch of the globe.
Yesterday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our world.
No,
not
"we,"
but they.
They saw it--somebody saw it--and told me about it.
But it is no matter,
I was not caring
for those things,
I am tired of them,
any way.
I think they are well enough,
but one doesn't want them always hanging around.
My interest was all in the Southern Cross.
I had never seen that.
I had heard about it all my life,
and it was but natural that I should be burning
to see it.
No other constellation makes so much talk.
I had nothing against the Big Dipper-- and naturally couldn't have anything against it,
since it is a citizen of our own sky,
and the property of the United States--but I did want it
to move out of the way and give this foreigner a chance.
Judging by the size of the talk which the Southern Cross had made,
I supposed it would need a sky all
to itself.
But that was a mistake.
We saw the Cross to-night,
and it is not large.
Not large,
and not strikingly bright.
But it was low down toward the horizon,
and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky.
It is ingeniously named,
for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else.
But that description does not describe;
it is too vague,
too general,
too indefinite.
It does after a fashion suggest a cross across that is out of repair--or out of drawing;
not correctly shaped.
It is long,
with a short cross-bar,
and the cross-bar is canted out of the straight line.
It consists of four large stars and one little one.
The little one is out of line and further damages the shape.
It should have been placed at the intersection of the stem and the cross-bar.
If you do not draw an imaginary line from star
to star it does not suggest a cross--nor anything in particular.
One must ignore the little star,
and leave it out of the combination--it confuses everything.
If you leave it out,
then you can make out of the four stars a sort of cross--out of true;
or a sort of kite--out of true;
or a sort of coffin-out of true.
Constellations have always been troublesome things
to name.
If you give one of them a fanciful name,
it will always refuse
to live up
to it;
it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
Ultimately,
to satisfy the public,
the fanciful name has
to be discarded
for a common-sense one,
a manifestly descriptive one.
The Great Bear remained the Great Bear--and unrecognizable as such--for thousands of years;
and people complained about it all the time,
and quite properly;
but as soon as it became the property of the United States,
Congress changed it
to the Big Dipper,
and now every body is satisfied,
and there is no more talk about riots.
I would not change the Southern Cross
to the Southern Coffin,
I would change it
to the Southern Kite;
for up there in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite,
but not
for coffins and crosses and dippers.
In a little while,
now--I cannot tell exactly how long it will be--the globe will belong
to the English- speaking race;
and of course the skies also.
Then the constellations will be re-organized,
and polished up,
and re-named--the most of them
"Victoria,"
I reckon,
but this one will sail thereafter as the Southern Kite,
or go out of business.
Several towns and things,
here and there,
have been named
for Her Majesty already.
In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky Way of islands.
They are so thick on the map that one would hardly expect
to find room between them
for a canoe;
yet we seldom glimpse one.
Once we saw the dim bulk of a couple of them,
far away,
spectral and dreamy things;
members of the Horne-Alofa and Fortuna.
On the larger one are two rival native kings--and they have a time together.
They are Catholics;
so are their people.
The missionaries there are French priests.
>From the multitudinous islands in these regions the
"recruits"
for the Queensland plantations were formerly drawn;
are still drawn from them,
I believe.
Vessels fitted up like old-time slavers came here and carried off the natives
to serve as laborers in the great Australian province.
In the beginning it was plain,
simple man-stealing,
as per testimony of the missionaries.
This has been denied,
but not disproven.
Afterward it was forbidden by law to
"recruit"
a native without his consent,
and governmental agents were sent in all recruiting vessels
to see that the law was obeyed--which they did,
according
to the recruiting people;
and which they sometimes didn't,
according
to the missionaries.
A man could be lawfully recruited
for a three-years term of service;
he could volunteer
for another term if he so chose;
when his time was up he could return
to his island.
And would also have the means
to do it;
for the government required the employer
to put money in its hands
for this purpose before the recruit was delivered
to him.
Captain Wawn was a recruiting ship-master during many years.
From his pleasant book one gets the idea that the recruiting business was quite popular
with the islanders,
as a rule.
And yet that did not make the business wholly dull and uninteresting;
for one finds rather frequent little breaks in the monotony of it--like this,
for instance:
"The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying almost becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the island,
about three-quarters of a mile from the shore.
The boats were in sight at some distance.
The recruiter-boat had run into a small nook on the rocky coast,
under a high bank,
above which stood a solitary hut backed by dense forest.
The government agent and mate in the second boat lay about 400'yards
to the westward.
"Suddenly we heard the sound of firing,
followed by yells from the natives on shore,
and then we saw the recruiter-boat push out
with a seemingly diminished crew.
The mate's boat pulled quickly up,
took her in tow,
and presently brought her alongside,
all her own crew being more or less hurt.
It seems the natives had called them into the place on pretence of friendship.
A crowd gathered about the stern of the boat,
and several fellows even got into her.
All of a sudden our men were attacked
with clubs and tomahawks.
The recruiter escaped the first blows aimed at him,
making play
with his fists until he had an opportunity
to draw his revolver.
'Tom Sayers,'
a Mare man,
received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid the scalp open but did not penetrate his skull,
fortunately.
'Bobby Towns,'
another Mare boatman,
had both his thumbs cut in warding off blows,
one of them being so nearly severed from the hand that the doctors had
to finish the operation.
Lihu,
a Lifu boy,
the recruiter's special attendant,
was cut and pricked in various places,
but nowhere seriously.
Jack,
an unlucky Tanna recruit,
who had been engaged
to act as boatman,
received an arrow through his forearm,
the head of which--apiece of bone seven or eight inches long--was still in the limb,
protruding from both sides,
when the boats returned.
The recruiter himself would have got off scot-free had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers
to the loom of the steering-oar just as they were getting off.
The fight had been short but sharp.
The enemy lost two men,
both shot dead."
The truth is,
Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal encounters between natives and French and English recruiting-crews
(for the French are in the business
for the plantations of New Caledonia),
that one is almost persuaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular among the islanders;
else why this bristling string of attacks and bloodcurdling slaughter?
The captain lays it all to
"Exeter Hall influence."
But
for the meddling philanthropists,
the native fathers and mothers would be fond of seeing their children carted into exile and now and then the grave,
instead of weeping about it and trying
to kill the kind recruiters.
CHAPTER VI.
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring
to its own merits.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point:
He does not approve of missionaries.
They obstruct his business.
They make
"Recruiting,"
as he calls it
("Slave-Catching,"
as they call it in their frank way)
a trouble when it ought
to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion.
The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor Traffic is conducted,
and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of the Traffic,
and about the traffic itself--and it is distinctly uncomplimentary
to the Traffic and
to everything connected
with it,
including the law
for its regulation.
Captain Wawn's book is of very recent date;
I have by me a pamphlet of still later date--hot from the press,
in fact--by Rev.
Wm.
Gray,
a missionary;
and the book and the pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading,
to my mind.
Interesting,
and easy
to understand--except in one detail,
which I will mention presently.
It is easy
to understand why the Queensland sugar planter should want the Kanaka recruit:
he is cheap.
Very cheap,
in fact.
These are the figures paid by the planter:
L20
to the recruiter
for getting the Kanaka or
"catching"
him,
as the missionary phrase goes;
L3
to the Queensland government for
"superintending"
the importation;
L5 deposited
with the Government
for the Kanaka's passage home when his three years are up,
in case he shall live that long;
about L25
to the Kanaka himself
for three years'
wages and clothing;
total payment
for the use of a man three years,
L53;
or,
including diet,
L60.
Altogether,
a hundred dollars a year.
One can understand why the recruiter is fond of the business;
the recruit costs him a few cheap presents
(given
to the recruit's relatives,
not himself),
and the recruit is worth L20
to the recruiter when delivered in Queensland.
All this is clear enough;
but the thing that is not clear is,
what there is about it all
to persuade the recruit.
He is young and brisk;
life at home in his beautiful island is one lazy,
long holiday
to him;
or if he wants
to work he can turn out a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it
for four or five shillings a bag.
In Queensland he must get up at dawn and work from eight
to twelve hours a day in the canefields--in a much hotter climate than he is used to--and get less than four shillings a week
for it.
I cannot understand his willingness
to go
to Queensland.
It is a deep puzzle
to me.
Here is the explanation,
from the planter's point of view;
at least I gather from the missionary's pamphlet that it is the planter's:
"When he comes from his home he is a savage,
pure and simple.
He feels no shame at his nakedness and want of adornment.
When he returns home he does so well dressed,
sporting a Waterbury watch,
collars,
cuffs,
boots,
and jewelry.
He takes
with him one or more boxes--["Box"
is English
for trunk.]-- well filled
with clothing,
a musical instrument or two,
and perfumery and other articles of luxury he has learned
to appreciate."
For just one moment we have a seeming flash of comprehension of,
the Kanaka's reason
for exiling himself :
he goes away
to acquire civilization.
Yes,
he was naked and not ashamed,
now he is clothed and knows how
to be ashamed;
he was unenlightened;
now he has a Waterbury watch;
he was unrefined,
now he has jewelry,
and something
to make him smell good;
he was a nobody,
a provincial,
now he has been
to far countries and can show off.
It all looks plausible--for a moment.
Then the missionary takes hold of this explanation and pulls it
to pieces,
and dances on it,
and damages it beyond recognition.
"Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one,
the average sequel is this:
The cuffs and collars,
if used at all,
are carried off by youngsters,
who fasten them round the leg,
just below the knee,
as ornaments.
The Waterbury,
broken and dirty,
finds its way
to the trader,
who gives a trifle
for it;
or the inside is taken out,
the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck.
Knives,
axes,
calico,
and handkerchiefs are divided among friends,
and there is hardly one of these apiece.
The boxes,
the keys often lost on the road home,
can be bought
for 2s.
6d.
They are
to be seen rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna.
(I speak of what I have seen.)
A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry
with me because I would not buy his trousers,
which he declared were just my fit.
He sold them afterwards
to one of my Aniwan teachers
for 9d.
worth of tobacco--a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s.
or 10s.
in Queensland.
A coat or shirt is handy
for cold weather.
The white handkerchiefs,
the
'senet'
(perfumery),
the umbrella,
and perhaps the hat,
are kept.
The boots have
to take their chance,
if they do not happen
to fit the copra trader.
'Senet'
on the hair,
streaks of paint on the face,
a dirty white handkerchief round the neck,
strips of turtle shell in the ears,
a belt,
a sheath and knife,
and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home the day after landing."
A hat,
an umbrella,
a belt,
a neckerchief.
Otherwise stark naked.
All in a day the hard-earned
"civilization"
has melted away
to this.
And even these perishable things must presently go.
Indeed,
there is but a single detail of his civilization that can be depended on
to stay by him:
according
to the missionary,
he has learned
to swear.
This is art,
and art is long,
as the poet says.
In all countries the laws throw light upon the past.
The Queensland law
for the regulation of the Labor Traffic is a confession.
It is a confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic had existed in the past,
and that they still existed when the law was made.
The missionaries make a further charge:
that the law is evaded by the recruiters,
and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them
to do it.
Regulation 31 reveals two things:
that sometimes a young fool of a recruit gets his senses back,
after being persuaded
to sign away his liberty
for three years,
and dearly wants
to get out of the engagement and stay at home
with his own people;
and that threats,
intimidation,
and force are used
to keep him on board the recruiting-ship,
and
to hold him
to his contract.
Regulation 31 forbids these coercions.
The law requires that he shall be allowed
to go free;
and another clause of it requires the recruiter
to set him ashore--per boat,
because of the prevalence of sharks.
Testimony from Rev.
Mr.Gray:
"There are
'wrinkles'
for taking the penitent Kanaka.
My first experience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884.
A vessel anchored just out of sight of our station,
word was brought
to me that some boys were stolen,
and the relatives wished me
to go and get them back.
The facts were,
as I found,
that six boys had recruited,
had rushed into the boat,
the Government Agent informed me.
They had all
'signed';
and,
said the Government Agent,
'on board they shall remain.'
I was assured that the six boys were of age and willing
to go.
Yet on getting ready
to leave the ship I found four of the lads ready
to come ashore in the boat! This I forbade.
One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming ashore in my boat.
When appealed to,
the Government Agent suggested that we go and leave him
to be picked up by the ship's boat,
a quarter mile distant at the time!"
The law and the missionaries feel
for the repentant recruit--and properly,
one may be permitted
to think,
for he is only a youth and ignorant and persuadable
to his hurt--but sympathy
for him is not kept in stock by the recruiter.
Rev.
Mr.Gray says:
"A captain many years in the traffic explained
to me how a penitent could betaken.
'When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and pull ahead of him,
then lie between him and the shore.
If he has not tired himself swimming,
and passes the boat,
keep on heading him in this way.
The dodge rarely fails.
The boy generally tires of swimming,
gets into the boat of his own accord,
and goes quietly on board."
Yes,
exhaustion is likely
to make a boy quiet.
If the distressed boy had been the speaker's son,
and the captors savages,
the speaker would have been surprised
to see how differently the thing looked from the new point of view;
however,
it is not our custom
to put ourselves in the other person's place.
Somehow there is something pathetic about that disappointed young savage's resignation.
I must explain,
here,
that in the traffic dialect,
"boy"
does not always mean boy;
it means a youth above sixteen years of age.
That is by Queensland law the age of consent,
though it is held that recruiters allow themselves some latitude in guessing at ages.
Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of
"cast-iron regulations."
They and the missionaries have poisoned his life.
He grieves
for the good old days,
vanished
to come no more.
See him weep;
hear him cuss between the lines!
"For a long time we were allowed
to apprehend and detain all deserters who had signed the agreement on board ship,
but the
'cast- iron'
regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop
to that,
allowing the Kanaka
to sign the agreement
for three years'
service,
travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations,
cadge all he could,
and leave when he thought fit,
so long as he did not extend his pleasure trip
to Queensland."
Rev.
Mr.Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a
"farce."
"There is as much cruelty and injustice done
to natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful.
The regulations that exist are unjust and inadequate--unjust and inadequate they must ever be."
He furnishes his reasons
for his position,
but they are too long
for reproduction here.
However,
if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course in civilization in Queensland,
is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swearing,
it must be that all the profit of the traffic goes
to the white man.
This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the traffic ought
to be squarely abolished.
However,
there is reason
for hope that that can be left alone
to achieve itself.
It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years.
Queensland is a very healthy place
for white people--death-rate 12 in 1,000 of the population- but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that.
The vital statistics
for 1893 place it at 52;
for 1894
(Mackay district),
68.
The first six months of the Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous
for him because of the rigors of the new climate.
The death-rate among the new men has reached as high as 180 in the 1,000.
In the Kanaka's native home his death-rate is 12 in time of peace,
and 15 in time of war.
Thus exile
to Queensland--with the opportunity
to acquire civilization,
an umbrella,
and a pretty poor quality of profanity--is twelve times as deadly
for him as war.
Common Christian charity,
common humanity,
does seem
to require,
not only that these people be returned
to their homes,
but that war,
pestilence,
and famine be introduced among them
for their preservation.
Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet spoke long years ago--five and fifty years ago.
In fact,
he spoke a little too early.
Prophecy is a good line of business,
but it is full of risks.
This prophet was the Right Rev.
M.
Russell,
LL.D.,
D.C.L.,
of Edinburgh:
"Is the tide of civilization
to roll only
to the foot of the Rocky Mountains,
and is the sun of knowledge
to set at last in the waves of the Pacific ?
No;
the mighty day of four thousand years is drawing
to its close;
the sun of humanity has performed its destined course;
but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west,
its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas .
.
.
.
And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth
to people the isles,
and the seeds of another Europe and a second England sown in the regions of the sun.
But mark the words of the prophecy:
'He shall dwell in the tents of Shem,
and Canaan shall be his servant.'
It is not said Canaan shall be his slave.
To the Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe,
but there is not given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack of the executioner.
The East will not be stained
with the same atrocities as the West;
the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not
to mar the destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world;
humanizing,
not destroying,
as they advance;
uniting with,
not enslaving,
the inhabitants
with whom they dwell,
the British race may,"
etc.,
etc.
And he closes his vision
with an invocation from Thomson:
"Come,
bright Improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime
to clime."
Very well,
Bright Improvement has arrived,
you see,
with her civilization,
and her Waterbury,
and her umbrella,
and her third-quality profanity,
and her humanizing-not-destroying machinery,
and her hundred- and-eighty death-rate,
and everything is going along just as handsome! But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the business.
Rev.
Mr.Gray says:
"What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should wipe out these races
to enrich ourselves."
And he closes his pamphlet
with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of the early prophet:
"My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this
"1.
It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka,
deprives him of his citizenship,
and depopulates the islands fitted
to his home.
"2.
It is felt
to lower the dignity of the white agricultural laborer in Queensland,
and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there.
"3.
The whole system is fraught
with danger
to Australia and the islands on the score of health.
"4.
On social and political grounds the continuance of the Queensland Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier
to the true federation of the Australian colonies.
"5.
The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are inadequate
to prevent abuses,
and in the nature of things they must remain so.
"6.
The whole system is contrary
to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel requires us
to help the weak,
but the Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down.
"7.
The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a black man are of less value than those of a white man.
And a Traffic that has grown out of
'slave-hunting'
will certainly remain
to the end not unlike its origin."
CHAPTER VII.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have.
Let us economize it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
>From Diary:--For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands,
catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a member of it.
There does seem
to be a prodigious lot of islands this year;
the map of this region is freckled and fly-specked all over
with them.
Their number would seem
to be uncountable.
We are moving among the Fijis now--224 islands and islets in the group.
In front of us,
to the west,
the wilderness stretches toward Australia,
then curves upward
to New Guinea,
and still up and up
to Japan;
behind us,
to the east,
the wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the Pacific;
south of us is New Zealand.
Somewhere or other among these myriads Samoa is concealed,
and not discoverable on the map.
Still,
if you wish
to go there,
you will have no trouble about finding it if you follow the directions given by Robert Louis Stevenson
to Dr. Conan Doyle and
to Mr. J.
M.
Barrie.
"You go
to America,
cross the continent
to San Francisco,
and then it's the second turning
to the left."
To get the full flavor of the joke one must take a glance at the map.
Wednesday,
September 11.--Yesterday we passed close
to an island or so,
and recognized the published Fiji characteristics:
a broad belt of clean white coral sand around the island;
back of it a graceful fringe of leaning palms,
with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their bases;
back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic vegetation;
back of that,
rugged and picturesque mountains.
A detail of the immediate foreground:
a mouldering ship perched high up on a reef- bench.
This completes the composition,
and makes the picture artistically perfect.
In the afternoon we sighted Suva,
the capital of the group,
and threaded our way into the secluded little harbor--a placid basin of brilliant blue and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills.
A few ships rode at anchor in it--one of them a sailing vessel flying the American flag;
and they said she came from Duluth! There's a journey! Duluth is several thousand miles from the sea,
and yet she is entitled
to the proud name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of America.
There is only one free,
independent,
unsubsidized American ship sailing the foreign seas,
and Duluth owns it.
All by itself that ship is the American fleet.
All by itself it causes the American name and power
to be respected in the far regions of the globe.
All by itself it certifies
to the world that the most populous civilized nation,
in the earth has a just pride in her stupendous stretch of sea-front,
and is determined
to assert and maintain her rightful place as one of the Great Maritime Powers of the Planet.
All by itself it is making foreign eyes familiar
with a Flag which they have not seen before
for forty years,
outside of the museum.
For what Duluth has done,
in building,
equipping,
and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial Fleet,
and in thus rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it high
for the homage of the nations,
we owe her a debt of gratitude which our hearts shall confess
with quickened beats whenever her name is named henceforth.
Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time,
but while the flag flies and the Republic survives,
they who live under their shelter will still drink this one,
standing and uncovered:
Health and prosperity
to Thee,
O Duluth,
American Queen of the Alien Seas! Row-boats began
to flock from the shore;
their crews were the first natives we had seen.
These men carried no overplus of clothing,
and this was wise,
for the weather was hot.
Handsome,
great dusky men they were,
muscular,
clean-limbed,
and
with faces full of character and intelligence.
It would be hard
to find their superiors anywhere among the dark races,
I should think.
Everybody went ashore
to look around,
and spy out the land,
and have that luxury of luxuries
to sea-voyagers--a land-dinner.
And there we saw more natives:
Wrinkled old women,
with their flat mammals flung over their shoulders,
or hanging down in front like the cold-weather drip from the molasses-faucet;
plump and smily young girls,
blithe and content,
easy and graceful,
a pleasure
to look at;
young matrons,
tall,
straight,
comely,
nobly built,
sweeping by
with chin up,
and a gait incomparable
for unconscious stateliness and dignity;
majestic young men athletes
for build and muscle clothed in a loose arrangement of dazzling white,
with bronze breast and bronze legs naked,
and the head a cannon-swab of solid hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brick-red.
Only sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness;
now they have the bicycle.
We strolled about the streets of the white folks'
little town,
and around over the hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens and plantations,
and past clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink,
the great blossoms were so intensely red;
and by and by we stopped
to ask an elderly English colonist a question or two,
and
to sympathize
with him concerning the torrid weather;
but he was surprised,
and said:
"This?
This is not hot.
You ought
to be here in the summer time once."
"We supposed that this was summer;
it has the ear-marks of it.
You could take it
to almost any country and deceive people
with it.
But if it isn't summer,
what does it lack?"
"It lacks half a year.
This is mid-winter."
I had been suffering from colds
for several months,
and a sudden change of season,
like this,
could hardly fail
to do me hurt.
It brought on another cold.
It is odd,
these sudden jumps from season
to season.
A fortnight ago we left America in mid-summer,
now it is midwinter;
about a week hence we shall arrive in Australia in the spring.
After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known somewhere else in the world,
and presently made,
some new friends and drove
with them out into the country
to visit his Excellency the head of the State,
who was occupying his country residence,
to escape the rigors of the winter weather,
I suppose,
for it was on breezy high ground and much more comfortable than the lower regions,
where the town is,
and where the winter has full swing,
and often sets a person's hair afire when he takes off his hat
to bow.
There is a noble and beautiful view of ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's high-placed house,
and its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose and serenity which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands.
One of the new friends who went out there
with me was a large man,
and I had been admiring his size all the way.
I was still admiring it as he stood by the governor on the veranda,
talking;
then the Fijian butler stepped out there
to announce tea,
and dwarfed him.
Maybe he did not quite dwarf him,
but at any rate the contrast was quite striking.
Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political suspension.
I think that in the talk there on the veranda it was said that in Fiji,
as in the ,Sandwich Islands,
native kings and chiefs are of much grander size and build than the commoners.
This man was clothed in flowing white vestments,
and they were just the thing
for him;
they comported well
with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity.
European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace.
I know that,
because they do that
with everybody that wears them.
It was said that the old-time devotion
to chiefs and reverence
for their persons still survive in the native commoner,
and in great force.
The educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European gentlemen,
but even his clothes cannot damn him in the reverence of his people.
Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on,
in spite of his lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor.
He has no need
to defile himself
with work,
or trouble his heart
with the sordid cares of life;
the tribe will see
to it that he shall not want,
and that he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman.
I had a glimpse of him down in the town.
Perhaps he is a descendant of the last king--the king
with the difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable monument of cut-stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of the town.
Thakombau--I remember,
now;
that is the name.
It is easier
to preserve it on a granite block than in your head.
Fiji was ceded
to England by this king in 1858.
One of the gentlemen present at the governor's quoted a remark made by the king at the time of the session--a neat retort,
and
with a touch of pathos in it,
too.
The English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort
to Thakombau by saying that the transfer of the kingdom
to Great Britain was merely
"a sort of hermit-crab formality,
you know."
"Yes,"
said poor Thakombau,
"but
with this difference--the crab moves into an unoccupied shell,
but mine isn't."
However,
as far as I can make out from the books,
the King was between the devil and the deep sea at the time,
and hadn't much choice.
He owed the United States a large debt--a debt which he could pay if allowed time,
but time was denied him.
He must pay up right away or the warships would be upon him.
To protect his people from this disaster he ceded his country
to Britain,
with a clause in the contract providing
for the ultimate payment of the American debt.
In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters;
they were very religious,
and worshiped idols;
the big chiefs were proud and haughty,
and they were men of great style in many ways;
all chiefs had several wives,
the biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty;
when a chief was dead and ready
for burial,
four or five of his wives were strangled and put into the grave
with him.
In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped from Australia
to Fiji,
and brought guns and ammunition
with them.
Consider what a power they were,
armed like that,
and what an opportunity they had.
If they had been energetic men and sober,
and had had brains and known how
to use them,
they could have achieved the sovereignty of the archipelago twenty-seven kings and each
with eight or nine islands under his scepter.
But nothing came of this chance.
They lived worthless lives of sin and luxury,
and died without honor--in most cases by violence.
Only one of them had any ambition;
he was an Irishman named Connor.
He tried
to raise a family of fifty children,
and scored forty- eight.
He died lamenting his failure.
It was a foolish sort of avarice.
Many a father would have been rich enough
with forty.
It is a fine race,
the Fijians,
with brains in their heads,
and an inquiring turn of mind.
It appears that their savage ancestors had a doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religion--with limitations.
That is
to say,
their dead friend would go
to a happy hereafter if he could be accumulated,
but not otherwise.
They drew the line;
they thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping,
too comprehensive.
They called his attention
to certain facts.
For instance,
many of their friends had been devoured by sharks;
the sharks,
in their turn,
were caught and eaten by other men;
later,
these men were captured in war,
and eaten by the enemy.
The original persons had entered into the composition of the sharks;
next,
they and the sharks had become part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals.
How,
then,
could the particles of the original men be searched out from the final conglomerate and put together again?
The inquirers were full of doubts,
and considered that the missionary had not examined the matter with--the gravity and attention which so serious a thing deserved.
The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things,
and got from them one--a very dainty and poetical idea:
Those wild and ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers,
after they perish,
rise on the winds and float away
to the fair fields of heaven,
and flourish there forever in immortal beauty! CHAPTER VIII.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem
to crowd upon each other;
but no,
there is no crowding,
even in the center of a group;
and between groups there are lonely wide deserts of sea.
Not everything is known about the islands,
their peoples and their languages.
A startling reminder of this is furnished by the fact that in Fiji,
twenty years ago,
were living two strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an unknown language.
"They were picked up by a passing vessel many hundreds of miles from any known land,
floating in the same tiny canoe in which they had been blown out
to sea.
When found they were but skin and bone.
No one could understand what they said,
and they have never named their country;
or,
if they have,
the name does not correspond
with that of any island on any chart.
They are now fat and sleek,
and as happy as the day is long.
In the ship's log there is an entry of the latitude and longitude in which they were found,
and this is probably all the clue they will ever have
to their lost homes."
--[Forbes's
"Two Years in Fiji."
] What a strange and romantic episode it is;
and how one is tortured
with curiosity
to know whence those mysterious creatures came,
those Men Without a Country,
errant waifs who cannot name their lost home,
wandering Children of Nowhere.
Indeed,
the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and mystery.
The loneliness,
the solemnity,
the beauty,
and the deep repose of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own
for the bruised spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle
for life in the great world;
and
for men who have been hunted out of the great world
for crime;
and
for other men who love an easy and indolent existence;
and
for others who love a roving free life,
and stir and change and adventure;
and
for yet others who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and money-getting,
mixed
with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase,
divorce without trial or expense,
and limitless spreeing thrown in
to make life ideally perfect.
We sailed again,
refreshed.
The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English,
man whose home was in New Zealand.
He was a naturalist.
His learning in his specialty was deep and thorough,
his interest in his subject amounted
to a passion,
he had an easy gift of speech;
and so,
when he talked about animals it was a pleasure
to listen
to him.
And profitable,
too,
though he was sometimes difficult
to understand because now and then he used scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of us.
They were pretty sure
to be above my reach,
but as he was quite willing
to explain them I always made it a point
to get him
to do it.
I had a fair knowledge of his subject--layman's knowledge--to begin with,
but it was his teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity--in a word,
gave it value.
His special interest was the fauna of Australasia,
and his knowledge of the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate.
I already knew a good deal about the rabbits in Australasia and their marvelous fecundity,
but in my talks
with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel was far short of the facts.
He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were so thick in the land that people had
to dig trenches through them
to get from town
to town.
He told me a great deal about worms,
and the kangaroo,
and other coleoptera,
and said he knew the history and ways of all such pachydermata.
He said the kangaroo had pockets,
and carried its young in them when it couldn't get apples.
And he said that the emu was as big as an ostrich,
and looked like one,
and had an amorphous appetite and would eat bricks.
Also,
that the dingo was not a dingo at all,
but just a wild dog;
and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that neither of them barked;
otherwise they were just the same.
He said that the only game-bird in Australia was the wombat,
and the only song-bird the larrikin,
and that both were protected by government.
The most beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise.
Next came the two kinds of lyres;
not spelt the same.
He said the one kind was dying out,
the other thickening up.
He explained that the
"Sundowner"
was not a bird it was a man;
sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of our word,
tramp.
He is a loafer,
a hard drinker,
and a sponge.
He tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season,
pretending
to look
for work;
but he always times himself
to arrive at a sheep-run just at sundown,
when the day's labor ends;
all he wants is whisky and supper and bed and breakfast;
he gets them and then disappears.
The naturalist spoke of the bell bird,
the creature that at short intervals all day rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest.
It is the favorite and best friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner;
for he knows that wherever the bell bird is,
there is water;
and he goes somewhere else.
The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia was the,
Laughing Jackass,
and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa.
The Moa stood thirteen feet high,
and could step over an ordinary man's head or kick his hat off;
and his head,
too,
for that matter.
He said it was wingless,
but a swift runner.
The natives used
to ride it.
It could make forty miles an hour,
and keep it up
for four hundred miles and come out reasonably fresh.
It was still in existence when the railway was introduced into New Zealand;
still in existence,
and carrying the mails.
The railroad began
with the same schedule it has now:
two expresses a week-time,
twenty miles an hour.
The company exterminated the moa
to get the mails.
Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels,
the naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable
for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws governing these species of tubercles,
but that in his opinion Nature's fondness
for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird,
fish,
amphibian,
burrower,
crawler,
quadruped,
and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus--grotesquest of animals,
king of the animalculae of the world
for versatility of character and make-up.
Said he:
"You can call it anything you want to,
and be right.
It is a fish,
for it lives in the river half the time;
it is a land animal,
for it resides on the land half the time;
it is an amphibian,
since it likes both and does not know which it prefers;
it is a hybernian,
for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time;
it is a kind of duck,
for it has a duck- bill and four webbed paddles;
it is a fish and quadruped together,
for in the water it swims
with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country
with them;
it is a kind of seal,
for it has a seal's fur;
it is carnivorous,
herbivorous,
insectivorous,
and vermifuginous,
for it eats fish and grass and butterflies,
and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them;
it is clearly a bird,
for it lays eggs,
and hatches them;
it is clearly a mammal,
for it nurses its young;
and it is manifestly a kind of Christian,
for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around,
and when there isn't,
doesn't.
It has all the tastes there are except refined ones,
it has all the habits there are except good ones.
"It is a survival--a survival of the fittest.
Mr.Darwin invented the theory that goes by that name,
but the Ornithorhynchus was the first
to put it
to actual experiment and prove that it could be done.
Hence it should have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin.
It was never in the Ark;
you will find no mention of it there;
it nobly stayed out and worked the theory.
Of all creatures in the world it was the only one properly equipped
for the test.
The Ark was thirteen months afloat,
and all the globe submerged;
no land visible above the flood,
no vegetation,
no food
for a mammal
to eat,
nor water
for a mammal
to drink;
for all mammal food was destroyed,
and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the earth mingled their waters and rose above the mountain tops,
the result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction could use and live.
But this combination was nuts
for the Ornithorhynchus,
if I may use a term like that without offense.
Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea.
On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were floating.
Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace;
voyaged from clime
to clime,
from hemisphere
to hemisphere,
in contentment and comfort,
in virile interest in the constant change Of scene,
in humble thankfulness
for its privileges,
in ever-increasing enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life,
its fortunes,
and its sacred honor,
if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection
with an episode of this nature.
"It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of independent means.
Of things actually necessary
to its existence and its happiness not a detail was wanting.
When it wished
to walk,
it scrambled along the tree-trunk;
it mused in the shade of the leaves by day,
it slept in their shelter by night;
when it wanted the refreshment of a swim,
it had it;
it ate leaves when it wanted a vegetable diet,
it dug under the bark
for worms and grubs;
when it wanted fish it caught them,
when it wanted eggs it laid them.
If the grubs gave out in one tree it swam
to another;
and as
for fish,
the very opulence of the supply was an embarrassment.
And finally,
when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend that would have slain a crocodile.
"When at last,
after thirteen months of travel and research in all the Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit,
it strode ashore,
saying in its heart,
'Let them that come after me invent theories and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like,
but I am the first that has done it!
"This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates,
to an age long anterior
to the advent of man upon the earth;
they date back,
indeed,
to a time when a causeway hundreds of miles wide,
and thousands of miles long,
joined Australia
to Africa,
and the animals of the two countries were alike,
and all belonged
to that remote geological epoch known
to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian.
Later the causeway sank under the sea;
subterranean convulsions lifted the African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before,
but Australia kept her old level.
In Africa's new climate the animals necessarily began
to develop and shade off into new forms and families and species,
but the animals of Australia as necessarily remained stationary,
and have so remained until this day.
In the course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus developed and developed and developed,
and sluffed off detail after detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly disintegrated and scattered.
Whenever you see a bird or a beast or a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been speaking--that creature which was everything in general and nothing in particular--the opulently endowed
'e pluribus unum'
of the animal world.
"Such is the history of the most hoary,
the most ancient,
the most venerable creature that exists in the earth today--Ornithorhynchus Platypus Extraordinariensis--whom God preserve!"
When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that
with ease.
And not only in the prose form,
but in the poetical as well.
He had written many pieces of poetry in his time,
and these manuscripts he lent around among the passengers,
and was willing
to let them be copied.
It seemed
to me that the least technical one in the series,
and the one which reached the loftiest note,
perhaps,
was his INVOCATION.
"Come forth from thy oozy couch,
O Ornithorhynchus dear! And greet
with a cordial claw The stranger that longs
to hear
"From thy own own lips the tale Of thy origin all unknown:
Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be And flesh where should be bone;
"And fishy fin where should be paw,
And beaver-trowel tail,
And snout of beast equip'd
with teeth Where gills ought
to prevail.
"Come,
Kangaroo,
the good and true Foreshortened as
to legs,
And body tapered like a churn,
And sack marsupial,
i'
fegs,
"And tells us why you linger here,
Thou relic of a vanished time,
When all your friends as fossils sleep,.
Immortalized in lime!"
Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist;
but there seems
to be warrant
for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.
The above verses are indeed beautiful,
and,
in a way,
touching;
but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan.
It can hardly be doubted that the author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by them.
It is not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase,
but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all are there.
Compare this Invocation with
"Frank Dutton"--particularly stanzas first and seventeenth--and I think the reader will feel convinced that he who wrote the one had read the other:
I.
"Frank Dutton was as fine a lad As ever you wish
to see,
And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake On earth no more will he be,
His age was near fifteen years,
And he was a motherless boy,
He was living
with his grandmother When he was drowned,
poor boy.
XVII.
"He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,
On Sunday he was found,
And the tidings of that drowned boy Was heard
for miles around.
His form was laid by his mother's side,
Beneath the cold,
cold ground,
His friends
for him will drop a tear When they view his little mound."
The Sentimental Song Book.
By Mrs. Julia Moore,
p.
36.
CHAPTER IX.
It is your human environment that makes climate.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sept.
15--Night.
Close
to Australia now.
Sydney 50 miles distant.
That note recalls an experience.
The passengers were sent for,
to come up in the bow and see a fine sight.
It was very dark.
One could not follow
with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction it dimmed away and became lost
to sight at about that distance from us.
But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while,
there was a sure reward
for you.
Presently,
a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water--a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath;
then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent,
with every curve of its body and the
"break"
spreading away from its head,
and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living fire.
And my,
but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost before you could think,
this monster of light,
fifty feet long,
would go flaming and storming by,
and suddenly disappear.
And out in the distance whence he came you would see another flash;
and another and another and another,
and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant;
and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us,
a swarm of wiggling curves,
a moving conflagration,
a vision of bewildering beauty,
a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those people will not see again until after they are dead.
It was porpoises--porpoises aglow
with phosphorescent light.
They presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows,
and there they played
for an hour,
leaping and frollicking and carrying on,
turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit,
never making a miscalculation,
though the stem missed them only about an inch,
as a rule.
They were porpoises of the ordinary length- eight or ten feet--but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of united and glowing curves astern.
That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing
to look at,
and we stayed out the performance;
one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime.
The porpoise is the kitten of the sea;
he never has a serious thought,
he cares
for nothing but fun and play.
But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night.
It was near a center of civilization,
and he could have been drinking.
By and by,
when we had approached
to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began
to show,
and in time the little spark grew
to a great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness
with a far-reaching sword of light.
Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall,
and exhibits no break
to the ignorant stranger.
It has a break in the middle,
but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it.
Near by that break is a false break which resembles it,
and which used
to make trouble
for the mariner at night,
in the early days before the place was lighted.
It caused the memorable disaster
to the Duncan Dunbar,
one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian,
the sea.
The ship was a sailing vessel;
a fine and favorite passenger packet,
commanded by a popular captain of high reputation.
She was due from England,
and Sydney was waiting,
and counting the hours;
counting the hours,
and making ready
to give her a heart-stirring welcome;
for she was bringing back a great company of mothers and daughters,
the long-missed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes;
daughters that had been years absent at school,
and mothers that had been
with them all that time watching over them.
Of all the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets
with their hearts,
and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase;
only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted
to the fickle winds,
not steam,
and what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treasure comes safe
to port and the long dread is over.
On board the Duncan Dunbar,
flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon,
the happy home-comers made busy preparation,
for it was not doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day was done;
they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter
for the meeting,
their richest and their loveliest,
these poor brides of the grave.
But the wind lost force,
or there was a miscalculation,
and before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on.
It was said that ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited
for the morning;
but this was no ordinary occasion;
all about him were appealing faces,
faces pathetic
with disappointment.
So his sympathy moved him
to try the dangerous passage in the dark.
He had entered the Heads seventeen times,
and believed he knew the ground.
So he steered straight
for the false opening,
mistaking it
for the true one.
He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too late.
There was no saving the ship.
The great seas swept her in and crushed her
to splinters and rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice.
Not one of all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive.
The tale is told
to every stranger that passes the spot,
and it will continue
to be told
to all that come,
for generations;
but it will never grow old,
custom cannot stale it,
the heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it.
There were two hundred persons in the ship,
and but one survived the disaster.
He was a sailor.
A huge sea flung him up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the top and the bottom,
and there he lay all night.
At any other time he would have lain there
for the rest of his life,
without chance of discovery;
but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home,
and straightway the walls of the Heads were black
with mourners;
and one of these,
stretching himself out over the precipice
to spy out what might be seen below,
discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck.
Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was accomplished.
He was a person
with a practical turn of mind,
and he hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields
for that year.
We entered and cast anchor,
and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor--a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the world.
It is not surprising that the people are proud of it,
nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words.
A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it,
and I testified
with a cordiality which I judged would be up
to the market rate.
I said it was beautiful--superbly beautiful.
Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise.
The citizen did not seem altogether satisfied.
He said:
"It is beautiful,
of course it's beautiful--the Harbor;
but that isn't all of it,
it's only half of it;
Sydney's the other half,
and it takes both of them together
to ring the supremacy-bell.
God made the Harbor,
and that's all right;
but Satan made Sydney."
Of course I made an apology;
and asked him
to convey it
to his friend.
He was right about Sydney being half of it.
It would be beautiful without Sydney,
but not above half as beautiful as it is now,
with Sydney added.
It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely blue water,
with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land,
high wooden ridges
with sides sloped like graves.
Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges,
snuggling amongst the foliage,
and one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city.
The city clothes a cluster of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges
with its undulating masses of masonry,
and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and give picturesqueness
to the general effect.
The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding themselves in it,
and pleasure-launches are always exploring them
with picnic parties on board.
It is said by trustworthy people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage.
But there are liars everywhere this year,
and they will double that when their works are in good going order.
October was close at hand,
spring was come.
It was really spring-- everybody said so;
but you could have sold it
for summer in Canada,
and nobody would have suspected.
It was the very weather that makes our home summers the perfection of climatic luxury;
I mean,
when you are out in the wood or by the sea.
But these people said it was cool,
now--a person ought
to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted
to know what warm weather is;
and he ought
to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he wanted
to know what hot weather is.
They said that away up there toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs.
Sydney is the place
to go
to get information about other people's climates.
It seems
to me that the occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest and most irresponsible trade there is.
The traveler can always find out anything he wants to,
merely by asking.
He can get at all the facts,
and more.
Everybody helps him,
nobody hinders him.
Anybody who has an old fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let him have it at his own price.
An accumulation of such goods is easily and quickly made.
They cost almost nothing and they bring par in the foreign market.
Travelers who come
to America always freight up
with the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected,
and they carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home market.
If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude,
then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map;
and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia,
S.
C.,
and of Little Rock,
Arkansas,
since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are north of-it-thirty-four degrees.
But no,
climate disregards the parallels of latitude.
In Arkansas they have a winter;
in Sydney they have the name of it,
but not the thing itself.
I have seen the ice in the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river;
and at Memphis,
but a little way above,
the Mississippi has been frozen over,
from bank
to bank.
But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which brought the mercury down
to freezing point.
Once in a mid-winter day there,
in the month of July,
the mercury went down
to 36 deg.,
and that remains the memorable
"cold day"
in the history of the town.
No doubt Little Rock has seen it below zero.
Once,
in Sydney,
in mid-summer,
about New Year's Day,
the mercury went up
to 106 deg.
in the shade,
and that is Sydney's memorable hot day.
That would about tally
with Little Rock's hottest day also,
I imagine.
My Sydney figures are taken from a government report,
and are trustworthy.
In the matter of summer weather Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney,
perhaps,
but when it comes
to winter weather,
that is another affair.
You could cut up an Arkansas winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left
for Arkansas and the poor.
The whole narrow,
hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has the climate of its capital--a mean winter temperature of 54 deg.
and a mean summer one of 71 deg.
It is a climate which cannot be improved upon
for healthfulness.
But the experts say that 90 deg.
in New South Wales is harder
to bear than 112 deg.
in the neighboring colony of Victoria,
because the atmosphere of the former is humid,
and of the latter dry.
The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the same as that of Nice--60 deg.-- yet Nice is further from the equator by 460 miles than is the former.
But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates;
stingier in the case of Australia than usual.
Apparently this vast continent has a really good climate nowhere but around the edges.
If we look at a map of the world we are surprised
to see how big Australia is.
It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was before we added Alaska.
But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land almost everywhere in the United States,
it seems settled that inside of the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks.
In effect,
Australia is as yet unoccupied.
If you take a map of the United States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places;
also the fringe of Southern States from Florida west
to the Mouth of the Mississippi;
also a narrow,
inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way
to its head waters;
also a narrow,
inhabited border along the Pacific coast:
then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the Pacific-coast strip,
your map will look like the latest map of Australia.
This stupendous blank is hot,
not
to say torrid;
a part of it is fertile,
the rest is desert;
it is not liberally watered;
it has no towns.
One has only
to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the westward-lying regions
to find that he has left the choice climate behind him,
and found a new one of a quite different character.
In fact,
he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of India.
Captain Sturt,
the great explorer,
gives us a sample of the heat.
"The wind,
which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E.,
increased
to a heavy gale,
and I shall never forget its withering effect.
I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree,
but the blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire.
This really was nothing ideal:
everything both animate and inanimate gave way before it;
the horses stood
with their backs
to the wind and their noses
to the ground,
without the muscular strength
to raise their heads;
the birds were mute,
and the leaves of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us.
At noon I took a thermometer graded
to 127 deg.,
out of my box,
and observed that the mercury was up
to 125.
Thinking that it had been unduly influenced,
I put it in the fork of a tree close
to me,
sheltered alike from the wind and the sun.
I went
to examine it about an hour afterwards,
when I found the mercury had risen
to the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb,
a circumstance that I believe no traveler has ever before had
to record.
I cannot find language
to convey
to the reader's mind an idea of the intense and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed."
That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes,
and brings
with it what is called a
"
dust-storm."
It is said that most Australian towns are acquainted
with the dust-storm.
I think I know what it is like,
for the following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well
with the alkali duststorm of Nevada,
if you leave out the
"shovel"
part.
Still the shovel part is a pretty important part,
and seems
to indicate that my Nevada storm is but a poor thing,
after all.
"As we proceeded the altitude became less,
and the heat proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo,
which is only 600 feet above sea-level.
It is a pretty town,
built on an extensive plain .
.
.
.
After the effects of a shower of rain have passed away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust,
and occasionally,
when the wind is in a particular quarter,
it is lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud.
In the midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead,
and the unlucky person who happens
to be out at the time is compelled
to seek the nearest retreat at hand.
When the thrifty housewife sees in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards her house,
she closes the doors and windows
with all expedition.
A drawing-room,
the window of which has been carelessly left open during a dust-storm,
is indeed an extraordinary sight.
A lady who has resided in Dubbo
for some years says that the dust lies so thick on the carpet that it is necessary
to use a shovel
to remove it."
And probably a wagon.
I was mistaken;
I have not seen a proper duststorm.
To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia are fascinating things
to look at and think about,
they are so strange,
so weird,
so new,
so uncommonplace,
such a startling and interesting contrast
to the other sections of the planet,
the sections that are known
to us all,
familiar
to us all.
In the matter of particulars--a detail here,
a detail there--we have had the choice climate of New South Wales'
seacoast;
we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt;
we have had the wonderful dust-storm;
and we have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States,
with a narrow belt of civilization,
population,
and good climate around it.
CHAPTER X.
Everything human is pathetic.
The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
There is no humor in heaven.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Captain Cook found Australia in 1770,
and eighteen years later the British Government began
to transport convicts
to it.
Altogether,
New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years.
The convicts wore heavy chains;
they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them;
they were heavily punished
for even slight infractions of the rules;
"the cruelest discipline ever known"
is one historian's description of their life.
--[The Story of Australasia.
J.
S.
Laurie.] English law was hard-hearted in those days.
For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days'
confinement,
men,
women,
and boys were sent
to this other end of the earth
to serve terms of seven and fourteen years;
and
for serious crimes they were transported
for life.
Children were sent
to the penal colonies
for seven years
for stealing a rabbit! When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in force
for diminishing garroting and wife-beating--25 lashes on the bare back
with the cat-o'-nine-tails.
It was said that this terrible punishment was able
to bring the stubbornest ruffians
to terms;
and that no man had been found
with grit enough
to keep his emotions
to himself beyond the ninth blow;
as a rule the man shrieked earlier.
That penalty had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters;
but humane modern London could not endure it;
it got its law rescinded.
Many a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion
to deplore that cruel achievement of sentimental
"humanity."
Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty
for almost any little offense;
and sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty,
and then another fifty,
and so on,
as long as the sufferer could endure the torture and live.
In Tasmania I read the entry,
in an old manuscript official record,
of a case where a convict was given three hundred lashes--for stealing some silver spoons.
And men got more than that,
sometimes.
Who handled the cat?
Often it was another convict;
sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade;
and he had
to lay on
with all his might;
otherwise he would get a flogging himself
for his mercy-
for he was under watch--and yet not do his friend any good:
the friend would be attended
to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of full punishment.
The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable,
and suicide so difficult
to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew straws
to determine which of them should kill another of the group--this murder
to secure death
to the perpetrator and
to the witnesses of it by the hand of the hangman! The incidents quoted above are mere hints,
mere suggestions of what convict life was like--they are but a couple of details tossed into view out of a shoreless sea of such;
or,
to change the figure,
they are but a pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand.
Some of the convicts--indeed,
a good many of them--were very bad people,
even
for that day;
but the most of them were probably not noticeably worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home.
We must believe this;
we cannot avoid it.
We are obliged
to believe that a nation that could look on,
unmoved,
and see starving or freezing women hanged
for stealing twenty-six cents'
worth of bacon or rags,
and boys snatched from their mothers,
and men from their families,
and sent
to the other side of the world
for long terms of years
for similar trifling offenses,
was a nation
to whom the term
"civilized"
could not in any large way be applied.
And we must also believe that a nation that knew,
during more than forty years,
what was happening
to those exiles and was still content
with it,
was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher grade of civilization.
If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen who had charge of the convicts and attended
to their backs and stomachs,
we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters,
and between both and the nation at home,
there was a quite noticeable monotony of sameness.
Four years had gone by,
and many convicts had come.
Respectable settlers were beginning
to arrive.
These two classes of colonists had
to be protected,
in case of trouble among themselves or
with the natives.
It is proper
to mention the natives,
though they could hardly count they were so scarce.
At a time when they had not as yet begun
to be much disturbed--not as yet being in the way--it was estimated that in New South Wales there was but one native
to 45,000 acres of territory.
People had
to be protected.
Officers of the regular army did not want this service--away off there where neither honor nor distinction was
to be gained.
So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of 1,000 uniformed civilians called the
"New South Wales Corps"
and shipped it.
This was the worst blow of all.
The colony fairly staggered under it.
The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside of the jails.
The colonists trembled.
It was feared that next there would be an importation of the nobility.
In those early days the colony was non-supporting.
All the necessaries of life--food,
clothing,
and all--were sent out from England,
and kept in great government store-houses,
and given
to the convicts and sold
to the settlers--sold at a trifling advance upon cost.
The Corps saw its opportunity.
Its officers went into commerce,
and in a most lawless way.
They went
to importing rum,
and also
to manufacturing it in private stills,
in defiance of the government's commands and protests.
They leagued themselves together and ruled the market;
they boycotted the government and the other dealers;
they established a close monopoly and kept it strictly in their own hands.
When a vessel arrived
with spirits,
they allowed nobody
to buy but themselves,
and they forced the owner
to sell
to them at a price named by themselves--and it was always low enough.
They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold it at an average of ten.
They made rum the currency of the country--for there was little or no money--and they maintained their devastating hold and kept the colony under their heel
for eighteen or twenty years before they were finally conquered and routed by the government.
Meantime,
they had spread intemperance everywhere.
And they had squeezed farm after farm out of the settlers hands
for rum,
and thus had bountifully enriched themselves.
When a farmer was caught in the last agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him
for a drink.
In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars
for a piece of property which was sold some years later
for $100,000.
When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered that the land was specially fitted
for the wool-culture.
Prosperity followed,
commerce
with the world began,
by and by rich mines of the noble metals were opened,
immigrants flowed in,
capital likewise.
The result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South Wales.
It is a country that is rich in mines,
wool ranches,
trams,
railways,
steamship lines,
schools,
newspapers,
botanical gardens,
art galleries,
libraries,
museums,
hospitals,
learned societies;
it is the hospitable home of every species of culture and of every species of material enterprise,
and there is a,
church at every man's door,
and a race-track over the way.
CHAPTER XI.
We should be careful
to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there;
lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid.
She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is well;
but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people,
and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this.
The English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler.
As
to the other English- speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around,
I know by experience that the description fits them.
I will not go more particularly into this matter,
for I find that when writers try
to distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.
Mr.Gane
("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885
"),
tried
to distribute his gratitude,
and was not lucky:
"The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned
for their hospitality.
The treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted people will help more than anything else
to make us recollect
with pleasure our stay amongst them.
In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel.
The
'new chum'
needs only the acquaintanceship of one of their number,
and he becomes at once the happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful kindnesses.
Of the towns it has been our good fortune
to visit,
none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney."
Nobody could say it finer than that.
If he had put in his cork then,
and stayed away from Dubbo----but no;
heedless man,
he pulled it again.
Pulled it when he was away along in his book,
and his memory of what he had said about Sydney had grown dim:
"We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying,
in warm praise,
to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its inhabitants.
Sydney,
though well deserving the character it bears of its kindly treatment of strangers,
possesses a little formality and reserve.
In Dubbo,
on the contrary,
though the same congenial manners prevail,
there is a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met
with elsewhere.
In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having been able,
though so late in this work,
to bestow a panegyric,
however unpretentious,
on a town which,
though possessing no picturesque natural surroundings,
nor interesting architectural productions,
has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but obtain
for their town a reputation
for benevolence and kind- heartedness."
I wonder what soured him on Sydney.
It seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad.
For he has them,
the worst way--any one can see that.
A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and picturesque surroundings,
and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity,
No,
these are old,
old symptoms;
and when they appear we know that the man has got the panegyrics.
Sydney has a population of 400,000.
When a stranger from America steps ashore there,
the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was expecting it
to be;
and the next thing that strikes him is that it is an English city
with American trimmings.
Later on,
in Melbourne,
he will find the American trimmings still more in evidence;
there,
even the architecture will often suggest America;
a photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him
for a picture of the finest street in a large American city.
I was told that the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters.
The name seemed out of focus somehow.
When the explanation came,
it offered a new instance of the curious changes which words,
as well as animals,
undergo through change of habitat and climate.
With us,
when you speak of a squatter you are always supposed
to be speaking of a poor man,
but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed
to be speaking of a millionaire;
in America the word indicates the possessor of a few acres and a doubtful title,
in Australia it indicates a man whose landfront is as long as a railroad,
and whose title has been perfected in one way or another;
in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen head of live stock,
in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty thousand up
to half a million head;
in America the word indicates a man who is obscure and not important,
in Australia a man who is prominent and of the first importance;
in America you take off your hat
to no squatter,
in Australia you do;
in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark,
in Australia you advertise it;
in America if your friend is a squatter nothing comes of it,
but
with a squatter
for your friend in Australia you may sup
with kings if there are any around.
In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland
(some people say twice as many),
to support a sheep;
and when the squatter has half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode Island,
to speak in general terms.
His annual wool crop may be worth a quarter or a half million dollars.
He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities,
and make occasional trips
to his sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains
to look after his battalions of riders and shepherds and other hands.
He has a commodious dwelling out there,
and if he approve of you he will invite you
to spend a week in it,
and will make you at home and comfortable,
and let you see the great industry in all its details,
and feed you and slake you and smoke you
with the best that money can buy.
On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town,
with all the various businesses and occupations that go
to make an important town;
and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the squatters.
I have seen that town,
and it is not unlikely that there are other squatter-owned towns in Australia.
Australia supplies the world not only
with fine wool,
but
with mutton also.
The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships has created this great trade.
In Sydney I visited a huge establishment where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day,
for shipment
to England.
The Australians did not seem
to me
to differ noticeably from Americans,
either in dress,
carriage,
ways,
pronunciation,
inflections,
or general appearance.
There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English origin,
but these were not pronounced enough,
as a rule,
to catch one's attention.
The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning --from the moment that the introduction is completed.
This is American.
To put it in another way,
it is English friendliness
with the English shyness and self-consciousness left out.
Now and then--but this is rare--one hears such words as piper
for paper,
lydy
for lady,
and tyble
for table fall from lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations
to come.
There is a superstition prevalent in Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism,
but people who have been
"home"--as the native reverently and lovingly calls England--know better.
It is
"costermonger."
All over Australasia this pronunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of people.
That mislaid
'y'
is rather striking when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence
to enable it
to show up.
In the hotel in Sydney the chambermaid said,
one morning:
"The tyble is set,
and here is the piper;
and if the lydy is ready I'll tell the wyter
to bring up the breakfast."
I have made passing mention,
a moment ago,
of the native Australasian's custom of speaking of England as
"home."
It was always pretty
to hear it,
and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it touching;
in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment,
and made one seem
to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head.
In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed;
it is without stiffness or restraint.
This does not remind one of England so much as it does of America.
But Australasia is strictly democratic,
and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by differences of rank.
English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive.
Where masses of people are gathered together in England,
caste is submerged,
and
with it the English reserve;
equality exists
for the moment,
and every individual is free;
so free from any consciousness of fetters,
indeed,
that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is forgotten,
and falls into abeyance--and
to such a degree indeed,
that he will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to--an exhibition of daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.
But it is hard
to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself,
or when the company present is small and new
to him.
He is on his guard then,
and his natural reserve is
to the fore.
This has given him the false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of humor.
Americans are not Englishmen,
and American humor is not English humor;
but both the American and his humor had their origin in England,
and have merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new environment.
About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a couple that were made in Australia at club suppers--one of them by an Englishman,
the other by an Australian.
CHAPTER X11.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy,
calling him frivolous and shallow:
Yet it was the schoolboy who said
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
In Sydney I had a large dream,
and in the course of talk I told it
to a missionary from India who was on his way
to visit some relatives in New Zealand.
I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of God;
that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins;
and that we and the other creatures are the microbes that charge
with multitudinous life the corpuscles.
Mr.X.,
the missionary,
considered the dream awhile,
then said:
"It is not surpassable
for magnitude,
since its metes and bounds are the metes and bounds of the universe itself;
and it seems
to me that it almost accounts
for a thing which is otherwise nearly unaccountable--the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos.
Perhaps they dream them,
and then honestly believe them
to be divine revelations of fact.
It looks like that,
for the legends are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake."
He told some of the legends,
and said that they were implicitly believed by all classes of Hindoos,
including those of high social position and intelligence;
and he said that this universal credulity was a great hindrance
to the missionary in his work.
Then he said something like this:
"At home,
people wonder why Christianity does not make faster progress in India.
They hear that the Indians believe easily,
and that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a hospitable reception.
Then they argue like this:
since the Indian believes easily,
place Christianity before them and they must believe;
confirm its truths by the biblical miracles,
and they will no longer doubt,
The natural deduction is,
that as Christianity makes but indifferent progress in India,
the fault is
with us:
we are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles.
"But the truth is,
we are not by any means so well equipped as they think.
We have not the easy task that they imagine.
To use a military figure,
we are sent against the enemy
with good powder in our guns,
but only wads
for bullets;
that is
to say,
our miracles are not effective;
the Hindoos do not care
for them;
they have more extraordinary ones of their own.
All the details of their own religion are proven and established by miracles;
the details of ours must be proven in the same way.
When I first began my work in India I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task.
A correction was not long in coming.
I thought as our friends think at home--that
to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers
to listen
with favor
to my grave message I only needed
to charm the way
to it
with wonders,
marvels,
miracles.
With full confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson,
the strongest man that had ever lived--for so I called him.
"At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces of my people,
but as I moved along from incident
to incident of the great story,
I was distressed
to see that I was steadily losing the sympathy of my audience.
I could not understand it.
It was a surprise
to me,
and a disappointment.
Before I was through,
the fading sympathy had paled
to indifference.
Thence
to the end the indifference remained;
I was not able
to make any impression upon it.
"A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay.
He said
'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands--we accept no other testimony.
Apparently,
this is also the rule
with you Christians.
And we know when a man has his power from a god by the fact that he does things which he could not do,
as a man,
with the mere powers of a man.
Plainly,
this is the Christian's way also,
of knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own.
You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of Samson;
for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as other men.
It is our way,
as I have said.
There are many nations in the world,
and each group of nations has its own gods,
and will pay no worship
to the gods of the others.
Each group believes its own gods
to be strongest,
and it will not exchange them except
for gods that shall be proven
to be their superiors in power.
Man is but a weak creature,
and needs the help of gods--he cannot do without it.
Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when there may be stronger ones
to be found?
That would be foolish.
No,
if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own,
he should not turn a deaf ear,
for it is not a light matter that is at stake.
How then shall he determine which gods are the stronger,
his own or those that preside over the concerns of other nations?
By comparing the known works of his own gods
with the works of those others;
there is no other way.
Now,
when we make this comparison,
we are not drawn towards the gods of any other nation.
Our gods are shown by their works
to be the strongest,
the most powerful.
The Christians have but few gods,
and they are new--new,
and not strong;
as it seems
to us.
They will increase in number,
it is true,
for this has happened
with all gods,
but that time is far away,
many ages and decades of ages away,
for gods multiply slowly,
as is meet
for beings
to whom a thousand years is but a single moment.
Our own gods have been born millions of years apart.
The process is slow,
the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow.
In the slow lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at last become prodigious.
We have a thousand proofs of this in the colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary men
to whom they have given supernatural qualities.
To your Samson was given supernatural power,
and when he broke the withes,
and slew the thousands
with the jawbone of an ass,
and carried away the gate's of the city upon his shoulders,
you were amazed--and also awed,
for you recognized the divine source of his strength.
But it could not profit
to place these things before your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder;
for they would compare them
with the deed done by Hanuman,
when our gods infused their divine strength into his muscles;
and they would be indifferent
to them--as you saw.
In the old,
old times,
ages and ages gone by,
when our god Rama was warring
with the demon god of Ceylon,
Rama bethought him
to bridge the sea and connect Ceylon
with India,
so that his armies might pass easily over;
and he sent his general,
Hanuman,
inspired like your own Samson
with divine strength,
to bring the materials
for the bridge.
In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles,
to the Himalayas,
and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred miles long,
and started
with it toward Ceylon.
It was in the night;
and,
as he passed along the plain,
the people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth rocking under it,
and they ran out,
and there,
with their snowy summits piled
to heaven,
they saw the Himalayas passing by.
And as this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth,
upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping villages,
and it was as if the constellations were filing in procession through the sky.
While they were looking,
Hanuman stumbled,
and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell.
Half of its length has wasted away in the course of the ages,
but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun
to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods.
You must know,
yourself,
that Hanuman could not have carried those mountains
to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods.
You know that it was not done by his own strength,
therefore,
you know that it was done by the strength of the gods,
just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by his own.
I think you must concede two things:
First,
That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders,
Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over ours;
secondly,
That his feat is not supported by any but verbal evidence,
while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence,
but this evidence is confirmed,
established,
proven,
by visible,
tangible evidence,
which is the strongest of all testimony.
We have the sandstone ridge,
and while it remains we cannot doubt,
and shall not.
Have you the gates?'
"
CHAPTER XIII.
The timid man yearns
for full value and asks a tenth.
The bold man strikes
for double value and compromises on par.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
One is sure
to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works--such as legislative buildings,
town halls,
hospitals,
asylums,
parks,
and botanical gardens.
I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens,
the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand.
And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals,
also.
I have seen a costly and well-equipped,
and architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants.
It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring planters,
and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources.
I suppose it would be hard
to match this in any country.
This village was about
to close a contract
for lighting its streets
with the electric light,
when I was there.
That is ahead of London.
London is still obscured by gas--gas pretty widely scattered,
too,
in some of the districts;
so widely indeed,
that except on moonlight nights it is difficult
to find the gas lamps.
The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres,
beautifully laid out and rich
with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world.
The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town,
overlooking the great harbor,
and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House--fifty-six acres;
and at hand also,
is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres.
In addition,
there are the zoological gardens,
the race-course,
and the great cricket-grounds where the international matches are played.
Therefore there is plenty of room
for reposeful lazying and lounging,
and
for exercise too,
for such as like that kind of work.
There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure.
If you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will receive an invitation
to the next ball that takes place there,
if nothing can be proven against you.
And it will be very pleasant;
for you will see everybody except the Governor,
and add a number of acquaintances and several friends
to your list.
The Governor will be in England.
He always is.
The continent has four or five governors,
and I do not know how many it takes
to govern the outlying archipelago;
but anyway you will not see them.
When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated,
and give a ball,
and help pray
for rain,
and get aboard ship and go back home.
And so the Lieutenant-Governor has
to do all the work.
I was in Australasia three months and a half,
and saw only one Governor.
The others were at home.
The Australasian Governor would not be so restless,
perhaps,
if he had a war,
or a veto,
or something like that
to call
for his reserve-energies,
but he hasn't.
There isn't any war,
and there isn't any veto in his hands.
And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line.
The country governs itself,
and prefers
to do it;
and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes
to help;
and so the Imperial veto,
while a fact,
is yet mainly a name.
Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's functions
with us.
And therefore more fatiguing.
He is the apparent head of the State,
he is the real head of Society.
He represents culture,
refinement,
elevated sentiment,
polite life,
religion;
and by his example he propagates these,
and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit.
He creates the fashion,
and leads it.
His ball is the ball of balls,
and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.
He is usually a lord,
and this is well;
for his position compels him
to lead an expensive life,
and an English lord is generally well equipped
for that.
Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit
to the Admiralty House;
which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water.
The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither;
and there,
or on board the flag-ship,
they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House.
The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree,
and he is sumptuously housed,
as becomes the dignity of his office.
Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch.
Your richer friends own boats of this kind,
and they will invite you,
and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short.
And finally comes the shark-fishing.
Sydney Harbor is populous
with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world.
Some people make their living catching them;
for the Government pays a cash bounty on them.
The larger the shark the larger the bounty,
and some of the sharks are twenty feet long.
You not only get the bounty,
but everything that is in the shark belongs
to you.
Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.
The shark is the swiftest fish that swims.
The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared
to his.
And he is a great gad-about,
and roams far and wide in the oceans,
and visits the shores of all of them,
ultimately,
in the course of his restless excursions.
I have a tale
to tell now,
which has not as yet been in print.
In 1870 a young stranger arrived in Sydney,
and set about finding something
to do;
but he knew no one,
and brought no recommendations,
and the result was that he got no employment.
He had aimed high,
at first,
but as time and his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting,
until at last he was willing
to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter.
But luck was still against him;
he could find no opening of any sort.
Finally his money was all gone.
He walked the streets all day,
thinking;
he walked them all night,
thinking,
thinking,
and growing hungrier and hungrier.
At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting aimlessly along the harbor shore.
As he was passing by a nodding shark- fisher the man looked up and said----
"Say,
young fellow,
take my line a spell,
and change my luck
for me."
"How do you know I won't make it worse?"
"Because you can't.
It has been at its worst all night.
If you can't change it,
no harm's done;
if you do change it,
it's
for the better,
of course.
Come."
"All right,
what will you give.?"
"I'll give you the shark,
if you catch one."
"And I will eat it,
bones and all.
Give me the line."
"Here you are.
I will get away,
now,
for awhile,
so that my luck won't spoil yours;
for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there,
pull in,
pull in,
man,
you've got a bite! I knew how it would be.
Why,
I knew you
for a born son of luck the minute I saw you.
All right--he's landed."
It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer,"
the fisherman said,
as he laid the creature open
with his knife.
"Now you rob him,
young man,
while I step
to my hamper
for a fresh bait.
There's generally something in them worth going for.
You've changed my luck,
you see.
But my goodness,
I hope you haven't changed your own."
"Oh,
it wouldn't matter;
don't worry about that.
Get your bait.
I'll rob him."
When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay,
and was starting away.
"What,
you are not going?"
"Yes.
Good-bye."
"But what about your shark?"
"The shark?
Why,
what use is he
to me?"
"What use is he?
I like that.
Don't you know that we can go and report him
to Government,
and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty?
Hard cash,
you know.
What do you think about it now?"
"Oh,
well,
you can collect it."
"And keep it?
Is that what you mean?"
"Yes."
"Well,
this is odd.
You're one of those sort they call eccentrics,
I judge.
The saying is,
you mustn't judge a man by his clothes,
and I'm believing it now.
Why yours are looking just ratty,
don't you know;
and yet you must be rich."
"I am."
The young man walked slowly back
to the town,
deeply musing as he went.
He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant,
then glanced at his clothes and passed on,
and got his breakfast at a
"stand-up."
There was a good deal of it,
and it cost five shillings.
He tendered a sovereign,
got his change,
glanced at his silver,
muttered
to himself,
"There isn't enough
to buy clothes with,"
and went his way.
At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room at home,
settling his breakfast
with the morning paper.
A servant put his head in and said:
"There's a sundowner at the door wants
to see you,
sir."
"What do you bring that kind of a message here for?
Send him about his business."
"He won't go,
sir.
I've tried."
"He won't go?
That's--why,
that's unusual.
He's one of two things,
then:
he's a remarkable person,
or he's crazy.
Is he crazy?"
"No,
sir.
He don't look it."
"Then he's remarkable.
What does he say he wants?"
"He won't tell,
sir;
only says it's very important."
"And won't go.
Does he say he won't go?"
"Says he'll stand there till he sees you,
sir,
if it's all day."
"And yet isn't crazy.
Show him up."
The sundowner was shown in.
The broker said
to himself,
"No,
he's not crazy;
that is easy
to see;
so he must be the other thing."
Then aloud,
"Well,
my good fellow,
be quick about it;
don't waste any words;
what is it you want?"
"I want
to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."
"Scott!
(It's a mistake;
he is crazy .
.
.
.
No--he can't be--not
with that eye.)
Why,
you take my breath away.
Come,
who are you?"
"Nobody that you know."
"What is your name?"
"Cecil Rhodes."
"No,
I don't remember hearing the name before.
Now then--just
for curiosity's sake--what has sent you
to me on this extraordinary errand?"
"The intention
to make a hundred thousand pounds
for you and as much
for myself within the next sixty days."
"Well,
well,
well.
It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you interest me.
And somehow you--well,
you fascinate me;
I think that that is about the word.
And it isn't your proposition--no,
that doesn't fascinate me;
it's something else,
I don't quite know what;
something that's born in you and oozes out of you,
I suppose.
Now then just
for curiosity's sake again,
nothing more:
as I understand it,
it is your desire
to bor----"
"I said intention."
"Pardon,
so you did.
I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an unheedful valuing of its strength,
you know."
"I knew its strength."
"Well,
I must say--but look here,
let me walk the floor a little,
my mind is getting into a sort of whirl,
though you don't seem disturbed any.
(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy;
but as
to his being remarkable-- well,
really he amounts
to that,
and something over.)
Now then,
I believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment.
Strike,
and spare not.
What is your scheme?"
"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days."
"What,
the whole of it?"
"The whole of it."
"No,
I was not quite out of the reach of surprises,
after all.
Why,
how you talk! Do you know what our crop is going
to foot up?"
"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more."
"Well,
you've got your statistics right,
any way.
Now,
then,
do you know what the margins would foot up,
to buy it at sixty days?"
"The hundred thousand pounds I came here
to get."
"Right,
once more.
Well,
dear me,
just
to see what would happen,
I wish you had the money.
And if you had it,
what would you do
with it?"
"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."
"You mean,
of course,
that you might make it if----"
"I said
'shall'."
"Yes,
by George,
you did say
'shall'! You are the most definite devil I ever saw,
in the matter of language.
Dear,
dear,
dear,
look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind.
Upon my word I believe you've got what you believe
to be a rational reason,
for venturing into this house,
an entire stranger,
on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an entire colony on speculation.
Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized,
if I may use the word.
Why would you buy the crop,
and why would you make that sum out of it?
That is
to say,
what makes you think you----"
"I don't think--I know."
"Definite again.
How do you know?"
"Because France has declared war against Germany,
and wool has gone up fourteen per cent.
in London and is still rising."
"Oh,
in-deed?
Now then,
I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have just let fly ought
to have made me jump out of my chair,
but it didn't stir me the least little bit,
you see.
And
for a very simple reason:
I have read the morning paper.
You can look at it if you want to.
The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night,
fifty days out from London.
All her news is printed here.
There are no war- clouds anywhere;
and as
for wool,
why,
it is the low-spiritedest commodity in the English market.
It is your turn
to jump,
now .
.
.
.
Well,
why,
don't you jump?
Why do you sit there in that placid fashion,
when----"
"Because I have later news."
"Later news?
Oh,
come--later news than fifty days,
brought steaming hot from London by the----"
"My news is only ten days old."
"Oh,
Mun-chausen,
hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"
"Got it out of a shark."
"Oh,
oh,
oh,
this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun-- raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the single person of----"
"Sit down! And collect yourself.
Where is the use in getting excited?
Am I excited?
There is nothing
to get excited about.
When I make a statement which I cannot prove,
it will be time enough
for you
to begin
to offer hospitality
to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."
"Oh,
a thousand,
thousand pardons! I ought
to be ashamed of myself,
and I am ashamed of myself
for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark
to England
to fetch back a market report----"
"What does your middle initial stand for,
sir?"
"Andrew.
What are you writing?"
"Wait a moment.
Proof about the shark--and another matter.
Only ten lines.
There--now it is done.
Sign it."
"Many thanks--many.
Let me see;
it says--it says oh,
come,
this is interesting! Why--why--look here! prove what you say here,
and I'll put up the money,
and double as much,
if necessary,
and divide the winnings
with you,
half and half.
There,
now--I've signed;
make your promise good if you can.
Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old."
"Here it is--and
with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged
to the man the shark swallowed.
Swallowed him in the Thames,
without a doubt;
for you will notice that the last entry in the book is dated
'London,'
and is of the same date as the Times,
and says,
'Ber confequentz der Kreigeseflarun,
reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab,
aur bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'----,
as clean native German as anybody can put upon paper,
and means that in consequence of the declaration of war,
this loyal soul is leaving
for home to-day,
to fight.
And he did leave,
too,
but the shark had him before the day was done,
poor fellow."
"And a pity,
too.
But there are times
for mourning,
and we will attend
to this case further on;
other matters are pressing,
now.
I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop.
It will cheer the drooping spirits of the boys,
in a transitory way.
Everything is transitory in this world.
Sixty days hence,
when they are called
to deliver the goods,
they will think they've been struck by lightning.
But there is a time
for mourning,
and we will attend
to that case along
with the other one.
Come along,
I'll take you
to my tailor.
What did you say your name is?"
"Cecil Rhodes."
"It is hard
to remember.
However,
I think you will make it easier by and by,
if you live.
There are three kinds of people--Commonplace Men,
Remarkable Men,
and Lunatics.
I'll classify you
with the Remarkables,
and take the chances."
The deal went through,
and secured
to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed.
The people of Sydney ought
to be afraid of the sharks,
but
for some reason they do not seem
to be.
On Saturdays the young men go out in their boats,
and sometimes the water is fairly covered
with the little sails.
A boat upsets now and then,
by accident,
a result of tumultuous skylarking;
sometimes the boys upset their boat
for fun--such as it is
with sharks visibly waiting around
for just such an occurrence.
The young fellows scramble aboard whole--sometimes--not always.
Tragedies have happened more than once.
While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed
for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat
to save him from the assembling sharks;
but the sharks made swift work
with the lives of both.
The government pays a bounty
for the shark;
to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine
with agreeable mutton;
the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean
to get the free board.
In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.
CHAPTER XIV.
We can secure other people's approval,
if we do right and try hard;
but our own is worth a hundred of it,
and no way has been found out of securing that.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
My health had broken down in New York in May;
it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days;
it broke again on the Pacific.
It broke again in Sydney,
but not until after I had had a good outing,
and had also filled my lecture engagements.
This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland.
In the circumstances,
to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.
So we moved south
with a westward slant,
17 hours by rail
to the capital of the colony of Victoria,
Melbourne--that juvenile city of sixty years,
and half a million inhabitants.
On the map the distance looked small;
but that is a trouble
with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia.
The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map--looks like a county,
in fact--yet it is about as large as England,
Scotland,
and Wales combined.
Or,
to get another focus upon it,
it is just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island,
and one-third as large as the State of Texas.
Outside of Melbourne,
Victoria seems
to be owned by a handful of squatters,
each
with a Rhode Island
for a sheep farm.
That is the impression which one gathers from common talk,
yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales.
The climate of Victoria is favorable
to other great industries--among others,
wheat- growing and the making of wine.
We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon.
It was American in one way,
for we had a most rational sleeping car;
also the car was clean and fine and new--nothing about it
to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe.
But our baggage was weighed,
and extra weight charged for.
That was continental.
Continental and troublesome.
Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be described as continental.
The tickets were round-trip ones--to Melbourne,
and clear
to Adelaide in South Australia,
and then all the way back
to Sydney.
Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected
to make;
but then as the round trip wouldn't cost much more than the single trip,
it seemed well enough
to buy as many miles as one could afford,
even if one was not likely
to need them.
A human being has a natural desire
to have more of a good thing than he needs.
Now comes a singular thing:
the oddest thing,
the strangest thing,
the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show.
At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting-cold of a high altitude
to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney
to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth;
imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders.
It is a narrow-gage road
to the frontier,
and a broader gauge thence
to Melbourne.
The two governments were the builders of the road and are the owners of it.
One or two reasons are given
for this curious state of things.
One is,
that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies--the two most important colonies of Australasia.
What the other one is,
I have forgotten.
But it is of no consequence.
It could be but another effort
to explain the inexplicable.
All passengers fret at the double-gauge;
all shippers of freight must of course fret at it;
unnecessary expense,
delay,
and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned,
and no one is benefitted.
Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor
with a custom- house.
Personally,
I have no objection,
but it must be a good deal of inconvenience
to the people.
We have something resembling it here and there in America,
but it goes by another name.
The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery,
and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed.
But they are not.
Protection
to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it.
The result
to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East.
Iron carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough
to be coined when it arrived.
We changed cars.
This was at Albury.
And it was there,
I think,
that the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains.
Accurately named.
"My word!"
as the Australians say,
but it was a stunning color,
that blue.
Deep,
strong,
rich,
exquisite;
towering and majestic masses of blue--a softly luminous blue,
a smouldering blue,
as if vaguely lit by fires within.
It extinguished the blue of the sky--made it pallid and unwholesome,
whitey and washed-out.
A wonderful color--just divine.
A resident told me that those were not mountains;
he said they were rabbit-piles.
And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue.
This man may have been right,
but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a country.
The facts which such people give
to travelers are usually erroneous,
and often intemperately so.
The rabbit-plague has indeed been very bad in Australia,
and it could account
for one mountain,
but not
for a mountain range,
it seems
to me.
It is too large an order.
We breakfasted at the station.
A good breakfast,
except the coffee;
and cheap.
The Government establishes the prices and placards them.
The waiters were men,
I think;
but that is not usual in Australasia.
The usual thing is
to have girls.
No,
not girls,
young ladies--generally duchesses.
Dress?
They would attract attention at any royal levee in Europe.
Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do.
Not that they could not afford it,
perhaps,
but they would not know how.
All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains,
through thin--not thick--forests of great melancholy gum trees,
with trunks rugged
with curled sheets of flaking bark--erysipelas convalescents,
so
to speak,
shedding their dead skins.
And all along were tiny cabins,
built sometimes of wood,
sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron;
and the doorsteps and fences were clogged
with children--rugged little simply- clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.
And there were little villages,
with neat stations well placarded
with showy advertisements--mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of
"sheepdip."
If that is the name--and I think it is.
It is a stuff like tar,
and is dabbed on
to places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep.
It bars out the flies,
and has healing properties,
and a nip
to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills.
It is not good
to eat.
That is,
it is not good
to eat except when mixed
with railroad coffee.
It improves railroad coffee.
Without it railroad coffee is too vague.
But
with it,
it is quite assertive and enthusiastic.
By itself,
railroad coffee is too passive;
but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down
to business.
I wonder where they get railroad coffee?
We saw birds,
but not a kangaroo,
not an emu,
not an ornithorhynchus,
not a lecturer,
not a native.
Indeed,
the land seemed quite destitute of game.
But I have misused the word native.
In Australia it is applied
to Australian-born whites only.
I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals--no
"blackfellows."
And
to this day I have never seen one.
In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities,
but in the curio of chiefest interest
to the stranger all of them are lacking.
We have at home an abundance of museums,
and not an American Indian in them.
It is clearly an absurdity,
but it never struck me before.
CHAPTER XV.
Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people,
but I am measurably familiar
with it.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Truth is stranger than fiction,
but it is because Fiction is obliged
to stick
to possibilities;
Truth isn't.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The air was balmy and delicious,
the sunshine radiant;
it was a charming excursion.
In the course of it we came
to a town whose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga.
This was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there.
It was out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of space a time,
with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as
to which of the two long-missing persons he was:
Arthur Orton,
the mislaid roustabout of Wapping,
or Sir Roger Tichborne,
the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English history.
We all know now,
but not a dozen people knew then;
and the dozen kept the mystery
to themselves and allowed the most intricate and fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played upon the world's stage
to unfold itself serenely,
act by act,
in a British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial development.
When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel
to see what daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale,
as compared
with the poor little conservative risks permitted
to fiction.
The fiction-artist could achieve no success
with the materials of this splendid Tichborne romance.
He would have
to drop out the chief characters;
the public would say such people are impossible.
He would have
to drop out a number of the most picturesque incidents;
the public would say such things could never happen.
And yet the chief characters did exist,
and the incidents did happen.
It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000
to unmask the Claimant and drive him out;
and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still believed in him.
It cost the British Government another $400,000
to convict him of perjury;
and after the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him;
and among these believers were many educated and intelligent men;
and some of them had personally known the real Sir Roger.
The Claimant was sentenced
to 14 years'
imprisonment.
When he got out of prison he went
to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the Bowery
for a time,
then disappeared from view.
He always claimed
to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called
for him.
This was but a few months ago--not very much short of a generation since he left Wagga-Wagga
to go and possess himself of his estates.
On his death-bed he yielded up his secret,
and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of Wapping,
able seaman and butcher--that and nothing more.
But it is scarcely
to be doubted that there are people whom even his dying confession will not convince.
The old habit of assimilating incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case;
a weaker article would probably disagree
with them.
I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial
for perjury.
I attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided
for him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers.
He was in evening dress,
and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature.
There were about twenty-five gentlemen present;
educated men,
men moving in good society,
none of them commonplace;
some of them were men of distinction,
none of them were obscurities.
They were his cordial friends and admirers.
It was
"Sir Roger,"
always
"Sir Roger,"
on all hands;
no one withheld the title,
all turned it from the tongue
with unction,
and as if it tasted good.
For many years I had had a mystery in stock.
Melbourne,
and only Melbourne,
could unriddle it
for me.
In 1873 I arrived in London
with my wife and young child,
and presently received a note from Naples signed by a name not familiar
to me.
It was not Bascom,
and it was not Henry;
but I will call it Henry Bascom
for convenience's sake.
This note,
of about six lines,
was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were ragged.
I came
to be familiar
with those strips in later years.
Their size and pattern were always the same.
Their contents were usually
to the same effect:
would I and mine come
to the writer's country-place in England on such and such a date,
by such and such a train,
and stay twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the specified time?
A carriage would meet us at the station.
These invitations were always
for a long time ahead;
if we were in Europe,
three months ahead;
if we were in America,
six
to twelve months ahead.
They always named the exact date and train
for the beginning and also
for the end of the visit.
This first note invited us
for a date three months in the future.
It asked us
to arrive by the 4.10 p.m.
train from London,
August 6th.
The carriage would be waiting.
The carriage would take us away seven days later-train specified.
And there were these words:
"Speak
to Tom Hughes."
I showed the note
to the author of
"Tom Brown at Rugby,"
and be said:
"Accept,
and be thankful."
He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius,
a man of fine attainments,
a choice man in every way,
a rare and beautiful character.
He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days,
and that it was a house worth going a long way
to see--like Knowle;
that Mr. B.
was of a social disposition;
liked the company of agreeable people,
and always had samples of the sort coming and going.
We paid the visit.
We paid others,
in later years--the last one in 1879.
Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a steam yacht--a long and leisurely trip,
for he was making collections,
in all lands,
of birds,
butterflies,
and such things.
The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau,
we were at a little watering place on Long Island Sound;
and in the mail matter of that day came a letter
with the Melbourne post-mark on it.
It was
for my wife,
but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope,
and opened it.
It was the usual note--as
to paucity of lines--and was written on the customary strip of paper;
but there was nothing usual about the contents.
The note informed my wife that if it would be any assuagement of her grief
to know that her husband's lecture-tour in Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning
to the end,
he,
the writer,
could testify that such was the case;
also,
that her husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes,
as she would already know by the press telegrams,
long before the reception of this note;
that the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and city governments;
and that while he,
the writer,
her friend and mine,
had not reached Melbourne in time
to see the body,
he had at least had the sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers.
Signed,
"Henry Bascom."
My first thought was,
why didn't he have the coffin opened?
He would have seen that the corpse was an imposter,
and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those tears,
and comforted those sorrowing governments,
and sold the remains and sent me the money.
I did nothing about the matter.
I had set the law after living lecture doubles of mine a couple of times in America,
and the law had not been able
to catch them;
others in my trade had tried
to catch their impostor- doubles and had failed.
Then where was the use in harrying a ghost?
None--and so I did not disturb it.
I had a curiosity
to know about that man's lecture-tour and last moments,
but that could wait.
When I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it.
But he passed from life,
and I never saw him again..
My curiosity faded away.
However,
when I found that I was going
to Australia it revived.
And naturally:
for if the people should say that I was a dull,
poor thing compared
to what I was before I died,
it would have a bad effect on business.
Well,
to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor! I pressed them,
but they were firm--they had never heard of him,
and didn't believe in him.
I could not understand it;
still,
I thought it would all come right in Melbourne.
The government would remember;
and the other mourners.
At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the matter.
But no--it turned out that they had never heard of it.
So my mystery was a mystery still.
It was a great disappointment.
I believed it would never be cleared up--in this life--so I dropped it out of my mind.
But at last! just when I was least expecting it---- However,
this is not the place
for the rest of it;
I shall come
to the matter again,
in a far-distant chapter.
CHAPTER XVI.
There is a Moral sense,
and there is an Immoral Sense.
History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us
to perceive morality and how
to avoid it,
and that the Immoral Sense enables us
to perceive immorality and how
to enjoy it.
-Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground.
It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude.
It has an elaborate system of cable-car service;
it has museums,
and colleges,
and schools,
and public gardens,
and electricity,
and gas,
and libraries,
and ,theaters,
and mining centers,
and wool centers,
and centers of the arts and sciences,
and boards of trade,
and ships,
and railroads,
and a harbor,
and social clubs,
and journalistic clubs,
and racing clubs,
and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed,
and as many churches and banks as can make a living.
In a word,
it is equipped
with everything that goes
to make the modern great city.
It is the largest city of Australasia,
and fills the post
with honor and credit.
It has one specialty;
this must not be jumbled in
with those other things.
It is the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult.
Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia.
On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of November,
Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York
to San Francisco,
and deeper than from the northern lakes
to the Gulf of Mexico;
and every man and woman,
of high degree or low,
who can afford the expense,
put away their other duties and come.
They begin
to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day,
and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day,
until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed
to their uttermost
to meet the demands of the occasion,
and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within.
They come a hundred thousand strong,
as all the best authorities say,
and they pack the spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never
to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.
It is the
"Melbourne Cup"
that brings this multitude together.
Their clothes have been ordered long ago,
at unlimited cost,
and without bounds as
to beauty and magnificence,
and have been kept in concealment until now,
for unto this day are they consecrate.
I am speaking of the ladies'
clothes;
but one might know that.
And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle,
a delirium of color,
a vision of beauty.
The champagne flows,
everybody is vivacious,
excited,
happy;
everybody bets,
and gloves and fortunes change hands right along,
all the time.
Day after day the races go on,
and the fun and the excitement are kept at white heat;
and when each day is done,
the people dance all night so as
to be fresh
for the race in the morning.
And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation
for next year,
then flock away
to their remote homes and count their gains and losses,
and order next year's Cup-clothes,
and then lie down and sleep two weeks,
and get up sorry
to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy again.
The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day.
It would be difficult
to overstate its importance.
It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.
Overshadows them?
I might almost say it blots them out.
Each of them gets attention,
but not everybody's;
each of them evokes interest,
but not everybody's;
each of them rouses enthusiasm,
but not everybody's;
in each case a part of the attention,
interest,
and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom,
and another part of it is official and perfunctory.
Cup Day,
and Cup Day only,
commands an attention,
an interest,
and an enthusiasm which are universal--and spontaneous,
not perfunctory.
Cup Day is supreme it has no rival.
I can call
to mind no specialized annual day,
in any country,
which can be named by that large name--Supreme.
I can call
to mind no specialized annual day,
in any country,
whose approach fires the whole land
with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation.
No day save this one;
but this one does it.
In America we have no annual supreme day;
no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad.
We have the Fourth of July,
and Christmas,
and Thanksgiving.
Neither of them can claim the primacy;
neither of them can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near
to being universal.
Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth,
with its pandemonium and its perils,
and they rejoice when it is gone--if still alive.
The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread
to many excellent people.
They have
to buy a cart-load of presents,
and they never know what
to buy
to hit the various tastes;
they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work,
and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied
with the result,
and so disappointed that they want
to sit down and cry.
Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.
The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become general of late years.
The Thankfulness is not so general.
This is natural.
Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year,
and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
We have a supreme day--a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day,
a day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement;
but it is not annual.
It comes but once in four years;
therefore it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.
In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days--Christmas and the Queen's birthday.
But they are equally popular;
there is no supremacy.
I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique,
solitary,
unfellowed;
and likely
to hold that high place a long time.
The next things which interest us when we travel are,
first,
the people;
next,
the novelties;
and finally the history of the places and countries visited.
Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced civilization of the modern day.
When one is familiar
with such cities in the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar
with the cities of Australasia.
The outside aspects will furnish little that is new.
There will be new names,
but the things which they represent will sometimes be found
to be less new than their names.
There may be shades of difference,
but these can easily be too fine
for detection by the incompetent eye of the passing stranger.
In the larrikin he will not be able
to discover a new species,
but only an old one met elsewhere,
and variously called loafer,
rough,
tough,
bummer,
or blatherskite,
according
to his geographical distribution.
The larrikin differs by a shade from those others,
in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they,
more kindly disposed,
more hospitable,
more hearty,
more friendly.
At least it seemed so
to me,
and I had opportunity
to observe.
In Sydney,
at least.
In Melbourne I had
to drive
to and from the lecture-theater,
but in Sydney I was able
to walk both ways,
and did it.
Every night,
on my way home at ten,
or a quarter past,
I found the larrikin grouped in considerable force at several of the street corners,
and he always gave me this pleasant salutation:
"Hello,
Mark!"
"Here's
to you,
old chap!
"Say--Mark!--is he dead?
--a reference
to a passage in some book of mine,
though I did not detect,
at that time,
that that was its source.
And I didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne,
when I came on the stage
for the first time,
and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery.
It is always difficult
to answer a sudden inquiry like that,
when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means.
I will remark here--if it is not an indecorum--that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him
to his deepest deeps,
and veil his sight and break his voice.
And from Winnipeg
to Africa,
experience will teach him nothing;
he will never learn
to expect it,
it will catch him as a surprise each time.
The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no trouble
for me.
I was a prospective prisoner of war,
but at dinners,
suppers,
on the platform,
and elsewhere,
there was never anything
to remind me of it.
This was hospitality of the right metal,
and would have been prominently lacking in some countries,
in the circumstances.
And speaking of the war-flurry,
it seemed
to me
to bring
to light the unexpected,
in a detail or two.
It seemed
to relegate the war-talk
to the politicians on both sides of the water;
whereas whenever a prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore,
the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest.
The attitude of the newspapers was new also.
I speak of those of Australasia and India,
for I had access
to those only.
They treated the subject argumentatively and
with dignity,
not
with spite and anger.
That was a new spirit,
too,
and not learned of the French and German press,
either before Sedan or since.
I heard many public speeches,
and they reflected the moderation of the journals.
The outlook is that the English-speaking race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now,
if its sections do not get
to fighting each other.
It would be a pity
to spoil that prospect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their differences so much better and also so much more definitely.
No,
as I have suggested,
novelties are rare in the great capitals of modern times.
Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries.
Wool brokers are just like stockbrokers;
they all bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in unison--no stranger can tell what--and the president calmly says
"Sold
to Smith & Co.,
threpence farthing--next!"
--when probably nothing of the kind happened;
for how should he know?
In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things;
but all museums are fascinating,
and they do so tire your eyes,
and break your back,
and burn out your vitalities
with their consuming interest.
You always say you will never go again,
but you do go.
The palaces of the rich,
in Melbourne,
are much like the palaces of the rich in America,
and the life in them is the same;
but there the resemblance ends.
The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large,
and not often beautiful,
but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often ducally spacious,
and the climate and the gardeners together make them as beautiful as a dream.
It is said that some of the country seats have grounds--domains--about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the country mansion of an English lord;
but I was not out in the country;
I had my hands full in town.
And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats ?
Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict.
Australian history is almost always picturesque;
indeed,
it is so curious and strange,
that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has
to offer,
and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place.
It does not read like history,
but like the most beautiful lies.
And all of a fresh new sort,
no mouldy old stale ones.
It is full of surprises,
and adventures,
and incongruities,
and contradictions,
and incredibilities;
but they are all true,
they all happened.
CHAPTER XVII.
The English are mentioned in the Bible:
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory,
population,
and trade,
it requires a stern exercise of faith
to believe in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution
to the Empire's commercial grandeur.
As compared
with the landed estate of the British Empire,
the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one-- Russia--is not very impressive
for size.
My authorities make the British Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire.
Roughly proportioned,
if you will allow your entire hand
to represent the British Empire,
you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the middle joint of the middle finger,
and what is left of the hand will represent Russia.
The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are about the same--400,000,000 each.
No other Power approaches these figures.
Even Russia is left far behind.
The population of Australasia--4,000,000--sinks into nothingness,
and is lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000.
Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration.
The value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions of dollars,--[New South Wales Blue Book.]--and it is claimed that more than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports
to England and imports from England.
In addition
to this,
Australasia does a trade
with countries other than England,
amounting
to a hundred million dollars a year,
and a domestic intercolonial trade amounting
to a hundred and fifty millions.
In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of goods a year.
It is claimed that about half of this represents commodities of Australasian production.
The products exported annually by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000.1 Now,
here are some faith- straining figures:
Indian production
(300,000,000 population),
$500,000,000.
Australasian production
(4,000,000 population),
$300,000,000.
That is
to say,
the product of the individual Indian,
annually
(for export some whither),
is worth $1.15 ;
that of the individual Australasian
(for export some whither),
$75! Or,
to put it in another way,
the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an annual result worth $8.75,
while the Australasian family sends away $375 worth.
There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and others,
which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product,
both
for export and home use,
is worth in gold only $7.50 ;
or,
$37.50
for the family-aggregate.
Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication,
the Australasian family's aggregate production would be nearly $1,600.
Truly,
nothing is so astonishing as figures,
if they once get started.
We left Melbourne by rail
for Adelaide,
the capital of the vast Province of South Australia--a seventeen-hour excursion.
On the train we found several Sydney friends;
among them a Judge who was going out on circuit,
and was going
to hold court at Broken Hill,
where the celebrated silver mine is.
It seemed a curious road
to take
to get
to that region.
Broken Hill is close
to the western border of New South Wales,
and Sydney is on the eastern border.
A fairly straight line,
700 miles long,
drawn westward from Sydney,
would strike Broken Hill,
just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo.
The way the Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail,
he said;
southwest from Sydney down
to Melbourne,
then northward up
to Adelaide,
then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales once more--to Broken Hill.
It was like going from Boston southwest
to Richmond,
Virginia,
then northwest up
to Erie,
Pennsylvania,
then a cant back northeast and over the border--to Buffalo,
New York.
But the explanation was simple.
Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world.
Its stocks started at shillings,
and went by leaps and bounds
to the most fanciful figures.
It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares,
and comes next mouth and buys your house at your own price,
and moves into it herself;
where the coachman takes a few shares,
and next month sets up a bank;
and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree,
and next month buys out the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook.
In a word,
it was one of those excitements which bring multitudes of people
to a common center
with a rush,
and whose needs must be supplied,
and at once.
Adelaide was close by,
Sydney was far away.
Adelaide threw a short railway across the border before Sydney had time
to arrange
for a long one;
it was not worth while
for Sydney
to arrange at all.
The whole vast trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands,
irrevocably.
New South Wales furnishes
for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles--mainly through alien countries--to administer it,
but Adelaide takes the dividends and makes no moan.
We started at 4.20 in the afternoon,
and moved across level until night.
In the morning we had a stretch of
"scrub"
country--the kind of thing which is so useful
to the Australian novelist.
In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks,
and flits mysteriously about,
slipping out from time
to time
to surprise and slaughter the settler;
then slipping back again,
and leaving no track that the white man can follow.
In the scrub the novelist's heroine gets lost,
search fails of result;
she wanders here and there,
and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious,
and the searchers pass within a yard or two of her,
not suspecting that she is near,
and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled
with her failing hand and left behind.
Nobody can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal
"tracker,"
and he will not lend himself
to the scheme if it will interfere
with the novelist's plot.
The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions,
and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it --as seamless as a blanket,
to all appearance.
One might as well walk under water and hope
to guess out a route and stick
to it,
I should think.
Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal
"tracker"
was able
to hunt out people lost in the scrub.
Also in the
"bush";
also in the desert;
and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground which had
to all appearance been washed clear of footprints.
>From reading Australian books and talking
with the people,
I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft,
a penetration,
a luminous sagacity,
and a minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people,
white or colored.
In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of Victoria,
one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum,
but knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or yesterday.
And there is the case,
on records where A.,
a settler,
makes a bet
with B.,
that B.
may lose a cow as effectually as he can,
and A.
will produce an aboriginal who will find her.
B.
selects a cow and lets the tracker see the cow's footprint,
then be put under guard.
B.
then drives the cow a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions,
and frequently doubles back upon itself;
and he selects difficult ground all the time,
and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows,
and mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs.
He finally brings his cow home;
the aboriginal is set at liberty,
and at once moves around in a great circle,
examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is after;
then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course,
and ultimately tracks it
to the stable where B.
has hidden the cow.
Now wherein does one cow-track differ from another?
There must be a difference,
or the tracker could not have performed the feat;
a difference minute,
shadowy,
and not detectible by you or me,
or by the late Sherlock Holmes,
and yet discernible by a member of a race charged by some people
with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human intelligence.
CHAPTER XVIII.
It is easier
to stay out than get out.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country,
and went twisting in and out through lovely little green valleys.
There were several varieties of gum trees;
among them many giants.
Some of them were bodied and barked like the sycamore;
some were of fantastic aspect,
and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures.
And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know.
The foliage seemed
to consist of big bunches of pine-spines,
the lower half of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color,
the upper half a most vivid and strenuous and shouting green.
The effect was altogether bewitching.
The tree was apparently rare.
I should say that the first and last samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart.
There was another tree of striking aspect,
a kind of pine,
we were told.
Its foliage was as fine as hair,
apparently,
and its mass sphered itself above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke.
It was not a sociable sort;
it did not gather in groups or couples,
but each individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor.
It scattered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling grassy great knolls,
and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine;
and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet.
On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom--importations from England--and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried
to tell me which--was which;
but as he didn't know,
he had difficulty.
He said he was ashamed of his ignorance,
but that he had never been confronted
with the question before during the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia,
and so he had never happened
to get interested in the matter.
But there was no need
to be ashamed.
The most of us have his defect.
We take a natural interest in novelties,
but it is against nature
to take an interest in familiar things.
The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape.
Here and there they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of sober or sombre color,
with a so startling effect as
to make a body catch his breath
with the happy surprise of it.
And then there was the wattle,
a native bush or tree,
an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom.
It is a favorite
with the Australians,
and has a fine fragrance,
a quality usually wanting in Australian blossoms.
The gentleman who enriched me
with the poverty of his formation about the gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the Province of South Australia
with thirty-six shillings in his pocket--an adventurer without trade,
profession,
or friends,
but
with a clearly-defined purpose in his head:
he would stay until he was worth L200,
then go back home.
He would allow himself five years
for the accumulation of this fortune.
"That was more than fifty years ago,"
said he.
"And here I am,
yet."
As he went out at the door he met a friend,
and turned and introduced him
to me,
and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke.
I spoke of the previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this half century of exile,
and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded.
"With him?
Oh,
it did.
It's not so sad a case.
He is modest,
and he left out some of the particulars.
The lad reached South Australia just in time
to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines.
They turned out L700,000 in the first three years.
Up
to now they have yielded L120,000,000.
He has had his share.
Before that boy had been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village;
he could go now and buy a city,
I think.
No,
there is nothing very pathetic about his case.
He and his copper arrived at just a handy time
to save South Australia.
It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land boom a while before."
There it is again;
picturesque history-- Australia's specialty.
In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it.
In 1836 the British Parliament erected it--still a solitude--into a Province,
and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery.
Speculators took hold,
now,
and inaugurated a vast land scheme,
and invited immigration,
encouraging it
with lurid promises of sudden wealth.
It was well worked in London;
and bishops,
statesmen,
and all ports of people made a rush
for the land company's shares.
Immigrants soon began
to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea.
The crowds continued
to come,
prices of land rose high,
then higher and still higher,
everybody was prosperous and happy,
the boom swelled into gigantic proportions.
A village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand,
and in these wigwams fashion made display;
richly-dressed ladies played on costly pianos,
London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots were abundant,
and this fine society drank champagne,
and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been accustomed
to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world.
The provincial government put up expensive buildings
for its own use,
and a palace
with gardens
for the use of its governor.
The governor had a guard,
and maintained a court.
Roads,
wharves,
and hospitals were built.
All this on credit,
on paper,
on wind,
on inflated and fictitious values--on the boom's moonshine,
in fact.
This went on handsomely during four or five years.
Then of a sudden came a smash.
Bills
for a huge amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored,
the land company's credit went up in smoke,
a panic followed,
values fell
with a rush,
the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled
to other lands,
leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude,
where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.
Adelaide was indeed almost empty;
its population had fallen
to 3,000.
During two years or more the death-trance continued.
Prospect of revival there was none;
hope of it ceased.
Then,
as suddenly as the paralysis had come,
came the resurrection from it.
Those astonishingly rich copper mines were discovered,
and the corpse got up and danced.
The wool production began
to grow;
grain-raising followed -followed so vigorously,
too,
that four or five years after the copper discovery,
this little colony,
which had had
to import its breadstuffs formerly,
and pay hard prices
for them--once $50 a barrel
for flour--had become an exporter of grain.
The prosperities continued.
After many years Providence,
desiring
to show especial regard
for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in its welfare which should certify
to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving,
conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches,
Broken Hill;
and South Australia went over the border and took it,
giving thanks.
Among our passengers was an American
with a unique vocation.
Unique is a strong word,
but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the American told me;
for I understood him
to say that in the world there was not another man engaged in the business which he was following.
He was buying the kangaroo-skin crop;
buying all of it,
both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian;
and buying it
for an American house in New York.
The prices were not high,
as there was no competition,
but the year's aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000.
I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent.
In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes.
After the tanning,
the leather takes a new name--which I have forgotten--I only remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes the leather.
There was a German competition
for a while,
some years ago,
but that has ceased.
The Germans failed
to arrive at the secret of tanning the skins successfully,
and they withdrew from the business.
Now then,
I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really entitled
to bear that high epithet--unique.
And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted
to the hands of a sole person.
I can think of no instance of it.
There is more than one Pope,
there is more than one Emperor,
there is even more than one living god,
walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large populations of men.
I have seen and talked
with two of these Beings myself in India,
and I have the autograph of one of them.
It can come good,
by and by,
I reckon,
if I attach it
to a
"permit."
Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train,
as the French say,
and were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes
to the city.
It was an excursion of an hour or two,
and the charm of it could not be overstated,
I think.
The road wound around gaps and gorges,
and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect--mountains,
crags,
country homes,
gardens,
forests--color,
color,
color everywhere,
and the air fine and fresh,
the skies blue,
and not a shred of cloud
to mar the downpour of the brilliant sunshine.
And finally the mountain gateway opened,
and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away into dim distances on every hand,
soft and delicate and dainty and beautiful.
On its near edge reposed the city.
We descended and entered.
There was nothing
to remind one of the humble capital,
of buts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom.
No,
this was a modern city,
with wide streets,
compactly built;
with fine homes everywhere,
embowered in foliage and flowers,
and
with imposing masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful.
There was prosperity,
in the air;
for another boom was on.
Providence,
desiring
to show especial regard
for the neighboring colony on the west called Western Australia--and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify
to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving,
had recently conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches,
Coolgardie;
and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it,
giving thanks.
Everything comes
to him who is patient and good,
and waits.
But South Australia deserves much,
for apparently she is a hospitable home
for every alien who chooses
to come;,
and
for his religion,
too.
She has a population,
as per the latest census,
of only 320,000-odd,
and yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can think of.
Tabulated,
these varieties of religion make a remarkable show.
One would have
to go far
to find its match.
I copy here this cosmopolitan curiosity,
and it comes from the published census:
Church of England,...........
89,271 Roman Catholic,..............
47,179 Wesleyan,....................
49,159 Lutheran,....................
23,328 Presbyterian,................
18,206 Congregationalist,...........
11,882 Bible Christian,.............
15,762 Primitive Methodist,.........
11,654 Baptist,.....................
17,547 Christian Brethren,..........
465 Methodist New Connexion,.....
39 Unitarian,...................
688 Church of Christ,............
3,367 Society of Friends,..........
100 Salvation Army,..............
4,356 New Jerusalem Church,........
168 Jews,........................
840 Protestants
(undefined),.....
6,532 Mohammedans,.................
299 Confucians,
etc.,............
3,884 Other religions,.............
1,719 Object,......................
6,940 Not stated,..................
8,046 Total,.......................320,431 The item in the above list
"Other religions"
includes the following as returned:
Agnostics,
Atheists,
Believers in Christ,
Buddhists,
Calvinists,
Christadelphians,
Christians,
Christ's Chapel,
Christian Israelites,
Christian Socialists,
Church of God,
Cosmopolitans,
Deists,
Evangelists,
Exclusive Brethren,
Free Church,
Free Methodists,
Freethinkers,
Followers of Christ,
Gospel Meetings,
Greek Church,
Infidels,
Maronites,
Memnonists,
Moravians,
Mormons,
Naturalists,
Orthodox,
Others
(indefinite),
Pagans,
Pantheists,
Plymouth Brethren,
Rationalists,
Reformers,
Secularists,
Seventh-day Adventists,
Shaker,
Sh1ntOlStS,
Spiritualists,
Theosophists,
Town
(City)
Mission,
Welsh Church,
Huguenot,
Hussite,
Zoroastrians,
Zwinglian,
About 64 roads
to the other world.
You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is.
Anything can live in it.
Agnostics,
Atheists,
Freethinkers,
Infidels,
Mormons,
Pagans,
Indefinites they are all there.
And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it:
they can spread,
flourish,
prosper.
All except the Spiritualists and the Theosophists.
That is the most curious feature of this curious table.
What is the matter
with the specter?
Why do they puff him away?
He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world.
CHAPTER XIX.
Pity is
for the living,
Envy is
for the dead.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty,
the Botanical Gardens.
We cannot have these paradises.
The best we could do would be
to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat.
But it would be inadequate,
the lacks would still be so great:
the confined sense,
the sense of suffocation,
the atmospheric dimness,
the sweaty heat--these would all be there,
in place of the Australian openness
to the sky,
the sunshine and the breeze.
Whatever will grow under glass
with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.--[The greatest heat in Victoria,
that there is an authoritative record of,
was at Sandhurst,
in January,
1862.
The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade.
In January,
1880,
the heat at Adelaide,
South Australia,
was 172 degrees in the sun.] When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor,
in variety of vegetation,
as the desert of Sahara;
now it has everything that grows on the earth.
In fact,
not Australia only,
but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world;
and wherever one goes the results appear,
in gardens private and public,
in the woodsy walls of the highways,
and in even the forests.
If you see a curious or beautiful tree or bush or flower,
and ask about it,
the people,
answering,
usually name a foreign country as the place of its origin--India,
Africa,
Japan,
China,
England,
America,
Java,
Sumatra,
New Guinea,
Polynesia,
and so on.
In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition
to be courteous
to me.
This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon;
or like a maniac who was consumed
with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun.
It was a very human laugh.
If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man.
It is an odd-looking bird,
with a head and beak that are much too large
for its body.
In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia,
but this one will probably survive,
for man is his friend and lets him alone.
Man always has a good reason
for his charities towards wild things,
human or animal when he has any.
In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes.
If L.
J.
he will not kill all of them.
In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog--the dingo.
He was a beautiful creature--shapely,
graceful,
a little wolfish in some of his aspects,
but
with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition.
The dingo is not an importation;
he was present in great force when the whites first came
to the continent.
It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe;
his origin,
his descent,
the place where his ancestors first appeared,
are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's.
He is the most precious dog in the world,
for he does not bark.
But in an evil hour he got
to raiding the sheep-runs
to appease his hunger,
and that sealed his doom.
He is hunted,
now,
just as if he were a wolf.
He has been sentenced
to extermination,
and the sentence will be carried out.
This is all right,
and not objectionable.
The world was made
for man--the white man.
South Australia is confusingly named.
All of the colonies have a southern exposure except one--Queensland.
Properly speaking,
South Australia is middle Australia.
It extends straight up through the center of the continent like the middle board in a center-table.
It is 2,000 miles high,
from south
to north,
and about a third as wide.
A wee little spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its population;
the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere--as elsewhere as they could be in the United States
with all the country between Denver and Chicago,
and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico
to scatter over.
There is plenty of room.
A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide
to Port Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean.
South Australia built the line;
and did it in 1871-2 when her population numbered only 185,000.
It was a great work;
for there were no roads,
no paths;
1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but once before by white men;
provisions,
wire,
and poles had
to be carried over immense stretches of desert;
wells had
to be dug along the route
to supply the men and cattle
with water.
A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin
to Java and thence
to India,
and there was telegraphic communication
with England from India.
And so,
if Adelaide could make connection
with Port Darwin it meant connection
with the whole world.
The enterprise succeeded.
One could watch the London markets daily,
now;
the profit
to the wool-growers of Australia was instant and enormous.
A telegram from Melbourne
to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 miles--the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe.
It has
to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated;
still,
but little time is lost.
These halts,
and the distances between them,
are here tabulated.
--[From Round the Empire."
(George R.
Parkin),
all but the last two.] Miles.
Melbourne-Mount Gambier,.......300 Mount Gambier -Adelaide,.......270 Adelaide-Port Augusta,.........200 Port Augusta-Alice Springs,..1,036 Alice Springs-Port Darwin,.....898 Port Darwin- Banjoewangie,..
1,150 Banjoewangie-Batavia,..........480 Batavia- Singapore,............553 Singapore- Penang,.............399 Penang -Madras,..............1,280 Madras-Bombay,.................650 Bombay-Aden,.................1,662 Aden--Suez,..................1,346 Suez-Alexandria,...............224 Alexandria-Malta,..............828 Malta--Gibraltar,............1,008 Gibraltar- Falmouth,.........1,061 Falmouth-London,...............350 London-New York,.............2,500 New York-San Francisco,......3,500 I was in Adelaide again,
some months later,
and saw the multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg
to commemorate the Reading of the Proclamation--in 1836--which founded the Province.
If I have at any time called it a Colony,
I withdraw the discourtesy.
It is not a Colony,
it is a Province;
and officially so.
Moreover,
it is the only one so named in Australasia.
There was great enthusiasm;
it was the Province's national holiday,
its Fourth of July,
so
to speak.
It is the pre-eminent holiday;
and that is saying much,
in a country where they seem
to have a most un-English mania
for holidays.
Mainly they are workingmen's holidays;
for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign;
his vote is the desire of the politician--indeed,
it is the very breath of the politician's being;
the parliament exists
to deliver the will of the workingman,
and the government exists
to execute it.
The workingman is a great power everywhere in Australia,
but South Australia is his paradise.
He has had a hard time in this world,
and has earned a paradise.
I am glad he has found it.
The holidays there are frequent enough
to be bewildering
to the stranger.
I tried
to get the hang of the system,
but was not able
to do it.
You have seen that the Province is tolerant,
religious-wise.
It is so politically,
also.
One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet--the Minister of Public Works-was an American,
born and reared in New England.
There is nothing narrow about the Province,
politically,
or in any other way that I know of.
Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister.
No amount of horse-racing can damn this community.
The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg.
The death-rate is 13 in the 1,000--about half what it is in the city of New York,
I should think,
and New York is a healthy city.
Thirteen is the death-rate
for the average citizen of the Province,
but there seems
to be no death-rate
for the old people.
There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could remember Cromwell.
There were six of them.
These Old Settlers had all been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation,
in 1536.
They showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time,
in their outward aspect,
but they were young within;
young and cheerful,
and ready
to talk;
ready
to talk,
and talk all you wanted;
in their turn,
and out of it.
They were down
for six speeches,
and they made 42.
The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down
for 42 speeches,
and they made 6.
They have splendid grit,
the Old Settlers,
splendid staying power.
But they do not hear well,
and when they see the mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker,
they think they are the one,
and they all get up together,
and begin
to respond,
in the most animated way;
and the more the mayor gesticulates,
and shouts
"Sit down! Sit down!"
the more they take it
for applause,
and the more excited and reminiscent and enthusiastic they get;
and next,
when they see the whole house laughing and crying,
three of them think it is about the bitter old-time hardships they are describing,
and the other three think the laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking--jokes of the vintage of 1836--and then the way they do go on! And finally when ushers come and plead,
and beg,
and gently and reverently crowd them down into their seats,
they say,
"Oh,
I'm not tired--I could bang along a week!"
and they sit there looking simple and childlike,
and gentle,
and proud of their oratory,
and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other end of the room.
And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance,
and begins his carefully prepared speech,
impressively and
with solemnity--
"when we,
now great and prosperous and powerful,
bow our heads in reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy,
of wisdom,
of forethought,
of---- Up come the immortal six again,
in a body,
with a joyous
"Hey,
I've thought of another one!"
and at it they go,
with might and main,
hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them,
but taking all the visible violences
for applause,
as before,
and hammering joyously away till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again.
And a pity,
too;
for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over,
in these days of their honored antiquity;
and certainly the things they had
to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing.
It was a stirring spectacle;
stirring in more ways than one,
for it was amazingly funny,
and at the same time deeply pathetic;
for they had seen so much,
these time-worn veterans,
end had suffered so much;
and had built so strongly and well,
and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep,
in liberty and tolerance;
and had lived
to see the structure rise
to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised
for honorable work.
One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward;
things about the aboriginals,
mainly.
He thought them intelligent-- remarkably so in some directions--and he said that along
with their unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones;
and he considered it a great pity that the race had died out.
He instanced their invention of the boomerang and the
"weet-weet"
as evidences of their brightness;
and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough
to learn
to do the miracles
with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved.
He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged
to confess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in perfection;
that it had possibilities which they could not master.
The white man could not control its motions,
could not make it obey him;
but the aboriginal could.
He told me some wonderful things--some almost incredible things--which he had seen the blacks do
with the boomerang and the weet-weet.
They have been confirmed
to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books.
It is contended--and may be said
to be conceded--that the boomerang was known
to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times.
In support of this,
Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted.
It is also contended that it was known
to the ancient Egyptians.
One of two things either some one
with is then apparent:
a boomerang arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge of the thing had been lost,
or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it.
It will take some time
to find out which of these two propositions is the fact.
But there is no hurry.
CHAPTER XX.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things:
freedom of speech,
freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never
to practice either of them.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
>From diary:
Mr.G.
called.
I had not seen him since Nauheim,
Germany--several years ago;
the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg.
We talked of the people we had known there,
or had casually met;
and G.
said:
"Do you remember my introducing you
to an earl--the Earl of C.?"
"Yes.
That was the last time I saw you.
You and he were in a carriage,
just starting--belated--for the train.
I remember it."
"I remember it too,
because of a thing which happened then which I was not looking for.
He had told me a while before,
about a remarkable and interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours,
and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you
for some particulars about that Californian.
The subject was not mentioned that day at Nauheim,
for we were hurrying away,
and there was no time;
but the thing that surprised me was this:
when I induced you,
you said,
'I am glad
to meet your lordship gain.'
The I again'
was the surprise.
He is a little hard of hearing,
and didn't catch that word,
and I thought you hadn't intended that he should.
As we drove off I had only time
to say,
'Why,
what do you know about him.?'
and I understood you
to say,
'Oh,
nothing,
except that he is the quickest judge of----'
Then we were gone,
and I didn't get the rest.
I wondered what it was that he was such a quick judge of.
I have thought of it many times since,
and still wondered what it could be.
He and I talked it over,
but could not guess it out.
He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses,
for he is a good judge of those--no one is a better.
But you couldn't know that,
because you didn't know him;
you had mistaken him
for some one else;
it must be that,
he said,
because he knew you had never met him before.
And of course you hadn't had you?"
"Yes,
I had."
"Is that so?
Where?"
"At a fox-hunt,
in England."
"How curious that is.
Why,
he hadn't the least recollection of it.
Had you any conversation
with him?"
"Some--yes."
"Well,
it left not the least impression upon him.
What did you talk about?"
"About the fox.
I think that was all."
"Why,
that would interest him;
that ought
to have left an impression.
What did he talk about?"
"The fox."
It's very curious.
I don't understand it.
Did what he said leave an impression upon you?"
"Yes.
It showed me that he was a quick judge of--however,
I will tell you all about it,
then you will understand.
It was a quarter of a century ago 1873 or
'74.
I had an American friend in London named F.,
who was fond of hunting,
and his friends the Blanks invited him and me
to come out
to a hunt and be their guests at their country place.
In the morning the mounts were provided,
but when I saw the horses I changed my mind and asked permission
to walk.
I had never seen an English hunter before,
and it seemed
to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground.
I had always been diffident about horses,
anyway,
even those of the common altitudes,
and I did not feel competent
to hunt on a horse that went on stilts.
So then Mrs. Blank came
to my help and said I could go
with her in the dog-cart and we would drive
to a place she knew of,
and there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by.
"When we got
to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field
with heavy wood on all its sides except ours.
Mrs.Blank sat in the dog-cart fifty yards away,
which was as near as she could get
with the vehicle.
I was full of interest,
for I had never seen a fox-hunt.
I waited,
dreaming and imagining,
in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility which reigned in that retired spot.
Presently,
from away off in the forest on the left,
a mellow bugle-note came floating;
then all of a sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by and disappeared in the forest on the right;
there was a pause,
and then a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire,
a stirring sight
to see.
There was one man ahead of the rest,
and he came spurring straight at me.
He was fiercely excited.
It was fine
to see him ride;
he was a master horseman.
He came like,
a storm till he was within seven feet of me,
where I was leaning on the wall,
then he stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails,
and shouted like a demon:
"'Which way'd the fox go?'
"I didn't much like the tone,
but I did not let on;
for he was excited,
you know.
But I was calm;
so I said softly,
and without acrimony:
"'Which fox?'
"It seemed
to anger him.
I don't know why;
and he thundered out:
"'WHICH fox?
Why,
THE fox?
Which way did the FOX go?'
"I said,
with great gentleness--even argumentatively:
"'If you could be a little more definite--a little less vague--because I am a stranger,
and there are many foxes,
as you will know even better than I,
and unless I know which one it is that you desire
to identify,
and----'
"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand years!'
and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would snatch a cat,
and was away like a hurricane.
A very excitable man.
"I went back
to Mrs. Blank,
and she was excited,
too--oh,
all alive.
She said:
"'He spoke
to you!--didn't he?'
"'Yes,
it is what happened.'
"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said,
but I knew be spoke
to you! Do you know who it was?
It was Lord C.,
and he is Master of the Buckhounds! Tell me--what do you think of him?'
"'Him?
Well,
for sizing-up a stranger,
he's got the most sudden and accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.'
"It pleased her.
I thought it would."
G.
got away from Nauheim just in time
to escape being shut in by the quarantine-bars on the frontiers;
and so did we,
for we left the next day.
But G.
had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian custom-house,
and we should have fared likewise but
for the thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort.
He introduced me
to the Italian consul-general,
and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made our way smooth.
It was a dozen lines merely commending me in a general way
to the courtesies of servants in his Italian Majesty's service,
but it was more powerful than it looked.
In addition
to a raft of ordinary baggage,
we had six or eight trunks which were filled exclusively
with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in Frankfort
for use in Florence,
where we had taken a house.
I was going
to ship these through by express;
but at the last moment an order went throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless the owner went
with them.
This was a bad outlook.
We must take these things along,
and the delay sure
to be caused by the examination of them in the custom-house might lose us our train.
I imagined all sorts of terrors,
and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier.
We were six in number,
clogged
with all that baggage,
and I was courier
for the party the most incapable one they ever employed.
We arrived,
and pressed
with the crowd into the immense custom-house,
and the usual worries began;
everybody crowding
to the counter and begging
to have his baggage examined first,
and all hands clattering and chattering at once.
It seemed
to me that I could do nothing;
it would be better
to give it all up and go away and leave the baggage.
I couldn't speak the language;
I should never accomplish anything.
Just then a tall handsome man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the station- master--and that reminded me of my letter.
I ran
to him and put it into his hands.
He took it out of the envelope,
and the moment his eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top,
he took off his cap and made a beautiful bow
to me,
and said in English:
"Which is your baggage?
Please show it
to me."
I showed him the mountain.
Nobody was disturbing it;
nobody was interested in it;
all the family's attempts
to get attention
to it had failed--except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable goods.
It was just being opened.
My officer said:
"There,
let that alone! Lock it.
Now chalk it.
Chalk all of the lot.
Now please come and show the hand-baggage."
He plowed through the waiting crowd,
I following,
to the counter,
and he gave orders again,
in his emphatic military way:
"Chalk these.
Chalk all of them."
Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again,
and went his way.
By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre of passengers,
and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were present getting their baggage chalked;
and as we passed down in review on our way
to the door,
I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy which gave me deep satisfaction.
But soon there was an accident.
My overcoat pockets were stuffed
with German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco,
and a porter was following us around
with this overcoat on his arm,
and gradually getting it upside down.
Just as I,
in the rear of my family,
moved by the sentinels at the door,
about three hatfuls of the tobacco tumbled out on the floor.
One of the soldiers pounced upon it,
gathered it up in his arms,
pointed back whence I had come,
and marched me ahead of him past that long wall of passengers again--he chattering and exulting like a devil,
they smiling in peaceful joy,
and I trying
to look as if my pride was not hurt,
and as if I did not mind being brought
to shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me.
But at heart I was cruelly humbled.
When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of it was at the worst,
the stately station-master stepped out from somewhere,
and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him;
and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that be was betraying
to him the whole shabby business.
The station-master was plainly very angry.
He came striding down toward me,
and when he was come near he began
to pour out a stream of indignant Italian;
then suddenly took off his hat and made that beautiful bow and said:
"Oh,
it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here---"
He turned
to the exulting soldier and burst out
with a flood of white-hot Italian lava,
and the next moment he was bowing,
and the soldier and I were moving in procession again--he in the lead and ashamed,
this time,
I
with my chin up.
And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers,
and I went forth
to the train
with the honors of war.
Tobacco and all.
CHAPTER XXI.
Man will do many things
to get himself loved,
he will do all things
to get himself envied.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the
"weet-weet"
at all.
I met but few men who had seen it thrown--at least I met but few who mentioned having seen it thrown.
Roughly described,
it is a fat wooden cigar
with its butt-end fastened
to a flexible twig.
The whole thing is only a couple of feet long,
and weighs less than two ounces.
This feather--so
to call it--is not thrown through the air,
but is flung
with an underhanded throw and made
to strike the ground a little way in front of the thrower;
then it glances and makes a long skip;
glances again,
skips again,
and again and again,
like the flat stone which a boy sends skating over the water.
The water is smooth,
and the stone has a good chance;
so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards;
but the weet-weet has no such good chance,
for it strikes sand,
grass,
and earth in its course.
Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured distance of two hundred and twenty yards.
It would have gone even further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and they damaged its speed.
Two hundred and twenty yards;
and so weightless a toy--a mouse on the end of a bit of wire,
in effect;
and not sailing through the accommodating air,
but encountering grass and sand and stuff at every jump.
It looks wholly impossible;
but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the feat and did the measuring,
and set down the facts in his book about aboriginal life,
which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government.
What is the secret of the feat?
No one explains.
It cannot be physical strength,
for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance.
It must be art.
But no one explains what the art of it is;
nor how it gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any two- ounce thing 220 yards,
either through the air or bumping along the ground.
Rev.
J.
G.
Woods says:
"The distance
to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is truly astonishing.
I have seen an Australian stand at one side of Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it."
(Width of Kensington Oval not stated.)
"It darts through the air
with the sharp and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball,
its greatest height from the ground being some seven or eight feet .
.
.
.
.
.
When properly thrown it looks just like a living animal leaping along .
.
.
.
.
.
Its movements have a wonderful resemblance
to the long leaps of a kangaroo- rat fleeing in alarm,
with its long tail trailing behind it."
The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet,
in the early days,
which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary an instrument as the boomerang.
There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked skinny aboriginals,
or they couldn't have been such unapproachable trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters.
It must have been race- aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's estimate of them.
They were lazy--always lazy.
Perhaps that was their trouble.
It is a killing defect.
Surely they could have invented and built a competent house,
but they didn't.
And they could have invented and developed the agricultural arts,
but they didn't.
They went naked and houseless,
and lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits,
and were just plain savages,
for all their smartness.
With a country as big as the United States
to live and multiply in,
and
with no epidemic diseases among them till the white man came
with those and his other appliances of civilization,
it is quite probable that there was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race in all Australia.
He diligently and deliberately kept population down by infanticide--largely;
but mainly by certain other methods.
He did not need
to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came.
The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth several of his.
The white man knew ways of reducing a native population 80 percent.
in 20 years.
The native had never seen anything as fine as that before.
For example,
there is the case of the country now called Victoria--a country eighty times as large as Rhode Island,
as I have already said.
By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the whites came along in the middle of the
'Thirties.
Of these,
1,000 lived in Gippsland,
a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode Islands:
they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities;
indeed,
at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left.
The Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily:
from 173 persons it faded
to 34 in twenty years;
at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered one person altogether.
The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 when the white man came;
they could muster but twenty,
thirty-seven years later,
in 1875.
In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes scattered about the colony of Victoria,
but I was told that natives of full blood are very scarce now.
It is said that the aboriginals continue in some force in the huge territory called Queensland.
The early whites were not used
to savages.
They could not understand the primary law of savage life:
that if a man do you a wrong,
his whole tribe is responsible--each individual of it--and you may take your change out of any individual of it,
without bothering
to seek out the guilty one.
When a white killed an aboriginal,
the tribe applied the ancient law,
and killed the first white they came across.
To the whites this was a monstrous thing.
Extermination seemed
to be the proper medicine
for such creatures as this.
They did not kill all the blacks,
but they promptly killed enough of them
to make their own persons safe.
From the dawn of civilization down
to this day the white man has always used that very precaution.
Mrs.Campbell Praed lived in Queensland,
as a child,
in the early days,
and in her
"Sketches of Australian life,"
we get informing pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black
to reform each other.
Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland,
Mrs.Praed says:
"At first the natives retreated before the whites;
and,
except that they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds,
gave little cause
for uneasiness.
But,
as the number of squatters increased,
each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or three men in his train,
so that shepherds'
huts and stockmen's camps lay far apart,
and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes,
the Blacks'
depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual event.
"The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in words.
Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where perhaps foot of white man has never trod--interminable vistas where the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their lanky limbs,
from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic pendants like crimson stalactites;
ravines along the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows rankly;
level untimbered plains alternating
with undulating tracts of pasture,
here and there broken by a stony ridge,
steep gully,
or dried-up creek.
All wild,
vast and desolate;
all the same monotonous gray coloring,
except where the wattle,
when in blossom,
shows patches of feathery gold,
or a belt of scrub lies green,
glossy,
and impenetrable as Indian jungle.
"The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles,
birds,
and insects,
and by the absence of larger creatures;
of which in the day-time,
the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo,
or the rustle of a wallabi,
or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps
to its lair.
But there are the whirring of locusts,
the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass,
the screeching of cockatoos and parrots,
the hissing of the frilled lizard,
and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth.
And then at night,
the melancholy wailing of the curlews,
the dismal howling of dingoes,
the discordant croaking of tree-frogs,
might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher."
That is the theater
for the drama.
When you comprehend one or two other details,
you will perceive how well suited
for trouble it was,
and how loudly it invited it.
The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that profound wilderness miles and miles apart--at each station half a dozen persons.
There was a plenty of cattle,
the black natives were always ill-nourished and hungry.
The land belonged
to them.
The whites had not bought it,
and couldn't buy it;
for the tribes had no chiefs,
nobody in authority,
nobody competent
to sell and convey;
and the tribes themselves had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land.
The ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers,
and this opinion was not hidden under a bushel.
More promising materials
for a tragedy could not have been collated.
Let Mrs. Praed speak:
"At Nie station,
one dark night,
the unsuspecting hut-keeper,
having,
as he believed,
secured himself against assault,
was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly.
The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept."
One could guess the whole drama from that little text.
The curtain was up.
It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was determined--and permanently:
"There was treachery on both sides.
The Blacks killed the Whites when they found them defenseless,
and the Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my childish sense of justice.
They were regarded as little above the level of brutes,
and in some cases were destroyed like vermin.
"Here is an instance.
A squatter,
whose station was surrounded by Blacks,
whom he suspected
to be hostile and from whom he feared an attack,
parleyed
with them from his house-door.
He told them it was Christmas-time--a time at which all men,
black or white,
feasted;
that there were flour,
sugar-plums,
good things in plenty in the store,
and that he would make
for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed of--a great pudding of which all might eat and be filled.
The Blacks listened and were lost.
The pudding was made and distributed.
Next morning there was howling in the camp,
for it had been sweetened
with sugar and arsenic!"
The white man's spirit was right,
but his method was wrong.
His spirit was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage,
but the use of poison was a departure from custom.
True,
it was merely a technical departure,
not a real one;
still,
it was a departure,
and therefore a mistake,
in my opinion.
It was better,
kinder,
swifter,
and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been sanctified by custom,
but that does not justify its employment.
That is,
it does not wholly justify it.
Its unusual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to.
It takes hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of exhibition of cruelty,
and this smirches the good name of our civilization,
whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no such effect because usage has made those methods familiar
to us and innocent.
In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him
to death;
and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us
to it;
yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness
to it.
In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake;
and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us
to it;
yet a quick death is loving- kindness
to it.
In more than one country we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother
with dogs and guns through the woods and swamps
for an afternoon's sport,
and filled the region
with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight,
and their wild supplications
for mercy;
but this method we do not mind,
because custom has inured us
to it;
yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness
to it.
In many countries we have taken the savage's land from him,
and made him our slave,
and lashed him every day,
and broken his pride,
and made death his only friend,
and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks;
and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us
to it;
yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness
to it.
In the Matabeleland today--why,
there we are confining ourselves
to sanctified custom,
we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes in London;
and nobody cares,
because we are used
to the old holy customs,
and all we ask is that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon the attention of our comfortable consciences.
Mrs.Praed says of the poisoner,
"That squatter deserves
to have his name handed down
to the contempt of posterity."
I am sorry
to hear her say that.
I myself blame him
for one thing,
and severely,
but I stop there.
I blame him for,
the indiscretion of introducing a novelty which was calculated
to attract attention
to our civilization.
There was no occasion
to do that.
It was his duty,
and it is every loyal man's duty
to protect that heritage in every way he can;
and the best way
to do that is
to attract attention elsewhere.
The squatter's judgment was bad--that is plain;
but his heart was right.
He is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and tried
to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings
with the savage.
His name is lost,
and it is a pity;
for it deserves
to be handed down
to posterity
with homage and reverence.
This paragraph is from a London journal:
"To learn what France is doing
to spread the blessings of civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn
with advantage
to New Caledonia.
With a view
to attracting free settlers
to that penal colony,
M.
Feillet,
the Governor,
forcibly expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations,
with a derisory compensation,
in spite of the protests of the Council General of the island.
Such immigrants as could be induced
to cross the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee,
cocoa,
banana,
and bread-fruit trees,
the raising of which had cost the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few five- franc pieces
to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea."
You observe the combination?
It is robbery,
humiliation,
and slow,
slow murder,
through poverty and the white man's whisky.
The savage's gentle friend,
the savage's noble friend,
the only magnanimous and unselfish friend the savage has ever had,
was not there
with the merciful swift release of his poisoned pudding.
There are many humorous things in the world;
among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
--[See Chapter on Tasmania,
post.] CHAPTER XXII.
Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand,
except a lady's watch.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art.
She can place a thing before you so that you can see it.
She is not alone in that.
Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history.
The materials were surprisingly rich,
both in quality and in mass,
and Marcus Clarke,
Ralph Boldrewood,
Cordon,
Kendall,
and the others,
have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature,
and one which must endure.
Materials--there is no end
to them! Why,
a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by himself,
his character and ways are so freckled
with varieties--varieties not staled by familiarity,
but new
to us.
You do not need
to invent any picturesquenesses;
whatever you want in that line he can furnish you;
and they will not be fancies and doubtful,
but realities and authentic.
In his history,
as preserved by the white man's official records,
he is everything--everything that a human creature can be.
He covers the entire ground.
He is a coward--there are a thousand fact
to prove it.
He is brave--there are a thousand facts
to prove it.
He is treacherous-- oh,
beyond imagination! he is faithful,
loyal,
true--the white man's records supply you
with a harvest of instances of it that are noble,
worshipful,
and pathetically beautiful.
He kills the starving stranger who comes begging
for food and shelter there is proof of it.
He succors,
and feeds,
and guides
to safety,
to-day,
the lost stranger who fired on him only yesterday--there is proof of it.
He takes his reluctant bride by force,
he courts her
with a club,
then loves her faithfully through a long life--it is of record.
He gathers
to himself another wife by the same processes,
beats and bangs her as a daily diversion,
and by and by lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm--it is of record.
He will face a hundred hostiles
to rescue one of his children,
and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough without it.
His delicate stomach turns,
at certain details of the white man's food;
but he likes over-ripe fish,
and brazed dog,
and cat,
and rat,
and will eat his own uncle
with relish.
He is a sociable animal,
yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by.
He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul,
but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not acquainted with.
He knows all the great and many of the little constellations,
and has names
for them;
he has a symbol-writing by means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes;
he has a correct eye
for form and expression,
and draws a good picture;
he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot discern,
and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master;
he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model--if
with it;
a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians
for seventy years;
and by an art all his own he performs miracles
with it which the white man cannot approach untaught,
nor parallel after teaching.
Within certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest known
to history or tradition;
and yet the poor creature was never able
to invent a counting system that would reach above five,
nor a vessel that he could boil water in.
He is the prize-curiosity of all the races.
To all intents and purposes he is dead--in the body;
but he has features that will live in literature.
Mr.Philip Chauncy,
an officer of the Victorian Government,
contributed
to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals which has in it some things which I wish
to condense slightly and insert here.
He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraordinary,
and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also.
He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target
for cricket-balls thrown
with great force ten or fifteen yards,
by professional bowlers,
and successfully dodge them or parry them
with his shield during about half an hour.
One of those balls,
properly placed,
could have killed him;
"Yet he depended,
with the utmost self-possession,
on the quickness of his eye and his agility."
The shield was the customary war-shield of his race,
and would not be a protection
to you or
to me.
It is no broader than a stovepipe,
and is about as long as a man's arm.
The opposing surface is not flat,
but slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow.
The difficulty about a cricket-ball that has been thrown
with a scientific
"twist"
is,
that it suddenly changes it course when it is close
to its target and comes straight
for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or
to one side.
I should not be able
to protect myself from such balls
for half- an-hour,
or less.
Mr.Chauncy once saw
"a little native man"
throw a cricket-ball 119 yards.
This is said
to beat the English professional record by thirteen yards.
We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side.
Mr.Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven;
and was assured that he had sometimes done it over fourteen.
But what is that
to this:
"I saw the same man leap from the ground,
and in going over he dipped his head,
unaided by his hands,
into a hat placed in an inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting upright on horseback--both man and horse being of the average size.
The native landed on the other side of the horse
with the hat fairly on his head.
The prodigious height of the leap,
and the precision
with which it was taken so as
to enable him
to dip his head into the hat,
exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld."
I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a side- twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high;
but he could not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high.
I know this,
because I tried it myself.
One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.
Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore--dug them in the sand--wells that were
"quite circular,
carried straight down,
and the work beautifully executed."
Their tools were their hands and feet.
How did they throw sand out from such a depth?
How could they stoop down and get it,
with only two feet of space
to stoop in ?
How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in on them?
I do not know.
Still,
they did manage those seeming impossibilities.
Swallowed the sand,
may be.
Mr.Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu,
the kangaroo,
and other game:
"As he walks through the bush his step is light,
elastic,
and noiseless;
every track on the earth catches his keen eye;
a leaf,
or fragment of a stick turned,
or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the lower animals,
instantly arrests his attention;
in fact,
nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground,
in the trees,
or in the distance,
which may supply him
with a meal or warn him of danger.
A little examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered
with the scratches of opossums ascending and descending is sufficient
to inform him whether one went up the night before without coming down again or not."
Fennimore Cooper lost his chance.
He would have known how
to value these people.
He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them
for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented.
All savages draw outline pictures upon bark;
but the resemblances are not close,
and expression is usually lacking.
But the Australian aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form,
attitude,
carriage;
and he put spirit into them,
and expression.
And his pictures of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of the other animals.
He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day,
both the ladies and the gentlemen.
As an untaught wielder of the pencil it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people.
His place in art--as
to drawing,
not color-work--is well up,
all things considered.
His art is not
to be classified
with savage art at all,
but on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of civilized art.
To be exact,
his place in art is between Botticelli and De Maurier.
That is
to say,
he could not draw as well as De Maurier but better than Boticelli.
In feeling,
he resembles both;
also in grouping and in his preferences in the matter of subjects.
His
"corrobboree"
of the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms,
with clothes and the smirk of civilization added;
Botticelli's
"Spring"
is the
"corrobboree"
further idealized,
but
with fewer clothes and more smirk.
And well enough as
to intention,
but--my word! The aboriginal can make a fire by friction.
I have tried that.
All savages are able
to stand a good deal of physical pain.
The Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree.
Do not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant
to you.
They were recorded by the Rev.
Henry N.
Wolloston,
of Melbourne,
who had been a surgeon before he became a clergyman:
1.
"In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany,
King George's Sound,
to visit at Cape Riche,
accompanied by a native on foot.
We traveled about forty miles the first day,
then camped by a water-hole
for the night.
After cooking and eating our supper,
I observed the native,
who had said nothing
to me on the subject,
collect the hot embers of the fire together,
and deliberately place his right foot in the glowing mass
for a moment,
then suddenly withdraw it,
stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction.
This operation he repeated several times.
On my inquiring the meaning of his strange conduct,
he only said,
'Me carpenter-make
'em'
('I am mending my foot'),
and then showed me his charred great toe,
the nail of which had been torn off by a tea-tree stump,
in which it had been caught during the journey,
and the pain of which he had borne
with stoical composure until the evening,
when he had an opportunity of cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described."
And he proceeded on the journey the next day,
"as if nothing had happened"--and walked thirty miles.
It was a strange idea,
to keep a surgeon and then do his own surgery.
2.
"A native about twenty-five years of age once applied
to me,
as a doctor,
to extract the wooden barb of a spear,
which,
during a fight in the bush some four months previously,
had entered his chest,
just missing the heart,
and penetrated the viscera
to a considerable depth.
The spear had been cut off,
leaving the barb behind,
which continued
to force its way by muscular action gradually toward the back;
and when I examined him I could feel a hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone.
I made a deep incision,
and
with a pair of forceps extracted the barb,
which was made,
as usual,
of hard wood about four inches long and from half an inch
to an inch thick.
It was very smooth,
and partly digested,
so
to speak,
by the maceration
to which it had been exposed during its four months'
journey through the body.
The wound made by the spear had long since healed,
leaving only a small cicatrix;
and after the operation,
which the native bore without flinching,
he appeared
to suffer no pain.
Indeed,
judging from his good state of health,
the presence of the foreign matter did not materially annoy him.
He was perfectly well in a few days."
But No.
3 is my favorite.
Whenever I read it I seem
to enjoy all that the patient enjoyed--whatever it was:
3.
"Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself
to me
with one leg only,
and requested me
to supply him
with a wooden leg.
He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles,
for this purpose.
I examined the limb,
which had been severed just below the knee,
and found that it had been charred by fire,
while about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through the flesh.
I at once removed this
with the saw;
and having made as presentable a stump of it as I could,
covered the amputated end of the bone
with a surrounding of muscle,
and kept the patient a few days under my care
to allow the wound
to heal.
On inquiring,
the native told me that in a fight
with other black-fellows a spear had struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee.
Finding it was serious,
he had recourse
to the following crude and barbarous operation,
which it appears is not uncommon among these people in their native state.
He made a fire,
and dug a hole in the earth only sufficiently large
to admit his leg,
and deep enough
to allow the wounded part
to be on a level
with the surface of the ground.
He then surrounded the limb
with the live coals or charcoal,
which was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off.
The cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage,
and he was able in a day or two
to hobble down
to the Sound,
with the aid of a long stout stick,
although he was more than a week on the road."
But he was a fastidious native.
He soon discarded the wooden leg made
for him by the doctor,
because
"it had no feeling in it."
It must have had as much as the one he burnt off,
I should think.
So much
for the Aboriginals.
It is difficult
for me
to let them alone.
They are marvelously interesting creatures.
For a quarter of a century,
now,
the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in comfortable stations,
and fed them well and taken good care of them in every way.
If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have seen some of those people--but I didn't.
I would walk thirty miles
to see a stuffed one.
Australia has a slang of its own.
This is a matter of course.
The vast cattle and sheep industries,
the strange aspects of the country,
and the strange native animals,
brute and human,
are matters which would naturally breed a local slang.
I have notes of this slang somewhere,
but at the moment I can call
to mind only a few of the words and phrases.
They are expressive ones.
The wide,
sterile,
unpeopled deserts have created eloquent phrases like
"No Man's Land
"
and the
"Never-never Country."
Also this felicitous form:
"She lives in the Never-never Country"--that is,
she is an old maid.
And this one is not without merit:
"heifer-paddock"--young ladies'
seminary.
"Bail up"
and
"stick up"
equivalent of our highwayman-term to
"hold up"
a stage-coach or a train.
"New-chum"
is the equivalent of our
"tenderfoot"--new arrival.
And then there is the immortal
"My word!
"We must import it.
"M-y word!
"In cold print it is the equivalent of our
"Ger-rreat Caesar!"
but spoken
with the proper Australian unction and fervency,
it is worth six of it
for grace and charm and expressiveness.
Our form is rude and explosive;
it is not suited
to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock;
but
"M-y word!"
is,
and is music
to the ear,
too,
when the utterer knows how
to say it.
I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean,
but it struck me coldly,
it aroused no sympathy.
That was because it was the dead corpse of the thing,
the
'soul was not there--the tones were lacking--the informing spirit--the deep feeling--the eloquence.
But the first time I heard an Australian say it,
it was positively thrilling.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Be careless in your dress if you must,
but keep a tidy soul.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
We left Adelaide in due course,
and went
to Horsham,
in the colony of Victoria;
a good deal of a journey,
if I remember rightly,
but pleasant.
Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor--one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often;
gray,
bare,
sombre,
melancholy,
baked,
cracked,
in the tedious long drouths,
but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain.
A country town,
peaceful,
reposeful,
inviting,
full of snug homes,
with garden plots,
and plenty of shrubbery and flowers.
"Horsham,
October 17.
At the hotel.
The weather divine.
Across the way,
in front of the London Bank of Australia,
is a very handsome cottonwood.
It is in opulent leaf,
and every leaf perfect.
The full power of the on-rushing spring is upon it,
and I imagine I can see it grow.
Alongside the bank and a little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring fountain- sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze,
and mottled
with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like flash- lights through an opal--a most beautiful tree,
and a striking contrast
to the cottonwood.
Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly defined--it is a kodak
for faithful,
hard,
unsentimental detail;
the other an impressionist picture,
delicious
to look upon,
full of a subtle and exquisite charm,
but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft loveliness."
It turned out,
upon inquiry,
to be a pepper tree--an importation from China.
It has a silky sheen,
soft and rich.
I saw some that had long red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage.
At a distance,
in certain lights,
they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new charm.
There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham.
We were driven out
to it by its chief.
The conveyance was an open wagon;
the time,
noonday;
no wind;
the sky without a cloud,
the sunshine brilliant-- and the mercury at 92 deg.
in the shade.
In some countries an indolent unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have been a sweltering and prostrating experience;
but there was nothing of that in this case.
It is a climate that is perfect.
There was no sense of heat;
indeed,
there was no heat;
the air was fine and pure and exhilarating;
if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not have felt any discomfort,
or grown silent or droopy or tired.
Of course,
the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere.
In that plain 112 deg.
in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is 88 or 90 deg.
in New York.
The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed
to me
to be a hundred yards wide between the fences.
I was not given the width in yards,
but only in chains and perches--and furlongs,
I think.
I would have given a good deal
to know what the width was,
but I did not pursue the matter.
I think it is best
to put up
with information the way you get it;
and seem satisfied
with it,
and surprised at it,
and grateful
for it,
and say,
"My word!"
and never let on.
It was a wide space;
I could tell you how wide,
in chains and perches and furlongs and things,
but that would not help you any.
Those things sound well,
but they are shadowy and indefinite,
like troy weight and avoirdupois;
nobody knows what they mean.
When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you which you want,
troy or avoirdupois,
it is best
to say
"Yes,"
and shift the subject.
They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and cattle- raising days.
People had
to drive their stock long distances--immense journeys--from worn-out places
to new ones where were water and fresh pasturage;
and this wide space had
to be left in grass and unfenced,
or the stock would have starved
to death in the transit.
On the way we saw the usual birds--the beautiful little green parrots,
the magpie,
and some others;
and also the slender native bird of modest plumage and the eternally-forgettable name--the bird that is the smartest among birds,
and can give a parrot 30
to 1 in the game and then talk him
to death.
I cannot recall that bird's name.
I think it begins
with M.
I wish it began
with G.
or something that a person can remember.
The magpie was out in great force,
in the fields and on the fences.
He is a handsome large creature,
with snowy white decorations,
and is a singer;
he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely.
He was once modest,
even diffident;
but he lost all that when he found out that he was Australia's sole musical bird.
He has talent,
and cuteness,
and impudence;
and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet--never coming when he is called,
always coming when he isn't,
and studying disobedience as an accomplishment.
He is not confined,
but loafs all over the house and grounds,
like the laughing jackass.
I think he learns
to talk,
I know he learns
to sing tunes,
and his friends say that he knows how
to steal without learning.
I was acquainted
with a tame magpie in Melbourne.
He had lived in a lady's house several years,
and believed he owned it.
The lady had tamed him,
and in return he had tamed the lady.
He was always on deck when not wanted,
always having his own way,
always tyrannizing over the dog,
and always making the cat's life a slow sorrow and a martyrdom.
He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in perfect time and tune;
and would do it,
too,
at any time that silence was wanted;
and then encore himself and do it again;
but if he was asked
to sing he would go out and take a walk.
It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and waterless plain around Horsham,
but the agricultural college has dissipated that idea.
Its ample nurseries were producing oranges,
apricots,
lemons,
almonds,
peaches,
cherries,
48 varieties of apples--in fact,
all manner of fruits,
and in abundance.
The trees did not seem
to miss the water;
they were in vigorous and flourishing condition.
Experiments are made
with different soils,
to see what things thrive best in them and what climates are best
for them.
A man who is ignorantly trying
to produce upon his farm things not suited
to its soil and its other conditions can make a journey
to the college from anywhere in Australia,
and go back
with a change of scheme which will make his farm productive and profitable.
There were forty pupils there--a few of them farmers,
relearning their trade,
the rest young men mainly from the cities--novices.
It seemed a strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction
for city-bred youths,
but such is the fact.
They are good stuff,
too;
they are above the agricultural average of intelligence,
and they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long descent.
The students work all day in the fields,
the nurseries,
and the shearing- sheds,
learning and doing all the practical work of the business--three days in a week.
On the other three they study and hear lectures.
They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculture--like chemistry,
for instance.
We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep.
They did it by hand,
not
with the machine.
The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there;
and the students took off his coat
with great celerity and adroitness.
Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep,
but that is customary
with shearers,
and they don't mind it;
they don't even mind it as much as the sheep.
They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right ahead.
The coat of wool was unbelievably thick.
Before the shearing the sheep looked like the fat woman in the circus;
after it he looked like a bench.
He was clipped
to the skin;
and smoothly and uniformly.
The fleece comes from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket.
The college was flying the Australian flag--the gridiron of England smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red field that had the random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it.
>From Horsham we went
to Stawell.
By rail.
Still in the colony of Victoria.
Stawell is in the gold-mining country.
In the bank-safe was half a peck of surface-gold--gold dust,
grain gold;
rich;
pure in fact,
and pleasant
to sift through one's fingers;
and would be pleasanter if it would stick.
And there were a couple of gold bricks,
very heavy
to handle,
and worth $7,500 a piece.
They were from a very valuable quartz mine;
a lady owns two-thirds of it;
she has an income of $75,000 a month from it,
and is able
to keep house.
The Stawell region is not productive of gold only;
it has great vineyards,
and produces exceptionally fine wines.
One of these vineyards--the Great Western,
owned by Mr. Irving--is regarded as a model.
Its product has reputation abroad.
It yields a choice champagne and a fine claret,
and its hock took a prize in France two or three years ago.
The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground,
cut in the rock,
to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term required
to perfect it.
In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of champagne.
The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000,
and those people are said
to drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year.
The dryest community on the earth.
The government has lately reduced the duty upon foreign wines.
That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection.
A man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy enterprise,
upon the faith of existing laws;
then the law is changed,
and the man is robbed by his own government.
On the way back
to Stawell we had a chance
to see a group of boulders called the Three Sisters--a curiosity oddly located;
for it was upon high ground,
with the land sloping away from it,
and no height above it from whence the boulders could have rolled down.
Relics of an early ice- drift,
perhaps.
They are noble boulders.
One of them has the size and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern.
The road led through a forest of great gum-trees,
lean and scraggy and sorrowful.
The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth,
apparently.
Along it toiled occasional freight wagons,
drawn by long double files of oxen.
Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles,
I was told,
and were running a successful opposition
to the railway! The railways are owned and run by the government.
Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay,
pictures of patience and resignation.
It is a tree that can get along without water;
still it is fond of it--ravenously so.
It is a very intelligent tree and will detect the presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet,
and send out slender long root-fibres
to prospect it.
They will find it;
and will also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick.
Once a cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began
to gradually reduce its output,
and finally ceased altogether
to deliver water.
Upon examining into the matter it was found stopped up,
wadded compactly
with a mass of root-fibres,
delicate and hair-like.
How this stuff had gotten into the pipe was a puzzle
for some little time;
finally it was found that it had crept in through a crack that was almost invisible
to the eye.
A gum tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drinking the water.
CHAPTER XXIV.
There is no such thing as
"the Queen's English."
The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares! --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Frequently,
in Australia,
one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort.
We had this kind of scenery,
finely staged,
all the way
to Ballarat.
Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey.
At one time a great stretch of the vault was densely flecked
with wee ragged-edged flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff,
all of one shape and size,
and equidistant apart,
with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between.
The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across the skies.
By and by these flakes fused themselves together in interminable lines,
with shady faint hollows between the lines,
the long satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated movement,
and enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea.
Later,
the sea solidified itself;
then gradually broke up its mass into innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size,
and ranged these across the firmament,
in receding and fading perspective,
in the similitude of a stupendous colonnade--a mirage without a doubt flung from the far Gates of the Hereafter.
The approaches
to Ballarat were beautiful.
The features,
great green expanses of rolling pasture-land,
bisected by eye contenting hedges of commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse--and a lovely lake.
One must put in the pause,
there,
to fetch the reader up
with a slight jolt,
and keep him from gliding by without noticing the lake.
One must notice it;
for a lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of Australia as are the dry places.
Ninety-two in the shade again,
but balmy and comfortable,
fresh and bracing.
A perfect climate.
Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely.
Nobody had ever heard of it.
On the 25th of August,
1851,
the first great gold-strike made in Australia was made here.
The wandering prospectors who made it scraped up two pounds and a half of gold the first day-worth $600.
A few days later the place was a hive--a town.
The news of the strike spread everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way -spread like a flash
to the very ends of the earth.
A celebrity so prompt and so universal has hardly been paralleled in history,
perhaps.
It was as if the name BALLARAT had suddenly been written on the sky,
where all the world could read it at once.
The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three months before had already started emigrants toward Australia;
they had been coming as a stream,
but they came as a flood,
now.
A hundred thousand people poured into Melbourne from England and other countries in a single month,
and flocked away
to the mines.
The crews of the ships that brought them flocked
with them;
the clerks in the government offices followed;
so did the cooks,
the maids,
the coachmen,
the butlers,
and the other domestic servants;
so did the carpenters,
the smiths,
the plumbers,
the painters,
the reporters,
the editors,
the lawyers,
the clients,
the barkeepers,
the bummers,
the blacklegs,
the thieves,
the loose women,
the grocers,
the butchers,
the bakers,
the doctors,
the druggists,
the nurses;
so did the police;
even officials of high and hitherto envied place threw up their positions and joined the procession.
This roaring avalanche swept out of Melbourne and left it desolate,
Sunday-like,
paralyzed,
everything at a stand-still,
the ships lying idle at anchor,
all signs of life departed,
all sounds stilled save the rasping of the cloud-shadows as they scraped across the vacant streets.
That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open,
and lacerated and scarified and gutted,
in the feverish search
for its hidden riches.
There is nothing like surface-mining
to snatch the graces and beauties and benignities out of a paradise,
and make an odious and repulsive spectacle of it.
What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and reloaded--and went back home
for good in the same cabin they had come out in! Not all of them.
Only some.
I saw the others in Ballarat myself,
forty-five years later--what were left of them by time and death and the disposition
to rove.
They were young and gay,
then;
they are patriarchal and grave,
now;
and they do not get excited any more.
They talk of the Past.
They live in it.
Their life is a dream,
a retrospection.
Ballarat was a great region for
"nuggets."
No such nuggets were found in California as Ballarat produced.
In fact,
the Ballarat region has yielded the largest ones known
to history.
Two of them weighed about 180 pounds each,
and together were worth $90,000.
They were offered
to any poor person who would shoulder them and carry them away.
Gold was so plentiful that it made people liberal like that.
Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days.
Everybody was happy,
for a time,
and apparently prosperous.
Then came trouble.
The government swooped down
with a mining tax.
And in its worst form,
too;
for it was not a tax upon what the miner had taken out,
but upon what he was going
to take out--if he could find it.
It was a license-tax license
to work his claim--and it had
to be paid before he could begin digging.
Consider the situation.
No business is so uncertain as surface-mining.
Your claim may be good,
and it may be worthless.
It may make you well off in a month;
and then again you may have
to dig and slave
for half a year,
at heavy expense,
only
to find out at last that the gold is not there in cost-paying quantity,
and that your time and your hard work have been thrown away.
It might be wise policy
to advance the miner a monthly sum
to encourage him
to develop the country's riches;
but
to tax him monthly in advance instead--why,
such a thing was never dreamed of in America.
There,
neither the claim itself nor its products,
howsoever rich or poor,
were taxed.
The Ballarat miners protested,
petitioned,
complained--it was of no use;
the government held its ground,
and went on collecting the tax.
And not by pleasant methods,
but by ways which must have been very galling
to free people.
The rumblings of a coming storm began
to be audible.
By and by there was a result;
and I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history.
It was a revolution--small in size;
but great politically;
it was a strike
for liberty,
a struggle
for a principle,
a stand against injustice and oppression.
It was the Barons and John,
over again;
it was Hampden and Ship-Money;
it was Concord and Lexington;
small beginnings,
all of them,
but all of them great in political results,
all of them epoch-making.
It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle.
It adds an honorable page
to history;
the people know it and are proud of it.
They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka Stockade,
and Peter Lalor has his monument.
The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold.
This soil the miners ripped and tore and trenched and harried and disembowled,
and made it yield up its immense treasure.
Then they went down into the earth
with deep shafts,
seeking the gravelly beds of ancient rivers and brooks--and found them.
They followed the courses of these streams,
and gutted them,
sending the gravel up in buckets
to the upper world,
and washing out of it its enormous deposits of gold.
The next biggest of the two monster nuggets mentioned above came from an old river-channel 180 feet under ground.
Finally the quartz lodes were attacked.
That is not poor-man's mining.
Quartz-mining and milling require capital,
and staying-power,
and patience.
Big companies were formed,
and
for several decades,
now,
the lodes have been successfully worked,
and have yielded great wealth.
Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines--taking the three kinds of mining together--have contributed
to the world's pocket something over three hundred millions of dollars,
which is
to say that this nearly invisible little spot on the earth's surface has yielded about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years as all California has yielded in forty-seven.
The Californian aggregate,
from 1848
to 1895,
inclusive,
as reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint,
is $1,265,215,217.
A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines.
With all my experience of mining I had never heard of anything of the sort before.
The main gold reef runs about north and south--of course
for that is the custom of a rich gold reef.
At Ballarat its course is between walls of slate.
Now the citizen told me that throughout a stretch of twelve miles along the reef,
the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black streak of a carbonaceous nature--a streak in the slate;
a streak no thicker than a pencil--and that wherever it crosses the reef you will certainly find gold at the junction.
It is called the Indicator.
Thirty feet on each side of the Indicator
(and down in the slate,
of course)
is a still finer streak--a streak as fine as a pencil mark;
and indeed,
that is its name Pencil Mark.
Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that thirty feet from it is the Indicator;
you measure the distance,
excavate,
find the Indicator,
trace it straight
to the reef,
and sink your shaft;
your fortune is made,
for certain.
If that is true,
it is curious.
And it is curious anyway.
Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population;
and yet,
since it is in Australia,
it has every essential of an advanced and enlightened big city.
This is pure matter of course.
I must stop dwelling upon these things.
It is hard
to keep from dwelling upon them,
though;
for it is difficult
to get away from the surprise of it.
I will let the other details go,
this time,
but I must allow myself
to mention that this little town has a park of 326 acres;
a flower garden of 83 acres,
with an elaborate and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine statuary;
and an artificial lake covering 600 acres,
equipped
with a fleet of 200 shells,
small sail boats,
and little steam yachts.
At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was tempted
to add.
I do not strike them out because they were not true or not well said,
but because I find them better said by another man--and a man more competent
to testify,
too,
because he belongs on the ground,
and knows.
I clip them from a chatty speech delivered some years ago by Mr. William Little,
who was at that time mayor of Ballarat:
"The language of our citizens,
in this as in other parts of Australasia,
is mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon,
free from Americanisms,
vulgarisms,
and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland,
and is pure enough
to suit a Trench or a Latham.
Our youth,
aided by climatic influence,
are in point of physique and comeliness unsurpassed in the Sunny South.
Our young men are well ordered;
and our maidens,
'not stepping over the bounds of modesty,'
are as fair as Psyches,
dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers."
The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment,
but that is apparent only,
not real.
November is summer-time there.
His compliment
to the local purity of the language is warranted.
It is quite free from impurities;
this is acknowledged far and wide.
As in the German Empire all cultivated people claim
to speak Hanovarian German,
so in Australasia all cultivated people claim
to speak Ballarat English.
Even in England this cult has made considerable progress,
and now that it is favored by the two great Universities,
the time is not far away when Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of Great Britain at large.
Its great merit is,
that it is shorter than ordinary English--that is,
it is more compressed.
At first you have some difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator whom I have quoted speaks it.
An illustration will show what I mean.
When he called and I handed him a chair,
he bowed and said:
"Q."
Presently,
when we were lighting our cigars,
he held a match
to mine and I said:
"Thank you,"
and he said:
"Km."
Then I saw.
'Q'
is the end of the phrase
"I thank you"
'Km'
is the end of the phrase
"You are welcome."
Mr.Little puts no emphasis upon either of them,
but delivers them so reduced that they hardly have a sound.
All Ballarat English is like that,
and the effect is very soft and pleasant;
it takes all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and gives
to it a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the faint rustling of the forest leaves.
CHAPTER XXV.
"Classic."
A book which people praise and don't read.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
On the rail again--bound
for Bendigo.
From diary:
October 23.
Got up at 6,
left at 7.30;
soon reached Castlemaine,
one of the rich gold-fields of the early days;
waited several hours
for a train;
left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour.
For comrade,
a Catholic priest who was better than I was,
but didn't seem
to know it--a man full of graces of the heart,
the mind,
and the spirit;
a lovable man.
He will rise.
He will be a bishop some day.
Later an Archbishop.
Later a Cardinal.
Finally an Archangel,
I hope.
And then he will recall me when I say,
"Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat
to Bendigo,
when you were nothing but Father C.,
and I was nothing
to what I am now?"
It has actually taken nine hours
to come from Ballarat
to Bendigo.
We could have saved seven by walking.
However,
there was no hurry.
Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days.
It does a great quartz-mining business,
now--that business which,
more than any other that I know of,
teaches patience,
and requires grit and a steady nerve.
The town is full of towering chimney-stacks,
and hoisting-works,
and looks like a petroleum-city.
Speaking of patience;
for example,
one of the local companies went steadily on
with its deep borings and searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward
for eleven years-- then struck it,
and became suddenly rich.
The eleven years'
work had cost $55,000,
and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's head.
It is kept under locks and bars,
as a precious thing,
and is reverently shown
to the visitor,
"hats off."
When I saw it I had not heard its history.
"It is gold.
Examine it--take the glass.
Now how much should you say it is worth?"
I said:
"I should say about two cents;
or in your English dialect,
four farthings."
"Well,
it cost L11,000."
"Oh,
come!"
"Yes,
it did.
Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental nuggets of the world,
and this one is the monumentalest one of the three.
The other two represent 19,000 a piece;
this one a couple of thousand more.
It is small,
and not much
to look at,
but it is entitled to
(its)
name--Adam.
It is the Adam-nugget of this mine,
and its children run up into the millions."
Speaking of patience again,
another of the mines was worked,
under heavy expenses,
during 17 years before pay was struck,
and still another one compelled a wait of 21 years before pay was struck;
then,
in both instances,
the outlay was all back in a year or two,
with compound interest.
Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat.
The two together have produced $650,000,000 worth--which is half as much as California has produced.
It was through Mr. Blank--not
to go into particulars about his name--it was mainly through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably pleasant and interesting.
He explained this
to me himself.
He told me that it was through his influence that the city government invited me
to the town-hall
to hear complimentary speeches and respond
to them;
that it was through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive through the city and shown its notable features;
that it was through his influence that I was invited
to visit the great mines;
that it was through his influence that I was taken
to the hospital and allowed
to see the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely hut eight weeks before by robbers,
and stabbed forty-six times and scalped besides;
that it was through his influence that when I arrived this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting up in his cot letting on
to read one of my books;
that it was through his influence that efforts had been made
to get the Catholic Archbishop of Bendigo
to invite me
to dinner;
that it was through his influence that efforts had been made
to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo
to ask me
to supper;
that it was through his influence that the dean of the editorial fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown me,
from the summit of Lone Tree Hill,
the mightiest and loveliest expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all Australia.
And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo and I answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had adorned the streets
with 105 miles of shade trees,
he said that it was through his influence that it had been done.
But I am not representing him quite correctly.
He did not say it was through his influence that all these things had happened--for that would have been coarse;
be merely conveyed that idea;
conveyed it so subtly that I only caught it fleetingly,
as one catches vagrant faint breaths of perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer;
conveyed it without offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation--but conveyed it,
nevertheless.
He was an Irishman;
an educated gentleman;
grave,
and kindly,
and courteous;
a bachelor,
and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old,
apparently.
He called upon me at the hotel,
and it was there that we had this talk.
He made me like him,
and did it without trouble.
This was partly through his winning and gentle ways,
but mainly through the amazing familiarity
with my books which his conversation showed.
He was down
to date
with them,
too;
and if he had made them the study of his life he could hardly have been better posted as
to their contents than he was.
He made me better satisfied
with myself than I had ever been before.
It was plain that he had a deep fondness
for humor,
yet he never laughed;
he never even chuckled;
in fact,
humor could not win
to outward expression on his face at all.
No,
he was always grave--tenderly,
pensively grave;
but he made me laugh,
all along;
and this was very trying--and very pleasant at the same time--for it was at quotations from my own books.
When he was going,
he turned and said:
"You don't remember me?"
"I?
Why,
no.
Have we met before?"
"No,
it was a matter of correspondence."
"Correspondence?"
"Yes,
many years ago.
Twelve or fifteen.
Oh,
longer than that.
But of course you----"
A musing pause.
Then he said:
"Do you remember Corrigan Castle?"
"N-no,
I believe I don't.
I don't seem
to recall the name."
He waited a moment,
pondering,
with the door-knob in his hand,
then started out;
but turned back and said that I had once been interested in Corrigan Castle,
and asked me if I would go
with him
to his quarters in the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over.
I was a teetotaler and liked relaxation,
so I said I would.
We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten.
He had a most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor,
with good pictures on the walls,
Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel,
and here and there,
and books everywhere-largely mine;
which made me proud.
The light was brilliant,
the easy chairs were deep-cushioned,
the arrangements
for brewing and smoking were all there.
We brewed and lit up;
then he passed a sheet of note-paper
to me and said--
"Do you remember that?"
"Oh,
yes,
indeed!"
The paper was of a sumptuous quality.
At the top was a twisted and interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red,
in the ornate English fashion of long years ago;
and under it,
in neat gothic capitals was this--printed in blue:
THE MARK TWAIN CLUB CORRIGAN CASTLE ............187..
"My!"
said I,
"how did you come by this?"
"I was President of it."
"No! --you don't mean it."
"It is true.
I was its first President.
I was re-elected annually as long as its meetings were held in my castle--Corrigan--which was five years."
Then he showed me an album
with twenty-three photographs of me in it.
Five of them were of old dates,
the others of various later crops;
the list closed
with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.
"You sent us the first five;
the rest were bought."
This was paradise! We ran late,
and talked,
talked,
talked--subject,
the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle,
Ireland.
My first knowledge of that Club dates away back;
all of twenty years,
I should say.
It came
to me in the form of a courteous letter,
written on the note-paper which I have described,
and signed
"By order of the President;
C.
PEMBROKE,
Secretary."
It conveyed the fact that the Club had been created in my honor,
and added the hope that this token of appreciation of my work would meet
with my approval.
I answered,
with thanks;
and did what I could
to keep my gratification from over-exposure.
It was then that the long correspondence began.
A letter came back,
by order of the President,
furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two in number.
With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws,
in pamphlet form,
and artistically printed.
The initiation fee and dues were in their proper place;
also,
schedule of meetings--monthly--for essays upon works of mine,
followed by discussions;
quarterly
for business and a supper,
without essays,
but
with after-supper speeches also,
there was a list of the officers:
President,
Vice-President,
Secretary,
Treasurer,
etc.
The letter was brief,
but it was pleasant reading,
for it told me about the strong interest which the membership took in their new venture,
etc.,
etc.
It also asked me
for a photograph --a special one.
I went down and sat
for it and sent it--with a letter,
of course.
Presently came the badge of the Club,
and very dainty and pretty it was;
and very artistic.
It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of grass-sprays and rushes,
and was done in enamels on a gold basis,
and had a gold pin back of it.
After I had petted it,
and played
with it,
and caressed it,
and enjoyed it a couple of hours,
the light happened
to fall upon it at a new angle,
and revealed
to me a cunning new detail;
with the light just right,
certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and rush- stems wove themselves into a monogram--mine! You can see that that jewel was a work of art.
And when you come
to consider the intrinsic value of it,
you must concede that it is not every literary club that could afford a badge like that.
It was easily worth $75,
in the opinion of Messrs.
Marcus and Ward of New York.
They said they could not duplicate it
for that and make a profit.
By this time the Club was well under way;
and from that time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well supplied
with business.
He reported the Club's discussions of my books
with laborious fullness,
and did his work
with great spirit and ability.
As a,
rule,
he synopsized;
but when a speech was especially brilliant,
he short-handed it and gave me the best passages from it,
written out.
There were five speakers whom he particularly favored in that way:
Palmer,
Forbes,
Naylor,
Norris,
and Calder.
Palmer and Forbes could never get through a speech without attacking each other,
and each in his own way was formidably effective--Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse,
Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire.
I could always tell which of them was talking without looking
for his name.
Naylor had a polished style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor;
Norris's style was wholly without ornament,
but enviably compact,
lucid,
and strong.
But after all,
Calder was the gem.
He never spoke when sober,
he spoke continuously when he wasn't.
And certainly they were the drunkest speeches that a man ever uttered.
They were full of good things,
but so incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim
to follow him.
They were not intended
to be funny,
but they were,--funny
for the very gravity which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of incongruity.
In the course of five years I came
to know the styles of the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own club at home.
These reports came every month.
They were written on foolscap,
600 words
to the page,
and usually about twenty-five pages in a report--a good 15,000 words,
I should say,--a solid week's work.
The reports were absorbingly entertaining,
long as they were;
but,
unfortunately
for me,
they did not come alone.
They were always accompanied by a lot of questions about passages and purposes in my books,
which the Club wanted answered;
and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's report,
and the Auditor's report,
and the Committee's report,
and the President's review,
and my opinion of these was always desired;
also suggestions
for the good of the Club,
if any occurred
to me.
By and by I came
to dread those things;
and this dread grew and grew and grew;
grew until I got
to anticipating them
with a cold horror.
For I was an indolent man,
and not fond of letter-writing,
and whenever these things came I had
to put everything by and sit down--for my own peace of mind--and dig and dig until I got something out of my head which would answer
for a reply.
I got along fairly well the first year;
but
for the succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my curse,
my nightmare,
the grief and misery of my life.
And I got so,
so sick of sitting
for photographs.
I sat every year
for five years,
trying
to satisfy that insatiable organization.
Then at last I rose in revolt.
I could endure my oppressions no longer.
I pulled my fortitude together and tore off my chains,
and was a free man again,
and happy.
From that day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived,
and by and by they ceased
to come.
Well,
in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this all out in full confession.
Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank way,
and
with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the Mark Twain Club,
and the only member it had ever had! Why,
it was matter
for anger,
but I didn't feel any.
He said he never had
to work
for a living,
and that by the time he was thirty life had become a bore and a weariness
to him.
He had no interests left;
they had paled and perished,
one by one,
and left him desolate.
He had begun
to think of suicide.
Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of starting an imaginary club,
and went straightway
to work at it,
with enthusiasm and love.
He was charmed
with it;
it gave him something
to do.
It elaborated itself on his hands;--it became twenty times more complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it.
Every new addition
to his original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a fresh interest and a new pleasure.
He designed the Club badge himself,
and worked over it,
altering and improving it,
a number of days and nights;
then sent
to London and had it made.
It was the only one that was made.
It was made
for me;
the
"rest of the Club"
went without.
He invented the thirty-two members and their names.
He invented the five favorite speakers and their five separate styles.
He invented their speeches,
and reported them himself.
He would have kept that Club going until now,
if I hadn't deserted,
he said.
He said he worked like a slave over those reports;
each of them cost him from a week
to a fortnight's work,
and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing
to be alive.
It was a bitter blow
to him when the Club died.
Finally,
there wasn't any Corrigan Castle.
He had invented that,
too.
It was wonderful--the whole thing;
and altogether the most ingenious and laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard of.
And I liked it;
liked
to bear him tell about it;
yet I have been a hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember.
Finally he said--
"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago,
telling about your lecture tour in Australia,
and your death and burial in Melbourne?
--a note from Henry Bascomb,
of Bascomb Hall,
Upper Holywell Hants."
"Yes."
"I wrote it."
"M-y-word!"
"Yes,
I did it.
I don't know why.
I just took the notion,
and carried it out without stopping
to think.
It was wrong.
It could have done harm.
I was always sorry about it afterward.
You must forgive me.
I was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht,
on his voyage around the world.
He often spoke of you,
and of the pleasant times you had had together in his home;
and the notion took me,
there in Melbourne,
and I imitated his hand,
and wrote the letter."
So the mystery was cleared up,
after so many,
many years.
CHAPTER XXVI.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep from telling their happinesses
to the unhappy.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
After visits
to Maryborough and some other Australian towns,
we presently took passage
for New Zealand.
If it would not look too much like showing off,
I would tell the reader where New Zealand is;
for he is as I was;
he thinks he knows.
And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is;
and how
to pronounce pariah;
and how
to use the word unique without exposing himself
to the derision of the dictionary.
But in truth,
he knows none of these things.
There are but four or five people in the world who possess this knowledge,
and these make their living out of it.
They travel from place
to place,
visiting literary assemblages,
geographical societies,
and seats of learning,
and springing sudden bets that these people do not know these things.
Since all people think they know them,
they are an easy prey
to these adventurers.
Or rather they were an easy prey until the law interfered,
three months ago,
and a New York court decided that this kind of gambling is illegal,
"because it traverses Article IV,
Section 9,
of the Constitution of the United States,
which forbids betting on a sure thing."
This decision was rendered by the full Bench of the New York Supreme Court,
after a test sprung upon the court by counsel
for the prosecution,
which showed that none of the nine Judges was able
to answer any of the four questions.
All people think that New Zealand is close
to Australia or Asia,
or somewhere,
and that you cross
to it on a bridge.
But that is not so.
It is not close
to anything,
but lies by itself,
out in the water.
It is nearest
to Australia,
but still not near.
The gap between is very wide.
It will be a surprise
to the reader,
as it was
to me,
to learn that the distance from Australia
to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred miles,
and that there is no bridge.
I learned this from Professor X.,
of Yale University,
whom I met in the steamer on the great lakes when I was crossing the continent
to sail across the Pacific.
I asked him about New Zealand,
in order
to make conversation.
I supposed he would generalize a little without compromising himself,
and then turn the subject
to something he was acquainted with,
and my object would then be attained;
the ice would be broken,
and we could go smoothly on,
and get acquainted,
and have a pleasant time.
But,
to my surprise,
he was not only not embarrassed by my question,
but seemed
to welcome it,
and
to take a distinct interest in it.
He began
to talk--fluently,
confidently,
comfortably;
and as he talked,
my admiration grew and grew;
for as the subject developed under his hands,
I saw that he not only knew where New Zealand was,
but that he was minutely familiar
with every detail of its history,
politics,
religions,
and commerce,
its fauna,
flora.,
geology,
products,
and climatic peculiarities.
When he was done,
I was lost in wonder and admiration,
and said
to myself,
he knows everything;
in the domain of human knowledge he is king.
I wanted
to see him do more miracles;
and so,
just
for the pleasure of hearing him answer,
I asked him about Hertzegovina,
and pariah,
and unique.
But he began
to generalize then,
and show distress.
I saw that
with New Zealand gone,
he was a Samson shorn of his locks;
he was as other men.
This was a curious and interesting mystery,
and I was frank
with him,
and asked him
to explain it.
He tried
to avoid it at first;
but then laughed and said that after all,
the matter was not worth concealment,
so he would let me into the secret.
In substance,
this is his story:
"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home,
when a card came up--the card of a stranger.
Under the name was printed a line which showed that this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington University,
New Zealand.
I was troubled--troubled,
I mean,
by the shortness of the notice.
College etiquette required that he be at once invited
to dinner by some member of the Faculty--invited
to dine on that day--not,
put off till a subsequent day.
I did not quite know what
to do.
College etiquette requires,
in the case of a foreign guest,
that the dinner-talk shall begin
with complimentary references
to his country,
its great men,
its services
to civilization,
its seats of learning,
and things like that;
and of course the host is responsible,
and must either begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else.
I was in great difficulty;
and the more I searched my memory,
the more my trouble grew.
I found that I knew nothing about New Zealand.
I thought I knew where it was,
and that was all.
I had an impression that it was close
to Australia,
or Asia,
or somewhere,
and that one went over
to it on a bridge.
This might turn out
to be incorrect;
and even if correct,
it would not furnish matter enough
for the purpose at the dinner,
and I should expose my College
to shame before my guest;
he would see that I,
a member of the Faculty of the first University in America,
was wholly ignorant of his country,
and he would go away and tell this,
and laugh at it.
The thought of it made my face burn.
"I sent
for my wife and told her how I was situated,
and asked
for her help,
and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself,
if I had not been excited and worried.
She said she would go and tell the visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes;
and she would talk,
and keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and make Professor Lawson give the dinner.
For Lawson knew everything,
and could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the University.
I ran
to Lawson,
but was disappointed.
He did not know anything about New Zealand.
He said that,
as far as his recollection went it was close
to Australia,
or Asia,
or somewhere,
and you go over
to it on a bridge;
but that was all he knew.
It was too bad.
Lawson was a perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning;
but now in this hour of our need,
it turned out that he did not know any useful thing.
"We consulted.
He saw that the reputation of the University was in very real peril,
and he walked the floor in anxiety,
talking,
and trying
to think out some way
to meet the difficulty.
Presently he decided that we must try the rest of the Faculty--some of them might know about New Zealand.
So we went
to the telephone and called up the professor of astronomy and asked him,
and he said that all he knew was,
that it was close
to Australia,
or Asia,
or somewhere,
and you went over
to it on----
"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology,
and he said that all he knew was that it was close
to Aus----.
"We shut him off,
and sat down,
worried and disheartened,
to see if we could think up some other scheme.
We shortly hit upon one which promised well,
and this one we adopted,
and set its machinery going at once.
It was this.
Lawson must give the dinner.
The Faculty must be notified by telephone
to prepare.
We must all get
to work diligently,
and at the end of eight hours and a half we must come
to dinner acquainted
with New Zealand;
at least well enough informed
to appear without discredit before this native.
To seem properly intelligent we should have
to know about New Zealand's population,
and politics,
and form of government,
and commerce,
and taxes,
and products,
and ancient history,
and modern history,
and varieties of religion,
and nature of the laws,
and their codification,
and amount of revenue,
and whence drawn,
and methods of collection,
and percentage of loss,
and character of climate,
and--well,
a lot of things like that;
we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry.
And while we posted up in this way,
the Faculty's wives must flock over,
one after the other,
in a studiedly casual way,
and help my wife keep the New Zealander quiet,
and not let him get out and come interfering
with our studies.
The scheme worked admirably;
but it stopped business,
stopped it entirely.
"It is in the official log-book of Yale,
to be read and wondered at by future generations--the account of the Great Blank Day--the memorable Blank Day--the day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped,
a Sunday silence prevailed all about,
and the whole University stood still while the Faculty read-up and qualified itself
to sit at meat,
"without shame,
in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from New Zealand:
"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn--but we were posted.
Yes,
it is fair
to claim that.
In fact,
erudition is a pale name
for it.
New Zealand was the only subject;
and it was just beautiful
to hear us ripple it out.
And
with such an air of unembarrassed ease,
and unostentatious familiarity
with detail,
and trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh,
the grace and fluency of it!
"Well,
finally somebody happened
to notice that the guest was looking dazed,
and wasn't saying anything.
So they stirred him up,
of course.
Then that man came out
with a good,
honest,
eloquent compliment that made the Faculty blush.
He said be was not worthy
to sit in the company of men like these;
that he had been silent from admiration;
that he had been silent from another cause also--silent from shame--silent from ignorance!
'For,'
said he,
'I,
who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have served five in a professorship,
and ought
to know much about that country,
perceive,
now,
that I know almost nothing about it.
I say it
with shame,
that I have learned fifty times,
yes,
a hundred times more about New Zealand in these two hours at this table than I ever knew before in all the eighteen years put together.
I was silent because I could not help myself.
What I knew about taxes,
and policies,
and laws,
and revenue,
and products,
and history,
and all that multitude of things,
was but general,
and ordinary,
and vague-unscientific,
in a word--and it would have been insanity
to expose it here
to the searching glare of your amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters,
gentlemen.
I beg you
to let me sit silent--as becomes me.
But do not change the subject;
I can at least follow you,
in this one;
whereas if you change
to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty erudition,
I shall be as one lost.
If you know all this about a remote little inconsequent patch like New Zealand,
ah,
what wouldn't you know about any other Subject!'
"
CHAPTER XXVIL Man is the Only Animal that Blushes.
Or needs to.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession,
what there is of it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
FROM DIARY:
November 1--noon.
A fine day,
a brilliant sun.
Warm in the sun,
cold in the shade--an icy breeze blowing out of the south.
A solemn long swell rolling up northward.
It comes from the South Pole,
with nothing in the way
to obstruct its march and tone its energy down.
I have read somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers--Cook?
or Tasman?--accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial evidence that no important land lay
to the southward,
and so did not waste time on a useless quest in that direction,
but changed his course and went searching elsewhere.
Afternoon.
Passing between Tasmania
(formerly Van Diemen's Land)
and neighboring islands--islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages used
to gaze at their lost homeland and cry;
and die of broken hearts.
How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone,
or nearly so.
The work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of Australia.
As far as Tasmania is concerned,
the extermination was complete:
not a native is left.
It was a strife of years,
and decades of years.
The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other,
ambushed each other,
butchered each other.
The Blacks were not numerous.
But they were wary,
alert,
cunning,
and they knew their country well.
They lasted a long time,
few as they were,
and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites.
The Government wanted
to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination,
if possible.
One of its schemes was
to capture them and coop them up,
on a neighboring island,
under guard.
Bodies of Whites volunteered
for the hunt,
for the pay was good--L5
for each Black captured and delivered,
but the success achieved was not very satisfactory.
The Black was naked,
and his body was greased.
It was hard
to get a grip on him that would hold.
The Whites moved about in armed bodies,
and surprised little families of natives,
and did make captures;
but it was suspected that in these surprises half a dozen natives were killed
to one caught--and that was not what the Government desired.
Another scheme was
to drive the natives into a corner of the island and fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country;
but the natives managed
to slip through,
constantly,
and continue their murders and arsons.
The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that they must stay in the desolate region officially appointed
for them! The proclamation was a dead letter;
the savages could not read it.
Afterward a picture-proclamation was issued.
It was painted up on boards,
and these were nailed
to trees in the forest.
Herewith is a photographic reproduction of this fashion-plate.
Substantially it means:
1.
The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks
to love each other;
2.
He loves his black subjects;
3.
Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged;
4.
Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged.
Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the labors and ingenuities of several thousand Whites
for a long time
with failure as a result.
Then,
at last,
a quarter of a century after the beginning of the troubles between the two races,
the right man was found.
No,
he found himself.
This was George Augustus Robinson,
called in history
"The Conciliator."
He was not educated,
and not conspicuous in any way.
He was a working bricklayer,
in Hobart Town.
But he must have been an amazing personality;
a man worth traveling far
to see.
It may be his counterpart appears in history,
but I do not know where
to look
for it.
He set himself this incredible task:
to go out into the wilderness,
the jungle,
and the mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages were hidden,
and appear among them unarmed,
speak the language of love and of kindness
to them,
and persuade them
to forsake their homes and the wild free life that was so dear
to them,
and go
with him and surrender
to the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward,
and upon their charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a madman.
In the beginning,
his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the sugar plum speculation.
If the scheme was striking,
and new
to the world's experience,
the situation was not less so.
It was this.
The White population numbered 40,000 in 1831;
the Black population numbered three hundred.
Not 300 warriors,
but 300 men,
women,
and children.
The Whites were armed
with guns,
the Blacks
with clubs and spears.
The Whites had fought the Blacks
for a quarter of a century,
and had tried every thinkable way
to capture,
kill,
or subdue them;
and could not do it.
If white men of any race could have done it,
these would have accomplished it.
But every scheme had failed,
the splendid 300,
the matchless 300 were unconquered,
and manifestly unconquerable.
They would not yield,
they would listen
to no terms,
they would fight
to the bitter end.
Yet they had no poet
to keep up their heart,
and sing the marvel of their magnificent patriotism.
At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting,
the surviving 300 naked patriots were still defiant,
still persistent,
still efficacious
with their rude weapons,
and the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which way
to turn,
nor what
to do.
Then the Bricklayer--that wonderful man--proposed
to go out into the wilderness,
with no weapon but his tongue,
and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart;
and track those embittered savages
to their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows.
Naturally,
he was considered a crank.
But he was not quite that.
In fact,
he was a good way short of that.
He was building upon his long and intimate knowledge of the native character.
The deriders of his project were right--from their standpoint--for they believed the natives
to be mere wild beasts;
and Robinson was right,
from his standpoint--for he believed the natives
to be human beings.
The truth did really lie between the two.
The event proved that Robinson's judgment was soundest;
but about once a month
for four years the event came near
to giving the verdict
to the deriders,
for about that frequently Robinson barely escaped falling under the native spears.
But history shows that he had a thinking head,
and was not a mere wild sentimentalist.
For instance,
he wanted the war parties
(called)
in before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace.
He wanted the best chance of success--not a half-chance.
And he was very willing
to have help;
and so,
high rewards were advertised,
for any who would go unarmed
with him.
This opportunity was declined.
Robinson persuaded some tamed natives of both sexes
to go
with him--a strong evidence of his persuasive powers,
for those natives well knew that their destruction would be almost certain.
As it turned out,
they had
to face death over and over again.
Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their hands.
They could not ride off,
horseback,
comfortably into the woods and call Leonidas and his 300 together
for a talk and a treaty the following day;
for the wild men were not in a body;
they were scattered,
immense distances apart,
over regions so desolate that even the birds could not make a living
with the chances offered--scattered in groups of twenty,
a dozen,
half a dozen,
even in groups of three.
And the mission must go on foot.
Mr.Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible regions,
whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human devils the world has seen--the convicts set apart
to people the
"Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"--were never able,
but once,
to survive the horrors of a march through them,
but starving and struggling,
and fainting and failing,
ate each other,
and died:
"Onward,
still onward,
was the order of the indomitable Robinson.
No one ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of the traveling difficulties.
While I was resident in Hobart Town,
the Governor,
Sir John Franklin,
and his lady,
undertook the western journey
to Macquarrie Harbor,
and suffered terribly.
One man who assisted
to carry her ladyship through the swamps,
gave me his bitter experience of its miseries.
Several were disabled
for life.
No wonder that but one party,
escaping from Macquarrie Harbor convict settlement,
arrived at the civilized region in safety.
Men perished in the scrub,
were lost in snow,
or were devoured by their companions.
This was the territory traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides.
All honor
to his intrepidity,
and their wonderful fidelity! When they had,
in the depth of winter,
to cross deep and rapid rivers,
pass among mountains six thousand feet high,
pierce dangerous thickets,
and find food in a country forsaken even by birds,
we can realize their hardships.
"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain,
and over the lofty plateau of Middlesex Plains,
the travelers experienced unwonted misery,
and the circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band.
Mr.Robinson wrote afterwards
to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of this passage of horrors.
In that letter,
of Oct 2,
1834,
he states that his Natives were very reluctant
to go over the dreadful mountain passes;
that
'for seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid body of snow;'
that
'the snows were of incredible depth;'
that
'the Natives were frequently up
to their middle in snow.'
But still the ill- clad,
ill-fed,
diseased,
and way-worn men and women were sustained by the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend,
and responded most nobly
to his call."
Mr.Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe remember,
it was a whole tribe--"was by far the grandest feature of the war,
and the crowning glory of his efforts."
The word
"war"
was not well chosen,
and is misleading.
There was war still,
but only the Blacks were conducting it--the Whites were holding off until Robinson could give his scheme a fair trial.
I think that we are
to understand that the friendly capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing,
the highest in value,
that happened during the whole thirty years of truceless hostilities;
that it was a decisive thing,
a peaceful Waterloo,
the surrender of the native Napoleon and his dreaded forces,
the happy ending of the long strife.
For
"that tribe was the terror of the colony,"
its chief
"the Black Douglas of Bush households."
Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere,
in some remote corner of the hideous regions just described,
and he and his unarmed little party started on a tedious and perilous hunt
for them.
At last,
"there,
under the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap,
whose grim cone rose five thousand feet in the uninhabited westward interior,"
they were found.
It was a serious moment.
Robinson himself believed,
for once,
that his mission,
successful until now,
was
to end here in failure,
and that his own death-hour had struck.
The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude,
with his eighteen-foot spear poised;
his warriors stood massed at his back,
armed
for battle,
their faces eloquent
with their long-cherished loathing
for white men.
"They rattled their spears and shouted their war-cry."
Their women were back of them,
laden
with supplies of weapons,
and keeping their 150 eager dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal
to fall on.
"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection,"
whispered a member of Robinson's little party.
"I think we shall,"
answered Robinson;
then plucked up heart and began his persuasions--in the tribe's own dialect,
which surprised and pleased the chief.
Presently there was an interruption by the chief:
"Who are you?"
"We are gentlemen."
"Where are your guns?"
"We have none."
The warrior was astonished.
"Where your little guns?"
(pistols).
"We have none."
A few minutes passed--in by-play--suspense--discussion among the tribesmen--Robinson's tamed squaws ventured
to cross the line and begin persuasions upon the wild squaws.
Then the chief stepped back
"to confer
with the old women--the real arbiters of savage war."
Mr.Bonwick continues:
"As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks
for the signal of life or death from the president of the amphitheatre,
so waited our friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued.
In a few minutes,
before a word was uttered,
the women of the tribe threw up their arms three times.
This was the inviolable sign of peace! Down fell the spears.
Forward,
with a heavy sigh of relief,
and upward glance of gratitude,
came the friends of peace.
The impulsive natives rushed forth
with tears and cries,
as each saw in the other's rank a loved one of the past.
"It was a jubilee of joy.
A festival followed.
And,
while tears flowed at the recital of woe,
a corrobory of pleasant laughter closed the eventful day."
In four years,
without the spilling of a drop of blood,
Robinson brought them all in,
willing captives,
and delivered them
to the white governor,
and ended the war which powder and bullets,
and thousands of men
to use them,
had prosecuted without result since 1804.
Marsyas charming the wild beasts
with his music--that is fable;
but the miracle wrought by Robinson is fact.
It is history--and authentic;
and surely,
there is nothing greater,
nothing more reverence-compelling in the history of any country,
ancient or modern.
And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will develop,
there is a stately monument
to George Augustus Robinson,
the Conciliator in--no,
it is
to another man,
I forget his name.
However,
Robertson's own generation honored him,
and in manifesting it honored themselves.
The Government gave him a money-reward and a thousand acres of land;
and the people held mass-meetings and praised him and emphasized their praise
with a large subscription of money.
A good dramatic situation;
but the curtain fell on another:
"When this desperate tribe was thus captured,
there was much surprise
to find that the L30,000 of a little earlier day had been spent,
and the whole population of the colony placed under arms,
in contention
with an opposing force of sixteen men
with wooden spears! Yet such was the fact.
The celebrated Big River tribe,
that had been raised by European fears
to a host,
consisted of sixteen men,
nine women,
and one child.
With a knowledge of the mischief done by these few,
their wonderful marches and their widespread aggressions,
their enemies cannot deny
to them the attributes of courage and military tact.
A Wallace might harass a large army
with a small and determined band;
but the contending parties were at least equal in arms and civilization.
The Zulus who fought us in Africa,
the Maories in New Zealand,
the Arabs in the Soudan,
were far better provided
with weapons,
more advanced in the science of war,
and considerably more numerous,
than the naked Tasmanians.
Governor Arthur rightly termed them a noble race."
These were indeed wonderful people,
the natives.
They ought not
to have been wasted.
They should have been crossed
with the Whites.
It would have improved the Whites and done the Natives no harm.
But the Natives were wasted,
poor heroic wild creatures.
They were gathered together in little settlements on neighboring islands,
and paternally cared
for by the Government,
and instructed in religion,
and deprived of tobacco,
because the superintendent of the Sunday-school was not a smoker,
and so considered smoking immoral.
The Natives were not used
to clothes,
and houses,
and regular hours,
and church,
and school,
and Sunday-school,
and work,
and the other misplaced persecutions of civilization,
and they pined
for their lost home and their wild free life.
Too late they repented that they had traded that heaven
for this hell.
They sat homesick on their alien crags,
and day by day gazed out through their tears over the sea
with unappeasable longing toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been their paradise;
one by one their hearts broke and they died.
In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive.
A handful lingered along into age.
In 1864 the last man died,
in 1876 the last woman died,
and the Spartans of Australasia were extinct.
The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try
to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop;
but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on
to prove himself inadequate when he deals
with savages.
He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it
to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food
to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow,
and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun,
with no shelter,
no bed,
no covering
for his and his family's naked bodies,
and nothing
to eat but snakes and grubs and
'offal.
This would be a hell
to him;
and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell
to the savage--but he hasn't any,
and has never had any;
and
for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization,
committing his crime
with the very best intentions,
and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures;
and gazed at it,
vaguely troubled and sorrowful,
and wondered what could be the matter
with them.
One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals,
they were so sincerely kind,
and tender,
and humane;
and well-meaning.
They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away,
and they did their honest best
to reason it out.
And one man,
in a like case in New South Wales,
did reason it out and arrive at a solution:
"It is from the wrath of God,
which is revealed from heaven against cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."
That settles it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Let us be thankful
for the fools.
But
for them the rest of us could not succeed.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The aphorism does really seem true:
"Given the Circumstances,
the Man will appear."
But the man musn't appear ahead of time,
or it will spoil everything.
In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching
for a quarter of a century--and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart.
When all other means had failed,
the Moment had arrived,
and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward.
Earlier he would have been jeered back
to his trowel again.
It reminds me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were crossing Montana.
He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago.
He thought it had been in print,
but could not remember.
At any rate,
in substance it was this,
as nearly as I can call it back
to mind.
A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began
to appear that Memphis,
Tennessee,
was going
to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise could see the signs of it.
At that time Memphis had a wharf boat,
of course.
There was a paved sloping wharf,
for the accommodation of freight,
but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat,
and all loading and unloading was done across it,
between steamer and shore.
A number of wharfboat clerks were needed,
and part of the time,
every day,
they were very busy,
and part of the time tediously idle.
They were boiling over
with youth and spirits,
and they had
to make the intervals of idleness endurable in some way;
and as a rule,
they did it by contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other.
The favorite butt
for the jokes was Ed Jackson,
because he played none himself,
and was easy game
for other people's--for he always believed whatever was told him.
One day he told the others his scheme
for his holiday.
He was not going fishing or hunting this time--no,
he had thought out a better plan.
Out of his $40 a month he had saved enough
for his purpose,
in an economical way,
and he was going
to have a look at New York.
It was a great and surprising idea.
It meant travel immense travel--in those days it meant seeing the world;
it was the equivalent of a voyage around it in ours.
At first the other youths thought his mind was affected,
but when they found that he was in earnest,
the next thing
to be thought of was,
what sort of opportunity this venture might afford
for a practical joke.
The young men studied over the matter,
then held a secret consultation and made a plan.
The idea was,
that one of the conspirators should offer Ed a letter of introduction
to Commodore Vanderbilt,
and trick him into delivering it.
It would be easy
to do this.
But what would Ed do when he got back
to Memphis?
That was a serious matter.
He was good-hearted,
and had always taken the jokes patiently;
but they had been jokes which did not humiliate him,
did not bring him
to shame;
whereas,
this would be a cruel one in that way,
and
to play it was
to meddle
with fire;
for
with all his good nature,
Ed was a Southerner--and the English of that was,
that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he could before falling himself.
However,
the chances must be taken--it wouldn't do
to waste such a joke as that.
So the letter was prepared
with great care and elaboration.
It was signed Alfred Fairchild,
and was written in an easy and friendly spirit.
It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son,
and was of good parts and sterling character,
and it begged the Commodore
to be kind
to the young stranger
for the writer's sake.
It went on
to say,
"You may have forgotten me,
in this long stretch of time,
but you will easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night;
and how,
while he was chasing down the road after us,
we cut across the field and doubled back and sold his own apples
to his own cook
for a hat-full of doughnuts;
and the time that we----"
and so forth and so on,
bringing in names of imaginary comrades,
and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and,
of course,
wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures,
but putting them into lively and telling shape.
With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like
to have a letter
to Commodore Vanderbilt,
the great millionaire.
It was expected that the question would astonish Ed,
and it did.
"What?
Do you know that extraordinary man?"
"No;
but my father does.
They were schoolboys together.
And if you like,
I'll write and ask father.
I know he'll be glad
to give it
to you
for my sake."
Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight.
The three days passed,
and the letter was put into his bands.
He started on his trip,
still pouring out his thanks while he shook good-bye all around.
And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter in a storm of happy satisfaction--and then quieted down,
and were less happy,
less satisfied.
For the old doubts as
to the wisdom of this deception began
to intrude again.
Arrived in New York,
Ed found his way
to Commodore Vanderbilt's business quarters,
and was ushered into a large anteroom,
where a score of people were patiently awaiting their turn
for a two-minute interview
with the millionaire in his private office.
A servant asked
for Ed's card,
and got the letter instead.
Ed was sent
for a moment later,
and found Mr. Vanderbilt alone,
with the letter--open--in his hand.
"Pray sit down,
Mr.--er--"
"Jackson."
"
Ah--sit down,
Mr.Jackson.
By the opening sentences it seems
to be a letter from an old friend.
Allow me--I will run my eye through it.
He says he says--why,
who is it?"
He turned the sheet and found the signature.
"Alfred Fairchild--hm--Fairchild--I don't recall the name.
But that is nothing--a thousand names have gone from me.
He says--he says-hm-hmoh,
dear,
but it's good! Oh,
it's rare! I don't quite remember it,
but I seem
to it'll all come back
to me presently.
He says --he says--hm--hm-oh,
but that was a game! Oh,
spl-endid ! How it carries me back! It's all dim,
of course it's a long time ago--and the names--some of the names are wavery and indistinct--but sho',
I know it happened--I can feel it! and lord,
how it warms my heart,
and brings back my lost youth! Well,
well,
well,
I've got
to come back into this work-a-day world now--business presses and people are waiting--I'll keep the rest
for bed to-night,
and live my youth over again.
And you'll thank Fairchild
for me when you see him--I used
to call him Alf,
I think --and you'll give him my gratitude for--what this letter has done
for the tired spirit of a hard-worked man;
and tell him there isn't anything that I can do
for him or any friend of his that I won't do.
And as
for you,
my lad,
you are my guest;
you can't stop at any hotel in New York.
Sit.
where you are a little while,
till I get through
with these people,
then we'll go home.
I'll take care of you,
my boy--make yourself easy as
to that."
Ed stayed a week,
and had an immense time--and never suspected that the Commodore's shrewd eye was on him,
and that he was daily being weighed and measured and analyzed and tried and tested.
Yes,
he had an immense time;
and never wrote home,
but saved it all up
to tell when he should get back.
Twice,
with proper modesty and decency,
he proposed
to end his visit,
but the Commodore said,
"No--wait;
leave it
to me;
I'll tell you when
to go."
In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of his--consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious systems,
and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in effective centers--and among other things his farseeing eye had detected the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce,
already spoken of,
toward Memphis,
and he had resolved
to set his grasp upon it and make it his own.
The week came
to an end.
Then the Commodore said:
"Now you can start home.
But first we will have some more talk about that tobacco matter.
I know you now.
I know your abilities as well as you know them yourself--perhaps better.
You understand that tobacco matter;
you understand that I am going
to take possession of it,
and you also understand the plans which I have matured
for doing it.
What I want is a man who knows my mind,
and is qualified
to represent me in Memphis,
and be in supreme command of that important business--and I appoint you."
"Me!"
"Yes.
Your salary will be high--of course-for you are representing me.
Later you will earn increases of it,
and will get them.
You will need a small army of assistants;
choose them yourself--and carefully.
Take no man
for friendship's sake;
but,
all things being equal,
take the man you know,
take your friend,
in preference
to the stranger."
After some further talk under this head,
the Commodore said:
"Good-bye,
my boy,
and thank Alf
for me,
for sending you
to me."
When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down
to the wharf in a fever
to tell his great news and thank the boys over and over again
for thinking
to give him the letter
to Mr. Vanderbilt.
It happened
to be one of those idle times.
Blazing hot noonday,
and no sign of life on the wharf.
But as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles,
he saw a white linen figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning,
and said
to himself,
"That's one of them,"
and hastened his step;
next,
he said,
"It's Charley--it's Fairchild good";
and the next moment laid an affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder.
The eyes opened lazily,
took one glance,
the face blanched,
the form whirled itself from the sack-pile,
and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying
for the wharf-boat like the wind! Ed was dazed,
stupefied.
Was Fairchild crazy?
What could be the meaning of this?
He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat;
turned the corner of a freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys.
They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter;
they heard his step,
and glanced up just as he discovered them;
the laugh died abruptly;
and before Ed could speak they were off,
and sailing over barrels and bales like hunted deer.
Again Ed was paralyzed.
Had the boys all gone mad?
What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct?
And so,
dreaming along,
he reached the wharf-boat,
and stepped aboard nothing but silence there,
and vacancy.
He crossed the deck,
turned the corner
to go down the outer guard,
heard a fervent--
"O lord!"
and saw a white linen form plunge overboard.
The youth came up coughing and strangling,
and cried out--
"Go
'way from here! You let me alone.
I didn't do it,
I swear I didn't!"
"Didn't do what?"
"Give you the----"
"Never mind what you didn't do--come out of that! What makes you all act so?
What have I done?"
"You?
Why you haven't done anything.
But----"
"Well,
then,
what have you got against me?
What do you all treat me so for?"
"I--er--but haven't you got anything against us?"
"Of course not.
What put such a thing into your head?"
"Honor bright--you haven't?
"Honor bright."
"Swear it!"
"I don't know what in the world you mean,
but I swear it,
anyway."
"And you'll shake hands
with me?"
"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why,
I'm just starving
to shake hands
with somebody!"
The swimmer muttered,
"Hang him,
he smelt a rat and never delivered the letter!--but it's all right,
I'm not going
to fetch up the subject."
And he crawled out and came dripping and draining
to shake hands.
First one and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously--armed
to the teeth--took in the amicable situation,
then ventured warily forward and joined the love-feast.
And
to Ed's eager inquiry as
to what made them act as they had been acting,
they answered evasively,
and pretended that they had put it up as a joke,
to see what he would do.
It was the best explanation they could invent at such short notice.
And each said
to himself,
"He never delivered that letter,
and the joke is on us,
if he only knew it or we were dull enough
to come out and tell."
Then,
of course,
they wanted
to know all about the trip;
and he said--
"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks it's my treat.
I'm going
to tell you all about it.
And to-night it's my treat again-- and we'll have oysters and a time!"
When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted,
Ed said:
"Well,
when,
I delivered the letter
to Mr. Vanderbilt----"
"Great Scott!"
"Gracious,
how you scared me.
What's the matter?"
"Oh--er--nothing.
Nothing--it was a tack in the chair-seat,"
said one.
"But you all said it.
However,
no matter.
When I delivered the letter----"
"Did you deliver it?"
And they looked at each other as people might who thought that maybe they were dreaming.
Then they settled
to listening;
and as the story deepened and its marvels grew,
the amazement of it made them dumb,
and the interest of it took their breath.
They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours,
but sat like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance.
At last the tale was ended,
and Ed said--
"And it's all owing
to you,
boys,
and you'll never find me ungrateful-- bless your hearts,
the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have places;
I want every one of you.
I know you--I know you
'by the back,'
as the gamblers say.
You're jokers,
and all that,
but you're sterling,
with the hallmark on.
And Charley Fairchild,
you shall be my first assistant and right hand,
because of your first-class ability,
and because you got me the letter,
and
for your father's sake who wrote it
for me,
and
to please Mr. Vanderbilt,
who said it would! And here's
to that great man--drink hearty!"
Yes,
when the Moment comes,
the Man appears--even if he is a thousand miles away,
and has
to be discovered by a practical joke.
CHAPTER XXIX.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended;
yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Necessarily,
the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of any country.
The annals of Tasmania,
in whose shadow we were sailing,
are lurid
with that feature.
Tasmania was a convict-dump,
in old times;
this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator,
where reference is made
to vain attempts of desperate convicts
to win
to permanent freedom,
after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the
"Gates of Hell."
In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts,
of both sexes and all ages,
and a bitter hard life they had.
In one spot there was a settlement of juvenile convicts--children--who had been sent thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe
to expiate their
"crimes."
In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent,
at whose head stands Hobart,
the capital of Tasmania.
The Derwent's shores furnish scenery of an interesting sort.
The historian Laurie,
whose book,
"The Story of Australasia,"
is just out,
invoices its features
with considerable truth and intemperance:
"The marvelous picturesqueness of every point of view,
combined
with the clear balmy atmosphere and the transparency of the ocean depths,
must have delighted and deeply impressed"
the early explorers.
"If the rock-bound coasts,
sullen,
defiant,
and lowering,
seemed uninviting,
these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored
with golden sand,
clad
with evergreen shrubbery,
and adorned
with every variety of indigenous wattle,
she-oak,
wild flower,
and fern,
from the delicately graceful
'maiden- hair'
to the palm-like
'old man';
while the majestic gum-tree,
clean and smooth as the mast of
'some tall admiral'
pierces the clear air
to the height of 230 feet or more."
It looked so
to me.
"Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula,
what a shock of pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar,
with its cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising
to a height of 900 feet,
the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud,
the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains of foam."
That is well enough,
but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet high.
Still they were a very fine show.
They stood boldly out by themselves,
and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle.
But there was nothing about their appearance
to suggest the heads of a hydra.
They looked like a row of lofty slabs
with their upper ends tapered
to the shape of a carving-knife point;
in fact,
the early voyager,
ignorant of their great height,
might have mistaken them
for a rusty old rank of piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular.
The Peninsula is lofty,
rocky,
and densely clothed
with scrub,
or brush,
or both.
It is joined
to the main by a low neck.
At this junction was formerly a convict station called Port Arthur--a place hard
to escape from.
Behind it was the wilderness of scrub,
in which a fugitive would soon starve;
in front was the narrow neck,
with a cordon of chained dogs across it,
and a line of lanterns,
and a fence of living guards,
armed.
We saw the place as we swept by--that is,
we had a glimpse of what we were told was the entrance
to Port Arthur.
The glimpse was worth something,
as a remembrancer,
but that was all.
The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of fairy visions,
in its entire length elsewhere unequaled.
In gliding over the deep blue sea studded
with lovely islets luxuriant
to the water's edge,
one is at a loss which scene
to choose
for contemplation and
to admire most.
When the Huon and Bruni have been passed,
there seems no possible chance of a rival;
but suddenly Mount Wellington,
massive and noble like his brother Etna,
literally heaves in sight,
sternly guarded on either hand by Mounts Nelson and Rumney;
presently we arrive at Sullivan's Cove--Hobart!"
It is an attractive town.
It sits on low hills that slope
to the harbor --a harbor that looks like a river,
and is as smooth as one.
Its still surface is pictured
with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage.
Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness,
and over the way is that noble mountain,
Wellington,
a stately bulk,
a most majestic pile.
How beautiful is the whole region,
for form,
and grouping,
and opulence,
and freshness of foliage,
and variety of color,
and grace and shapeliness of the hills,
the capes,
the,
promontories;
and then,
the splendor of the sunlight,
the dim rich distances,
the charm of the water-glimpses! And it was in this paradise that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed,
and the Corps-bandits quartered,
and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black innocents consummated on that autumn day in May,
in the brutish old time.
It was all out of keeping
with the place,
a sort of bringing of heaven and hell together.
The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we struck the head of the procession of Junior Englands.
We were
to encounter other sections of it in New Zealand,
presently,
and others later in Natal.
Wherever the exiled Englishman can find in his new home resemblances
to his old one,
he is touched
to the marrow of his being;
the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination,
and these allied forces transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the revered originals.
It is beautiful,
the feeling which works this enchantment,
and it compels one's homage;
compels it,
and also compels one's assent--compels it always--even when,
as happens sometimes,
one does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is pointing them out.
The resemblances do exist,
it is quite true;
and often they cunningly approximate the originals--but after all,
in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one England.
Now that I have sampled the globe,
I am not in doubt.
There is a beauty of Switzerland,
and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the earth;
there is a beauty of the fiord,
and it is repeated in New Zealand and Alaska;
there is a beauty of Hawaii,
and it is repeated in ten thousand islands of the Southern seas;
there is a beauty of the prairie and the plain,
and it is repeated here and there in the earth;
each of these is worshipful,
each is perfect in its way,
yet holds no monopoly of its beauty;
but that beauty which is England is alone--it has no duplicate.
It is made up of very simple details--just grass,
and trees,
and shrubs,
and roads,
and hedges,
and gardens,
and houses,
and vines,
and churches,
and castles,
and here and there a ruin--and over it all a mellow dream- haze of history.
But its beauty is incomparable,
and all its own.
Hobart has a peculiarity--it is the neatest town that the sun shines on;
and I incline
to believe that it is also the cleanest.
However that may be,
its supremacy in neatness is not
to be questioned.
There cannot be another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors;
no rickety gates and fences,
no neglected houses crumbling
to ruin,
no crazy and unsightly sheds,
no weed-grown front-yards of the poor,
no back-yards littered
with tin cans and old boots and empty bottles,
no rubbish in the gutters,
no clutter on the sidewalks,
no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes and tin-patched huts.
No,
in Hobart all the aspects are tidy,
and all a comfort
to the eye;
the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed,
and has its vines,
its flowers,
its neat fence,
its neat gate,
its comely cat asleep on the window ledge.
We had a glimpse of the museum,
by courtesy of the American gentleman who is curator of it.
It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of marsupials--[A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is its pocket.
In some countries it is extinct,
in the others it is rare.
The first American marsupials were Stephen Girard,
Mr.Aston and the opossum;
the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. Rhodes,
and the kangaroo.
I,
myself,
am the latest marsupial.
Also,
I might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all.
But there is nothing in that.]--one,
the
"
Tasmanian devil;"
that is,
I think he was one of them.
And there was a fish
with lungs.
When the water dries up it can live in the mud.
Most curious of all was a parrot that kills sheep.
On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a whole year.
He doesn't want the whole sheep,
but only the kidney-fat.
This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird
to support.
To get the fat he drives his beak in and rips it out;
the wound is mortal.
This parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about by changed conditions.
When the sheep culture was introduced,
it presently brought famine
to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always thitherto been the parrot's diet.
The miseries of hunger made the bird willing
to eat raw flesh,
since it could get no other food,
and it began
to pick remnants of meat from sheep skins hung out on the fences
to dry.
It soon came
to prefer sheep meat
to any other food,
and by and by it came
to prefer the kidney-fat
to any other detail of the sheep.
The parrot's bill was not well shaped
for digging out the fat,
but Nature fixed that matter;
she altered the bill's shape,
and now the parrot can dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
or anybody else,
for that matter--even an Admiral.
And there was another curiosity--quite a stunning one,
I thought:
Arrow- heads and knives just like those which Primeval Man made out of flint,
and thought he had done such a wonderful thing--yes,
and has been humored and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring scientists until there is probably no living
with him in the other world by now.
Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our day;
and by people who have never heard of him or his works:
by aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas,
within our time.
And they not only duplicated those works of art but did it in the brittlest and most treacherous of substances--glass:
made them out of old brandy bottles flung out of the British camps;
millions of tons of them.
It is time
for Primeval Man
to make a little less noise,
now.
He has had his day.
He is not what he used
to be.
We had a drive through a bloomy and odorous fairy-land,
to the Refuge
for the Indigent--a spacious and comfortable home,
with hospitals,
etc.,
for both sexes.
There was a crowd in there,
of the oldest people I have ever seen.
It was like being suddenly set down in a new world--a weird world where Youth has never been,
a world sacred
to Age,
and bowed forms,
and wrinkles.
Out of the 359 persons present,
223,
were ex-convicts,
and could have told stirring tales,
no doubt,
if they had been minded
to talk;
42 of the 359 were past 80,
and several were close upon 90;
the average age at death there is 76 years.
As
for me,
I have no use
for that place;
it is too healthy.
Seventy is old enough--after that,
there is too much risk.
Youth and gaiety might vanish,
any day--and then,
what is left?
Death in life;
death without its privileges,
death without its benefits.
There were 185 women in that Refuge,
and 81 of them were ex-convicts.
The steamer disappointed us.
Instead of making a long visit at Hobart,
as usual,
she made a short one.
So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania,
and then moved on.
CHAPTER XXX.
Nature makes the locust
with an appetite
for crops;
man would have made him
with an appetite
for sand.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea,
and reached Bluff,
in New Zealand,
early in the morning.
Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island,
and is away down south,
nearly forty-seven degrees below the equator.
It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it,
and the climates of the two should be alike;
but
for some reason or other it has not been so arranged.
Quebec is hot in the summer and cold in the winter,
but Bluff's climate is less intense;
the cold weather is not very cold,
the hot weather is not very hot;
and the difference between the hottest month and the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff.
The man who introduced the rabbit there was banqueted and lauded;
but they would hang him,
now,
if they could get him.
In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted;
in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored,
and his person is sacred.
The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher,
in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat,
the weasel,
the ferret,
the cat,
and the mongoose.
In England any person below the Heir who is caught
with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain how it got there,
or he will suffer fine and imprisonment,
together
with extinction of his peerage;
in Bluff,
the cat found
with a rabbit in its possession does not have
to explain--everybody looks the other way;
the person caught noticing would suffer fine and imprisonment,
with extinction of peerage.
This is a sure way
to undermine the moral fabric of a cat.
Thirty years from now there will not be a moral cat in New Zealand.
Some think there is none there now.
In England the poacher is watched,
tracked,
hunted--he dare not show his face;
in Bluff the cat,
the weasel,
the stoat,
and the mongoose go up and down,
whither they will,
unmolested.
By a law of the legislature,
posted where all may read,
it is decreed that any person found in possession of one of these creatures
(dead)
must satisfactorily explain the circumstances or pay a fine of not less than L5,
nor more than L20.
The revenue from this source is not large.
Persons who want
to pay a hundred dollars
for a dead cat are getting rarer and rarer every day.
This is bad,
for the revenue was
to go
to the endowment of a University.
All governments are more or less short-sighted:
in England they fine the poacher,
whereas he ought
to be banished
to New Zealand.
New Zealand would pay his way,
and give him wages.
It was from Bluff that we ought
to have cut across
to the west coast and visited the New Zealand Switzerland,
a land of superb scenery,
made up of snowy grandeurs,
anal mighty glaciers,
and beautiful lakes;
and over there,
also,
are the wonderful rivals of the Norwegian and Alaskan fiords;
and
for neighbor,
a waterfall of 1,900 feet;
but we were obliged
to postpone the trip
to some later and indefinite time.
November 6.
A lovely summer morning;
brilliant blue sky.
A few miles out from Invercargill,
passed through vast level green expanses snowed over
with sheep.
Fine
to see.
The green,
deep and very vivid sometimes;
at other times less so,
but delicate and lovely.
A passenger reminds me that I am in
"the England of the Far South."
Dunedin,
same date.
The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises.
The people are Scotch.
They stopped here on their way from home
to heaven- thinking they had arrived.
The population is stated at 40,000,
by Malcolm Ross,
journalist;
stated by an M.
P.
at 60,000.
A journalist cannot lie.
To the residence of Dr. Hockin.
He has a fine collection of books relating
to New Zealand;
and his house is a museum of Maori art and antiquities.
He has pictures and prints in color of many native chiefs of the past--some of them of note in history.
There is nothing of the savage in the faces;
nothing could be finer than these men's features,
nothing more intellectual than these faces,
nothing more masculine,
nothing nobler than their aspect.
The aboriginals of Australia and Tasmania looked the savage,
but these chiefs looked like Roman patricians.
The tattooing in these portraits ought
to suggest the savage,
of course,
but it does not.
The designs are so flowing and graceful and beautiful that they are a most satisfactory decoration.
It takes but fifteen minutes
to get reconciled
to the tattooing,
and but fifteen more
to perceive that it is just the thing.
After that,
the undecorated European face is unpleasant and ignoble.
Dr.Hockiu gave us a ghastly curiosity--a lignified caterpillar
with a plant growing out of the back of its neck--a plant
with a slender stem 4 inches high.
It happened not by accident,
but by design--Nature's design.
This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon him by Nature--a law purposely inflicted upon him
to get him into trouble--a law which was a trap;
in pursuance of this law he made the proper preparations
for turning himself into a night-moth;
that is
to say,
he dug a little trench,
a little grave,
and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himself--then Nature was ready
for him.
She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air
with a purpose.
Some of them fell into a crease in the back of the caterpillar's neck,
and began
to sprout and grow--for there was soil there--he had not washed his neck.
The roots forced themselves down into the worm's person,
and rearward along through its body,
sucking up the creature's juices
for sap;
the worm slowly died,
and turned
to wood.
And here he was now,
a wooden caterpillar,
with every detail of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and perpetuated,
and
with that stem standing up out of him
for his monument--monument commemorative of his own loyalty and of Nature's unfair return
for it.
Nature is always acting like that.
Mrs.X.
said
(of course)
that the caterpillar was not conscious and didn't suffer.
She should have known better.
No caterpillar can deceive Nature.
If this one couldn't suffer,
Nature would have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar.
Not that she would have let this one go,
merely because it was defective.
No.
She would have waited and let him turn into a night-moth;
and then fried him in the candle.
Nature cakes a fish's eyes over
with parasites,
so that it shan't be able
to avoid its enemies or find its food.
She sends parasites into a star- fish's system,
which clog up its prongs and swell them and make them so uncomfortable that the poor creature delivers itself from the prong
to ease its misery;
and presently it has
to part
with another prong
for the sake of comfort,
and finally
with a third.
If it re-grows the prongs,
the parasite returns and the same thing is repeated.
And finally,
when the ability
to reproduce prongs is lost through age,
that poor old star- fish can't get around any more,
and so it dies of starvation.
In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due
to an
"unperfected tapeworm."
Unperfected--that is what they call it,
I do not know why,
for it transacts business just as well as if it were finished and frescoed and gilded,
and all that.
November 9.
To the museum and public picture gallery
with the president of the Society of Artists.
Some fine pictures there,
lent by the S.
of A.
several of them they bought,
the others came
to them by gift.
Next,
to the gallery of the S.
of A.--annual exhibition--just opened.
Fine.
Think of a town like this having two such collections as this,
and a Society of Artists.
It is so all over Australasia.
If it were a monarchy one might understand it.
I mean an absolute monarchy,
where it isn't necessary
to vote money,
but take it.
Then art flourishes.
But these colonies are republics--republics
with a wide suffrage;
voters of both sexes,
this one of New Zealand.
In republics,
neither the government nor the rich private citizen is much given
to propagating art.
All over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are bought
for the public galleries by the State and by societies of citizens.
Living citizens--not dead ones.
They rob themselves
to give,
not their heirs.
This S.
of A.
here owns its buildings built it by subscription.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The spirit of wrath--not the words--is the sin;
and the spirit of wrath is cursing.
We begin
to swear before we can talk.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
November 11.
On the road.
This train-express goes twenty and one-half miles an hour,
schedule time;
but it is fast enough,
the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting,
and the cars so comfortable.
They are not English,
and not American;
they are the Swiss combination of the two.
A narrow and railed porch along the side,
where a person can walk up and down.
A lavatory in each car.
This is progress;
this is nineteenth- century spirit.
In New Zealand,
these fast expresses run twice a week.
It is well
to know this if you want
to be a bird and fly through the country at a 20-mile gait;
otherwise you may start on one of the five wrong days,
and then you will get a train that can't overtake its own shadow.
By contrast,
these pleasant cars call
to mind the branch-road cars at Maryborough,
Australia,
and the passengers'
talk about the branch-road and the hotel.
Somewhere on the road
to Maryborough I changed
for a while
to a smoking- carriage.
There were two gentlemen there;
both riding backward,
one at each end of the compartment.
They were acquaintances of each other.
I sat down facing the one that sat at the starboard window.
He had a good face,
and a friendly look,
and I judged from his dress that he was a dissenting minister.
He was along toward fifty.
Of his own motion he struck a match,
and shaded it
with his hand
for me
to light my cigar.
I take the rest from my diary:
In order
to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough.
He said,
in a most pleasant--even musical voice,
but
with quiet and cultured decision:
"It's a charming town,
with a hell of a hotel."
I was astonished.
It seemed so odd
to hear a minister swear out loud.
He went placidly on:
"It's the worst hotel in Australia.
Well,
one may go further,
and say in Australasia."
"Bad beds?"
"No--none at all.
Just sand-bags."
"The pillows,
too?"
"Yes,
the pillows,
too.
Just sand.
And not a good quality of sand.
It packs too hard,
and has never been screened.
There is too much gravel in it.
It is like sleeping on nuts."
"Isn't there any good sand?"
"Plenty of it.
There is as good bed-sand in this region as the world can furnish.
Aerated sand--and loose;
but they won't buy it.
They want something that will pack solid,
and petrify."
"How are the rooms?"
"Eight feet square;
and a sheet of iced oil-cloth
to step on in the morning when you get out of the sand-quarry."
"As
to lights?"
"Coal-oil lamp."
"A good one?"
"No.
It's the kind that sheds a gloom."
"I like a lamp that burns all night."
"This one won't.
You must blow it out early."
"That is bad.
One might want it again in the night.
Can't find it in the dark."
"There's no trouble;
you can find it by the stench."
"Wardrobe?"
"Two nails on the door
to hang seven suits of clothes on if you've got them."
"Bells?"
"There aren't any."
"What do you do when you want service?"
"Shout.
But it won't fetch anybody."
"Suppose you want the chambermaid
to empty the slopjar?"
"There isn't any slop-jar.
The hotels don't keep them.
That is,
outside of Sydney and Melbourne."
"Yes,
I knew that.
I was only talking.
It's the oddest thing in Australia.
Another thing:
I've got
to get up in the dark,
in the morning,
to take the 5 o'clock train.
Now if the boots----"
"There isn't any."
"Well,
the porter."
"There isn't any."
"But who will call me?"
"Nobody.
You'll call yourself.
And you'll light yourself,
too.
There'll not be a light burning in the halls or anywhere.
And if you don't carry a light,
you'll break your neck."
"But who will help me down
with my baggage?"
"Nobody.
However,
I will tell you what
to do.
In Maryborough there's an American who has lived there half a lifetime;
a fine man,
and prosperous and popular.
He will be on the lookout
for you;
you won't have any trouble.
Sleep in peace;
he will rout you out,
and you will make your train.
Where is your manager?"
"I left him at Ballarat,
studying the language.
And besides,
he had
to go
to Melbourne and get us ready
for New Zealand.
I've not tried
to pilot myself before,
and it doesn't look easy."
"Easy! You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in Australia
for your experiment.
There are twelve miles of this road which no man without good executive ability can ever hope--tell me,
have you good executive ability?
first-rate executive ability?"
"I--well,
I think so,
but----"
"That settles it.
The tone of----oh,
you wouldn't ever make it in the world.
However,
that American will point you right,
and you'll go.
You've got tickets?"
"Yes--round trip;
all the way
to Sydney."
"Ah,
there it is,
you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by Castlemaine--twelve miles--instead of the 7.15 by Ballarat--in order
to save two hours of fooling along the road.
Now then,
don't interrupt--let me have the floor.
You're going
to save the government a deal of hauling,
but that's nothing;
your ticket is by Ballarat,
and it isn't good over that twelve miles,
and so----"
"But why should the government care which way I go?"
"Goodness knows! Ask of the winds that far away
with fragments strewed the sea,
as the boy that stood on the burning deck used
to say.
The government chooses
to do its railway business in its own way,
and it doesn't know as much about it as the French.
In the beginning they tried idiots;
then they imported the French--which was going backwards,
you see;
now it runs the roads itself--which is going backwards again,
you see.
Why,
do you know,
in order
to curry favor
with the voters,
the government puts down a road wherever anybody wants it--anybody that owns two sheep and a dog;
and by consequence we've got,
in the colony of Victoria,
800 railway stations,
and the business done at eighty of them doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week."
"Five dollars?
Oh,
come!"
"It's true.
It's the absolute truth."
"Why,
there are three or four men on wages at every station."
"I know it.
And the station-business doesn't pay
for the sheep-dip
to sanctify their coffee with.
It's just as I say.
And accommodating?
Why,
if you shake a rag the train will stop in the midst of the wilderness
to pick you up.
All that kind of politics costs,
you see.
And then,
besides,
any town that has a good many votes and wants a fine station,
gets it.
Don't you overlook that Maryborough station,
if you take an interest in governmental curiosities.
Why,
you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it,
and give them a sofa apiece,
and have room
for more.
You haven't fifteen stations in America that are as big,
and you probably haven't five that are half as fine.
Why,
it's per- fectly elegant.
And the clock! Everybody will show yon the clock.
There isn't a station in Europe that's got such a clock.
It doesn't strike--and that's one mercy.
It hasn't any bell;
and as you'll have cause
to remember,
if you keep your reason,
all Australia is simply bedamned
with bells.
On every quarter-hour,
night and day,
they jingle a tiresome chime of half a dozen notes--all the clocks in town at once,
all the clocks in Australasia at once,
and all the very same notes;
first,
downward scale:
mi,
re,
do,
sol--then upward scale:
sol,
si,
re,
do--down again:
mi,
re,
do,
sol--up again:
sol,
si,
re,
do--then the clock--say at midnight clang--clang--clang--clang--clang-clang--clang--clang--clang-- clang----and,
by that time you're--hello,
what's all this excitement about?
a runaway--scared by the train;
why,
you think this train could scare anything.
Well,
when they build eighty stations at a loss and a lot of palace-stations and clocks like Maryborough's at another loss,
the government has got
to economize somewhere hasn't it?
Very well look at the rolling stock.
That's where they save the money.
Why,
that train from Maryborough will consist of eighteen freight-cars and two passenger- kennels;
cheap,
poor,
shabby,
slovenly;
no drinking water,
no sanitary arrangements,
every imaginable inconvenience;
and slow?--oh,
the gait of cold molasses;
no air-brake,
no springs,
and they'll jolt your head off every time they start or stop.
That's where they make their little economies,
you see.
They spend tons of money
to house you palatially while you wait fifteen minutes
for a train,
then degrade you
to six hours'
convict-transportation
to get the foolish outlay back.
What a rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting,
then his journey in a nice train would be a grateful change.
But no,
that would be common sense--and out of place in a government.
And then,
besides,
they save in that other little detail,
you know--repudiate their own tickets,
and collect a poor little illegitimate extra shilling out of you
for that twelve miles,
and----"
"Well,
in any case----"
"Wait--there's more.
Leave that American out of the account and see what would happen.
There's nobody on hand
to examine your ticket when you arrive.
But the conductor will come and examine it when the train is ready
to start.
It is too late
to buy your extra ticket now;
the train can't wait,
and won't.
You must climb out."
"But can't I pay the conductor?"
"No,
he is not authorized
to receive the money,
and he won't.
You must climb out.
There's no other way.
I tell you,
the railway management is about the only thoroughly European thing here--continentally European I mean,
not English.
It's the continental business in perfection;
down fine.
Oh,
yes,
even
to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage."
The train slowed up at his place.
As he stepped out he said:
"Yes,
you'll like Maryborough.
Plenty of intelligence there.
It's a charming place--with a hell of a hotel."
Then he was gone.
I turned
to the other gentleman:
"Is your friend in the ministry?"
"No--studying
for it."
CHAPTER XXXII.
The man
with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
It was Junior England all the way
to Christchurch--in fact,
just a garden.
And Christchurch is an English town,
with an English-park annex,
and a winding English brook just like the Avon--and named the Avon;
but from a man,
not from Shakespeare's river.
Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows
to be found in the world,
I suppose.
They continue the line of a great ancestor;
they were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St. Helena.
It is a settled old community,
with all the serenities,
the graces,
the conveniences,
and the comforts of the ideal home-life.
If it had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over again
with hardly a lack.
In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things;
among others a fine native house of the olden time,
with all the details true
to the facts,
and the showy colors right and in their proper places.
All the details:
the fine mats and rugs and things;
the elaborate and wonderful wood carvings--wonderful,
surely,
considering who d