Mr. Hughes' letter of welcome.--Challenges.--Mr. Carlyle
Smythe.--The Adelaide Press.--The great drought.--The wine
industry.--Clairvoyance.--Meeting with Bellchambers.--The first
lecture.--The effect.--The Religious lecture.--The illustrated
lecture.--Premonitions.--The spot light.--Mr. Thomas' account of
the incident.--Correspondence.--Adelaide doctors.--A day in the
Bush.--The Mallee fowl.--Sussex in Australia.--Farewell to
Adelaide.
I was welcomed to Australia by a hospitable letter from the Premier, Mr.
Hughes, who assured me that he would do what he could to make our visit
a pleasant one, and added, "I hope you will see Australia as it is, for
I want you to tell the world about us. We are a very young country, we
have a very big and very rich heritage, and the great war has made us
realise that we are Australians, proud to belong to the Empire, but
proud too of our own country."
Apart from Mr. Hughes's kind message, my chief welcome to the new land
came from Sydney, and took the queer form of two independant challenges
to public debate, one from the Christian Evidence Society, and the other
from the local leader of the materialists. As the two positions are
mutually destructive, one felt inclined to tell them to fight it out
between themselves and that I would fight the winner. The Christian
Evidence Society, is, of course, out of the question, since they regard
a text as an argument, which I can only accept with many qualifications,
so that there is no common basis. The materialist is a more worthy
antagonist, for though he is often as bigotted and inaccessible to
reason as the worst type of Christian, there is always a leaven of
honest, open-minded doubters on whom a debate might make an impression.
A debate with them, as I experienced when I met Mr. MacCabe, can only
follow one line, they quoting all the real or alleged scandals which
have ever been connected with the lowest forms of mediumship, and
claiming that the whole cult is comprised therein, to which you counter
with your own personal experiences, and with the evidence of the cloud
of witnesses who have found the deepest comfort and enlarged knowledge.
It is like two boxers each hitting the air, and both returning to their
respective corners amid the plaudits of their backers, while the general
public is none the better.
Three correspondents headed me off on the ship, and as I gave each of
them a long separate interview, I was a tired man before I got ashore.
Mr. Carlyle Smythe, my impresario, had also arrived, a small alert
competent gentleman, with whom I at once got on pleasant terms, which
were never once clouded during our long travels together upon our tour.
I was fortunate indeed to have so useful and so entertaining a
companion, a musician, a scholar, and a man of many varied experiences.
With his help we soon got our stuff through the customs, and made the
short train journey which separates the Port of Adelaide from the
charming city of that name. By one o'clock we were safely housed in the
Grand Central Hotel, with windows in place of port holes, and the roar
of the trams to take the place of the murmurs of the great ocean.
The good genius of Adelaide was a figure, already almost legendary, one
Colonel Light, who played the part of Romulus and Remus to the infant
city. Somewhere in the thirties of last century he chose the site,
against strong opposition, and laid out the plan with such skill that in
all British and American lands I have seen few such cities, so pretty,
so orderly and so self-sufficing. When one sees all the amenities of the
place, botanical gardens, zoological gardens, art gallery, museum,
university, public library and the rest, it is hard to realise that the
whole population is still under three hundred thousand. I do not know
whether the press sets the tone to the community or the community to the
press, but in any case Adelaide is greatly blessed in this respect, for
its two chief papers the _Register_ and the _Advertiser_, under Sir
William Sowden and Sir Langdon Bonython respectively, are really
excellent, with a worldwide Metropolitan tone.
Their articles upon the subject in which I am particularly interested,
though by no means one-sided, were at least informed with knowledge and
breadth of mind.
In Adelaide I appreciated, for the first time, the crisis which
Australia has been passing through in the shape of a two-years drought,
only recently broken. It seems to have involved all the States and to
have caused great losses, amounting to millions of sheep and cattle. The
result was that the price of those cattle which survived has risen
enormously, and at the time of our visit an absolute record had been
established, a bullock having been sold for L41. The normal price would
be about L13. Sheep were about L3 each, the normal being fifteen
shillings. This had, of course, sent the price of meat soaring with the
usual popular unrest and agitation as a result. It was clear, however,
that with the heavy rains the prices would fall. These Australian
droughts are really terrible things, especially when they come upon
newly-opened country and in the hotter regions of Queensland and the
North. One lady told us that she had endured a drought in Queensland
which lasted so long that children of five had never seen a drop of
rain. You could travel a hundred miles and find the brown earth the
whole way, with no sign of green anywhere, the sheep eating twigs or
gnawing bark until they died. Her brother sold his surviving sheep for
one shilling each, and when the drought broke had to restock at 50s. a
head. This is a common experience, and all but the man with savings have
to take to some subordinate work, ruined men. No doubt, with
afforestation, artesian wells, irrigation and water storage things may
be modified, but all these things need capital, and capital in these
days is hard to seek, nor can it be expected that capitalists will pour
their money into States which have wild politicians who talk lightly of
past obligations. You cannot tell the investor that he is a bloated
incubus one moment, and go hat in hand for further incubation the next.
I fear that this grand country as a whole may suffer from the wild ideas
of some of its representatives. But under it all lies the solid
self-respecting British stuff, which will never repudiate a just debt,
however heavily it may press. Australians may groan under the burden,
but they should remember that for every pound of taxation they carry the
home Briton carries nearly three.
But to return for a moment to the droughts; has any writer of fiction
invented or described a more long-drawn agony than that of the man, his
nerves the more tired and sensitive from the constant unbroken heat,
waiting day after day for the cloud that never comes, while under the
glaring sun from the unchanging blue above him, his sheep, which
represent all his life's work and his hopes, perish before his eyes? A
revolver shot has often ended the long vigil and the pioneer has joined
his vanished flocks. I have just come in contact with a case where two
young returned soldiers, demobilised from the war and planted on the
land had forty-two cattle given them by the State to stock their little
farm. Not a drop of water fell for over a year, the feed failed, and
these two warriors of Palestine and Flanders wept at their own
helplessness while their little herd died before their eyes. Such are
the trials which the Australian farmer has to bear.
While waiting for my first lecture I do what I can to understand the
country and its problems. To this end I visited the vineyards and wine
plant of a local firm which possesses every factor for success, save the
capacity to answer letters. The originator started grape culture as a
private hobby about 60 years ago, and now such an industry has risen
that this firm alone has L700,000 sunk in the business, and yet it is
only one of several. The product can be most excellent, but little or
any ever reaches Europe, for it cannot overtake the local demand. The
quality was good and purer than the corresponding wines in
Europe--especially the champagnes, which seem to be devoid of that
poison, whatever it may be, which has for a symptom a dry tongue with
internal acidity, driving elderly gentlemen to whisky and soda. The
Australian product, taken in moderate doses, seems to have no poisonous
quality, and is without that lime-like dryness which appears to be the
cause of it. If temperance reform takes the sane course of insisting
upon a lowering of the alcohol in our drinks, so that one may be
surfeited before one could be drunken, then this question of good mild
wines will bulk very largely in the future, and Australia may supply one
of the answers. With all my sympathy for the reformers I feel that wine
is so useful a social agent that we should not abolish it until we are
certain that there is no _via media_. The most pregnant argument upon
the subject was the cartoon which showed the husband saying "My dear, it
is the anniversary of our wedding. Let us have a second bottle of ginger
beer."
We went over the vineyards, ourselves mildly interested in the vines,
and the children wildly excited over the possibility of concealed
snakes. Then we did the vats and the cellars with their countless
bottles. We were taught the secrets of fermentation, how the wonderful
Pasteur had discovered that the best and quickest was produced not by
the grape itself, as of old, but by the scraped bloom of the grape
inserted in the bottle. After viewing the number of times a bottle must
be turned, a hundred at least, and the complex processes which lead up
to the finished article, I will pay my wine bills in future with a
better grace. The place was all polished wood and shining brass, like
the fittings of a man-of-war, and a great impression of cleanliness and
efficiency was left upon our minds. We only know the Australian wines at
present by the rough article sold in flasks, but when the supply has
increased the world will learn that this country has some very different
stuff in its cellars, and will try to transport it to their tables.
We had a small meeting of spiritualists in our hotel sitting-room, under
the direction of Mr. Victor Cromer, a local student of the occult, who
seems to have considerable psychic power. He has a small circle for
psychic development which is on new lines, for the neophytes who are
learning clairvoyance sit around in a circle in silence, while Mr.
Cromer endeavours by mental effort to build up the thought form of some
object, say a tree, in the centre of the room. After a time he asks each
of the circle what he or she can see, and has many correct answers.
With colours in the same way he can convey impressions to his pupils. It
is clear that telepathy is not excluded as an explanation, but the
actual effect upon the participants is according to their own account,
visual rather than mental. We had an interesting sitting with a number
of these developing mediums present, and much information was given, but
little of it could be said to be truly evidential. After seeing such
clairvoyance as that of Mr. Tom Tyrell or others at home, when a dozen
names and addresses will be given together with the descriptions of
those who once owned them, one is spoiled for any lesser display.
There was one man whom I had particularly determined to meet when I came
to Australia. This was Mr. T. P. Bellchambers, about whom I had read an
article in some magazine which showed that he was a sort of humble
Jeffries or Thoreau, more lonely than the former, less learned than the
latter, who lived among the wild creatures in the back country, and was
on such terms with our humble brothers as few men are ever privileged to
attain. I had read how the eagle with the broken wing had come to him
for succour, and how little birds would sit on the edge of his pannikin
while he drank. Him at all cost would we see. Like the proverbial
prophet, no one I met had ever heard of him, but on the third day of our
residence there came a journalist bearing with him a rudely dressed,
tangle-haired man, collarless and unkempt, with kind, irregular features
and clear blue eyes--the eyes of a child. It was the man himself. "He
brought me," said he, nodding towards the journalist. "He had to, for I
always get bushed in a town."
This rude figure fingering his frayed cap was clearly out of his true
picture, and we should have to visit him in his own little clearing to
see him as he really was. Meanwhile I wondered whether one who was so
near nature might know something of nature's more occult secrets. The
dialogue ran like this:
"You who are so near nature must have psychic experiences."
"What's psychic? I live so much in the wild that I don't know much."
"I expect you know plenty we don't know. But I meant spiritual."
"Supernatural?"
"Well, we think it is natural, but little understood."
"You mean fairies and things?"
"Yes, and the dead."
"Well, I guess our fairies would be black fairies."
"Why not?"
"Well, I never saw any."
"I hoped you might."
"No, but I know one thing. The night my mother died I woke to find her
hand upon my brow. Oh, there's no doubt. Her hand was heavy on my brow."
"At the time?"
"Yes, at the very hour."
"Well, that was good."
"Animals know more about such things."
"Yes."
"They see something. My dog gets terrified when I see nothing, and
there's a place in the bush where my horse shies and sweats, he does,
but there's nothing to see."
"Something evil has been done there. I've known many cases."
"I expect that's it."
So ran our dialogue. At the end of it he took a cigar, lighted it at the
wrong end, and took himself with his strong simple backwoods atmosphere
out of the room. Assuredly I must follow him to the wilds.
Now came the night of my first lecture. It was in the city hall, and
every seat was occupied. It was a really magnificent audience of two
thousand people, the most representative of the town. I am an
embarrassed and an interested witness, so let me for this occasion quote
the sympathetic, not to say flattering account of the _Register_.
"There could not have been a more impressive set of circumstances
than those which attended the first Australian lecture by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle at the Adelaide Town Hall on Saturday night,
September 25th. The audience, large, representative and thoughtful,
was in its calibre and proportions a fitting compliment to a world
celebrity and his mission. Many of the intellectual leaders of the
city were present--University professors, pulpit personalities,
men eminent in business, legislators, every section of the
community contributed a quota. It cannot be doubted, of course,
that the brilliant literary fame of the lecturer was an attraction
added to that strange subject which explored the 'unknown drama of
the soul.' Over all Sir Arthur dominated by his big arresting
presence. His face has a rugged, kindly strength, tense and earnest
in its grave moments, and full of winning animation when the sun of
his rich humour plays on the powerful features."
"It is not altogether a sombre journey he makes among the shadows,
but apparently one of happy, as well as tender experiences, so that
laughter is not necessarily excluded from the exposition. Do not
let that be misunderstood. There was no intrusion of the slightest
flippancy--Sir Arthur, the whole time, exhibited that attitude of
reverence and humility demanded of one traversing a domain on the
borderland of the tremendous. Nothing approaching a theatrical
presentation of the case for Spiritualism marred the discourse. It
was for the most part a plain statement. First things had to be
said, and the explanatory groundwork laid for future development.
It was a lucid, illuminating introduction."
"Sir Arthur had a budget of notes, but after he had turned over a
few pages he sallied forth with fluent independence under the
inspiration of a vast mental store of material. A finger jutted out
now and again with a thrust of passionate emphasis, or his big
glasses twirled during moments of descriptive ease, and
occasionally both hands were held forward as though delivering
settled points to the audience for its examination. A clear,
well-disciplined voice, excellent diction, and conspicuous
sincerity of manner marked the lecture, and no one could have found
fault with the way in which Sir Arthur presented his case."
"The lecturer approached the audience in no spirit of impatient
dogmatism, but in the capacity of an understanding mind seeking to
illumine the darkness of doubt in those who had not shared his
great experiences. He did not dictate, but reasoned and pleaded,
taking the people into his confidence with strong conviction and a
consoling faith. 'I want to speak to you to-night on a subject
which concerns the destiny of every man and woman in this room,'
began Sir Arthur, bringing everybody at once into an intimate
personal circle. 'No doubt the Almighty, by putting an angel in
King William Street, could convert every one of you to
Spiritualism, but the Almighty law is that we must use our own
brains, and find out our own salvation, and it is not made too easy
for us.'"
It is awkward to include this kindly picture, and yet I do not know how
else to give an idea of how the matter seemed to a friendly observer. I
had chosen for my theme the scientific aspect of the matter, and I
marshalled my witnesses and showed how Professor Mayo corroborated
Professor Hare, and Professor Challis Professor Mayo, and Sir William
Crookes all his predecessors, while Russell Wallace and Lombroso and
Zollner and Barrett, and Lodge, and many more had all after long study
assented, and I read the very words of these great men, and showed how
bravely they had risked their reputations and careers for what they knew
to be the truth. I then showed how the opposition who dared to
contradict them were men with no practical experience of it at all. It
was wonderful to hear the shout of assent when I said that what struck
me most in such a position was its colossal impertinence. That shout
told me that my cause was won, and from then onwards the deep silence
was only broken by the occasional deep murmur of heart-felt agreement. I
told them the evidence that had been granted to me, the coming of my
son, the coming of my brother, and their message. "Plough! Plough!
others will cast the seed." It is hard to talk of such intimate matters,
but they were not given to me for my private comfort alone, but for that
of humanity. Nothing could have gone better than this first evening, and
though I had no chairman and spoke for ninety minutes without a pause, I
was so upheld--there is no other word for the sensation--that I was
stronger at the end than when I began. A leading materialist was among
my audience. "I am profoundly impressed," said he to Mr. Smythe, as he
passed him in the corridor. That stood out among many kind messages
which reached me that night.
Illustration: _Photo: Stirling, Melbourne._ THE WANDERERS, 1920-21.
My second lecture, two nights later, was on the Religious aspect of the
matter. I had shown that the phenomena were nothing, mere material
signals to arrest the attention of a material world. I had shown also
that the personal benefit, the conquest of death, the Communion of
Saints, was a high, but not the highest boon. The real full flower of
Spiritualism was what the wisdom of the dead could tell us about their
own conditions, their present experiences, their outlook upon the secret
of the universe, and the testing of religious truth from the viewpoint
of two worlds instead of one. The audience was more silent than before,
but the silence was that of suspense, not of dissent, as I showed them
from message after message what it was exactly which awaited them in the
beyond. Even I, who am oblivious as a rule to my audience, became aware
that they were tense with feeling and throbbing with emotion. I showed
how there was no conflict with religion, in spite of the
misunderstanding of the churches, and that the revelation had come to
extend and explain the old, even as the Christ had said that he had much
more to tell but could not do it now. "Entirely new ground was
traversed," says my kindly chronicler, "and the audience listened
throughout with rapt attention. They were obviously impressed by the
earnestness of the speaker and his masterly presentation of the theme."
I cannot answer for the latter but at least I can for the former, since
I speak not of what I think but of what I know. How can a man fail to be
earnest then?
A few days later I followed up the lectures by two exhibitions of
psychic pictures and photographs upon a screen. It was certainly an
amazing experience for those who imagined that the whole subject was
dreamland, and they freely admitted that it staggered them. They might
well be surprised, for such a series has never been seen, I believe,
before, including as it does choice samples from the very best
collections. I showed them the record of miracle after miracle, some of
them done under my very eyes, one guaranteed by Russell Wallace, three
by Sir William Crookes, one of the Geley series from Paris, two of Dr.
Crawford's medium with the ecto-plasm pouring from her, four
illustrating the absolutely final Lydia Haig case on the island of
Rothesay, several of Mr. Jeffrey's collection and several also of our
own Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, with the fine
photograph of the face within a crystal. No wonder that the audience sat
spellbound, while the local press declared that no such exhibition had
ever been seen before in Australia. It is almost too overwhelming for
immediate propaganda purposes. It has a stunning, dazing effect upon the
spectators. Only afterwards, I think, when they come to turn it all over
in their minds, do they see that the final proof has been laid before
them, which no one with the least sense for evidence could reject. But
the sense for evidence is not, alas, a universal human quality.
I am continually aware of direct spirit intervention in my own life. I
have put it on record in my "New Revelation" that I was able to say that
the turn of the great war would come upon the Piave months before that
river was on the Italian war map. This was recorded at the time, before
the fulfilment which occurred more than a year later--so it does not
depend upon my assertion. Again, I dreamed the name of the ship which
was to take us to Australia, rising in the middle of the night and
writing it down in pencil on my cheque-book. I wrote _Nadera_, but it
was actually _Naldera_. I had never heard that such a ship existed until
I visited the P. & O. office, when they told me we should go by the
_Osterley_, while I, seeing the _Naldera_ upon the list, thought "No,
that will be our ship!" So it proved, through no action of our own, and
thereby we were saved from quarantine and all manner of annoyance.
Never before have I experienced such direct visible intervention as
occurred during my first photographic lecture at Adelaide. I had shown a
slide the effect of which depended upon a single spirit face appearing
amid a crowd of others. The slide was damp, and as photos under these
circumstances always clear from the edges when placed in the lantern,
the whole centre was so thickly fogged that I was compelled to admit
that I could not myself see the spirit face. Suddenly, as I turned away,
rather abashed by my failure, I heard cries of "There it is," and
looking up again I saw this single face shining out from the general
darkness with so bright and vivid an effect that I never doubted for a
moment that the operator was throwing a spot light upon it, my wife
sharing my impression. I thought how extraordinarily clever it was that
he should pick it out so accurately at the distance. So the matter
passed, but next morning Mr. Thomas, the operator, who is not a
Spiritualist, came in great excitement to say that a palpable miracle
had been wrought, and that in his great experience of thirty years he
had never known a photo dry from the centre, nor, as I understood him,
become illuminated in such a fashion. Both my wife and I were surprised
to learn that he had thrown no ray upon it. Mr. Thomas told us that
several experts among the audience had commented upon the strangeness of
the incident. I, therefore, asked Mr. Thomas if he would give me a note
as to his own impression, so as to furnish an independant account. This
is what he wrote:--
_"Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide._
"_In Adelaide, on September 28th, I projected a lantern slide
containing a group of ladies and gentlemen, and in the centre of
the picture, when the slide was reversed, appeared a human face. On
the appearance of the picture showing the group the fog incidental
to a damp or new slide gradually appeared covering the whole slide,
and only after some minutes cleared, and then quite contrary to
usual practice did so from a central point just over the face that
appeared in the centre, and refused even after that to clear right
off to the edge. The general experience is for a slide to clear
from the outside edges to a common centre. Your slide cleared only
sufficiently in the centre to show the face, and did not, while the
slide was on view, clear any more than sufficient to show that
face. Thinking that perhaps there might be a scientific
explanation to this phenomenon, I hesitated before writing you, and
in the meantime I have made several experiments but have not in any
one particular experiment obtained the same result. I am very much
interested--as are hundreds of others who personally witnessed the
phenomenon._"
Mr. Thomas, in his account, has missed the self-illuminated appearance
of the face, but otherwise he brings out the points. I never gave
occasion for the repetition of the phenomenon, for in every case I was
careful that the slides were carefully dried beforehand.
So much for the lectures at Adelaide, which were five in all, and left,
as I heard from all sides, a deep impression upon the town. Of course,
the usual abusive messages poured in, including one which wound up with
the hearty words: "May you be struck dead before you leave this
Commonwealth." From Melbourne I had news that before our arrival in
Australia at a public prayer meeting at the Assembly Hall, Collins
Street, a Presbyterian prayed that we might never reach Australia's
shores. As we were on the high seas at the time this was clearly a
murderous petition, nor could I have believed it if a friend of mine had
not actually been present and heard it. On the other hand, we received
many letters of sympathy and thanks, which amply atoned. "I feel sure
that many mothers, who have lost their sons in the war, will, wherever
you go, bless you, as I do, for the help you have given." As this was
the object of our journey it could not be denied that we had attained
our end. When I say "we," I mean that such letters with inquiries came
continually to my wife as well as myself, though she answered them with
far greater fullness and clearness than I had time to do.
Hotel life began to tell upon the children, who are like horses with a
profusion of oats and no exercise. On the whole they were wonderfully
good. When some domestic crisis was passed the small voice of Malcolm,
once "Dimples," was heard from the darkness of his bed, saying, "Well,
if I am to be good I must have a proper start. Please mammie, say one,
two, three, and away!" When this ceremony had been performed a still
smaller voice of Baby asked the same favour, so once more there was a
formal start. The result was intermittent, and it is as well. I don't
believe in angelic children.
The Adelaide doctors entertained me to dinner, and I was pleased to meet
more than one who had been of my time at Edinburgh. They seemed to be a
very prosperous body of men. There was much interesting conversation,
especially from one elderly professor named Watson, who had known Bully
Hayes and other South Sea celebrities in the semi-piratical,
black-birding days. He told me one pretty story. They landed upon some
outlying island in Carpentaria, peopled by real primitive blacks, who
were rounded up by the ships crew on one of the peninsulas which formed
the end of the island. These creatures, the lowest of the human race,
huddled together in consternation while the white men trained a large
camera upon them. Suddenly three males advanced and made a speech in
their own tongue which, when interpreted, proved to be an offer that
those three should die in exchange for the lives of the tribe. What
could the very highest do more than this, and yet it came from the
lowest savages. Truly, we all have something of the divine, and it is
the very part which will grow and spread until it has burned out all the
rest. "Be a Christ!" said brave old Stead. At the end of countless aeons
we may all reach that point which not only Stead but St. Paul also has
foreshadowed.
I refreshed myself between lectures by going out to Nature and to
Bellchambers. As it was twenty-five miles out in the bush, inaccessible
by rail, and only to be approached by motor roads which were in parts
like the bed of a torrent, I could not take my wife, though the boys,
after the nature of boys, enjoy a journey the more for its roughness. It
was a day to remember. I saw lovely South Australia in the full beauty
of the spring, the budding girlhood of the year, with all her winsome
growing graces upon her. The brilliant yellow wattle was just fading
upon the trees, but the sward was covered with star-shaped purple
flowers of the knot-grass, and with familiar home flowers, each subtly
altered by their transportation. It was wild bush for part of the way,
but mostly of the second growth on account of forest fires as much as
the woodman's axe. Bellchambers came in to guide us, for there is no one
to ask upon these desolate tracks, and it is easy to get bushed. Mr.
Waite, the very capable zoologist of the museum, joined the party, and
with two such men the conversation soon got to that high nature talk
which represents the really permanent things of material life--more
lasting than thrones and dynasties. I learned of the strange storks, the
"native companions" who meet, 500 at a time, for their stately balls,
where in the hush of the bush they advance, retreat, and pirouette in
their dignified minuets. I heard of the bower birds, who decorate their
homes with devices of glass and pebbles. There was talk, too, of the
little red beetles who have such cunning ways that they can fertilise
the insectivorous plants without being eaten, and of the great ants who
get through galvanised iron by the aid of some acid-squirting insect
which they bring with them to the scene of their assault. I heard also
of the shark's egg which Mr. Waite had raped from sixty feet deep in
Sydney Harbour, descending for the purpose in a diver's suit, for which
I raised my hat to him. Deep things came also from Bellchambers' store
of knowledge and little glimpses of beautiful humanity from this true
gentleman.
"Yes," he said, "I am mostly vegetarian. You see, I know the beasts too
well to bring myself to pick their bones. Yes, I'm friends with most of
them. Birds have more sense than animals to my mind. They understand you
like. They know what you mean. Snakes have least of any. They don't get
friendly-like in the same way. But Nature helps the snakes in queer
ways. Some of them hatch their own eggs, and when they do Nature
raises the temperature of their bodies. That's queer."
Illustration: _Photo: W. G. Smith, Adelaide._ BELLCHAMBERS AND THE
MALLEE FOWL. "GET ALONG WITH YOU, DO!"
I carried away a mixed memory of the things I had seen. A blue-headed
wren, an eagle soaring in the distance; a hideous lizard with a huge
open mouth; a laughing jackass which refused to laugh; many more or less
tame wallabies and kangaroos; a dear little 'possum which got under the
back of my coat, and would not come out; noisy mynah birds which fly
ahead and warn the game against the hunter. Good little noisy mynah! All
my sympathies are with you! I would do the same if I could. This
senseless lust for killing is a disgrace to the race. We, of England,
cannot preach, for a pheasant battue is about the worst example of it.
But do let the creatures alone unless they are surely noxious! When Mr.
Bellchambers told us how he had trained two ibises--the old religious
variety--and how both had been picked off by some unknown local
"sportsman" it made one sad.
We had a touch of comedy, however, when Mr. Bellchambers attempted to
expose the egg of the Mallee fowl, which is covered a foot deep in
mould. He scraped into the mound with his hands. The cock watched him
with an expression which clearly said: "Confound the fellow! What is he
up to now?" He then got on the mound, and as quickly as Bellchambers
shovelled the earth out he kicked it back again, Bellchambers in his
good-humoured way crying "Get along with you, do!" A good husband is the
Mallee cock, and looks after the family interests. But what we humans
would think if we were born deep underground and had to begin our career
by digging our way to the surface, is beyond imagination.
There are quite a clan of Bellchambers living in or near the little
pioneer's hut built in a clearing of the bush. Mrs. Bellchambers is of
Sussex, as is her husband, and when they heard that we were fresh from
Sussex also it was wonderful to see the eager look that came upon their
faces, while the bush-born children could scarce understand what it was
that shook the solid old folk to their marrow. On the walls were old
prints of the Devil's Dyke and Firle Beacon. How strange that old Sussex
should be wearing out its very life in its care for the fauna of young
Australia. This remarkable man is unpaid with only his scanty holding
upon which to depend, and many dumb mouths dependent upon him. I shall
rejoice if my efforts in the local press serve to put his affairs upon a
more worthy foundation, and to make South Australia realise what a
valuable instrument lies to her hand.
Before I left Adelaide I learned many pleasing things about the
lectures, which did away with any shadow cast by those numerous
correspondents who seemed to think that we were still living under the
Mosaic dispensation, and who were so absent-minded that they usually
forgot to sign their names. It is a curious difference between the
Christian letters of abuse and those of materialists, that the former
are usually anonymous and the latter signed. I heard of one man, a lame
stockman, who had come 300 miles from the other side of Streaky Bay to
attend the whole course, and who declared that he could listen all
night. Another seized my hand and cried, "You will never know the good
you have done in this town." Well, I hope it was so, but I only regard
myself as the plough. Others must follow with the seed. Knowledge,
perseverance, sanity, judgment, courage--we ask some qualities from our
disciples if they are to do real good. Talking of moral courage I would
say that the Governor of South Australia, Sir Archibald Weigall with
Lady Weigall, had no hesitation in coming to support me with their
presence. By the end of September this most successful mission in
Adelaide was accomplished, and early in October we were on our way to
Melbourne, which meant a long night in the train and a few hours of the
next morning during which we saw the surface diggings of Ballarat on
every side of the railway line, the sandy soil pitted in every direction
with the shallow claims of the miners.