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 "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 XII.

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.