There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If

you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will

receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing

can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will

see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and

several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He

always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know

how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will

not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get

inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship

and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work.

I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor.

The others were at home.

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a

war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies,

but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his

hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The

country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about

it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the

Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto,

while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's

functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent

head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents

culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by

his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear

good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball

of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.

He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to

lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped

for that.

Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House;

which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim

boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board

the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government

House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate

of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity

of his office.

Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a

fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind,

and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day

seem short.

And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the

finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their

living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The

larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty

feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the

shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest

steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and

roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them,

ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to

tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger

arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no

one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no

employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money

wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing

to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter.

But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort.

Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking;

he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and

hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting

aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding

shark-fisher the man looked up and said----

"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me."

"How do you know I won't make it worse?"

"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't

change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better,

of course. Come."

"All right, what will you give?"

"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."

"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."

"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't

spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there, pull

in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I

knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right--he's

landed."

It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman

said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.

"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait.

There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my

luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own."

"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll

rob him."

When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his

hands in the bay, and was starting away.

"What, you are not going?"

"Yes. Good-bye."

"But what about your shark?"

"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"

"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report

him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty?

Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?"

"Oh, well, you can collect it."

"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes."

"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I

judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm

believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and

yet you must be rich."

"I am."

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went.

He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his

clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was

a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign,

got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't

enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.

At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his

morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A

servant put his head in and said:

"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."

"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his

business."

"He won't go, sir. I've tried."

"He won't go? That's--why, that's unusual. He's one of two things,

then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?"

"No, sir. He don't look it."

"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"

"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."

"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"

"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."

"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."

The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not

crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing."

Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any

words; what is it you want?"

"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."

"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No--he can't be--not

with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?"

"Nobody that you know."

"What is your name?"

"Cecil Rhodes."

"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then--just for

curiosity's sake--what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?"

"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for

myself within the next sixty days."

"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you

interest me. And somehow you--well, you fascinate me; I think that that

is about the word. And it isn't your proposition--no, that doesn't

fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something

that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for

curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your

desire to bor----"

"I said intention."

"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an

unheedful valuing of its strength, you know."

"I knew its strength."

"Well, I must say--but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind

is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any.

(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable

--well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I

believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare

not. What is your scheme?"

"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days."

"What, the whole of it?"

"The whole of it."

"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how

you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?"

"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more."

"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know

what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?"

"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."

"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish

you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?"

"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."

"You mean, of course, that you might make it if----"

"I said 'shall'."

"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I

ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here!

Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got

what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house,

an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an

entire colony on speculation. Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized,

if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you

make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you----"

"I don't think--I know."

"Definite again. How do you know?"

"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up

fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising."

"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have

just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't

stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I

have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The

fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty

days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no

war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest

commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . .

Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion,

when----"

"Because I have later news."

"Later news? Oh, come--later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot

from London by the----"

"My news is only ten days old."

"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"

"Got it out of a shark."

"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun

--raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the

single person of----"

"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited?

Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a

statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin

to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."

"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and

I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance

like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report----"

"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?"

"Andrew. What are you writing?"

"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark--and another matter. Only ten

lines. There--now it is done. Sign it."

"Many thanks--many. Let me see; it says--it says oh, come, this is

interesting! Why--why--look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put

up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings

with you, half and half. There, now--I've signed; make your promise good

if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old."

"Here it is--and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that

belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames,

without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is

dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber

confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur

bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'----, as clean

native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in

consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for

home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him

before the day was done, poor fellow."

"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend

to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down

and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will

cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything

is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to

deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But

there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with

the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say

your name is?"

"Cecil Rhodes."

"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and

by, if you live. There are three kinds of people--Commonplace Men,

Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables,

and take the chances."

The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first

fortune he ever pocketed.

The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some

reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in

their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little

sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous

skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun--such as it is

with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The

young fellows scramble aboard whole--sometimes--not always. Tragedies

have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that

a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed

for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from

the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of

both.

The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the

fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news

spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the

free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful

things in the colony.

CHAPTER XIV.

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but

our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of

securing that.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a

doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it

broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until

after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture

engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland.

In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not

advisable.

So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital

of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne--that juvenile city of sixty years,

and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small;

but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast

country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the

map--looks like a county, in fact--yet it is about as large as England,

Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is

just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as

large as the State of Texas.

Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of

squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the

impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of

Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate

of Victoria is favorable to other great industries--among others,

wheat-growing and the making of wine.

We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was

American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the

car was clean and fine and new--nothing about it to suggest the rolling

stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra

weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome.

Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be

described as continental.

The tickets were round-trip ones--to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in

South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred

more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip

wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to

buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need

them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing

than he needs.

Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the

most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the

frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers

were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the

biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break

in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that

gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some

petrified legislator's shoulders.

It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to

Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the

owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of

things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the

colonies--the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other

one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but

another effort to explain the inexplicable.

All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of

course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed

upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted.

Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a

custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good

deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it

here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire

of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could

manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron

were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama

forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were

several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron

carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be

valuable enough to be coined when it arrived.

We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that

the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the

Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say,

but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite;

towering and majestic masses of blue--a softly luminous blue, a

smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the

blue of the sky--made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out.

A wonderful color--just divine.

A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were

rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe

condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may

have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me

distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a

country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually

erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been

very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for

a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order.

We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and

cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The

waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The

usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies--generally

duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levee in

Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that

they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how.

All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through

thin--not thick--forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks

rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark--erysipelas convalescents, so

to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins,

built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and

the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children--rugged little

simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the

banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.

And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with

showy advertisements--mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of

"sheepdip." If that is the name--and I think it is. It is a stuff like

tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of

the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip

to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It

is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed

with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad

coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and

enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip

makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get

railroad coffee?

We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not

a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of

game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to

Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no

Aboriginals--no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one.

In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the

curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We

have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them.

It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.

CHAPTER XV.

Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably

familiar with it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to

stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming

excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was

famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga. This

was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was

out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he

soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of

space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in

unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as to which of the two long-missing

persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir

Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English

history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the

dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and

fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played

upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a

British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial

development.

When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what

daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale, as compared

with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The

fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this

splendid Tichborne romance.

He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such

people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most

picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never

happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did

happen.

It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive

him out; and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still

believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to

convict him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes

still believed in him; and among these believers were many educated and

intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir

Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he

got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the

Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view.

He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him.

This was but a few months ago--not very much short of a generation since

he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his

death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was

only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher--that and nothing

more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even

his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating

incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a

weaker article would probably disagree with them.

I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I

attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for

him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening

dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were

about twenty-five gentlemen present; educated men, men moving in good

society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of distinction,

none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and

admirers. It was "Sir Roger," always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one

withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if

it tasted good.

For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only

Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I arrived in London with my

wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by

a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but

I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of about

six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were

ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their

size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to

the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in

England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay

twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the

specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station.

These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in

Europe, three months ahead; if we were in America, six to twelve months

ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and

also for the end of the visit.

This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It

asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from London, August 6th. The

carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days

later-train specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom

Hughes."

I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said:

"Accept, and be thankful."

He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine

attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character.

He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately

manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going

a long way to see--like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition;

liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort

coming and going.

We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years--the last one in 1879.

Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a

steam yacht--a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in

all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things.

The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were

at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter

of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for

my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and

opened it. It was the usual note--as to paucity of lines--and was

written on the customary strip of paper; but there was nothing usual

about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any

assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture-tour in

Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he,

the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her

husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would

already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this

note; that the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and

city governments; and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had

not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the

sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry

Bascom."

My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would

have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right

ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those sorrowing

governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money.

I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture

doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been

able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their

impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a

ghost? None--and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know

about that man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait.

When I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he

passed from life, and I never saw him again.. My curiosity faded away.

However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And

naturally: for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing

compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on

business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of

that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm--they had never heard

of him, and didn't believe in him.

I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in

Melbourne. The government would remember; and the other mourners. At

the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about

the matter. But no--it turned out that they had never heard of it.

So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I

believed it would never be cleared up--in this life--so I dropped it out

of my mind.

But at last! just when I was least expecting it----

However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the

matter again, in a far-distant chapter.

CHAPTER XVI.

There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us

that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it,

and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to

enjoy it.

-Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately

city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system

of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and

public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters,

and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and

sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor,

and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a

squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and

banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything

that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of

Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one

specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is

the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the

Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of

November, Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land

and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from

the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of

high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other

duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight

before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until

all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet

the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging

outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred

thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the

spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to

be seen in Australasia elsewhere.

It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their

clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds

as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until

now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies'

clothes; but one might know that.

And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a

delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is

vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change

hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the

fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done,

the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning.

And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and

transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and

count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then

lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole

year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy

again.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be

difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays

and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.

Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them

gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but

not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in

each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter

of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory.

Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an

enthusiasm which are universal--and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup

Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual

day, in any country, which can be named by that large name--Supreme. I

can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose

approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and

preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but

this one does it.

In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the

whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and

Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can

arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown

Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium

and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone--if still alive. The

approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent

people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know

what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard

and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so

dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit

down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a

year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become

general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is

natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard

time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their

enthusiasm.

We have a supreme day--a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a

day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement;

but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it

cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.

In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days--Christmas and the

Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy.

I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is

unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long

time.

The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people;

next, the novelties; and finally the history of the places and countries

visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced

civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in

the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of

Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There

will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be

found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of

difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the

incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be

able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and

variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according

to his geographical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from

those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they,

more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At

least it seemed so to me, and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney,

at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater,

but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on

my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in

considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave

me this pleasant salutation:

"Hello, Mark!"

"Here's to you, old chap!

"Say--Mark!--is he dead?"--a reference to a passage in some book of mine,

though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I

didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the

first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy

height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry

like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means.

I will remark here--if it is not an indecorum--that the welcome which an

American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which

will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his

voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing;

he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each

time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no

trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners,

suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to

remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have

been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances.

And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the

unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to

the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a

prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the

public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of

the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India,

for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively

and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too,

and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or

since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation

of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will

dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get

to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by

baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their

differences so much better and also so much more definitely.

No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of

modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from

the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just

like stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their

hands and yell in unison--no stranger can tell what--and the president

calmly says "Sold to Smith & Co., threpence farthing--next!"--when

probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know?

In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating

things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes,

and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming

interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The

palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich

in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance

ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large,

and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often

ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as

beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have

grounds--domains--about them which rival in charm and magnitude those

which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I was not out

in the country; I had my hands full in town.

And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of

palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and

its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost

always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is

itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes

the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like

history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort,

no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and

incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all

true, they all happened.

CHAPTER XVII.

The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they

shall inherit the earth.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory,

population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe

in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's

commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British

Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one

--Russia--is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British

Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire.

Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the

British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the

middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will

represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are

about the same--400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these

figures. Even Russia is left far behind.

The population of Australasia--4,000,000--sinks into nothingness, and is

lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics

indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its

share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The

value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions

of dollars,--[New South Wales Blue Book.]--and it is claimed that more

than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's

exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this,

Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to

a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade

amounting to a hundred and fifty millions.

In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of

goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents

commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually

by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000. Now, here are some

faith-straining figures:

Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000.

Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000.

That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for

export some whither), is worth $1.15; that of the individual

Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another

way, the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an

annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends away $375

worth.

There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and

others, which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product,

both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50; or, $37.50

for the family-aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of

multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate production would be

nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once

get started.

We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province

of South Australia--a seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found

several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going out on circuit,

and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver

mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken

Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on

the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn

westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat

shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the

Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said;

southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide,

then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales

once more--to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to

Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant

back northeast and over the border--to Buffalo, New York.

But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver

discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world. Its

stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most

fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a

month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth and buys your house at

your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few

shares, and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor

invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship

company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of

those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center

with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once. Adelaide was

close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the

border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth

while for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast trade-profit of

Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales

furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles--mainly

through alien countries--to administer it, but Adelaide takes the

dividends and makes no moan.

We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night.

In the morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country--the kind of thing

which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile

aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to

time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then slipping back again, and

leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the

novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here

and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the

searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is

near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary

which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody

can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he

will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the

novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions,

and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it

--as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might as well walk

under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should

think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt

out people lost in the scrub. Also in the "bush"; also in the desert;

and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground

which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints.

From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became

convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a

penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of

observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so

remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an

official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government

of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint

marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but

knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or

yesterday.

And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with

B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A. will produce

an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the tracker

see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow

a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions, and frequently

doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the time,

and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and

mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings

his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around

in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is

after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and

ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now

wherein does one cow-track differ from another? There must be a

difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a

difference minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the

late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a member of a race charged

by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human

intelligence.

CHAPTER XVIII.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting

in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several

varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied

and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded

one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one

peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The

foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half

of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid

and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching.

The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last

samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart. There

was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its

foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself

above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was

not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each

individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself

in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling

grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful

sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see

the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet.

On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom--importations

from England--and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit

tried to tell me which--was which; but as he didn't know, he had

difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had

never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and

more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get

interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most

of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it

is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and

the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst

out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of

sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch

his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle,

a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It

is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality

usually wanting in Australian blossoms.

The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the

gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of

twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six

shillings in his pocket--an adventurer without trade, profession, or

friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head: he would stay

until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five

years for the accumulation of this fortune.

"That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet."

As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him

to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the

previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this

half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded.

"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he

left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just

in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out

L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded

L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the

country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could

go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about

his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South

Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land

boom a while before." There it is again; picturesque history

--Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it.

In 1836 the British Parliament erected it--still a solitude--into a

Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery.

Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and

invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth.

It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of

people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began

to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the

sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come,

prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was

prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A

village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and

in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on

costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots

were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways

conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been

accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the

world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own

use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor

had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were

built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious

values--on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during

four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge

amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land

company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a

rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other

lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately

had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.

Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000.

During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival

there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis

had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper

mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced.

The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed--followed so

vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this

little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay

hard prices for them--once $50 a barrel for flour--had become an exporter

of grain.

The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to

show especial regard for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in

its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that

colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving,

conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and

South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.

Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a

strong word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the

American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world there was

not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was

buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop

and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The

prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's

aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the

kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the

continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After

the tanning, the leather takes a new name--which I have forgotten--I only

remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes

the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago,

but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of

tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now

then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really

entitled to bear that high epithet--unique. And I suppose that there is

not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a

sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one

Pope, there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living

god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large

populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings

myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come

good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit."

Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and

were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to

the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it

could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges,

and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect--mountains, crags,

country homes, gardens, forests--color, color, color everywhere, and the

air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the

downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway

opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away

into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and

beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city.

We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble

capital, of buts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom.

No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine

homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing

masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful.

There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence,

desiring to show especial regard for the neighboring colony on the west

called Western Australia--and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare

which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's

conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently

conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie;

and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving

thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good, and waits.

But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable

home for every alien who chooses to come; and for his religion, too.

She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and

yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of

samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can

think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show.

One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this

cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census:

Church of England,........... 89,271

Roman Catholic,.............. 47,179

Wesleyan,.................... 49,159

Lutheran,.................... 23,328

Presbyterian,................ 18,206

Congregationalist,........... 11,882

Bible Christian,............. 15,762

Primitive Methodist,......... 11,654

Baptist,..................... 17,547

Christian Brethren,.......... 465

Methodist New Connexion,..... 39

Unitarian,................... 688

Church of Christ,............ 3,367

Society of Friends,.......... 100

Salvation Army,.............. 4,356

New Jerusalem Church,........ 168

Jews,........................ 840

Protestants (undefined),..... 6,532

Mohammedans,................. 299

Confucians, etc.,............ 3,884

Other religions,............. 1,719

Object,...................... 6,940

Not stated,.................. 8,046

Total,.......................320,431

The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as

returned:

Agnostics,

Atheists,

Believers in Christ,

Buddhists,

Calvinists,

Christadelphians,

Christians,

Christ's Chapel,

Christian Israelites,

Christian Socialists,

Church of God,

Cosmopolitans,

Deists,

Evangelists,

Exclusive Brethren,

Free Church,

Free Methodists,

Freethinkers,

Followers of Christ,

Gospel Meetings,

Greek Church,

Infidels,

Maronites,

Memnonists,

Moravians,

Mormons,

Naturalists,

Orthodox,

Others (indefinite),

Pagans,

Pantheists,

Plymouth Brethren,

Rationalists,

Reformers,

Secularists,

Seventh-day Adventists,

Shaker,

Shintoists,

Spiritualists,

Theosophists,

Town (City) Mission,

Welsh Church,

Huguenot,

Hussite,

Zoroastrians,

Zwinglian,

About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious

atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists,

Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there.

And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it:

they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the

Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table.

What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a

welcome toy everywhere else in the world.

CHAPTER XIX.

Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that

other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these

paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under

glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would

still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the

atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat--these would all be there, in place

of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze.

Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of

doors in Australia.--[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an

authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The

thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January, 1880,

the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.]

When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of

vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has everything that grows on

the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied

tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes

the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of

the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful

tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually

name a foreign country as the place of its origin--India, Africa, Japan,

China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on.

In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass

that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened

his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed

with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human

laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the

laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and

beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate

the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably

survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good

reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has

any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J.

he will not kill all of them.

In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog--the dingo. He was a

beautiful creature--shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his

aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The

dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the

whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog

in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors

first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's.

He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in

an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and

that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf.

He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried

out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for

man--the white man.

South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a

southern exposure except one--Queensland. Properly speaking, South

Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center

of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000

miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little

spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its

population; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere--as elsewhere as

they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver

and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is

plenty of room.

A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of

wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the

upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 1871-2 when

her population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there

were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but

once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried

over immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to

supply the men and cattle with water.

A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to

India, and there was telegraphic communication with England from India.

And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it meant

connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could

watch the London markets daily, now; the profit to the wool-growers of

Australia was instant and enormous.

A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000

miles--the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has

to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still, but

little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are

here tabulated.--[From "Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but

the last two.]

Miles.

Melbourne-Mount Gambier,.......300

Mount Gambier-Adelaide,........270

Adelaide-Port Augusta,.........200

Port Augusta-Alice Springs...1,036

Alice Springs-Port Darwin,.....898

Port Darwin-Banjoewangie,... 1,150

Banjoewangie-Batavia,..........480

Batavia-Singapore,.............553

Singapore-Penang,..............399

Penang-Madras,...............1,280

Madras-Bombay,.................650

Bombay-Aden,.................1,662

Aden-Suez,...................1,346

Suez-Alexandria,...............224

Alexandria-Malta,..............828

Malta-Gibraltar,.............1,008

Gibraltar-Falmouth,..........1,061

Falmouth-London,...............350

London-New York,.............2,500

New York-San Francisco,......3,500

I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather

in the neighboring city of Glenelg to commemorate the Reading of the

Proclamation--in 1836--which founded the Province. If I have at any time

called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it

is a Province; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named

in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the Province's

national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the pre-eminent

holiday; and that is saying much, in a country where they seem to have a

most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's

holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is

the desire of the politician--indeed, it is the very breath of the

politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the

workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a

great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise.

He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am

glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be

bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but

was not able to do it.

You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so

politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet--the

Minister of Public Works-was an American, born and reared in New England.

There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other

way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister.

No amount of horse-racing can damn this community.

The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in

the 1,000--about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think,

and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the

average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate for

the old people. There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could

remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had all

been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They

showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward

aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to

talk; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of

it. They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The governor and

the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6.

They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But

they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions

which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are

the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most

animated way; and the more the mayor gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down!

Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and

reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole

house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter

old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the

laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking--jokes of the

vintage of 1836--and then the way they do go on! And finally when ushers

come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into

their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired--I could bang along a week!"

and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of

their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other

end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and

begins his carefully prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity--

"When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in

reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy,

of wisdom, of forethought, of----"

Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've

thought of another one!" and at it they go, with might and main, hearing

not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the

visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away

till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity,

too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth

over, in these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things

they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing.

It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was

amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic; for they had seen

so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had

built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their

commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to see the

structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised

for honorable work.

One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward;

things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent

--remarkably so in some directions--and he said that along with their

unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he

considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced

their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of

their brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen

a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with

those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the

smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the

trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities which

they could not master. The white man could not control its motions,

could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some

wonderful things--some almost incredible things--which he had seen the

blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed

to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books.

It is contended--and may be said to be conceded--that the boomerang was

known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of

this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended

that it was known to the ancient Egyptians.

One of two things is then apparent, either some one with a boomerang

arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge

of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it.

It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the

fact. But there is no hurry.

CHAPTER XX.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three

unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,

and the prudence never to practice either of them.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

From diary:

Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years

ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the

people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said:

"Do you remember my introducing you to an earl--the Earl of C.?"

"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage,

just starting--belated--for the train. I remember it."

"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was

not looking for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and

interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours,

and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some

particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that

day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but the

thing that surprised me was this: when I induced you, you said, 'I am

glad to meet your lordship gain.' The I again' was the surprise. He is

a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you

hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say,

'Why, what do you know about him?' and I understood you to say, 'Oh,

nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of----' Then we were gone,

and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a

quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still

wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess

it out. He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good

judge of those--no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because

you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it must be

that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of

course you hadn't had you?"

"Yes, I had."

"Is that so? Where?"

"At a fox-hunt, in England."

"How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had

you any conversation with him?"

"Some--yes."

"Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk

about?"

"About the fox. I think that was all."

"Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression.

What did he talk about?"

"The fox."

It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an

impression upon you?"

"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of--however, I will tell

you all about it, then you will understand. It was a quarter of a

century ago 1873 or '74. I had an American friend in London named F.,

who was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to

come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the

morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my

mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter

before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground.

I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the

common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that

went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go

with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and

there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by.

"When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a

low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with

heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart

fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle.

I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited,

dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility

which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the

forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating; then all of a

sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by

and disappeared in the forest on the right; there was a pause, and then

a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the

left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire,

a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he

came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to

see him ride; he was a master horseman. He came like, a storm till he

was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall, then he

stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails, and shouted

like a demon:

"'Which way'd the fox go?'

"I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited,

you know. But I was calm; so I said softly, and without acrimony:

"'Which fox?'

"It seemed to anger him. I don't know why; and he thundered out:

"'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?'

"I said, with great gentleness--even argumentatively:

"'If you could be a little more definite--a little less vague--because I

am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you will know even better

than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify,

and----'

"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand

years!' and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would

snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man.

"I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too--oh, all alive. She

said:

"'He spoke to you!--didn't he?'

"'Yes, it is what happened.'

"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew be spoke to you! Do

you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds!

Tell me--what do you think of him?'

"'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and

accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.'

"It pleased her. I thought it would."

G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the

quarantine-bars on the frontiers; and so did we, for we left the next

day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian

custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but for the

thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to

the Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a

letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending

me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian

Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In addition

to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were

filled exclusively with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in

Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going

to ship these through by express; but at the last moment an order went

throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless

the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these

things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them

in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of

terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian

frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I

was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed.

We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and

the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to

have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering

at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to

give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the

language; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a tall handsome

man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the

station-master--and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put

it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his

eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap

and made a beautiful bow to me, and said in English:

"Which is your baggage? Please show it to me."

I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it; nobody was

interested in it; all the family's attempts to get attention to it had

failed--except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable

goods. It was just being opened. My officer said:

"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot.

Now please come and show the hand-baggage."

He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he

gave orders again, in his emphatic military way:

"Chalk these. Chalk all of them."

Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his

way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre

of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were

present getting their baggage chalked; and as we passed down in review on

our way to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy

which gave me deep satisfaction.

But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with

German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a

porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and

gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family,

moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco

tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered

it up in his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead

of him past that long wall of passengers again--he chattering and

exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look

as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to

shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at

heart I was cruelly humbled.

When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of

it was at the worst, the stately station-master stepped out from

somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him;

and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying

to him the whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very

angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he

began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off

his hat and made that beautiful bow and said:

"Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here---" He turned

to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian

lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were

moving in procession again--he in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with

my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and

I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all.

CHAPTER XXI.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to

get himself envied.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all.

I met but few men who had seen it thrown--at least I met but few who

mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden

cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is

only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This

feather--so to call it--is not thrown through the air, but is flung with

an underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front

of the thrower; then it glances and makes a long skip; glances again,

skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends

skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good

chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards;

but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass,

and earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured

distance of two hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even

further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and

they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards; and so weightless

a toy--a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect; and not sailing

through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff

at every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the

feat and did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about

aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government.

What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical

strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance.

It must be art. But no one explains what the art of it is; nor how it

gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any

two-ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or bumping along the

ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says:

"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is

truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of

Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width

of Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp

and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground

being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it

looks just like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its

movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a

kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it."

The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in

the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary

an instrument as the boomerang.

There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked

skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable

trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been

race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual

reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's

estimate of them.

They were lazy--always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a

killing defect. Surely they could have invented and built a competent

house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the

agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and

lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just plain

savages, for all their smartness.

With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and

with no epidemic diseases among them till the white man came with those

and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there

was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race

in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept population down by

infanticide--largely; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not

need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came.

The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth

several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population

80 percent. in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as

that before.

For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria--a

country eighty times as large as Rhode Island, as I have already said.

By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the

whites came along in the middle of the 'Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived

in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode

Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities;

indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The

Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily: from 173 persons it faded

to 34 in twenty years; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered

one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300

when the white man came; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven years

later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes

scattered about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of

full blood are very scarce now. It is said that the aboriginals continue

in some force in the huge territory called Queensland.

The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the

primary law of savage life: that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe

is responsible--each individual of it--and you may take your change out

of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one.

When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law, and

killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a

monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such

creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly

killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of

civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very

precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a child, in the

early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we get informing

pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each

other.

Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs.

Praed says:

"At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that

they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave

little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters

increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or

three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps

lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the

Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual

event.

"The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in

words. Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where

perhaps foot of white man has never trod--interminable vistas where

the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their

lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic

pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which

the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level untimbered plains

alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken

by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast

and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where

the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a

belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle.

"The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles,

birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which

in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd

of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the

grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of

locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the

screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled

lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the

dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the

curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of

tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher."

That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other

details, you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how

loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that

profound wilderness miles and miles apart--at each station half a dozen

persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always

ill-nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had not

bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in

authority, nobody competent to sell and convey; and the tribes themselves

had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The

ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion

was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for a tragedy

could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak:

"At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper,

having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying

wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept

stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he

slept."

One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was

up. It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was

determined--and permanently:

"There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites

when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in

a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my

childish sense of justice.

"They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some

cases were destroyed like vermin.

"Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by

Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an

attack, parleyed with them from his house-door. He told them it was

Christmas-time--a time at which all men, black or white, feasted;

that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the

store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had

never dreamed of--a great pudding of which all might eat and be

filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was made

and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it

had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!"

The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit

was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the

savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was

merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure,

and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter,

and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been

sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is,

it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and

attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes

hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of

exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our

civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no

such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and

innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him

to death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to

it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. In many

countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care

for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is

loving-kindness to it. In more than one country we have hunted the

savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns

through the woods and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the

region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and

their wild supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind,

because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is

loving-kindness to it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land

from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken

his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he

dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has

inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it.

In the Matabeleland today--why, there we are confining ourselves to

sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes

in London; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old holy customs,

and all we ask is that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon

the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the

poisoner, "That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the

contempt of posterity."

I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and

severely, but I stop there. I blame him for, the indiscretion of

introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our

civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it

is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in every way he can;

and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The

squatter's judgment was bad--that is plain; but his heart was right. He

is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history

who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and

tried to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings

with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves to

be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence.

This paragraph is from a London journal:

"To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of

civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage

to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that

penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the

Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a

derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council

General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross

the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee,

cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost

the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few

five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea."

You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow

murder, through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle

friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish

friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift

release of his poisoned pudding.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's

notion that he is less savage than the other savages.--[See Chapter on

Tasmania, post.]

CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before

you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is

fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the

country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both

in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon,

Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous

literature, and one which must endure. Materials--there is no end to

them! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by

himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties--varieties

not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any

picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and

they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In

his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is

everything--everything that a human creature can be. He covers the

entire ground. He is a coward--there are a thousand fact to prove it.

He is brave--there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous

--oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true--the white man's

records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble,

worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger

who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors,

and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on

him only yesterday--there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride

by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a

long life--it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the

same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by

lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm--it is of

record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children,

and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough

without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white

man's food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and

rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal,

yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law

goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that

menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not

acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little

constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means

of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a

correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can

track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot

discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot

master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without

the model--if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the

searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years;

and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white

man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within

certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest

known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able

to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel

that he could boil water in. He is the prize-curiosity of all the races.

To all intents and purposes he is dead--in the body; but he has features

that will live in literature.

Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed

to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals

which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert

here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their

judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite

extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and

muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen

an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force

ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge

them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of

those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; "Yet he depended,

with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his

agility."

The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a

protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is

about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but

slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow. The difficulty about

a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it

suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes

straight for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one

side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for

half-an-hour, or less.

Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119

yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen

yards.

We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board

and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr.

Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had

sometimes done it over fourteen. But what is that to this:

"I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he

dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an

inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting

upright on horseback--both man and horse being of the average size.

The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly

on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision

with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the

hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld."

I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete

run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a

side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could

not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know

this, because I tried it myself.

One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.

Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen

or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore--dug them in

the sand--wells that were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the

work beautifully executed."

Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from

such a depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet

of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in

on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming

impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be.

Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert

intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the

kangaroo, and other game:

"As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and

noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or

fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the

tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention;

in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground,

in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal

or warn him of danger. A little examination of the trunk of a tree

which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending

and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the

night before without coming down again or not."

Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these

people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest

Mohawk he ever invented.

All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not

close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian

aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude,

carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures

of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of

the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day,

both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil

it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people.

His place in art--as to drawing, not color-work--is well up, all things

considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but

on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of

civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and

De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but

better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping

and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of

the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms, with

clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the

"corrobboree" further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk.

And well enough as to intention, but--my word!

The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that.

All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The

Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do

not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you.

They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had

been a surgeon before he became a clergyman:

1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King

George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on

foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a

water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I

observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject,

collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place

his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly

withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn

guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he

repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange

conduct, he only said, 'Me carpenter-make 'em' ('I am mending my

foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which

had been torn off by a tea-tree stump, in which it had been caught

during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical

composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of

cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described."

And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had

happened"--and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a

surgeon and then do his own surgery.

2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as

a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a

fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his

chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated the viscera to a

considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb

behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action

gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I could feel a

hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I made a

deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which

was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from

half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly

digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which it had been

exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound

made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small

cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without

flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his

good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not

materially annoy him. He was perfectly well in a few days."

But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that

the patient enjoyed--whatever it was:

3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me

with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg.

He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for

this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just

below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while

about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through

the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw; and having made as

presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of

the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few

days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the

native told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had

struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it

was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous

operation, which it appears is not uncommon among these people in

their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth

only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow

the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground.

He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal, which

was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The

cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he

was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid

of a long stout stick, although he was more than a week on the

road."

But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made

for him by the doctor, because "it had no feeling in it." It must have

had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think.

So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone.

They are marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century,

now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in

comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in

every way. If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have

seen some of those people--but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to

see a stuffed one.

Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast

cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the

strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would

naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but

at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases.

They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have

created eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the "Never-never

Country." Also this felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never

Country"--that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without

merit: "heifer-paddock"--young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick

up" equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a

train. "New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"--new arrival.

And then there is the immortal "My word!" "We must import it."

"M-y word!"

"In cold print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat Caesar!" but spoken

with the proper Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it

for grace and charm and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive;

it is not suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but "M-y

word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to

say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it

struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the

dead corpse of the thing, the 'soul was not there--the tones were

lacking--the informing spirit--the deep feeling--the eloquence. But the

first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of

Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant.

Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor--one of those famous

dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre,

melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a

horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country

town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden

plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers.

"Horsham, October 17.

At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of the

London Bank of Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in

opulent leaf, and every leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing

spring is upon it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank

and a little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring

fountain-sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and

mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like

flash-lights through an opal--a most beautiful tree, and a striking

contrast to the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly

defined--it is a kodak for faithful, hard, unsentimental detail; the

other an impressionist picture, delicious to look upon, full of a subtle

and exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft

loveliness."

It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree--an importation from

China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long

red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a

distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new

charm.

There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were

driven out to it by its chief. The conveyance was an open wagon; the

time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant

--and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In some countries an indolent

unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have

been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was nothing of

that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense

of heat; indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and

exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not

have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired. Of course,

the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere. In that

plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is

88 or 90 deg. in New York.

The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to

be a hundred yards wide between the fences. I was not given the width in

yards, but only in chains and perches--and furlongs, I think. I would

have given a good deal to know what the width was, but I did not pursue

the matter. I think it is best to put up with information the way you

get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for

it, and say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could

tell you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but

that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are

shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows

what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you

which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift

the subject.

They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and

cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long distances

--immense journeys--from worn-out places to new ones where were water

and fresh pasturage; and this wide space had to be left in grass and

unfenced, or the stock would have starved to death in the transit.

On the way we saw the usual birds--the beautiful little green parrots,

the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest

plumage and the eternally-forgettable name--the bird that is the smartest

among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him

to death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it begins with M.

I wish it began with G. or something that a person can remember.

The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He

is a handsome large creature, with snowy white decorations, and is a

singer; he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely. He was once modest,

even diffident; but he lost all that when he found out that he was

Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and

impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet--never

coming when he is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying

disobedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs all

over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I think he learns

to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his friends say that he

knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame magpie

in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed

he owned it. The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the

lady. He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his own way,

always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making the cat's life a slow

sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in

perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time that silence was

wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked to

sing he would go out and take a walk.

It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and

waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has

dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were producing oranges,

apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of apples--in

fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not seem to

miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition.

Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best

in them and what climates are best for them. A man who is ignorantly

trying to produce upon his farm things not suited to its soil and its

other conditions can make a journey to the college from anywhere in

Australia, and go back with a change of scheme which will make his farm

productive and profitable.

There were forty pupils there--a few of them farmers, relearning their

trade, the rest young men mainly from the cities--novices. It seemed a

strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction for

city-bred youths, but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too; they

are above the agricultural average of intelligence, and they come without

any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long

descent.

The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the

shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the

business--three days in a week. On the other three they study and hear

lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon

agriculture--like chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in

sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the

machine. The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there;

and the students took off his coat with great celerity and adroitness.

Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary

with shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as

the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right

ahead.

The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep

looked like the fat woman in the circus; after it he looked like a bench.

He was clipped to the skin; and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes

from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket.

The college was flying the Australian flag--the gridiron of England

smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red field that had the

random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it.

From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of

Victoria. Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was

half a peck of surface-gold--gold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact,

and pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be pleasanter if it

would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to

handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz

mine; a lady owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month

from it, and is able to keep house.

The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great

vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these

vineyards--the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving--is regarded as a

model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne

and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three years

ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in

the rock, to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term

required to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of

champagne. The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000, and

those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year.

The dryest community on the earth. The government has lately reduced the

duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection.

A man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy

enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws; then the law is changed, and

the man is robbed by his own government.

On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders

called the Three Sisters--a curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high

ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from

whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early

ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size

and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern.

The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and

sorrowful. The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth, apparently.

Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of

oxen. Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was

told, and were running a successful opposition to the railway! The

railways are owned and run by the government.