I
He was 'a broth of a boy,' his biographer tells us. He lived chiefly on
boots and boxes. Eager to know what lay beyond the ranges, he wore out
more boots than his poor parents found it easy to provide. Taunted by
the constant vision of the restless waters, he put out to sea in broken
boxes and leaky barrels, that he might follow in the wake of the great
navigators. He was a born adventurer. Almost as soon as he first opened
his eyes and looked around him, he felt that the world was very wide and
vowed that he would find its utmost edges. From his explorations of the
hills and glens around his village home, he often returned too exhausted
either to eat or sleep. From his ventures upon the ocean he was more
than once brought home on a plank, apparently drowned. 'The wind and the
sea were his playmates,' we are told; 'he was as much at home in the
water as on the land; in fishing, sailing, climbing over the rocks, and
wandering among the silent hills, he spent a free, careless, happy
boyhood.' Every day had its own romance, its hairbreadth escape, its
thrilling adventure.
Therein lies the difference between a man and a beast. At just about the
time at which James Chalmers was born in Scotland, Captain Sturt led his
famous expedition into the hot and dusty heart of Australia. When he
reached Cooper's Creek on the return journey, he found that he had more
horses than he would be able to feed; so he turned one of them out on
the banks of the creek and left it there. When Burke and Wills reached
Cooper's Creek twenty years later, the horse was still grazing
peacefully on the side of the stream, and looked up at the explorers
with no more surprise or excitement than it would have shown if but
twenty hours had passed since it last saw human faces. It had found air
to breathe and water to drink and grass to nibble; what did it care
about the world? But with man it is otherwise. He wants to know what is
on the other side of the hill, what is on the other side of the water,
what is on the other side of the world! If he cannot go North, South,
East and West himself, he must at least have his newspaper; and the
newspaper brings all the ends of the earth every morning to his doorstep
and his breakfast-table. This, I say, is the difference between a beast
and a man; and James Chalmers--known in New Guinea as the most
magnificent specimen of humanity on the islands--was every inch _a man_.