It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and reverence for their

persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great force. The

educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the

region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European

gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn him in the reverence of his

people. Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in

spite of his lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no

need to defile himself with work, or trouble his heart with the sordid

cares of life; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want, and that

he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman. I had a glimpse of

him down in the town. Perhaps he is a descendant of the last king—the

king with the difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable

monument of cut-stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of

the town. Thakombau—I remember, now; that is the name. It is easier to

preserve it on a granite block than in your head.

Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the gentlemen

present at the governor's quoted a remark made by the king at the time of

the session—a neat retort, and with a touch of pathos in it, too. The

English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by

saying that the transfer of the kingdom to Great Britain was merely “a

sort of hermit-crab formality, you know.” “Yes,” said poor Thakombau,

“but with this difference—the crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but

mine isn't.”

However, as far as I can make out from the books, the King was between

the devil and the deep sea at the time, and hadn't much choice. He owed

the United States a large debt—a debt which he could pay if allowed

time, but time was denied him. He must pay up right away or the warships

would be upon him. To protect his people from this disaster he ceded his

country to Britain, with a clause in the contract providing for the

ultimate payment of the American debt.

In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters; they were very religious,

and worshiped idols; the big chiefs were proud and haughty, and they were

men of great style in many ways; all chiefs had several wives, the

biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty; when a chief was dead and

ready for burial, four or five of his wives were strangled and put into

the grave with him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped from

Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider

what a power they were, armed like that, and what an opportunity they

had. If they had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and

known how to use them, they could have achieved the sovereignty of the

archipelago(—)twenty-seven kings and each with eight or nine islands

under

his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived worthless

lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor—in most cases by

violence. Only one of them had any ambition; he was an Irishman named

Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored

forty-eight. He died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort

of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough with forty.

It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads, and an

inquiring turn of mind. It appears that their savage ancestors had a

doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religion—with limitations.

That is to say, their dead friend would go to a happy hereafter if he

could be accumulated, but not otherwise. They drew the line; they

thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too

comprehensive. They called his attention to certain facts. For

instance, many of their friends had been devoured by sharks; the sharks,

in their turn, were caught and eaten by other men; later, these men were

captured in war, and eaten by the enemy. The original persons had

entered into the composition of the sharks; next, they and the sharks had

become part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then,

could the particles of the original men be searched out from the final

conglomerate and put together again? The inquirers were full of doubts,

and considered that the missionary had not examined the matter with the

gravity and attention which so serious a thing deserved.

The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things, and

got from them one—a very dainty and poetical idea: Those wild and

ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers, after they

perish, rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of heaven,

and flourish there forever in immortal beauty!

CHAPTER VIII.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no

distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island

wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other; but no, there is

no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are

lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands,

their peoples and their languages. A startling reminder of this is

furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two

strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an

unknown language. “They were picked up by a passing vessel many hundreds

of miles from any known land, floating in the same tiny canoe in which

they had been blown out to sea. When found they were but skin and bone.

No one could understand what they said, and they have never named their

country; or, if they have, the name does not correspond with that of any

island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as happy as the day

is long. In the ship's log there is an entry of the latitude and

longitude in which they were found, and this is probably all the clue

they will ever have to their lost homes.”—[Forbes's “Two Years in

Fiji.”]

What a strange and romantic episode it is; and how one is tortured with

curiosity to know whence those mysterious creatures came, those Men

Without a Country, errant waifs who cannot name their lost home,

wandering Children of Nowhere.

Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and

mystery. The loneliness, the solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose

of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the bruised

spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the

great world; and for men who have been hunted out of the great world for

crime; and for other men who love an easy and indolent existence; and for

others who love a roving free life, and stir and change and adventure;

and for yet others who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and

money-getting, mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce

without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life

ideally perfect.

We sailed again, refreshed.

The most cultivated person in the ship was a young Englishman whose

home was in New Zealand. He was a naturalist. His learning in his

specialty was deep and thorough, his interest in his subject amounted to

a passion, he had an easy gift of speech; and so, when he talked about

animals it was a pleasure to listen to him. And profitable, too, though

he was sometimes difficult to understand because now and then he used

scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of us. They

were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as he was quite willing to

explain them I always made it a point to get him to do it. I had a fair

knowledge of his subject—layman's knowledge—to begin with, but it was

his teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity—in a

word, gave it value.

His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of

the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate. I already knew a good

deal about the rabbits in Australasia and their marvelous fecundity, but

in my talks with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and

obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel was far

short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported

into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were

so thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get

from town to town.

He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other

coleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways of all such

pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets, and carried its young in

them when it couldn't get apples. And he said that the emu was as big as

an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would

eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild

dog; and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that

neither of them barked; otherwise they were just the same. He said that

the only game-bird in Australia was the wombat, and the only song-bird

the larrikin, and that both were protected by government. The most

beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise. Next came the

two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying

out, the other thickening up. He explained that the “Sundowner” was not

a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of

our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He

tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to

look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run just

at sundown, when the day's labor ends; all he wants is whisky and supper

and bed and breakfast; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist

spoke of the bell bird, the creature that at short intervals all day

rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It

is the favorite and best friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner; for

he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water; and he goes

somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia

was the Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa.

The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an ordinary man's

head or kick his hat off; and his head, too, for that matter. He said it

was wingless, but a swift runner. The natives used to ride it. It could

make forty miles an hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come

out reasonably fresh. It was still in existence when the railway was

introduced into New Zealand; still in existence, and carrying the mails.

The railroad began with the same schedule it has now: two expresses a

week-time, twenty miles an hour. The company exterminated the moa to get

the mails.

Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist

said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was

remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws

governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's

fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that

curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler,

quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus—grotesquest of

animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of

character and make-up. Said he:

“You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish,

for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land animal, for it

resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it

likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian,

for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself

under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a

couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a

duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped

together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it

paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it

has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and

vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in

the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly

a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal,

for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian,

for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when

there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except

refined ones, it has all the habits there are except good ones.

“It is a survival—a survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin invented

the theory that goes by that name, but the Ornithorhynchus was the

first to put it to actual experiment and prove that it could be

done. Hence it should have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin.

It was never in the Ark; you will find no mention of it there; it

nobly stayed out and worked the theory. Of all creatures in the

world it was the only one properly equipped for the test. The Ark

was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged; no land

visible above the flood, no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat,

nor water for a mammal to drink; for all mammal food was destroyed,

and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the

earth mingled their waters and rose above the mountain tops, the

result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction

could use and live. But this combination was nuts for the

Ornithorhynchus, if I may use a term like that without offense.

Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea.

On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were

floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged

from clime to clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment

and comfort, in virile interest in the constant change of scene, in

humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing

enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose

validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor,

if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with

an episode of this nature.

“It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of

independent means. Of things actually necessary to its existence

and its happiness not a detail was wanting. When it wished to walk,

it scrambled along the tree-trunk; it mused in the shade of the

leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by night; when it wanted

the refreshment of a swim, it had it; it ate leaves when it wanted a

vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms and grubs; when it

wanted fish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If

the grubs gave out in one tree it swam to another; and as for fish,

the very opulence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally,

when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend

that would have slain a crocodile.

“When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all

the Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, it strode ashore,

saying in its heart, 'Let them that come after me invent theories

and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but

I am the first that has done it!

“This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other

Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to

the advent of man upon the earth; they date back, indeed, to a time

when a causeway hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long,

joined Australia to Africa, and the animals of the two countries

were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known

to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian. Later the

causeway sank under the sea; subterranean convulsions lifted the

African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but

Australia kept her old level. In Africa's new climate the animals

necessarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and

families and species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily

remained stationary, and have so remained until this day. In the

course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus

developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off detail after

detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly

disintegrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or

a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry

surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been

speaking—that creature which was everything in general and nothing

in particular—the opulently endowed 'e pluribus unum' of the animal

world.

“Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most

venerable creature that exists in the earth today—Ornithorhynchus

Platypus Extraordinariensis—whom God preserve!”

When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease.

And not only in the prose form, but in the poetical as well. He had

written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent

around among the passengers, and was willing to let them be copied. It

seemed to me that the least technical one in the series, and the one

which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his:

INVOCATION.

“Come forth from thy oozy couch,

O Ornithorhynchus dear!

And greet with a cordial claw

The stranger that longs to hear

“From thy own own lips the tale

Of thy origin all unknown:

Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be

And flesh where should be bone;

“And fishy fin where should be paw,

And beaver-trowel tail,

And snout of beast equip'd with teeth

Where gills ought to prevail.

“Come, Kangaroo, the good and true

Foreshortened as to legs,

And body tapered like a churn,

And sack marsupial, i' fegs,

“And tells us why you linger here,

Thou relic of a vanished time,

When all your friends as fossils sleep,

Immortalized in lime!”

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant

for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an

unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way,

touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably

suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that the

author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by them. It is

not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase,

but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all

are there. Compare this Invocation with “Frank Dutton”—particularly

stanzas first and seventeenth—and I think the reader will feel convinced

that he who wrote the one had read the other:

I.

“Frank Dutton was as fine a lad

As ever you wish to see,

And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake

On earth no more will he be,

His age was near fifteen years,

And he was a motherless boy,

He was living with his grandmother

When he was drowned, poor boy.”

XVII.

“He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,

On Sunday he was found,

And the tidings of that drowned boy

Was heard for miles around.

His form was laid by his mother's side,

Beneath the cold, cold ground,

His friends for him will drop a tear

When they view his little mound.”

The Sentimental Song Book. By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.

CHAPTER IX.

It is your human environment that makes climate.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come

up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not

follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any

direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance

from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while,

there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you

would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash

so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch

your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and

take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent,

with every curve of its body and the “break” spreading away from its

head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor

of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost

before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go

flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance

whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and

another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once

sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm

of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering

beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those

people will not see again until after they are dead.

It was porpoises—porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They

presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and

there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on,

turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting

hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only

about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length

—eight or ten feet—but every twist of their bodies sent a long

procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was

an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one

cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the

kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing

but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until

that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been

drinking.

By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of

Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those

lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a

great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword

of light.

Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like

a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break

in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed

by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which

resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in

the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable

disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the

history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing

vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular

captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was

waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to

give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great

company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life

of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and

mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all

the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and

fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase;

only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted

to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship

that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is

over.

On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning

afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not

doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day

was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter

for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of

the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and

before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that

ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the

morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing

faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to

try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads

seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight

for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find

out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the

ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and

rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of

all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale

is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to

be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old,

custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish

out of it.

There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the

disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the

precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the

top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he

would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of

discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney

that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway

the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these,

stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen

below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes

were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was

accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he

hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he

exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.

We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in

admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful

harbor—a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the

world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that

they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked

me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged

would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful—superbly

beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen

did not seem altogether satisfied. He said:

“It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful—the Harbor; but that isn't

all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes

both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor,

and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney.”

Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend.

He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful

without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney

added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf—a roomy sheet of lovely

blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country

on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides

sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these

ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses

of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster

of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of

masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other

architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and

give picturesqueness to the general effect.

The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land

everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always

exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy

people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered

700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year,

and they will double that when their works are in good going order.

October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring

—everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and

nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home

summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in

the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now—a person

ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm

weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he

wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward

the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get

information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the

occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest

and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out

anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and

more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody who has an old

fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will

let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is

easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in

the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with

the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they

carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home

market.

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude,

then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so

we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the

climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is

about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are

north of-it—thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the

parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they

have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in

the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at

Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over,

from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which

brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day

there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that

remains the memorable “cold day” in the history of the town. No doubt

Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer,

about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and

that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with Little

Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a

government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather

Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to

winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas

winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas

and the poor.

The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has

the climate of its capital—a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a

mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon

for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales

is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria,

because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry.

The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the

same as that of Nice—60 deg.—yet Nice is further from the equator by

460 miles than is the former.

But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of

Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good

climate nowhere but around the edges.

If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big

Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was

before we added Alaska.

But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land

almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of

the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate

which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In

effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United

States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the

fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the

Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way

to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific

coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining

mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the

Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.

This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile,

the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One

has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the

westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind

him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he

would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering

Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of

the heat.

“The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E.,

increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering

effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of

heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take

fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and

inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to

the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular

strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves

of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower

around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of

my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that

it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close

to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine

it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to

the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance

that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot

find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense

and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed.”

That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is

called a “dust-storm.” It is said that most Australian towns are

acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the

following description by Mr. Gane tallies very well with the alkali

duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the “shovel” part. Still the

shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my

Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all.

“As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat

proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600

feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive

plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed

away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust,

and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is

lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the

midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the

unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to

seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees

in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards

her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A

drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open

during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who

has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick

on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it.”

And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper

duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia

are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange,

so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting

contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known

to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars—a detail

here, a detail there—we have had the choice climate of New South Wales'

seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt;

we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the

phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United

States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate

around it.

CHAPTER X.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not

joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the

British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New

South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains;

they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they

were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; “the

cruelest discipline ever known” is one historian's description of their

life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]

English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which

in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement,

men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve

terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were

transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven

years for stealing a rabbit!

When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in

force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating—25 lashes on the bare

back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible

punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that

no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself

beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty

had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but

humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many

a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore

that cruel achievement of sentimental “humanity.”

Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty

for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add

fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could

endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old

manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three

hundred lashes—for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than

that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict;

sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with

all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy

—for he was under watch—and yet not do his friend any good: the friend

would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of

full punishment.

The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult

to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew

straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group—this

murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by

the hand of the hangman!

The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what

convict life was like—they are but a couple of details tossed into view

out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a

pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight

the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand.

Some of the convicts—indeed, a good many of them—were very bad people,

even for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably

worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We

must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a

nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women

hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys

snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the

other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling

offenses, was a nation to whom the term “civilized” could not in any

large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew,

during more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was

still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher

grade of civilization.

If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen

who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs,

we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and

between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable

monotony of sameness.

Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers

were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be

protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It

is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they

were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much

disturbed—not as yet being in the way—it was estimated that in New

South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory.

People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want

this service—away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to

be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of

1,000 uniformed civilians called the “New South Wales Corps” and shipped

it.

This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it.

The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside

of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there

would be an importation of the nobility.

In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries

of life—food, clothing, and all—were sent out from England, and kept in

great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the

settlers—sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its

opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way.

They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private

stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They

leagued themselves together and ruled the market; they boycotted the

government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and

kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits,

they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to

sell to them at a price named by themselves—and it was always low

enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold

it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of the country—for

there was little or no money—and they maintained their devastating hold

and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before

they were finally conquered and routed by the government.

Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed

farm after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had

bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last

agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink.

In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a

piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000.

When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered

that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity

followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the

noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The

result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South

Wales.

It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways,

steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries,

libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable

home of every species of culture and of every species of material

enterprise, and there is a church at every man's door, and a race-track

over the way.

CHAPTER XI.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is

in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot

stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is

well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people,

and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The

English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always

called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other

English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I

know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more

particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to

distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run

across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.

Mr. Gane (“New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 “), tried to distribute

his gratitude, and was not lucky:

“The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The

treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted

people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with

pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and

hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the

acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the

happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful

kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit,

none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney.”

Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and

stayed away from Dubbo——but no; heedless man, he pulled it again.

Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he

had said about Sydney had grown dim:

“We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in

warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its

inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears

of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality

and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial

manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful

familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with

elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in

having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a

panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing

no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural

productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but

obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and

kind-heartedness.”

I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing

degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a

man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst

way—any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not

throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and

picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese

dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity. No, these are

old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the

panegyrics.

Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps

ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight

or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing

that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings.

Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in

evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a

photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for

a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that

the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters.

The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it

offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as

animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when

you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor

man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be

speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of

a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose

landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been perfected in

one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen

head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty

thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man

who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and

of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter,

in Australia you do; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it

dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a

squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in

Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around.

In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some

people say twice as many), to support a sheep; and when the squatter has

half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode

Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a

quarter or a half million dollars.

He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the

large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several

hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of

riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out

there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it,

and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great

industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you

with the best that money can buy.

On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with

all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important

town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the

squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are

other squatter-owned towns in Australia.

Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton

also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships

has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment

where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for

shipment to England.

The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans,

either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general

appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English

origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's

attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning

—from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American.

To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English

shyness and self-consciousness left out.

Now and then—but this is rare—one hears such words as piper for paper,

lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not

expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in

Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have

been “home”—as the native reverently and lovingly calls England—know

better. It is “costermonger.” All over Australasia this pronunciation

is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the

uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of

people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of

it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney

the chambermaid said, one morning:

“The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll

tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast.”

I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's

custom of speaking of England as “home.” It was always pretty to hear

it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it

touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and

made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother

England's old gray head.

In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed;

it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of

England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly

democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by

differences of rank.

English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive.

Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is

submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the

moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of

fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and

guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is

forgotten, and falls into abeyance—and to such a degree indeed, that he

will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to—an exhibition of

daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.

But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself,

or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard

then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the

false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of

humor.

Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor;

but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have

merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new

environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a

couple that were made in Australia at club suppers—one of them by an

Englishman, the other by an Australian.

CHAPTER XII.

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and

shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you

know ain't so.”

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a

missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New

Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of

God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart

in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we

and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous

life the corpuscles.

Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said:

“It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are

the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that

it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly

unaccountable—the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos.

Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine

revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built

on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding

priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake.”

He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed

by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and

intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great

hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like

this:

“At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster

progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and

that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a

hospitable reception. Then they argue like this: since the Indian

believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must

believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will

no longer doubt. The natural deduction is, that as Christianity

makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we

are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles.

“But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they

think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a

military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in

our guns, but only wads for bullets; that is to say, our miracles

are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more

extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own

religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours

must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India

I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A

correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think

at home—that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with

favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with

wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders

performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived—for so I

called him.

“At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces

of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the

great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the

sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a

surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the

fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the

indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression upon

it.

“A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said

'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands—we accept no

other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you

Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the

fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the

mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of

knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own.

You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of

Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as

other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations

in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will

pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its

own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for

gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is

but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods—he cannot do

without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when

there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be foolish. No,

if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not

turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How

then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or

those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing

the known works of his own gods with the works of those others;

there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are

not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown

by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The

Christians have but few gods, and they are new—new, and not strong;

as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for

this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many

ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet

for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single moment. Our own

gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow,

the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow

lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at

last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the

colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary

men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson

was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew

the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the

gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed—and also

awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it

could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo

congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them

with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine

strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them—as

you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god

Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to

bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies

might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired

like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials

for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles,

to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty

mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon.

It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people

of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth

rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy

summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as

this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its

slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping

villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in

procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman

stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was

jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the

course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the

plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the

inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman

could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the

strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own

strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of

the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the

divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two

things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his

shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over

ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal

evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence,

but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible,

tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have

the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall

not. Have you the gates?'”

CHAPTER XIII.

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man

strikes for double value and compromises on par.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends

money upon public works—such as legislative buildings, town halls,

hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that

where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and

on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a

thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of

hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and

architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen

hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the

villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were

drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in

any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its

streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of

London. London is still obscured by gas—gas pretty widely scattered,

too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight

nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps.

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully

laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of

the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town,

overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of

Government House—fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation

ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the

zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where

the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room

for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as

like that kind of work.

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 he 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 $1.75; 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.