acquaintance of Nicholas. He had by this time lost all social
distinction. He had grown old and very shabby, and was so mean that
even his old friends, the convicts who had crossed the straits,
looked down on him with contempt. He came to me for an elector's
right, as a vote in our electorate--the Four Counties--was
sometimes worth as much as forty shillings, besides unlimited grog.
We were Conservatives then, true patriots, and we imitated--feebly,
it is true, but earnestly--the time-honoured customs of old England.
Mr. Nicholas had been a man of many employments, and of many
religions. He was never troubled with scruples of conscience, but
guided his conduct wholly by enlightened self-interest. He was a
Broad Churchman, very broad. As tutor in various families, he had
instructed his pupils in the tenets of the Church of England, of the
Catholics, of the Presbyterians, and of the Baptists. He always
professed the religion of his employer for the time being, and he
found that four religions were sufficient for his spiritual and
temporal wants. There were many other sects, but the labour of
learning all their peculiar views would not pay, so he neglected
them. The Wesleyans were at one time all-powerful in our road
district, and Nicholas, foreseeing a chance of filling an office of
profit under the Board, threw away all his sins, and obtained grace
and a billet as toll-collector or pikeman. In England the pike-man
was always a surly brute, who collected his fees with the help of a
bludgeon and a bulldog, but Nicholas performed his duties in the
disguise of a saint. He waited for passengers in his little wooden
office, sitting at a table, with a huge Bible before him, absorbed in
spiritual reading. He wore spectacles on his Roman nose, had a long
grey beard, quoted Scripture to chance passengers, and was very
earnest for their salvation. He was atoning for the sins of his
youth by leading the life of a hermit by praying and cheating. He
has had many followers. He made mistakes in his cash, which for a
while were overlooked in so good a man, but they became at length so
serious that he lost his billet. He had for some time been spoken of
by his friends and admirers as "Mr. Nicholas," but after his last
mistakes had been discovered, he began to be known merely as "Old
Nick the Lawyer," or "Old Nick the Liar," which some ignorant people
look upon as convertible terms. I think Lizard Skin, the cannibal,
was a better Christian than old Nick the lawyer, as he was brave and
honest, and scorned to tell a lie.
The convict counsel for the four seamen defended them at a great
expenditure of learning and lies. He argued at great length:--
"That there was no evidence that a master mariner named Blogg ever
existed; that he was an outlaw, and, as such, every British subject
had an inchoate right to kill him at sight, and, therefore, that the
seamen, supposing for the sake of argument that they did kill him,
acted strictly within their legal rights; that Blogg drowned himself
in a fit of delirium tremens, after being drunk on rum three days and
nights consecutively; that he fell overboard accidentally and was
drowned; that the cook and mate threw him overboard, and then laid
the blame on the innocent seamen; that Blogg swam ashore, and was now
living on an unchartered island; that if he was murdered, his body
had not been found: there could be no murder without a corpse; and
finally, he would respectfully submit to that honourable court, that
the case bristled with ineradicable difficulties."
The seamen would have been sent to the gallows in any case, but
Nicholas' speech made their fate inevitable. The court brushed aside
the legal bristles, and hanged the four seamen on the evidence of the
mate and the cook.
The tragedy of the gallows was followed by a short afterpiece. Jim
Parrish, Ned Tomlins, and every whaler and foremast man in Hobart
Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober,
and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an
oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that
he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of
swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was
triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his
peers and condemned to die, and he knew it. He tried to escape by
shipping on board a schooner bound to Portland Bay with whalers. The
captain took on board a keg of rum, holding fifteen gallons, usually
called a "Big Pup," and invited the mate to share the liquor with
him. The result was that the two officers soon became incapable of
rational navigation. Off King's Island the schooner was hove to in a
gale of wind, and for fourteen days stood off and on--five or six
hours one way, and five or six hours the other--while the master
and mate were down below, "nursing the Big Pup." The seamen were all
strangers to the coast, and did not know any cove into which they
could run for refuge. The cook was pitched overboard one dark night
during that gale off King's Island, and his loss was a piece of
ancient history by the time the master and mate had consumed the rum,
and were able to enter up the log.
Ex-Attorney-General Gellibrand sailed to Port Philip to look for
country in Australia Felix, and he found it. He was last seen on a
rounded hill, gazing over the rich and beautiful land which borders
Lake Colac; land which he was not fated to occupy, for he wandered
away and was lost, and his bones lay unburied by the stream which now
bears his name.
When Colonel Arthur's term of office expired he departed with the
utmost ceremony. The 21st Fusiliers escorted him to the wharf. As
he entered his barge his friends cheered, and his enemies groaned, and
then went home and illuminated the town, to testify their joy at
getting rid of a tyrant. He was the model Governor of a Crown
colony, and the Crown rewarded him for his services. He was made a
baronet, appointed Governor of Canada and of Bombay, was a member of
Her Majesty's Privy Council, a colonel of the Queen's Own regiment,
and he died on September 19th, 1854, full of years and honours, and
worth 70,000 pounds.
Laming was left an orphan by the death of Lizard Skin. The chief had
grown old and sick, and he sat every day for two years on a fallen
puriri near the white man's pah, but he never entered it. His spear
was always sticking up beside him. He had a gun, but was never known
to use it. He was often humming some ditty about old times before
the white man brought guns and powder, but he spoke to no one. He
was pondering over the future of his tribe, but the problem was too
much for him. The white men were strong and were overrunning his
land. His last injunction to his warriors was, that they should
listen to the words of his Pakeha, and that they should be brave that
they might live.
When the British Government took possession of New Zealand without
paying for it, they established a Land Court to investigate the
titles to lands formerly bought from the natives, and it was decided
in most cases that a few axes and hoes were an insufficient price to
pay for the pick of the country; the purchases were swindles. Laming
had possession of three or four hundred acres, and to the surprise of
the Court it was found that he had paid a fair price for them, and
his title was allowed. Moreover, his knowledge of the language and
customs of the Maoris was found to be so useful that he was appointed
a Judge of the Land Court.
The men who laid the foundations of empire in the Great South Land
were men of action. They did not stand idle in the shade, waiting
for someone to come and hire them. They dug a vineyard and planted
it. The vines now bring forth fruit, the winepress is full, the must
is fermenting. When the wine has been drawn off from the lees, and
time has matured it, of what kind will it be? And will the Lord of
the Vineyard commend it?
FIRST SETTLERS.
The first white settler in Victoria was the escaped convict Buckley;
but he did not cultivate the country, nor civilise the natives. The
natives, on the contrary, uncivilised him. When white men saw him
again, he had forgotten even his mother tongue, and could give them
little information. For more than thirty years he had managed to
live--to live like a savage; but for any good he had ever done he
might as well have died with the other convicts who ran away with
him. He never gave any clear account of his companions, and many
people were of opinion that he kept himself alive by eating them,
until he was found and fed by the blacks, who thought he was one of
their dead friends, and had "jumped up a white fellow."
While Buckley was still living with the blacks about Corio Bay, in
1827, Gellibrand and Batman applied for a grant of land at Western
Port, where the whalers used to strip wattle bark when whales were
out of season; but they did not get it.
Englishmen have no business to live anywhere without being governed,
and Colonel Arthur had no money to spend in governing a settlement at
Western Port. So Australia Felix was unsettled for eight years
longer.
Griffiths & Co., of Launceston, were trading with Sydney in 1833.
Their cargo outward was principally wheat, the price of which varied
very much; sometimes it was 2s. 6d. a bushel in Launceston, and 18s.
in Sydney. The return cargo from Port Jackson was principally coal,
freestone, and cedar.
Griffiths & Co. were engaged in whaling in Portland Bay. They sent
there two schooners, the 'Henry' and the 'Elizabeth', in June, 1834.
They erected huts on shore for the whalers. The 'Henry' was wrecked;
but the whales were plentiful, and yielded more oil than the casks
would hold, so the men dug clay pits on shore, and poured the oil
into them. The oil from forty-five whales was put into the pits, but
the clay absorbed every spoonful of it, and nothing but bones was
gained from so much slaughter. Before the 'Elizabeth' left Portland
Bay, the Hentys, the first permanent settlers in Victoria, arrived in
the schooner 'Thistle', on November 4th, 1834.
When the whalers of the 'Elizabeth' had been paid off, and had spent
their money, they were engaged to strip wattle bark at Western Port,
and were taken across in the schooner, with provisions, tools, six
bullocks and a dray. During that season they stripped three hundred
tons of bark and chopped it ready for bagging. John Toms went over
to weigh and ship the bark, and brought it back, together with the
men, in the barque 'Andrew Mack'.
WRECK OF THE CONVICT SHIP "NEVA," ON KING'S ISLAND.
She sailed from Cork on January 8th, 1835, B. H. Peck, master; Dr.
Stevenson, R.N., surgeon. She had on board 150 female prisoners and
thirty-three of their children, nine free women and their twenty-two
children, and a crew of twenty-six. Several ships had been wrecked
on King's Island, and when a vessel approached it the mate of the
watch warned his men to keep a bright look out. He said, "King's
Island is inhabited by anthropophagi, the bloodiest man eaters ever
known; and, if you don't want to go to pot, you had better keep your
eyes skinned." So the look-out man did not go to sleep.
Nevertheless, the 'Neva' went ashore on the Harbinger reef, on May
13th unshipped her rudder and parted into four pieces. Only nine men
and thirteen women reached the island; they were nearly naked and had
nothing to eat, and they wandered along the beach during the night,
searching amongst the wreckage. At last they found a puncheon of
rum, upended it, stove in the head, and drank. The thirteen women
then lay down on the sand close together, and slept. The night was
very cold, and Robinson, an apprentice, covered the women as well as
he could with some pieces of sail and blankets soaked with salt
water. The men walked about the beach all night to keep themselves
warm, being afraid to go inland for fear of the cannibal
blackfellows. In the morning they went to rouse the women, and found
that seven of the thirteen were dead.
The surviving men were the master, B. H. Peck, Joseph Bennet, Thomas
Sharp, John Watson, Edward Calthorp, Thomas Hines, Robert Ballard,
John Robinson, and William Kinderey. The women were Ellen Galvin,
Mary Stating, Ann Cullen, Rosa Heland, Rose Dunn, and Margaret Drury.
For three weeks these people lived almost entirely on shellfish.
They threw up a barricade on the shore, above high water mark, to
protect themselves against the cannibals. The only chest that came
ashore unbroken was that of Robinson the apprentice, and in it there
was a canister of powder. A flint musket was also found among the
wreckage, and with the flint and steel they struck a light and made a
fire. When they went down to the beach in search of shellfish, one
man kept guard at the barricade, and looked out for the blackfellows;
his musket was loaded with powder and pebbles.
Three weeks passed away before any of the natives appeared, but at
last they were seen approaching along the shore from the south. At
the first alarm all the ship-wrecked people ran to the barricade for
shelter, and the men armed themselves with anything in the shape of
weapons they could find. But their main hope of victory was the
musket. They could not expect to kill many cannibals with one shot,
but the flash and report would be sure to strike them with terror,
and put them to flight.
By this time their diet of shellfish had left them all weak and
emaciated, skeletons only just alive; the anthropophagi would have
nothing but bones to pick; still, the little life left in them was
precious, and they resolved to sell it as dear as they could. They
watched the savages approaching; at length they could count their
number. They were only eleven all told, and were advancing slowly.
Now they saw that seven of the eleven were small, only picaninnies.
When they came nearer three out of the other four were seen to be
lubras, and the eleventh individual then resolved himself into a
white savage, who roared out, "Mates ahoy!"
The white man was Scott, the sealer, who had taken up is abode on the
island with his harem, three Tasmanian gins and seven children.
They were the only permanent inhabitants; the cannibal blacks had
disappeared, and continued to exist only in the fancies of the
mariners. Scott's residence was opposite New Year's Island not far
from the shore; there he had built a hut and planted a garden with
potatoes and other vegetables. Flesh meat he obtained from the
kangaroos and seals. Their skins he took to Launceston in his boat,
and in it he brought back supplies of flour and groceries. He had
observed dead bodies of women and men, and pieces of a wrecked vessel
cast up by the sea, and had travelled along the shore with his
family, looking for anything useful or valuable which the wreck might
yield. After hearing the story, and seeing the miserable plight of
the castaways, he invited them to his home. On arriving at the hut
Scott and his lubras prepared for their guests a beautiful meal of
kangaroo and potatoes. This was their only food as long as they
remained on King's Island, for Scott's only boat had got adrift, and
his flour, tea, and sugar had been all consumed. But kangaroo beef
and potatoes seemed a most luxurious diet to the men and women who
had been kept alive for three weeks on nothing but shellfish.
Scott and his hounds hunted the kangaroo, and supplied the colony
with meat. The liver of the kangaroo when boiled and left to grow
cold is a dry substance, which, with the help of hunger and a little
imagination, is said to be as good as bread.
In the month of July, 1835, heavy gales were blowing over King's
Island. For fourteen days the schooner 'Elizabeth', with whalers for
Port Fairy, was hove to off the coast, standing off and on, six hours
one way and six hours the other. Akers, the captain, and his mate
got drunk on rum and water daily. The cook of the 'Industry' was on
board the 'Elizabeth', the man whom Captain Blogg was flogging when
his crew seized him and threw him overboard. The cook also was now
pitched overboard for having given evidence against the four men who
had saved him from further flogging.
At this time also Captain Friend, of the whaling cutter 'Sarah Ann',
took shelter under the lee of New Year's Island, and he pulled ashore
to visit Scott the sealer. There he found the shipwrecked men and
women whom he took on board his cutter, and conveyed to Launceston,
except one woman and two men. It was then too late in the season to
take the whalers to Port Fairy. Captain Friend was appointed chief
District Constable at Launceston; all the constables under him were
prisoners of the Crown, receiving half a dollar a day. He was
afterwards Collector of Customs at the Mersey.
In November, 1835 the schooner 'Elizabeth' returned to Launceston
with 270 tuns of oil. The share of the crew of a whaling vessel was
one-fiftieth of the value of the oil and bone. The boat-steerer
received one-thirtieth, and of the headmen some had one-twenty-fifth,
others one-fifteenth. In this same year, 1835, Batman went to Port
Phillip with a few friends and seven Sydney blackfellows. On June
14th he returned to Van Diemen's Land, and by the 25th of the same
month he had compiled a report of his expedition, which he sent to
Governor Arthur, together with a copy of the grant of land executed
by the black chiefs. He had obtained three copies of the grant
signed by three brothers Jagga-Jagga, by Bungaree, Yan-Yan, Moorwhip,
and Marmarallar. The area of the land bought by Batman was not
surveyed with precision, but it was of great extent, like infinite
space, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere. And in
addition he took up a small patch of one hundred thousand acres
between the bay and the Barwon, including the insignificant site of
Geelong, a place of small account even to this day. Batman was a
long-limbed Sydney native, and he bestrode his real estate like a
Colossus, but King William was a bigger Colossus than Batman--he
claimed both the land and the blacks, and ignored the Crown grant.
Next, John Fawkner and his friends chartered the schooner
'Enterprise' for a voyage across the Straits to Australia Felix. He
afterwards claimed to be the founder of Melbourne. He could write
and talk everlastingly, but he had not the 'robur' and 'as triplex'
suitable for a sea-robber. Sea-sickness nearly killed him, so he
stayed behind while the other adventurers went and laid the
foundation. They first examined the shores of Western Port, then
went to Port Philip Bay and entered the River Yarra. They
disembarked on its banks, ploughed some land, sowed maize and wheat,
and planted two thousand fruit trees. They were not so grasping as
Batman, and each man pegged out a farm of only one hundred acres.
These farms were very valuable in the days of the late boom, and are
called the city of Melbourne. Batman wanted to oust the newcomers;
he claimed the farms under his grant from the Jagga-Jaggas. He
squatted on Batman's Hill, and looked down with evil eyes on the
rival immigrants. He saw them clearing away the scrub along Flinders
Street, and splitting posts and rails all over the city from Spencer
Street to Spring Street, regardless of the fact that the ground under
their feet would be, in the days of their grandchildren, worth 3,000
pounds per foot. Their bullock-drays were often bogged in Elizabeth
Street, and they made a corduroy crossing over it with red gum logs.
Some of these logs were dislodged quite sound fifty years afterwards
by the Tramway Company's workmen.
DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER HOPKINS.
"Know ye not that lovely river?
Know ye not that smiling river?
Whose gentle flood, by cliff and wood,
With 'wildering sound goes winding ever."
In January, 1836, Captain Smith, who was in charge of the whaling
station at Port Fairy, went with two men, named Wilson and Gibbs, in
a whale boat to the islands near Warrnambool, to look for seal. They
could find no seal, and then they went across the bay, and found the
mouth of the river Hopkins. In trying to land there, their boat
capsized in the surf, and Smith was drowned. The other two men
succeeded in reaching the shore naked, and they travelled back along
the coast to Port Fairy, carrying sticks on their shoulders to look
like guns, in order to frighten away the natives, who were very
numerous on that part of the coast. On this journey they found the
wreck of a vessel, supposed to be a Spanish one, which has since been
covered by the drifting sand. When Captain Mills was afterwards
harbour master at Belfast, he took the bearings of it, and reported
them to the Harbour Department in Melbourne. Vain search was made
for it many years afterwards in the hope that it was a Spanish
galleon laden with doubloons.
Davy was in the Sydney trade in the 'Elizabeth' until March, 1836; he
then left her and joined the cutter 'Sarah Ann', under J. B. Mills,
to go whaling at Port Fairy. In the month of May, Captain Mills was
short of boats, and went to the Hopkins to look for the boat lost by
Smith. He took with him two boats with all their whaling gear, in
case he should see a whale. David Fermaner was in one of the boats,
which carried a supply of provisions for the two crews; in the other
boat there was only what was styled a nosebag, or snack--a mouthful
for each man.
On arriving off the Hopkins, they found a nasty sea on, and Captain
Mills said it would be dangerous to attempt to land; but his brother
Charles said he would try, and in doing so his boat capsized in the
breakers. All the men clung to the boat, but the off-sea prevented
them from getting on shore. When Captain Mills saw what had
happened, he at once pushed on his boat through the surf and
succeeded in reaching the shore inside the point on the eastern side
of the entrance. He then walked round towards the other boat with a
lance warp, waded out in the water as far as he could, and then threw
the warp to the men, who hauled on it until their boat came ashore,
and they were able to land.
All the provisions were lost. The water was baled out of the boat
that had been capsized, and she was taken over to the west head. All
the food for twelve men was in the nosebag, and it was very little;
each man had a mere nibble for supper. In those days wombats were
plentiful near the river, but the men could not catch or kill one of
them. Captain Mills had a gun in his boat which happened to be
loaded, and he gave it to Davy to try if he could shoot anything for
breakfast next morning. There was only one charge, all the rest of
the ammunition having been lost in the breakers. Davy walked up the
banks of the river early in the morning, and saw plenty of ducks, but
they were so wild he could not get near them. At last he was so
fortunate as to shoot a musk duck, which he brought back to the camp,
stuck up before the fire, and roasted. He then divided it into
twelve portions, and gave one portion to each of the twelve men for
breakfast; but it was a mockery of a meal, as unsubstantial as an
echo--smell, and nothing else.
The two boats were launched, and an attempt was made to pass out to
sea through the surf, but the wind was far down south, and the men
had to return and beach the boats. The sails were taken ashore and
used as tents. In the evening they again endeavoured to catch a
wombat, but failed.
On the next day they tried again to get out of the river, but the
surf half filled the boats with water, and they were glad to reach
the camp again.
Captain Mills was a native of Australia, and a good bushman; he told
the men that sow thistles were good to eat, so they went about
looking for them, and having found a quantity ate them. On the third
day they tried once more to get out of the river, but without success.