likely parts for the post. 'I should think,' wrote Freeman the historian,
'he would be just the man to deal with any unruly elements in the
country.' The absolute offer of the crown of Greece would not have
tempted Sir George for an hour.
As he said seriously, while joking on the point, 'In the far south there
was literally nobody to lead, whereas Greece had men sufficient to mould
her destinies. Anyhow, one given the administration of Greece, would not
have had a work more honourable than the development of Australasia, a
larger business altogether. 'Here was a region where several kingdoms
were in the raising, where the pattern could take something from
yourself. What drew me to the far south, as a fairy-tale might, was that
charm, "Yes, it's all new. Hardly anything has yet been done. It's mine
to do with as I will."'
There was the white man's history to fashion, and the black man's history
to discover. Sir George did not neglect the second inquiry, because the
other was the more important. His explorations had given him the idea
that Australia was of a volcanic origin. He judged it to have been, at
some period, a series of islands, each with its own volcano. These
islands had risen from the sea, been licked into shape probably by
earthquakes, and coming gradually together, had formed a continent.
During his Governorship of South Australia, Sir George fell upon a piece
of evidence which materially supported this belief. The skeleton of a
whale, as Sir Richard Owen certified the specimen, was discovered quite
inland, beyond the first mountain range. If Sir George had arrived at
some view, after long deliberation, he liked it to be accepted, as we all
do. Therefore he welcomed the discovery of that whale.
'I was laughed at,' he commented, 'when I insisted that the natives of
Australia must have come from a race more civilised than themselves. A
variety of reasons supported my estimate of their origin; as that, all
over native Australia, there appeared to prevail a rigorous law governing
marriage.
'It demonstrated that the natives understood the effect which blood
kinship would exercise upon the stamina of a race. There was no single
great tribe in Australia, but a series of tribes; yet this law was
general among them. No conqueror could have imposed it; instead, it must
have sprung from a family coming in, and bringing it with them. Where did
that family come from? I cannot tell. But we see, among the Aborigines of
Australia, customs resembling those of the African continent.'
Studying those customs, Sir George had been witness of the ancient rite
of circumcision, which also argued a higher civilisation. The blacks
built themselves, layer upon layer, into a human altar, and on it the
sacrifice was performed. Meanwhile a grunting noise, 'Ha-ha-ha,'
sonorous, even solemn, a savage mass, arose from the heap. Sir George
imagined that he was almost the first Englishman to behold this ceremony,
on the part of the Aborigines of Australia. To them it was religion;
whence did they get it? Their common rule Sir George found expressed as
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but they had their lighter
moments. He discovered, in a lady savage, a humorous link between the
vanity of all womankind. There had been a native dance, and he was
leaving, when the chieftainess approached him with the request, 'Oh,
don't go away until you have seen my son dance; he will be beautiful!'
'I waited, of course,' Sir George consented, ever gallant, 'and the son
presented himself, daubed over with dirt of divers colours, and began to
hop about. He was well built, he danced cleverly, he cackled in his
finery, and his mother was hugely proud of him. She might have been an
English duchess, introducing a pretty daughter to a first ball. It was
seeing the parent in the child, the most marked form of self-flattery.
Actually, tears of joy ran down those black, wizened cheeks. I wouldn't
have had it otherwise, and I was glad I stayed for the young buck.'
Wherever Sir George Grey went in Australia, he found the natives living
from hand to mouth, on roots and the reward of the chase. They were
equally primitive, in a system of punishment, which stood an offender up
as a mark for spears. But they were sportsmen, for it was prescribed that
the quarry must only be chastened in the legs. The tribes also reached
out to civilisation, in that each had its ground marked off, with the
accuracy of a European estate.
'I believe'--Sir George carried this subject wider--'that the cardinal
trouble in the settlement of new countries, has lain in the desire of the
white man to possess the lands of the black man. Perhaps it has been
inevitable, but the thing should be done on a proper method, and that has
not always obtained.'
Sir John Franklin, at Van Diemen's Land, was a brother Australian
Governor to Sir George Grey, but they never met. 'I had correspondence
with him,' Sir George observed, 'and from all I heard he was a most
interesting personality. Subsequently, I did meet Lady Franklin, who had
much character, allied to womanly gentleness. Everybody admired her
laving persistence to unravel the fate which had overtaken her husband in
the Arctic regions.'
It was almost a discovery to Sir George, with his wide knowledge of
Australasia, that he had never set foot in Tasmania. He passed it
variously, on board ship, yet had not been ashore. How was that? 'Maybe,'
he replied, 'because all my life I made it a rule, not to let anything
turn me aside from what I had immediately in hand. If you set out for a
place, with some definite object in view, your road should be the most
direct one. Don't branch off, because there is something elsewhere which
might gratify your curiosity.'
Sir George disciplined the hours, holding himself accountable for them to
his fellow-men and to the Great Accountant.
VIII PICTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE
There had been a reception in London, by Gladstone, following the usual
dinners which ministers of the Queen give in honour of her birthday.
To Sir George Grey, who was in the splendid crowd, came the wife of an
eminent member of the Government, carrying to an old friend a woman's
eager news of her own dinner. 'Oh,' she whispered in that still small
voice which rises a clarion note above a general buzz, 'oh, everything
went off admirably, and Bob's delighted. But the soup was just a little
cold.'
The soup often got cold at the Governor's board in Adelaide, the while he
was laying the foundations of the Colony. This implied study of the
problem, 'How are we to utilise the natives for the civilisation which
has begun to invade them in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?'
Already, in Western Australia, Sir George had devoted earnest study to
the subject, and method ripened with him. He felt, perhaps, that he had
been given a unique work, in the sense of moulding raw human materials to
higher ends. He was a master craftsman, and as he contrived, so there
might be issues near and remote. The future dwelt with Sir George when to
others, lacking the seer's eye, it was still below the farthest horizon.
Call it the second-sight of statesmanship--something which is born with a
person rather than acquired. He had simple words for the ideas that
underlay his life's labour, in bringing barbarous races under the harrow
of cultivation.
'It is quite evident that man's great line of exertion, is towards
getting more food for himself and his family. This truth applies to him
in all his states; only the more he advances in material welfare, the
more he needs to satisfy him. With a savage, mere food is enough, but in
the centres of civilisation beautiful clothes, fine horses and carriages,
marble palaces, all form the prize. Ever, it is the same impelling
desire.
'Well, the way to adopt with natives, was to show them how to obtain more
food. Benefit them in that manner, and they would regard you as their
friend, and you would have influence over them. I always paid a native,
doing unskilled work, the wage a white would have received for the same
effort. It was mere justice. Yet, so small a thing had immense results,
for manhood was cultivated in the black. Self-respect infected him. He
discovered himself, with proud surprise, to be a man instead of a
chattel.
'The mystery of managing native races, resolves itself into a few natural
laws. My hardest trouble was the witchcraft, which held in bonds, the
savage peoples whom I had to govern. It might differ, here or there, in
its characteristics; the evil was there all the same. Not merely did the
natives believe in witch-craft, having been swathed in it for ages, but
their chiefs made a profit therefrom, and were staunch for its
maintenance. My antidote was the introduction of medical aid, so that in
the cures wrought, those children of the dark, might see what surpassed
their own magic. They were discomfited, as it were, on their own ground.
'Superstition, which I distinguish from witchcraft, though the greater
evil flourished on the less, had its best treatment in the spread of the
Christian religion. Surely, a wonderful witness of its divine origin,
lies in the fact that it applies to the elevation and happiness of all
the world's races--is understandable to all. Farther, native schools made
advances upon sheer ignorance, as hospitals did in respect to witchcraft;
and it was possible, in some measure, to eradicate native indolence by
affording youths a training in a trade, or grown men work on public
improvements: Here we return to where we began--food as the primitive
impulse driving mankind.'
No trait of human nature was neglected by Sir George Grey, in his
exertions to plant the better ideas of living. He detected that the
Kaffirs of South Africa were sharp to humour, owners of a lively sense of
the ridiculous. On that hung an incident, which brought out the value of
the personal equation in dealing with natives, whether in South
Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. It was an item of Sir George
Grey's whole native policy. An old witch doctor, he mentioned, had been
inciting unrest among the dark masses of Kaffraria. Sir George had him
put comfortably in prison, where he could be certain of medical
attendance and rest. That was the least office, demanded towards a human
being evidently in a disturbed state of health.
It confounded the witch doctor. Never was such a father to his people as
Sir George Grey, and the tribes of a hemisphere acclaimed it. The witch
doctor had his doubts, took his physic wryly, and begged piteously to be
set free. He was released, on the strict promise that he would cease
being a firebrand. Not that alone, for he publicly recanted among the
Kaffirs, gathered on a market morning, to their huge amusement and
derision. He made no more trouble, and could not, had he tried, his fame
being ruined.
'A joust of fun like that,' was Sir George Grey's moral from the
incident, 'had a wonderful effect upon natives. It was much better than
shooting the witch doctor, and quite as effective. Even among whites,
ridicule may be a very serious punishment.'
But the Pro-Consul was not always warranted to win, in his encounters of
wit and wisdom. He put to the debit account, a dialogue he had with a
batch of Kaffir chiefs, on the proper employment of their moneys. He
wondered if the wages, earned from native work on the roads, and in
cultivating the lands, were always wisely spent. The broad inquiry was
well enough, as the chiefs took it, but unfortunately Sir George went on
to state a case in proof.
'For instance,' he innocently pleaded, 'is it necessary that so much
should be expended on the jewellery and ornaments of the women? Would
they not really look more handsome, without all those gew-gaws of brass
and metal, which they wear round their arms and ankles?' An aged chief
rose and gravely replied, 'You are a great chief, Governor, and you have
done marvellous things. You have persuaded us to labour, yea, to make
roads which we knew would lead to the conquest of our country. But you
had better rest and be content, not allowing success in other things to
induce you to enter upon what no man can accomplish. If you attempt, O
Governor, to wage war with woman and her love of ornament, you will
assuredly fail.'
'The assembled chiefs,' Sir George wound up the tale, 'roared with
delight at this answer, which really left me without a word to say.'
In South Australia he established one of his first schools, and the
lessons obtained from it were widely useful. They suggested the
difficulties that had to be overcome, wherever the alphabet was spread
before the Aborigine. Children made bright pupils, but, as they grew up,
were apt to go back on what they had learned. The reason was not far to
seek. An educated native found himself out of touch with his uneducated
fellows; education made a barrier. He was not the equal of the Europeans,
and could form no friendships with them. Neither was he happy with his
own people, whom he had passed in civilisation. He swung between two
poles, and very frequently was dragged back into the volume of native
life.
'You see the difficulty,' Sir George pointed out, 'as one that is
necessarily present with regard to all savage races. But it has its cure,
which I put into practice, namely, to provide males and females with an
equally good education. Especially, I mean a technical education, the
learning of some trade or art, for that was all important. Natives, on
leaving school, could then make a living by plying among the Europeans
the industry they had learned. Should a native learn shoemaking, he could
find a wife in a girl trained to domestic service. Such a couple were not
compelled to return to their own people, and they were independent of the
Europeans. It was lifting a race by its two halves, these being essential
to each other, not leaving one of them behind.'
Next, a picture in black and white. It wandered into the gallery of Sir
George's Pro-Consulship in South Australia. At the entrance to Spencer's
Gulf lies an island, on which a fortuitous little colony had established
itself. The colonists were mostly escaped convicts, from the penal
settlements of Australia and Van Diemen's Land, or sailors who had
deserted their ships. The men killed the seals which frequented the
island, trading in their skins with vessels that now and then called for
the purpose.
'I had never judged it my business,' Sir George spoke of this matter, 'to
interfere with those sealers. They kept the peace among themselves, and
did not come into contact with the settlement at Adelaide. Indeed, they
had some form of justice, under which a member who did anything wrong,
was transported for a time to a smaller neighbouring island. There he
could live on oysters of a sort, and on fish caught with lines supplied
to him. It was being sent to Coventry, new style, including oysters,
which, like all delicacies, will, I suppose, cause surfeit.
'The chief of this settlement, as he might be termed, had brought a
native woman with him from Van Diemen's Land. He was fairly educated, not
without considerable power of reasoning, and I had repeated talks with
him. Most of his companions had Australian black women living with them,
and there was a story that these had been taken by force from the
mainland. The natives of Van Diemen's Land were entirely distinct from
the natives of Australia, and the differences have been much debated. The
hair of a Van Diemen's Land woman was curly and woolly, Kaffir like; that
of the Australian woman long and straight.
'Very well, I was anxious to obtain a genuine specimen of the Tasmanian
female's hair. It would, I believed, be valuable to posterity, as bearing
upon the divergencies of two neighbouring races. Of course, the
Tasmanians have now been extinct for years, and their disappearance was
then rapidly approaching. It was best, to prevent any doubt, that I
should myself cut the tress of hair from the woman's head. The chief of
the colony, in response to my request, said he was quite willing that she
should visit Adelaide for this purpose. She was agreeable herself;
curious as to the scenes, strange to her, which she might witness in
Adelaide. As we are all born hungry, so we are all born curious; merely
we differ in degree. In due time she arrived, and I secured the necessary
sample of her hair, which remains, probably, in the Auckland Museum.
'Delighted with a new stock of clothes, the woman left Adelaide on her
return to the island, this also having been arranged. She was to light a
fire on a crag of the mainland, at which signal her lord and master would
put over with his boat to fetch her. Now recur my conversations with him,
which included the question, "Is it not rather bad that you should all be
living here with these native women?"
'His answer, coming from such a quarter, surprised me, and proved him a
regular controversialist. "It does nobody harm," he argued, "and we are
much more comfortable than we should otherwise be. There was nothing
hasty in what we did; every step was taken deliberately. Knowing we could
not re-enter the world, and there being no settlers, then, in these
parts, we considered: Could we not found a small nation ourselves? The
greatest nation of ancient times, cast in very similar circumstances, did
not feel it wrong to carry off, by force, the females of another people.
Thus, they acquired women to look after their homes, while otherwise they
would have been living in a pitiable state, with no ties. What that
nation did, we have done." Such was the word of the island chief, and no
appeal, in justification, to history, could ever have been made in
stranger circumstances.
'Was it not,' Sir George felt, 'extraordinary to hear the case of the
Romans and the Sabine women, pleaded in defence of a tiny outlawed
community, situate on the wild Australian coast, where another empire,
more magnificent even than that of Rome, was just planting itself? The
thing almost swept one's mind from the question itself--a difficult one
to answer as submitted.' Then, in this odd affair, the untutored far
south was springing to the support of Sir George's views as to cause and
effect. Imitators of ancient Rome, on an island of Spencer's Gulf,
Australia, many centuries later! The theory of the universe, expressed as
'cause and effect,' had been borne in upon Sir George from the moment he
turned thinker. It was a favourite text between him and Babbage, into
whose ear he poured his reasonings.
'Subjects occurred to me,' he said, 'which I believed had not been given
sufficient prominence, and this was one of them. I fancy Babbage wrote
about it.'
Every motion, every word spoken, they agreed, abode an eternal influence
in the world. Nothing, either in action or in reasoning, was lost; the
unborn ages made response. If we could go back far enough we should be
able to trace, by the influence it had wrought, that red streak, the
murder of Abel. Had we a divine intellect, we could see the whole
universe, a complete machine, at work. Sir George would marvel at the
splendour of that creation, asking himself, 'Might it, if fully revealed,
not be all too dazzling for human eyes?'
The Aborigine--Australian, Maori, and Kaffir--was to him a guarantee, by
physical evidence, of the same law of the universe. They three had passed
intimately before him, and he had mapped the intertwine of their paths.
These were noteworthy, being a fruit of Sir George's observation on the
human race in primitive lands. First, consider the women, who, among
barbarians, not having animals of burden, had always been pack horses.
'In New Zealand,' he said, 'with its forests, the females had to carry
their loads along narrow paths. The proper way to carry a pack is on the
head, but the trees made that impossible. Hills, too, had often to be
climbed, and to ease the ascent a bending posture must be taken. Add that
fact to the load on the back, and it was a consequence that Maori women
should evolve clumsy figures.
'In Australia there was more open ground, and in many parts the method
was to carry a load on the head. Thus, the native women were better of
figure, though quite unequal to their 116 THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL.
lithe, graceful Kaffir sisters of South Africa. Here the country was free
and open, and the carrying of a weight on the head naturally followed.'
Second, the men of those races.
'The Australians,' Sir George went on, 'were hunters, and had to climb
trees in search of opossums. They drove holes into the trunks with their
stone axes, dug in their big toes, and ascended. Such efforts provided
them with long legs, while, again, they walked with turned-in toes. Why?
Having scrub to penetrate, they must cut roads through it--a tiresome
labour, not pursued more than was necessary. If they turned in their
toes, they could sidle along a mere bee-line of clearing.
'The Maoris were very short in the limbs, this arising from the amount of
time they spent in their canoes. Peculiarities of environment equally
distinguish the Kaffirs, who were the most agile of the three races. Set
against any of the others, all in the primitive state, the Kaffirs might
have prevailed, though who could say? Neither the Maoris, nor the
Australians, worked in iron weapons, while the Kaffirs did, and that
circumstance would have told, in the clash of prevailing or going down.'
Contrasts were sharp in Oceana when she was young, which entitles you to
pass quickly from Sir George Grey's careful estimate of the native races
he ruled, to a little romance of South Australia. A Highland settler,
with the Highland name McFarland, lived in a cottage some twenty miles
from Adelaide. He was an informed and interesting Scot, and when the
Governor was tired, he would ride over to his shieling and stay a day or
two.
'A number of German colonists,' Sir George's narrative on this proceeded,
'had come to South Australia, seeking to improve their condition. Labour
being scarce and highly paid, the German girls went out and did shearing.
They moved from farm to farm, accompanied by some of the older women, and
at night they would be housed by the settler who happened to be employing
them.
'Among the shearers was a girl who had a great reputation for beauty. She
was quite a belle, and so winning that everybody liked her. One morning
old McFarland rushed in upon me at Adelaide, in a state of high
excitement. His nephew, a genuine McFarland also, had, the previous
night, eloped with the German beauty. The uncle was indignant that the
nephew should run away with a foreigner--yes, a foreigner! He implored me
to send the police to search for them, but I replied that I could do
nothing. He must go to the Justices of the Peace and petition, if he
wished to take action, on which point I offered no advice.
'Scarcely had he left, when the relatives of the girl, escorted by the
German pastor, invaded me, full of an equal indignation and also
demanding the police. I could only repeat the answer I had given to
McFarland, even when it was pleaded that the girl, like other members of
the German community, had pledged herself not to marry outside it. It was
urged that anything she might do to the contrary would not count, but
that argument would not hold. We heard, by the evening, of the marriage
of the runaways.
'They had been united by some Justice of the Peace, a frequent occurrence
then, there being few ministers, and the match proved a happy one in
every respect. How the bold young McFarland managed to carry off his
bride from her custodians I never learned, and I suppose I did not
inquire.'
Only in a South Australia, rescued from the chasms, grown stalwart under
the hand of Sir George Grey, could there have been such a romance. It
needed a stout heart and a trustful, loving one, and these are the
characteristics of a healthy community.
IX OVER-LORD OF OVER-SEAS
The war song of Lamech, father of Tubal Cain, called Sir George Grey
hurriedly to New Zealand. The Maoris were exploiting the legacy of the
first artificer in brass and iron.
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:
For I have slain a man to my wounding,
And a young man to my hurt.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.