FURTHER AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONS--NEW ZEALAND AND NEW CALEDONIA
Lady Galloway came out to us towards the end of 1891, and in January she
accompanied us on one of our amusing expeditions. This time it was about
three days' tour through a hilly--indeed mountainous country. The hills in
Australia do not, as a rule, attain great height; it is because they are
so ancient in the world's history that they have been worn down by the
storms of ages and the ravages of time. We went, however, to open another
range of caverns of the same kind as the Jenolan Caves. These, the
Yarrangobilly Caves, had been explored, and to a certain extent excavated,
within more recent years, and were now to be made accessible to tourists.
Mr. Dibbs and other officials and Members of Parliament, notably some
Labour Members, came also; and a mixed multitude, said to amount to about
five hundred people in all, took part more or less in what was called "The
Governor's Picnic."
[Sidenote: YARRANGOBILLY CAVES]
These did not follow us all through the hills, but camped in the valley
near the caves. Here a comic incident occurred. For the first part of the
tour we were in one district, for the last in another, but somehow in the
middle we fell between two stools. In Number One and Number Three we were
entertained by hosts who displayed the usual lavish hospitality, and all
the way we were conveyed by kindly charioteers, and accompanied by a
splendid voluntary mounted escort, but in Number Two, the valley near the
caves, something had gone wrong. A wooden hut with several rooms had been
prepared for our reception, but no food! It was a sort of debatable
ground, and either through misunderstanding or, as was hinted, through
local jealousy, it was nobody's business to act host on the border land.
The poor Premier and other officials were desperate when they discovered
our plight, and in the end Dibbs possessed himself of one of the troopers'
swords and rushed off to a party of picnickers who were innocently sitting
down to enjoy the supper which they had brought with them, asking what
they meant by eating cold mutton while the Governor and his party were
destitute!
He returned triumphant with a joint. Meantime someone had produced a
packet believed to contain Brand's Essence. Lady Galloway claimed that she
knew how to make soup, so it was handed over to her. She upset it all into
a soup plate full of water, and then, and not till then, it was discovered
to be tea! However, one way and another, we were provided with sufficient
food, and duly inaugurated the caves.
They were beautiful, but never have I been so hard pressed for adjectives.
The old guide whom we also met in the Jenolan Caves had been put on duty
at the Yarrangobilly excavations for the occasion. He stopped our party of
six or seven people before each particular stalagmite or stalactite, and
would not move on till each of us in turn had ejaculated "beautiful,"
"magnificent," "stupendous," or some other such laudatory word as
suppressed laughter enabled us to utter, for it became a sort of game not
to repeat what our companions had said.
The following day an early start took us to Tumut, where we had a great
reception and excellent entertainment. We were, however, not allowed to
enter the town for our first greetings. As we drew near it, about 9 a.m.
we perceived a table with a white cloth and several men standing round it
in a field ("paddock" is the correct term in Australia). The wagonette was
stopped, we were requested to get out, and we found that the magistrates
of the district were waiting there with champagne, forestalling the
reception prepared for us by the Municipality!
Shortly after our return to Hill View, our summer's home, Lady Galloway,
my brother Rupert, and I set off on a trip to New Zealand. In the
intervening time the whole of Australia was deeply moved by the terrible
news of the death of the Duke of Clarence. The fact of his recent
engagement brought home to every household the full force of the tragedy.
Addresses of condolence poured in, and the staff was fully occupied in
acknowledging them and forwarding them to England.
We sailed from Melbourne, staying for a day at Hobart in Tasmania, where
Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir Robert Hamilton the Governor, who was then
absent, took excellent care of us. Tasmania appeared to be a happy,
friendly little place, but naturally we had no time to see much. The
harbour is fine, and the vegetation in the neighbourhood of the city was
rich and green with quite an English aspect.
We then took ship for Dunedin, quite in the south of the South Island. It
took us about four days and the sea was by no means calm.
[Sidenote: DUNEDIN]
Dunedin is a very interesting place and quite lives up to its name, for
it is a small edition of Edinburgh. Scotch names over most of the shops,
and as we walked past the open door of a boys' school we heard
instructions being given in a very decided Scottish accent. There is a
hill which recalls the Castle Hill, and even a manufacture of a very good
woollen fabric with a distinctly plaid character. No doubt all this has
greatly developed, but I trust it remains true to its Scottish origin. It
was founded in 1848 by emigrants representing the Free Kirk of Scotland
who left after the separation from the Established Church. There is a
story that some of the first settlers put up a notice on their land to the
effect that their co-religionists might help themselves to wood but that
all others were to pay for it. True fraternal feeling, but it is hardly
consonant with usual Scottish shrewdness that they should have expected
the other wood-gatherers to volunteer payment.
From Dunedin we went on to Invercargill, the extreme southern point, where
the Governor, Lord Onslow, had invited us to join him on the Government
yacht, the _Hinemoa_, and there we found Lady Onslow awaiting us.
We were indeed fortunate in sharing in this expedition. The Onslows, who
were on the point of returning to England, had arranged a trip to the
Sounds for which they had not previously found time, and it was only in
their yacht that we could have fully enjoyed the wonders of these fiords
of the Southern Hemisphere. I do not know how it is now, but then
excursion steamers only went about four times a year, were very crowded,
and entered a limited number of Sounds. Lord Onslow took us into one after
another, each more imposing than the last. I was particularly impressed by
the desolate grandeur of one said not to have been entered for
twenty-five years. The mountainous steeps which guarded it were in great
part simply rocky slopes, and it seemed as if the spirits of the place
resented our intrusion. In most of the other Sounds the precipitous
mountain sides were clad with wildly luxuriant foliage, and land and water
were alive with birds, particularly water-fowl. Amongst these were the
lovely black-and-white Paradise ducks, which could be caught with
long-handled nets something like gigantic butterfly nets.
The precipices enclosing the Sounds rise in some cases five or six
thousand feet from the water's edge, their tops are snow-clad, and great
waterfalls thunder into the calm sea-inlets below. The most famous fiord
is Milford Sound, where is the great Bowen Fall. So thick is the
vegetation that one fallen tree was pointed out to us on which we were
assured that 500 different specimens of ferns, creepers, etc., might be
counted. We had no time to verify this statement, but a hasty inspection
made it seem not at all impossible. One thing is certain--the
mountain-side with its impenetrable forest descends so precipitously into
the waters below that our yacht of 500 tons was tied up to an overhanging
tree and had no need to cast anchor. I think that there are seventeen
Sounds in all (I do not mean that we saw so many), but Milford Sound is
the only one which could be reached from the land, and even that was, in
our time, a matter of great difficulty. For a long time the only
inhabitant had been a man called Sutherland, who was considered a hermit
and periodically supplied with food. He had discovered about fourteen
miles inland the great Sutherland waterfall, which is much higher than
Niagara though not nearly so broad.
[Sidenote: THE NEW ZEALAND SOUNDS]
When we were in Milford Sound we found a small band of convicts who had
been lately established there for the purpose of making a road to the
Fall. I do not think that they were working very hard, but they had
cleared about two miles of footpath through the thicket along which we
walked, and a lovely walk it was. Tea at the end, however, was
considerably disturbed by sandflies which came round us in a perfect
cloud, so that we could only push our cups up under our veils.
New Zealand sandflies are a peculiarly virulent species--a large blister
rises directly they bite you, but they have the saving grace that they
stop the moment the sun sets. They were, however, the only drawback to
this most delightful of trips. While we were fighting them my brother and
Lord Onslow's A.D.C., Captain Guthrie, tried to push on to the Fall. As
far as I remember, they got a distant view but had not time to reach
it.[1]
Lord Onslow was a most considerate nautical host. We cruised from Sound to
Sound by night as a rule, so that we might lie prostrate and asleep on the
rough waves which are apt to surround those shores, and during the day we
enjoyed the calm waters of the fiord.
We parted from the yacht and from our kind hosts with regret, having
arranged to be again their guests at Wellington. Meantime we saw something
of the South Island, which, by the way, bears the alternative name of
Middle Island. New Zealand is really composed of three islands--North
Island, the South or Middle Island, and a little one at the foot named
Stewart Island. New Zealand claims dominion over a large number of small
islands in the Pacific, to which happily two of the Samoan group over
which it exercises a "mandate" have been added since the war. Lord Onslow
told us that shortly before our visit he had been to settle the claims of
certain rival Queens of Raratonga, one of these dependencies. Having
decided in favour of one of these royal ladies, he endowed her with a
sundial, as a sign of supremacy, as he thought she could well assert
herself by "setting the time of day." The South Island is full of beauty.
We went in a steamer up Lake Wakatipu. I cannot attempt a description of
all the charms of this lake and its neighbourhood. Naturally it differed
from the Italian Lakes in the absence of picturesque villages (now, by the
way, almost swallowed up by the rows of villas which skirt Como and
Maggiore), but on the other hand there was the fascination of radiant
nature little touched by the hand of man. Probably now there is a happy
and growing population near Lake Wakatipu.
Before we left South Island we stayed for a night or two with my cousin,
Edmund Parker, a member of Dalgetty's firm, who then lived at
Christchurch. It is curious that whereas Dunedin owed its origin to the
Scotch Free Kirk, Christchurch, founded two years later, was a child of
the "Canterbury Association," which, under the auspices of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, Lord Lyttelton, and others, sent out a body of settlers
largely drawn from Oxford and strictly members of the Church of England.
They took up a tract of land and sold it in portions, devoting ten
shillings out of every pound received to church and schools; their city
was named Christchurch after the Cathedral and College in Oxford, and the
surrounding district bears the name of Canterbury. It stands upon the
river Avon, the banks of which are planted with willows said to have been
originally brought from Napoleon's Tomb at St. Helena. There is a fine
cathedral copied from Caen Cathedral in Normandy, and the whole place
recalls some city of the Old World transplanted to a newer and brighter
land.
The story goes that some of the original settlers, importing classics into
agriculture, "swore at their oxen in Greek"--perhaps someone who heard
them quoting Virgil's Georgics took any foreign tongue for Greek oaths.
[Sidenote: HOT SPRINGS OF NEW ZEALAND]
After crossing to Wellington and spending a day or two with the Onslows
there, we set off again to visit the famous hot-lake district in the
Northern Island. Our headquarters were at Rotorua and Whakarewarewa, from
both of which we visited the marvellous geysers, springs, and hot lakes
with which the district abounds.
The great Pink and White Terraces had been destroyed by a mud volcano some
years before our visit, but we saw in many places how similar formations
were being reproduced by the chemical substances thrown up by the springs,
making polished pink-and-white pavements and even terraces on a small
scale. To see the natural hot fountains starting up from the pools among
the rocks was entrancing. Some of the columns play at regular intervals,
some only occasionally; one irregular performer shoots up a column of
boiling water to a height sometimes attaining 100 feet. One was called the
Prince of Wales's Feathers, as the water sprang up in that form.
New Zealand is far more prolific in legends than Australia; the Maoris
being of a higher type than the Australian aboriginal, naturally handed
down semi-historical, semi-mythical traditions of their ancestors. Among
the prettiest and best-known tales is that of Hinemoa. This young lady was
the daughter of the chief of a powerful tribe whose headquarters was at
Whakarewarewa. Among the many suitors attracted by her beauty she
preferred a youth named Tutaneki; but though his mother was the daughter
of the chief of the Island of Mokoia, situated in the centre of the Lake
of Rotorua, his father was a commoner, and Hinemoa's father was furious at
the idea of a _mesalliance_. He dared Tutaneki again to set foot on the
mainland, and caused all the canoes to be hauled up on the beach to keep
Hinemoa from attempting to join her lover. Tutaneki, however, was an
accomplished musician, and every evening the strains of his lute floated
so sweetly over the waters of the lake that Hinemoa could no longer stand
separation. Taking six empty gourds as an improvised life-belt, she swam
the three miles dividing her from music and love. Fortunately, though
numbed by her exertions, she landed on the island where a hot spring,
still called Hinemoa's Bath, wells up near the beach, and a plunge into it
soon revived her. More successful than Leander, she was united to her
lover and lived with him peacefully on Mokoia. Her father appears to have
reconciled himself to the inevitable.
At one moment we almost thought that we should have, in a minor degree, to
emulate the performance of Hinemoa. We arranged to row across the Lake to
a spot on the shore opposite our hotel, where we were to be met by a
"coach" (as the ordinary vehicles were called) bringing our luncheon.
Somehow first our rudder broke away and then the boatman seemed to lose
his head--and anyhow lost one of his oars. We were thereby left
helplessly floating at no great distance from the beach, and, what was
worse, with no apparent possibility of securing our luncheon. However, my
brother, bolder than Tutaneki, saved Lady Galloway and myself from
imitating Hinemoa. He plunged into the water and managed to wade ashore,
and we soon had the satisfaction of seeing him return carrying the
luncheon basket on his head, and having sent a messenger to summon another
boat to our rescue.
One particularly fascinating feature in the Hot Lakes District was the
charm of open-air hot baths. Certain pools were surrounded by high
palisades rendering them absolutely private. You secured a key and locked
yourself in, when you could disport yourself in natural hot water and wade
about under the trees to your heart's content. The water was of a
delightful temperature, but certainly impregnated with chemicals, as I
found the skin peeling off my feet after two or three such baths.
[Sidenote: HUIA ONSLOW]
We arrived at Auckland in time to witness the final send-off of that most
popular Governor, Lord Onslow, with special tributes to Lady Onslow and
her baby son Huia, who, having been born during his parents' tenure of
office, had been endowed with the Maori chieftain's distinctive badge, the
feather of the Huia, and was christened by that name. Whenever he appeared
the Maoris shouted "Huia! Huia!" and, most tactfully, the child showed a
preference for brown men over white. Poor Huia grew into a splendid and
talented youth, but was disabled by an accident while diving. Despite his
crippled condition he gallantly pursued his scientific studies till
released by death in 1922.
Of all Rudyard Kipling's Songs of the Cities I think the Song of Auckland
best conveys the claim of that vision of beauty:
"Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart--
On us, on us the unswerving season smiles,
Who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart
To seek the Happy Isles!"
Truly, New Zealand must have waited while Providence bestowed gifts on
many lands, and have then received a special bounty from each store of
blessing. The strength of the mountain pass, the plunge of the waterfall,
the calm mirror of the lake, the awe of the forest, the glow of the
flowers, the fertile pasture for the flock, the rich plains for the
corn--gold, coal, and Kauri gum, the marvels of her springs--all these and
much more are given to her children, together with one of the most perfect
climates on the face of the earth. She has but one drawback--namely, that
she is ringed round by some of the stormiest oceans known to man. Perhaps
were it not so too many eager pilgrims would seek this far-off Paradise!
Lord and Lady Onslow returned with us to Sydney Government House, and soon
after left with their family for England. Lady Galloway in turn sailed in
the spring (Australian autumn), to my great regret. She made the voyage in
a Messageries boat, accompanied by the very pretty daughters of Lord
Southesk, Helena and Dora Carnegie.
In July of this year (1892) my husband and I were fortunately able to make
a most interesting journey to the French Colony of New Caledonia. As is
well known, certain questions had arisen from time to time between
Australia and New Caledonia, as the former Government asserted that
convicts escaped from the French penal colony were apt to take refuge on
Australian shores; and since the total cessation of convict transportation
from Great Britain Australians were, not unnaturally, additionally
sensitive to their arrival from any other quarter.
[Sidenote: NOUMEA]
Apart from this, however, the relations between the British and French
"outposts of Empire" were very friendly and a good many Australians had
established themselves as free settlers in Noumea, the capital of New
Caledonia; and when the French Government heard that Jersey contemplated a
visit they sent word (as we learnt later on) that a generous sum was to be
spent on the reception of the first Australian Governor to undertake the
voyage. Owing to the fact that he had to await permission from home before
absenting himself from New South Wales, and as there was then no cable to
Noumea, we were unable to name an exact date for our arrival, which after
some three days' voyage took place on July 13th. We sailed in a
Messageries boat, the _Armand Behic_, very luxurious and with most
obliging officers, but much too narrow in proportion to its length, which
caused it to roll even when the sea was perfectly calm. This was a common
fault with Messageries boats in those days. Probably also it was deficient
in cargo, as, despite a large Government subsidy, this line was run to New
Caledonia at a considerable loss. I wrote to my mother describing our
arrival as follows:
"We were received" (at Noumea) "with a tremendous salute of guns,
after which the Conseil de Sante promptly put the ship and all its
company into quarantine for 24 hours! We (including Private Secretary
and servants) were allowed to stay on board, where we were perfectly
comfortable, but all the other passengers from the _Armand Behic_ and
another ship arriving from Sydney at about the same time, were bundled
off to the quarantine island. There were about 180 of them and
accommodation for about 25. What the rhyme or reason of 24 _hours'_
quarantine was in a question of small-pox which might appear, if at
all, in 21 days, we at first failed to discover, but the solution--and
I fancy the true one--ultimately offered was that when our ship
arrived with the British Ensign flying there was an awful hullabaloo.
They did not know we were coming by this ship, and neither Government
House nor anything else was ready, so they cried, "Whatever shall we
do? Happy thought! Small-pox at Sydney--let us quarantine them till we
have had time to prepare," (Here let me remark that as a rule
Australia was absolutely free from small-pox, but a few cases had
lately been brought by a ship, and of course relegated to the New
South Wales remote quarantine stations.)
To resume my letter:
"It mattered very little to us, but was awfully hard on the other
victims, particularly as they put all their worn linen into some
concoction of chemicals which utterly spoilt it. Meantime we went off
to the quarantine island for a walk and went up a hill whence we had a
beautiful view of the harbour which is _lovely_ ... high hills of
charming shapes round it ... the real glow of vivid green, red, and
blue which one imagines in the South Pacific.... Well, next morning,
at 9 a.m., we were allowed to land in great honour and glory, and were
received by the Mayor, girt with his tricolour sash, and all the
Municipal Council, and then escorted to Government House, where
everything had been prepared, down to unlimited scent-bottles,
tooth-brushes, and splendidly bound copies of Byron and Milton, to
make us feel at home. The only drawback was that having once
established us, and apparently cleaned up the house for our arrival,
nobody ever attempted to dust or clean in any way again--and as it
rained all the time after the first day, and everyone walked
everywhere, including in the ball-room, in muddy boots, the effect was
peculiar. Every place was, however, decorated with flowers and flags,
which are no doubt excellent substitutes for dusters and dustpans."
[Sidenote: THE GOVERNOR OF NEW CALEDONIA]
I shall not easily forget that household. It is hardly necessary to say
that the Governor, M. Laffon, was a bachelor, a young man, clever and
charming but evidently unaccustomed to domestic details. I believe that he
was appointed through the influence of the Paris Rothschild, who was a
friend of his father, and who had a predominating share in the nickel
mines which constitute the great wealth of New Caledonia. He, however, was
a civilian and had no voice in the appointment of the Private Secretary
and Military A.D.C. who constituted his staff, and who treated their Chief
with a profound disregard which scandalised our Private Secretary, George
Goschen.
M. Laffon got up at any hour in the morning to take us to "objects of
interest" before the heat of the day, but the staff did not trouble
themselves to appear till about noon, and when a ceremonious _dejeuner_
was given we found that the Minister of the Interior was running round to
put the name-cards on the places of the guests. These young men told Mr.
Goschen that when they did not want to go anywhere they pleaded headache
and wondered if their Governor were surprised at the frequency of these
ailments. "But don't you have a headache?" added one of them. "An A.D.C.,"
retorted our virtuous Briton, "never has a headache." "But you have
sentiments?" "An A.D.C.," was the reply, "has no feelings." "You must feel
unwell sometimes?" "Never more than one out of four of us at a time."
Poor George Goschen was nearly crippled with rheumatism while at Noumea,
but would rather have died on the spot than have omitted to set a good
example by following us everywhere in a pelting rain. Nevertheless when
they deigned to accompany us the two Frenchmen made themselves very
agreeable.
Our English footman, originally a boy from Middleton village, was
considerably taken aback when he found that the only attendance in our
rooms was the sudden inroad of a party of kanakas (natives) who ran in
with feather brushes, stirred up a little dust, and rapidly disappeared.
"Well, Henry," said Mr. Goschen, "either you or I will have to make His
Excellency's bed." And, stimulated by this and by my maid's example, Henry
turned to, and we were made perfectly comfortable.
Fortunately for the peace of mind of our kind hosts, the Government and
Municipality, we came in for the Fetes de Juillet, so though they could
not carry out the special entertainments projected for us, they had three
balls, and some races, already arranged. It was rather strange to have the
music supplied by a Convict Band in their penal garb, but it was very
good.
In the middle of one of the balls we were summoned to witness a
"pilou-pilou," that is a native dance by the kanakas--merry-looking people
with tremendous heads of wool standing straight up. They danced a kind of
ballet with much swaying of their bodies and swinging of their weapons,
which they afterwards presented to me. I did not much like taking them,
but was assured that it was the custom.
These kanakas were darker and of a more negro type than the Samoans whom
we afterwards visited, but not so dark as the Australian aboriginals, nor
so savage as the inhabitants of the New Hebrides or New Ireland.
We saw two of their villages, and their system of irrigation by little
watercourses on the hill-side, which showed considerable capacity for
agriculture. The Roman Catholic missionaries claimed to have converted
about ten thousand of them, and it was curious to find in a dark little
hut of bark and reeds, with little inside except mats and smoke, two or
three Mass books and a crucifix. Some of the priests whom we met had gone
into the wilds of New Caledonia before the French annexed it in 1853, and
regardless of danger had worked there ever since.
[Sidenote: THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT]
We were taken to see the chief buildings of the Convict Settlement, which
appeared to be large and well planned, but one had rather a painful shock
when the first object pointed out was the site of the guillotine.
Naturally the convicts were divided into different classes. We entered one
long building where a number were confined in common, and seemed fairly
cheerful, but others were in little separate cells from which they were
only brought out, and then alone, for a very short time each day. Some had
only a brief period of such solitary confinement, but in one small cell we
found a very big man who almost seemed to fill it with his body when he
stood up at our entrance. He had been condemned to seven years of this
penance for having assaulted a waiter. He implored the Governor either to
have him executed at once, or to allow him a little more liberty. I backed
up his plea, and M. Laffon promised some consideration, which I trust was
effectual.
The worst thing we saw was the lunatics' prison, inhabited by men who had
gone mad since their arrival in the Island. One man had a most refined and
intellectual head; he had been a distinguished lawyer at Lyons and was
transported for having killed a man who, if I recollect rightly, had been
his sister's lover. No wonder that shame, exile, and his surroundings had
driven him mad. Another was much happier; he was quite harmless, and was
allowed to wander about and indulge his mania, which was the decoration of
the little chapel. I have no reason at all to think that the convicts were
ill-treated, but we did not see the place where the worst criminals were
confined, and one of the French ladies mysteriously remarked, "Ils ont des
temps durs ceux-la."
I always feel, however, that philanthropists who are ready to condemn the
treatment of convicts in any part of the world fail to realise the
difficulty of keeping order amongst large bodies of men, most of whom, at
all events, have criminal instincts. The heroes of novels and plays who
undergo such imprisonment are almost invariably represented as unjustly
convicted, probably scapegoats for real criminals, and all our sympathy is
evoked on their behalf. No doubt, particularly in the early days of
Australia, there were many cruelties and much undue severity, but the
comparatively few officers and men who were put to guard and govern masses
of criminals had no easy task. They were far removed from any possibility
of summoning help in cases of mutiny, and probably many of them
deteriorated mentally and physically through much anxiety and the
hardships which they themselves had to encounter.
[Sidenote: CONVICTS IN FORMER DAYS]
On the other hand, I heard many authentic stories in Australia of the kind
treatment and good behaviour of the convicts who were sent out from
England for slight offences, and who became steady and law-abiding
settlers, and were particularly careful in the education and upbringing of
their children. One gentleman told me of a dentist who refused a fee for
treating him because his father, who had been an official in convict days,
had been so good to the dentist's ticket-of-leave family. Of course it
seems very hard of our ancestors to have transported men and women for
stealing bread or poaching, and I am not justifying the penal laws of the
eighteenth century, but being what they were I am not at all sure that the
majority of those who were sent to Australia were not better off than they
would have been shut up in the prisons of those days in England, and
certainly their children had a much better start in life. I believe that
the great hardship was the voyage out in a slow sailing ship, overcrowded,
with little fresh air and the constant risk of food and water running
short. Once landed, there were many chances of prosperity for the
well-behaved. I say nothing of the real black sheep who were relegated to
Port Arthur or Norfolk Island. It is a mercy to think that those days are
past and over.
To return to New Caledonia. There were elaborate arrangements for work in
the nickel mines, and as assigned servants to free settlers whom the
French Government were very anxious to plant on the land. I do not think
that they were very successful in inducing large numbers to undertake the
long voyage, though there were a few Bretons on our ship. A good many
Australians, however, were established in trade in Noumea.
Words fail to do justice to the kindness of the New Caledonian
French--they made every exertion to render us happy, and completely
succeeded. When we left they robbed their Museum of a whole collection of
native curiosities which they put on board ship with us, despite our
protestations. One quaint incident perhaps deserves record. Just as we
departed I received an imposing-looking missive written in flowery
English, which proved to be a letter from a French poilu. He informed me
that he had been in Australia and had there married a girl whose name he
gave me. She was then living in Victoria, and if I remember rightly was
half Belgian, half British. A small child had been the offspring of the
union, but "France had called on him to serve," and though his time of
service overseas was nearly up, and though he wished to return to
Australia to "stand by his wife," France saw otherwise and proposed to
ship him back to Marseilles; he was in despair until I had appeared "like
a star of hope upon the horizon."
When we were back at Sydney I wrote to the Charity Organization at
Melbourne asking if they could find out anything about the lady. Oddly
enough she was actually employed in the C.O.S. Office, and was said to be
quite respectable, though there appeared to have been a little informality
about the "marriage lines."
I then wrote to the very amiable French Colonel at Noumea and asked
whether under the circumstances he could see his way to letting the
lovelorn swain return to Australia instead of to France. With prompt
courtesy he granted my request, and named some approximate date for the
man's arrival in Melbourne. Thereupon I wrote a further letter to the
C.O.S., asking that they would be prepared for a marriage ceremony about
which there should, this time, be no mistake. The end of the romance, at
all events of this chapter, was that I received a gushing epistle of
gratitude signed by "two young hearts," or words to that effect, "made for
ever happy." I never saw the youth and maiden whom I had thus been
instrumental in launching among the eddies and currents of matrimony, but
I trust that the little girl was sufficient to justify a somewhat blind
experiment.
[Sidenote: DEATH OF LORD ANCRAM]
A great tragedy threw a shadow over our sojourn in N.S.W.
One of our aides-de-camp was Lord Ancram, elder son of Lord Lothian, and a
particularly attractive young man. He was a great favourite in Sydney and
much in request at gatherings of every description, being good-looking and
having charming manners. In June 1892 he and my brother were invited to
join a shooting party in the country. He went off in high spirits, and
when he came to say good-bye to me, knowing him to be rather delicate, I
cautioned him to be sure and put some kind of bedding under as well as
over him if sleeping out at night. This he promised to do. I never saw him
again. It was customary in Australia to shoot riding. He and his
companions got off their horses for luncheon, and put their guns on the
ground. On remounting one of the party seems to have picked up a loaded
gun in mistake for his own which he had discharged. Handled incautiously
this gun went off, and poor Ancram was shot through the head, dying
instantaneously. I shall never forget the universal sorrow not only in
Government House, but among the whole warm-hearted community of New South
Wales. It was some comfort that the Admiral commanding the Station, Lord
Charles Scott, was Ancram's uncle, and he and his nice wife were able to
help, and advise as to the best means of breaking the news to the poor
parents and relatives in England.
Poor George Goschen, who was devoted to Ancram, was almost prostrated by
grief. It was rather curious that not very long before the accident Ancram
told me that he had dreamt that he found himself back in his old home, but
that his brother had taken his place and that nobody recognised him or
took any notice of him!
Treasures of the Old World are sometimes found at the Antipodes. On one of
our tours, at a township called Bungendore, a large wooden box appeared
unexpectedly in our private railway car. Opened, it was found to contain a
letter from a Mr. Harold Mapletoft Davis explaining that he confided to
our care relics from Little Gidding, brought from England long before by
his parents. His mother, Miss Mapletoft, was directly descended from Dr.
Mapletoft and from his wife, the only Miss Colet who married. In the box
were a copy of the famous _Harmonies_, and bound volumes of manuscript
writings by Mary Colet and her sisters. The fine binding of _The
Harmonies_, now in the British Museum, was said to have been executed by
Mary Colet herself; she did not die young as represented in "John
Inglesant," but lived to a good old age. There was also a lovely Charles I
embroidered miniature chest of drawers, containing a boar's tooth, a
handkerchief with the royal monogram, and other relics. Charles I left
this at Little Gidding during his troubles. It was ultimately purchased by
Queen Victoria, and is now at Windsor.