The fruit of the handsome, shrubby tree known botanically as DIOSPYROS

HEBECARPA is also a most effective fish poison. It is oval-shaped, red

when ripe, and, as the name implies, covered with soft, fine hair. For

all its lofty title and attractive appearance, the fruit is deceptive,

for it bites and blisters the lips and tongue like caustic, and on

being bruised and thrown into a pool on the reef, all fish are killed

outright.

A different and, for a black, singularly complicated process is employed

for the extraction of the noxious principle residing in the plant known

as “Koie-yan” (FARADAYA SPLENDIDA). This is one of the most rampant and

ambitious of the many vines of the jungle.

It combines exceeding vigour with rare gracefulness. The leaves are a

light glossy green, ovate, and often a foot long, while the flowers

are pure white (resembling slightly the azalea, but free from its

fragility), large, and with an elusive scent, sweet and yet indefinite.

The fruit, smooth and of porcelain whiteness, varies in size and shape,

and is said to be edible, though blacks ignore it. A large marble and

an undersized hen's egg may dangle together, or in company with others,

from the topmost branches of some tall tree, which has acted as host to

the clinging vine. The handsome but inconsiderate plant is turned

from its purpose of lending fictitious and fugitive charms to quite

commonplace but passive trees to the office of stupefying uncomplaining

fish. But the element which holds such deadly enmity to the sense of the

fish is not obtainable by the simple primary means successful with other

plants. Indeed, the process is quite elaborate, and goes to prove that

the Australian aboriginal has to his credit as a chemist the results of

successful original research, and that he is also a herbalist from whom

it is no condescension to learn. In this detail, at any rate, he is

distinctly an accomplished person. Portions of the vine are cut into

foot lengths; the outer layer of bark is removed and rejected, the

middle layer alone being preserved. This is carefully scraped off and

made up into shapely little piles on fresh green leaves. One might

imagine that a black boy preparing the deadly “Koie-yan” was really

playing at chemist's shop with neat-handed scrupulousness. When a

sufficiency is obtained it is rubbed on to stones previously heated by

fire. The stones then being thrown into a creek or a little lagoon left

by the receding tide, the poison becomes disseminated, with fatal effect

to all fish and other marine animals.

It is pointed out, however, by Dr. Hamlyn-Harris that the nature of the

active principle of the “Koie yan” does not permit of elaboration by

such means. The heating of the shredded bark would, therefore, appear

to fall into line with the gibberish of ancient alchemists. It would

bewilder the uninitiated without enhancing results.

Many other plants supply the means of killing small fish wholesale, or

of reducing them to palsied cripples. The three described are fairly

common, and have, therefore, been selected to point a moral. Poisoning

fish is a poor sort of sport, perhaps, but there are two classes of

fishermen--the hungry and the artistic. The latter use flimsy tackle and

complicated gear, and play the game, giving the victims to their wiles a

sporting chance. Though not the only representative of the hungry class,

the black boy generally fishes on an empty stomach, and his demeanour

coincides. No slobbering sentiment affects him. Yet he is not so cruel

as the mean white who throws a plug of dynamite into the river while

the fish are enjoying their crowded hour, though he will with as little

taint upon his conscience poison a pool full of fish as drag with hooked

stick a reluctant crab piecemeal from its burrow among the mangrove

roots. But then he is responding to the appeals of a clamant and

not over-particular stomach, while your dynamitard is occasionally a

well-fed barbarian with a queasy palate.

FLY-FISHING.

The neatest and most artistic method by which the blacks kill fish

necessitates the employment of a particular species of spider known to

the learned as NEPHILA MACULATA PISCATORUM. This spider was discovered

on Dunk Island by Macgillivray, the naturalist of the expedition of

H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE in 1848. It has a large ovate abdomen of olive-green

bespangled with golden dust; black thorax, with coral-red mandibles;

and long, slender legs, glossy black, and tricked out at the joints with

golden touches. A fine creature, gentle and stately in demeanour, it

spins a large web, strong enough to hold the biggest of beetles

and other insects, and, to harmonise with the superior air of the

manufacturer, the gossamer is of golden-green. The great spider at the

focus of the resplendent web is a frequent and conspicuous ornament

to the edges of the jungle, and having no fear, and no indocility of

temper, it undergoes the ordeal of admiration with an assumption

of disdainful coquettism. The local name of this comely creature

is “Karan-jamara.” Shameless polyandrist, she maintains several

consorts--from three to five seems to be the average number--and

they, semi-transparent, feeble, meek, subdued little fellows, maintain

precarious isolated existences in the outskirts of the web.

Though my own experience is negative, direct incontrovertible evidence

is extant to the effect that birds often meet their fate by blundering

into the web, to be devoured by the nimble and gaily decorated owner. I

have frequently seen karan-jamara disposing of hard-shelled beetles

as big in bulk as some birds, and the strongest of butterflies, once

entangled, is powerless. The long-legged spider leaps on the struggling

prey and stills its beating wings with one pinch of powerful red

mandibles. March flies form the most frequent diet. One has been

observed to dispose of fourteen of the great stupid flies in a single

evening, and if the flies could reason they might, while whimpering

because of the existence of such voracious spiders, acknowledge that

they design their webs in a very perplexing and masterly manner.

In pursuance of inquiries--the results of which are herein recorded--a

casual black boy, a stranger to these parts, and therefore unfamiliar

with the local name and the special purpose to which the spider is put,

was cross-examined. At first he failed to recognise the photograph, but

when it was explained by the pointed allusion to a living Maltese-cross

spider close at hand, a gleam of intelligence brightened his bewildered

face, and he delivered a self-satisfied dissertation on the order

Arachnida that is worth quoting:

“That fella Oo-boo-boo. That fella mammy belonga 'nother fella

altogether. You no savee, come close up--that fella ply way. You no

savee, come close up, that fella no good; that fella vite.”

And the boy looked gravely sagacious and smiled the wide, wise smile

betokening proud superiority of information. Had Macgillivray but known

that the “Oo-boo-boo” was the parent of all the many species, and that

it belongs to the discreetly valorous class that “vites” and flies away,

and lives to “vite” another day, he might have achieved renown of a

more popular kind than is the reward of the unromantic naturalist who

discovers merely a superior spider.

This spider is used on some of the rivers as a lure, virtues almost

irresistible being ascribed to it. Experiments in salt water, though not

absolutely negative in their results, have not afforded any specially

exciting sport; but possibly the fascination of the lure is more

efficient in fresh than in salt water, and is influential over the

habitual caution throughout a certain species of fish only. The trick is

worked in the following manner:

The angler takes a light, thin switch and entangles one end in the web,

which, by dexterous waving action, is converted (without being touched

with the fingers) into a strand about two feet long. The spider is

secured and squashed, and the end of the line moistened in the juices of

the body, some of the fragments of which are reserved for bait, and

also to be thrown into the water as a preliminary charm. These buoyant

titbits attract shoals of small fish, among which the line, with its

extract of spider, is delicately trailed; a fish rises to the lure, the

gossamer becomes entangled in its teeth, and it is landed by a brisk yet

easy movement of the wrist. A great angler recently said that throwing

a fly is an act of feeling or instinct rather than reason. So the black

boy with a careless flourish fills his dilly-bag, while he smiles at the

serious attempts of the white man to imitate his skill.

Owing to the brevity and the frailness of the line, the catch is limited

to fish under the recognised standard as to size. Tests prove that the

breaking strain of the line is nearly three-quarters of a pound, but the

weight of the individual is of no great consideration, since numbers are

caught quickly. The gossamer is singularly sticky. The viscid substance

with which it is coated is not readily dissolvable in water; indeed,

water seems to have the effect of hardening it, so that the line'

wears longer than might be expected. Piquant morsels of the spider are

entangled in the frayed end of the line as its original potency becomes

non-effective.

A friend for whose edification this novel method was demonstrated thus

writes it:

“It did not take the boy long to get ready. They simply broke a switch

about three feet long and attached a portion of the web about six inches

long to the end; squeezed out on to a leaf the fluid internals of the

spider, into which they dipped the end of the line, started a rather

melodious chant, and put the line in shallow water. I was only a few

feet away and could see no fish at first, but they came very soon. They

were very small, about one and a half inches long. They fasten their

teeth in the web, and are lifted out quite slowly. Some require to be

pulled off the line after being landed. I watched for about ten minutes,

during which time seventeen were caught.”

Sir William Macgreggor, ex-Governor of Queensland, has described the

Papuan art of fishing by means of kites, the lure being a tassel of the

web of a spider of the Nephila species. No doubt the blacks here made an

independent and original discovery, and in their simplicity applied

it in a different, but none the less effective, style from that of the

advanced Papuan.

Thus, to use the web and the fragments of a spider for fly-fishing is

certainly meting out poetic justice to the spider on account of the many

ensnared flies; and the black angler never pauses to reflect whether

the comminuted remains of a spider can possibly be construed into a fair

fly.

PART II--MISCELLANEA

PEARLS

WHAT IS A PEARL?

What is a pearl? The substance of a sensation--the consolidation of

discomfort on the part of an oyster or other nacre-secreting mollusc. It

is a globular deposit of carbonate of lime, with a very small proportion

of water, generally enclosing a trifle which is its cause and core

and, so to speak, is a waste product of the body's chemistry. In the

restricted, scientific sense, “true pearls are bodies consisting of

calcareous material with an organic basis.” Similar bodies having cores

of sand grains or other foreign substance are known as “blisters.”

Science, which peers and probes into the innermost affairs of oysters,

and speaks of them in terms of uneasy familiarity, asserts that pearls

are frequently caused by a parasite to which they are subject.

It would ill become one who has no scientific pretensions to suggest

other definitions, though he may claim to be among the few who have

been privileged to observe a pearl in the making, or, rather, to watch

Nature's finishing touches.

In the case of the oyster the radical home cure for the living irritant

or insoluble substance which had gained entrance between its valves

is an encasement of pearl-film. If this encasement is globular or

pear-shaped, or takes the form of a button and is lucid, lustrous,

flawless, and of large size, it may be of almost inestimable worth.

Does the proud beauty who glories in the possession of a pearl

condescend to imagine that she flaunts on her bosom just so many tombs

containing the dust of the germs of a parasite? Does she not rather love

to think of the gems as emblems of almost celestial purity, and to dwell

on the fable of the Persians rather than the audacious modern fact?

Addison has set the fable in imperishable gold: A drop of water fell out

of a cloud into the sea, and finding herself lost in such immensity of

fluid matter, broke out into the following reflection: “Alas! What an

inconsiderable creature am I in this prodigious ocean of waters; my

existence is of no concern to the universe; I am reduced to a kind of

nothing, and am less than the least of the works of God.” It so happened

that an oyster which lay in the neighbourhood chanced to gape and

swallow it up in the midst of this its humble soliloquy. The drop, says

the fable, lay a great while hardening in the shell, until by degrees it

was ripened into a pearl, which, falling into the hands of a diver after

a long series of adventures, is at present that famous pearl which is

affixed on the top of the Persian diadem.

Though one may count his pearls by the score, the hoard may be

valueless. Upon such examples entertaining, if not valuable, experiments

may be made without affectation or giving hostages to fortune. In all

the little deformed specimens thus dissected the core has been found to

consist of a foreign substance, generally what seemed under a microscope

of limited power a speck of dirt. The heart of one was a blob of

mud, which gave off a most baleful vapour. This was the result of the

house-cleaning of a common, edible rock oyster, and the pearl, dirty

green and lustreless, merely a thin casket, for the noisome mud had not

solidified. The care with which the impurity had been rendered innocuous

demonstrated the correct ideas of the oyster on sanitation. No doubt the

germ of the special form of tape-worm which troubles oysters, irritates

to pearl-making, and passes through other transformations in other

hosts, and completes its cycle in the body of a shark, would be too

minute for inexpert detection. The fact that molluscs do intern foreign

and obnoxious substances is testimony to their decency and love of

cleanliness, and so may the pearl be still accepted as the embodiment of

purity. Though all its little soul be dirt, the pearl is pure, and but

for the dirt or the germ of a filthy ailment it would not be pearl.

So many molluscs produce pearls that it would be absurd for the great

oyster family to set up exclusive rights. They do not, for your oyster

is ever humble even when tenanted with a rivalless pearl. On the coast

of North Queensland, within the Great Barrier Reef, pinnas of at least

two species are among the producing agents, which, covering a wide

range, seem to meet in two distinct genera, far apart in appearance and

habit. There is the frail, flat, translucent “window-shell” (Placuna),

the valves of which fit so closely that the poor little inhabitant

is squeezed to a wafer, a film, a fragment of muscle. Yet in some

localities nearly every individual has a pearl, pretty in tint, but

too minute to be of value. An allied species is common on the coast of

China, where the pearls are collected for export to India, to be reduced

to lime by calcination for the use of luxurious betel-nut chewers. These

almost microscopic pearls are also burnt in the mouths of the dead who

have been influential and wealthy.

Coal-black pearls occur in one of the pinnas, the interior of which

is sooty, shot with iridescent purple, and since the pearl, whether

produced by oyster, mussel, pinna, or window-shell, is generally more

brilliant than the containing shell, that of the black pinna, with the

high lights of its environment concentrated, may be a gem of surpassing

novelty and beauty. But the habitual product of this pinna is small,

dull, mud-tinted or brown, and of no value whatever. Another of the

genera grows “seed” of excellent lustre, corresponding with the azure

brightness of the shell.

The chief source of orient pearls on the coast of North Queensland

is the gold-lip mother-of-pearl PINCTADA MAXIMA, while the black lip

PINCTADA MARGARITIFERA occasionally yields fine and flawless specimens

of a silvery lustre. One which is still lovingly remembered was of pale

blue and wonderfully lighted. The commonest of the giant clams TRIDACNA

GIGAS sometimes betrays evidence of past internal trouble by the

presence of a concretion of porcelain whiteness and of porcellaneous

texture, but such are not to be described as pearls and to be prized as

rarities only.

That some huge molluscs produced pearls before man, with his faculty for

admiration, came on the scene is proved by their existence as fossils in

chalk. Hemispherical specimens have been found on the inner surface of a

shell which has no living representative--viz., the Inoceramus (some

of which attained a length of two feet)--and spherical ones of the same

prismatical structure occur detached in the chalk. It were curious

to let the imagination run over the fact that the hosts of these

uncommended gems died ages before the advent of man. The best of modern

prizes may be puny in comparison with those which caused distress to

the giant molluscs of the age when the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and

Pterodactylus were the aristocrats of the animal world. Such gems have

gone for ever, and even during this age of insatiable and adventurous

search man does not secure a tithe of the ocean's tribute, for, since a

pearl is a source of discomfort to its host, the unceasing effort of

the animal is towards expulsion. The greatest and possibly the most

magnificent are cast out as rubbish on the ocean floor, or are retained

within the valves when the animal dies of old age.

So-called pearls have been found in elephants' tusks and semi-adherent

to the bones of fish, and concretions--hard, smooth, and round, and

of the flat hue of skimmed milk--in coconuts and in the cavities of

bamboos; but in the production of the real gem neither oyster nor mussel

nor pinna need fear the rivalry of anything on the earth's surface. The

pearl belongs to the sea.

Completely spherical pearls can be formed only loose in the mantle or

soft parts of the body of the animal; but intrusions incite a deposit

of nacre in the form of a projection on the interior, which projection,

often a mere bubble, but sometimes semi-detached, may take the shape and

dimensions of the foreign substance. Or an inoffensive mollusc may be

goaded by the piercing of its shell from the exterior to create that

for which men venture into the depths of the sea. If a pearl-secreting

oyster be inherently robust, its defence against assault from without

may consist of the strengthening of the interior at the point of attack

by deposits of nacre. Thus, a slight protuberance arises which becomes

the base of a blister or button or the starting-point of a pear-shaped

gem. Many a lovely gem is, therefore, nothing more than the imperishable

record of aggression on the part of a flabby sponge on a resourceful

oyster. Occasionally valuable pearls are found within huge blisters.

Such pearls originate, no doubt, in the ordinary way, but, becoming

an intolerable nuisance on account of increasing size, are confined in

nacre.

One of the accompanying illustrations shows the fate which befell

an infant chiton upon intrusion on a small black-lip oyster, and

coincidentally the origin of a blister. The chiton family being

notorious for stolidity, the infant could not have realised the risks of

its trespass until the strait-jacket made its retirement impossible.

The nacre has reproduced the details of the chiton's exterior with the

fidelity of a casting, and further reveals the fact that it was alive

when entombed, for its struggles to escape are solidified.

This deliberate act of the oyster may not stand comparison with the

stone of Pyrrhus's ring, which had the figure of Apollo and the nine

Muses in the veins of it produced by the spontaneous handiwork of Nature

without any help from art. The marvellous stone belonged to the fabulous

past; the imprisoned chiton to the prosaic present.

Another illustration is that of an accumulation of nacre which has

assumed accidental resemblance to a miniature shark. It was found in a

gold-lip pearl shell in Torres Straits. The like quantity in globular

shape would represent a pearl of great value.

A PEARL IN THE MAKING.

On a calm and luminous day I waded, disrobed, in shallow water as limpid

as the fictitious stream which legend says King Solomon improvised

at the foot of his throne when the Queen of Sheba attended his court.

Lifting her robes--for she imagined the crossing of the water to be a

ceremonial device--the gorgeous Queen displayed her shapely calves. The

water resting on the verge of the lovely Isle was as delusively clear,

but was not deceptive.

It revealed living coral, good to avoid by the barefooted; clams with

patterned mantles of various tints--grey, slate-blue, sea-green, brown,

and buff; anemones in many shapes, some like spikes of lavender,

and irritant and repellent to the touch; some platter-shaped and

cobalt-blue; some as living vases with the opalescent tints of Venetian

glass, which, abhorring the hand of man, retreat into the sand until

only an inconspicuous fringe of neutral tint is visible. Sea-slugs

in almost endless form and variety of hue, and many other strange sea

things, were among the inhabitants of the reef--a closely packed arena

of never-ceasing slaughter.

In the middle of a clump of brown seaweed, which had fallen apart like

the neatly dressed hair of a woman, was a black streak, signifying the

gape of a wedge-shaped mollusc known as a pinna. The gape was about as

long as the parting of a woman's hair and about thrice as wide. As I

crouched to note the functions of the animal, my shadow intervened and

the caution of the creature was roused, the valves closing so that no

sign of the presence of the shell was distinguishable among the slightly

wavering, minute particles of alga. Changing my position, so that the

pinna might not be deprived of its share of the rays of the sun, the

valves soon furtively opened. A slight movement on my part and they

closed again, without having revealed any hidden charms.

After a few minutes, a certain confidence being established between us,

the pinna emerged from its retirement, in so far as such creatures are

permitted by Nature. The mantle of this particular species is shown as

a delicate fringe of lace in old gold and black. It ripples along the

upper edges of the confining valves, which are intensely black with a

pearly lustre. The pretty movements of the mantle--like the swinging

of the skirts of a well-apparelled damsel--attracted admiration, and on

peering into the shell a glimpse of something precious was obtained.

Tossed and twirled about just below the old gold fringe was a black

pearl about the size of a pea. The prize was safe. Without risk of loss

it could be watched in its unceasing revolutions. It seemed as if the

animal, with automatic perseverance, attempted to eject the incubus, the

weight of which kept it about an inch below the aperture of the valves.

Such motion would naturally tend to perfection. Whatsoever its lustre,

it would certainly be a sphere. Besides, it was a pearl in the making.

As long as it remained within the pinna and it could not be voluntarily

rejected, its size would inevitably increase. It was the rolling stone

to which time and the secretions of the animal would add weight and,

peradventure, beauty.

Was mortal ever before privileged to watch over the growth of a black

pearl? The activities of the mantle, a blending of enticing colour

and poetic motion, were slow, free, and light-attracting. The ancients

believed that some pearls were constituted by flashes of lightning

playing on bubbles within the oyster. A relative of the family here

seemed to be wooing the tropic sun of its beams, if not to vitalise, at

least to burnish its treasure.

Close scrutiny showed that the pearl was not absolutely free. It was

enclosed in a transparent membrane, the merest film, which confined

it to a particular position in the mantle, while it seemed to possess

independent actions--vertical and revolutionary. Perhaps the rays of

light which fell unequally on it through the water created the illusion

of revolutions, but it is certain that the pearl seemed to be playing a

game of hide-and-seek.

Was it possible for human nature to deny itself so easily gotten

and pretty a prize? I confess, though the possibility of the pearl

increasing in size and loveliness was obvious, that the fact that pinnas

are subject to ills, chances, and mishaps, was also recognised. Left to

be slowly tossed about, the pearl would become greater; but size, though

an important feature, is not the only desirable quality. And while it

grew might not another barefooted beach-comber discover it? Or might not

one of the many unintelligent admirers of the pinna itself find entrance

by drilling or by the violent crushing of the valves, and, ignoring the

treasure, destroy the organs and the substance by and from which it

was being delicately elaborated? Suppose, I argued, I remove the gaping

shell, I shall no longer be able to enjoy the rare, the unique pleasure

of presiding over the gradual perfection of a pearl, an aesthetic

advantage to which I alone had been made free. Could present possession

of a little sphere of carbonate of lime, polished and sooty black,

compensate for the continuance of the chaste joy of watching one of the

most covert and intimate processes of Nature? Balancing the immediate

material gain against the inevitable moral loss, I was almost persuaded

to self-denial, when, with a sudden impulse, begot of the consciousness

of rightful acquisition, the pinna was forcibly yet carefully drawn out

of the sand in which it was deeply embedded and in which it was anchored

by toughened byssus. Directly the valves were prised apart the pearl

fell into my hand. Never before had I seen one so loosely retained

within its shell. Generally, in the case of the pinna, pearls

are embedded in the muscles or soft parts, and are not primarily

discernible, but have to be sought for by passing the “meat” through

the fingers. On this occasion all previous experience had been set at

naught, so that it might seem that the prize had been presented by the

animal as its perfect and most opulent work.

STRANGE PEARLS.

The engaging theory of the ancients that pearls were made of glutinous

dewdrops condensed by the sun's heat does not take into account the

fact that some of the rarest, though not the most valuable, have assumed

contrary and fantastic shape. Fish, crabs, and marine insects have

proved a common origin of pearly developments while they have been

regarded by some as almost miraculous conceptions on the part of the

afflicted mollusc.

Hamed of Jeddah, the stubby Arab who deals in fish and oysters, and who

professes to have groped over in his youth a considerable extent of

the Red Sea for coral and pearls, relates many experiences in which

the popular gem takes pride of place. Oriental that he is, he loves

exaggeration, and while lending a propitious car to the stories in which

he enshrines his prime, when he could dive deep and long, and when the

precious red coral was “thick” and every shell contained a pearl, it is

discreet to disregard obvious breaks and bulges along the prim path of

truth. The very crudeness of his embellishments invests with kind of

comic relief some of his fables, which end invariably with insipid

uniformity. All the pearls which have slipped through Hamed's rough

hands have been valued at five hundred pounds, never more or less. It is

not for me to rub the gilt off the innocent inventions of the emotional

Arab, but merely to relate one of his time-beguiling tales, and one

which, probably, is of clean-cut truth.

A huge gold-lip, found four fathoms deep, where the sea grass sways

indolently long, contained a tinted pearl like:

“That fella sitting down along a tree and sing out along night time.”

“Flying fox?” I guessed grimly.

“No!” snapped Hamed indignantly. “'Nother fella.”

“That bird which says 'chump, chump, chump?'” I meekly asked.

Again Hamed sneered ironically. “No bird. No bird carn get along oyster.

Little fella-green like leaf. Sing out 'Ko-rog, ko-rog, ko-rog!'”

“Oh! Frog!”

“Yes. Like frog. Me call him 'ghouk' along my country. That fella inside

gold-lip. One inch long. Leg, hand, mouth, eyes all asame. I bin get

five hundred pounds for that fella.”

Azure pearls in the similitude of tiny fish can be vouched for by people

far more careful of their facts than Hamed--fish which have intruded

themselves on the oysters and have been encased in nacre. Probably the

rarity which fell into Hamed's hands was the pearly presentment of a

crustacean, for marine frogs are infinitely rarer than pearls. Several

molluscs admit tenants, one particular species a rotund crab; but in

the case in point the wrong mansion was entered and, so to speak, the

obtruder was transformed.

A common and neat industry in China is the production of fraudulent

pearls, pretty and in accordance with submitted design, in which the

co-operation of the obedient but frail mussel is necessary. If a round

pearl is desired, a naked shot is introduced between the valves so much

to the discomfort of the animal that it proceeds to cover it decently

with layer after layer of pearl-film, the bulk of which depends upon

the length of life granted to the mussel. Sometimes little josses are

stamped out in thin uncorrosive metal, which, being presented to the

mussel, are faithfully modelled, the thrifty Chinese obtaining in course

of time quaint pearly gods--as potent as the best--without money and

without price.

Not so long as a quarter of a century ago a spirit-bottle full

of pearls--buttons, blisters, and chips of all sorts, sizes, and

shapes--was purchased in North Queensland by one who had but the crudest

ideas as to the value of such gems. The vendor was a whity-brown man,

thin, and thinly clad in cotton. The complexion of the buyer was ruddier

than the cherry, for the tropic sun had beamed ardently on his peachy

Scotch skin, proclaiming him a new-chum, a bright and shining new-chum.

Because he was new he was alert to the value of money. Had he not come,

as all new-chums do, to Tom Tiddler's ground to pick up gold and silver?

Hence, when the hatless, spare, whity-brown man in soiled cotton offered

for sale the odd-shaped beads in a besmeared whisky-bottle for five

pounds, his national trait expressed itself in a scoff.

The whity-brown man's seriousness, his confidentiality, his keen

desire to sell, his mysticism and misty English, the ruddy young man

interpreted as manifestations of the arts and wiles by means of which

innocent strangers from far away lands are tempted into bankruptcy

bargains. The seller, anxious to dispossess himself of ill-gotten gains

prejudicial to his love of liberty, pursued the Scotch youth almost

tearfully, until the bottle changed hands, but at a considerable

reduction on the price originally demanded. Shortly after a friend

enlightened the youth as to the probable value of the collection, and

gave him some cheap advice, especially on the desirableness of secrecy.

The youth accepted the advice so literally that the story ends. No one

ever knew how, when, where, and for what consideration, he disposed of

his embarrassments. Fresh from the land of his birth, and with the text

of Burns's poetic letter in his mind, he kept that something to himself.

The days of such sensational deals are past. The primal crop has long

since been harvested. Science is now bidden to stimulate the docile

oyster, for the rage for pearls is as the rage of the heathen. Is it

not the wish of every woman, old and young, to possess pearls? And while

subject man, flushed with hope, ventures to the “utmost port, washed by

the furthest sea,” for such merchandise at the caprice of woman, Science

plods sedately after man, beguiling him with the hope of some less risky

and laborious means of acquiring the gems, while at the same time

she soothes the irrepressible passion of every damsel with strings of

artistic counterfeits manufactured from the scales of silvery fish, and

as pleasant to glance at as many an orient.

The Spaniards say that a paper cigarette, a glass of water, and the kiss

of a pretty girl, will sustain a man for a day without eating. But what

is a man to do who has no tobacco, only stale water, who is separated

from the nearest girl by seventy miles of perilous seas forlorn, and

whose appetite sickens at the sight of the coarse fare of a béche-de-mer

boat? There is but one resource for such a martyr. He must do “a

perisher.” That is precisely what the master of a lonely boat in an

odd angle of the Coral Sea was doing when a joyful sail appeared--a

dove-like messenger from civilisation and shops. It was a pitiable

famine. No one had had a smoke for a week. The black boys had broken

up their nicotine-saturated clay pipes and masticated them to pulp, and

still treasured the quids, while the “Boss” pondered cigars during the

day and dreamt them at night. But relief was at hand. The master of the

strange craft, though well stocked, was not disposed to be generous,

until tempted by the sight of a lovely yellow pearl, about the size of a

small marble and of satiny lustre--sweet to look upon, sweeter still

to possess. Aware of the other man's agonising needs, he drove a hard

bargain, and the gem became his at the cost of a box of tobacco. He

hugged himself for joy, and after a decent lapse, during which he acted

the part of the virtuous who had relieved another's necessities out of

sheer goodwill (for the pearl was only a curio, was it not?), he set

sail for the nearest port.

Certain that fortune had at last beamed upon him, he laid up his lugger,

wound up his affairs, and hurried off to Sydney, secretly, to dispose

of his prize first-hand. An expert weighed the treasure, scrutinised it

shrewdly through a microscope, and handed it back with a casual remark

that it was a pretty curio, but that its market value was about half a

crown. “It has been exposed to great heat, and may crumble to pieces at

a change of temperature. Get me one like that uncooked and I'll give you

twelve hundred pounds.”

Some time after, the grasping man discovered that the pearl had been

found in the “meat” of a “helmet” shell which had been roasted by a

hungry and tobaccoless boy.

Without appearing to suggest anything beyond a trifling blemish in this

story, replete as it is with edifying illustrations of the frailties of

human nature, it would be well to remember that the helmet shell (CASSIS

FLAMMEA) is not nacreous and could not therefore produce a true pearl,

but merely g porcellaneous concretion, which, however, might possess a

most attractive tint, possibly pale salmon or orange. Such a gem might

be valuable.

Great pearls are not generally found on shallow reefs. He who would

search for them systematically must dive, and if he does not possess the

proper costume and accessories his trips below are but brief, and not

always profitable. When a diver boasts that he can remain under water

two or three minutes--and the boast is very common--he has gauged his

endurance by his sensations, not by the clock. Once an expert was timed,

a coloured gentleman who had great repute among his companions, all

capable divers. He made a special and supreme effort, and though the

watch recorded barely seventy seconds, he was much distressed. Recovery

was, however, speedy; of ten subsequent minutes he spent more than

half out of sight. It is not argued that human beings cannot remain

voluntarily under water more than seventy seconds, but the feat is so

rare that those who accomplish it are not usually pearl-divers.

The natives of some parts of Borneo declare that the valves of the

oysters containing the largest pearls are always open, and that by

peering into the water the pearls may be seen. They tell a story of a

gigantic pearl which was thus discovered by the men of old and actually

brought while within the oyster into a canoe, but had slipped from the

fingers of a careless holder into deep water.

Spencer St. John, author of “Life in the Forests of the Far East,” had

among his friends a chief who ventured most of his possessions in a

pearling cruise. Disaster attended the enterprise, but without subduing

his faith in luck; mortgaging everything, even to his wife and child, he

went out to woo fortune again. His slave-boy was preparing to dive one

day when he started back, touched his master's hand, and with signs of

great emotion pointed into the water. The chief looked, and there, seven

fathoms below, lay an oyster with an enormous pearl distinctly visible.

Without a moment's reflection he plunged in, and, diving with skill

and speed, reached the shell before it closed, his fingers being caught

between the valves. He quickly rose to the surface, and was helped into

the boat by his anxious follower. Upon the oyster being forced open, a

pearl, unsurpassed in size and of extraordinary beauty, was revealed.

Returning to his native village, the chief sold all his smaller pearls,

and having redeemed his wife and child, set sail for Manila, where lived

an English friend who advanced him money, to whom he said: “Take this

pearl, clear off my debt, give me what you like in return. I shall be

satisfied.” The author adds: “The merchant took the pearl, gave him what

he considered its value--at all events enough to make Sulu ring with

his generosity--and sent the pearl to China; but what became of it

afterwards I could never distinctly trace; but I learned that a pearl in

Bengal called 'The Mermaid' originally came from China, and as the one

found in Sulu was said to be shaped like a woman's bust, it is probably

the same.”

Possibly the golden age of the pearl is passing as the golden age of the

reptile has passed, for can it not be imagined that, in those far-back

days when oysters attained a length of two feet and better deserved

the title of Tridacna (three bites) than the present clams, pearls

of corresponding magnificence of size were produced? Or are robust

pearlless oysters to be accepted as the type of the strong era, and

small oysters and pearls merely as signs of degeneracy? The largest of

modern pearls measured two inches long by a circumference of four inches

and weighed eighteen hundred grains. The containing shell may have been

big only in comparison with its contemporaries. A very small man has

been known to be afflicted with a disproportioned goitre, and there are

some who argue that the goitre may be but the prototype of the pearl.

Is fact or fable to claim the most glorious of pearl stories? Some

verily believe that Cleopatra did quaff the costliest beverage the world

has ever known. The incident is so faithful to the character of “that

rare Egyptian” that all sober record shall not discount delight in its

transcendent sumptuousness. Though the pearl may have been worth eighty

thousand pounds of our money, though Cleopatra was gay, though her

extravagance was impious, she was a glorious woman, and she had at least

one glorious, if nauseating, drink. The pearl decoction was merely an

episode in her policy, which was to fascinate Antony--Antony who had

called her to account for having aided his enemies in their war against

him. And what was an eighty thousand pound bauble in the high affairs

of State? “She was at the age when a woman's beauty is at its prime, and

she was also of the best judgment. So she furnished herself with a world

of gifts, stores of gold and silver, and of riches and other sumptuous

ornaments as is credible she might bring from so great a house and from

so wealthy and rich a realm as Egypt. But yet she carried nothing

with her wherein she trusted more than herself, and in the charms and

enchantment of her surpassing beauty and grace.”

And then the supper following the magnificent pageant! Anything less

than an eighty thousand pound pearl would have been an anti-climax, a

mean and clumsy culmination of a “gaudy night.” That soul-delighting gem

which vanished in foam told of a superb Cleopatra's “calm felicity and

power.”

Some say that, the jewel--cast away so majestically was one of a pair

which Cleopatra wore as ear-rings, and that when Antony restrained

his hostess from a repetition of the draught, she presented the now

matchless pearl to him. Another version implies that the ear-ring had

been originally one monster pearl, which Cleopatra had caused to be sawn

in two to gratify her lust for unique and lavish ornament.

It is said, too, that the pearl was dissolved in wine. By a simple

practical test and at the sacrifice of a small quantity of baroque,

proof was obtained that ordinary culinary vinegar is a solvent of

pearls. The experiment also yielded these notable conclusions--that

either the wine of Cleopatra's age was much more corrosive than the

vinegar of ours, or that the costly beverage was prepared beforehand,

or that the stately banquet was long-drawn-out while the inestimable gem

spluttered and simmered in the goblet. The dissolution of such a large

pearl must have been slow, and the product far from nice, but it was one

of the effects by which a sovereign woman conquered the “most courteous

lord” of his day.

A curious superstition prevails in some parts of the East Indies, it

being believed that if gold and pearls are placed by themselves in a

packet they will certainly decrease in quantity or number, and in the

end totally disappear; but, if a few grains of rice are added, the

treasure is safe. Rice is thought not only to preserve the original

number of pearls, but to actually cause increase.

Tarnished pearls are occasionally submitted to the process of

“skinning”--the removal with fine steel files under a magnifying

glass of the outer 'layer, on the chance of the existence of a better

underneath. The ancients treated lustreless gems differently, placing

them before doves, under the belief that they could be polished by being

pecked and played with by the gentle birds.

In some respects pearls are superior to all other gems. They are

emblematic of serenity, and serenity is often power in the highest

manifestation. None ever said an unkind word of pearls; no dubious

legend clings to them, making the timid afraid. They come to us

perfectly fashioned. No coarse handiwork has touched them, no soulless

machine ground them to conventional pattern. The last diamond may be,

the last pearl never, until the sea gives up more than its dead, its

very being. Pearls may begin and end in foam; but the beginning is now

and always, and the ending rare, for the Cleopatras are gone. Emblems

of purity, refinement, and peace, they are truly the gems for woman.

Queenly or demure, they become her, and she bestows on them a quality

hard to define, but singularly sweet and acceptable. Gold and precious

stones may occupy billions of years in the making, or may be the product

of--

“The war of elements,

The wrecks of matter, and the crash of worlds.”

Once we find these hard, cold things and take hold of and seize them, we

know that we have, to use a homely simile, eaten our cake. The supply

of pearls is continuous, and under the control of the cruel ingenuity of

man they grow to an ordinary size in less than a decade.

Many years ago an opinion was expressed that the increasing knowledge

'of the mollusc and its habits would enable man literally to sow the sea

with pearls as he sows a field with grain, and that the harvest would

be certain. Under natural conditions not one oyster in a hundred is

troubled with a pearl, and not one pearl in the hundred is of any real

value. It is demanded that unsuspecting oysters shall be inflicted with

a kind of plague, so that there shall be not one but several pearls

in every suffering individual, and in the greater number chance

will contrive a larger proportion of orients. Every oyster has

its potentialities; Science seeks to convert potentialities into

certainties.

PEARLS AND HIGH TRAGEDY.

Such merchandise has ever provoked the spirit of adventure in hardy,

healthy men, and pearls have claimed the lives of the best among them.

The health and figure of the friend who beguiled many an evening were

sacrificed to the lustrous gem so prized of women. A model of stalwart

manhood of the Viking strain, he died early, worn out with the stress

with which he sought the most serene of personal adornments. There may

have been some slight exaggeration in the popular belief that he had

walked along the bottom of the sea from one end of the Great Barrier

Reef to the other, a stretch of over one thousand miles; but that he had

accomplished more than that distance in the aggregate of his submarine

wanderings may be quite credible. Probably there was no human being who

possessed such intimate knowledge of the character of the ocean floor

within the living bounds of the Great Barrier; and since he was silent,

reserved, and self-contained to all save friends of long standing, was

never guilty of boasting, and ever reluctant to tell of his adventures,

the world is little the wiser from his work, though at the best time

of his life most of his days were spent under water in fairyland-like

scenes. It may seem absurd to associate fairyland with the depths of the

sea; but the shy explorer of many a coral grove has been heard to say

that the scenes fulfilled his ideals of what the realms of the fairies

might be like.

Pearl-divers are more susceptible to the charms of wayward Fortune than

those who have not realised the thrill of expectancy with which a huge

goldlip, encrusted with coral and swathed with seaweed, is seized. It

may contain a gem worth a king's ransom, or but an animal which, though

it may be crossed in love, is not engaging in appearance or in any

feature or quality commendable. There is the chance; and it appeals

to most rational men. Secretive Fortune lures on, promising the bubble

pearl 'and proffering that which satisfieth not, until the stress and

perils of the avocation tell on the enthusiast, who finds himself not

exuberant as wont; that Fortune has been tricking him; that in the

pursuit of pearls Chance is oft repellent; and that the prize which

seemed impossible to avoid has eluded the most devoted seekers.

It may be that my captain did not seek his pearls with zeal beyond that

which is common to the calling the world over; but that his enthusiasm

beguiled him into remote and odd parts of the Barrier, that he became

familiar with rare scenes (denied to all save submarine adventurers

in tropical waters), that he was oft in peril of his life, and that he

could pause in the midst of strenuous, nerve-racking work to watch

the never-ceasing hostilities of the denizens of the sea, may not be

questioned.

Not long before he passed away he told of one of his adventures in a

few hurried words, after the manner of one who loves not to dwell on

personal reminiscences, save as a text for the rectification of popular

error in respect of sensational happenings. The story is here repeated,

for it throws light on an incident which sent one ship of warfare on

dubious patrol, and reveals the manner of the men who sought pearls in

the old days.

“Have you found that pearl?” he asked smilingly; for we had often talked

of the possibility of being rewarded with a fortune-bestowing gem.

“Yes, indeed, I have; and a real beauty. I very much doubt if you, for

all your experience, ever saw such perfect shape and fine lustre. Here

is an instance of the perversity of Chance. You, tied up in a rubber

bag, rake the floor of the Barrier, fighting sharks and being hustled

by turtle, and never find anything out of the way. I stroll about the

beaches, and see what Fortune bestows!”

The size of a small marble, it lay swathed in white wadding. Minute

furrows sculptured the surface in radiating lines from pole to pole,

enhancing rare radiance.

The captain took the little casket in his hand that he might gloat over

the treasure, as, his eyes shining, he said:

“You lucky fellow! Where did you get it? I never saw a finer pearl, and

I have seen a few in my days. Fair numbers have passed through my hands;

but--you fraud!”

He lifted it, revealing a counterfeit, which had once ornamented a

hatpin.

In good-humour he settled down on a lounge and gradually drifted into

reminiscences.

“About two years before what I am going to tell you happened, I heard

of a patch of shell off an island Sud-Est way; I kept the tip to myself,

determined to work the spot on my own account if ever I got the chance.

I waited till I saved a few pounds, and, taking in a mate, fitted out a

craft, and with a crew of very fair boys sailed away. I found the spot

all right; but--my usual luck--someone had been there before me. Strange

to say, the spot was by no means worked out, though it was fairly good

ground and easy working, and the shell large. We did good business for

a while, until one day I got a proper start. The life-line fouled on

something, and I found that it had taken a turn round the bowsprit of a

wreck. I got on top pretty quick, and, having had a talk with my mate,

went down again. Very soon I knew the boat. It was the ----, and she

had belonged to a man I had known very well. The strange part about the

business was that the boat had been burned. Her deck was gone; she had

burned to the water's edge and had sunk, and there she rested on her

keel. I knew that the owner had left port some months before on a secret

cruise. Someone must have given him the tip, too. He was well known and

liked, and generally did good business. My mate and I talked over the

business. We wanted to clean up that patch, so decided to remain a few

days longer before clearing out to report. I was convinced that murder

had been committed-that the natives of the island had massacred the

party and had sunk the lugger.

“While I was below next day an urgent message came down. I bobbed up

pretty quickly. A boat was sneaking out from the beach, apparently with

the plan of cutting us off from our lugger, which was anchored some

distance off, with only a couple of boys on board. You bet, we got up

steam pretty quickly. When we got on board we reached for our rifles,

and then felt safe.

“The boat was then making straight for us, and it appeared to be crowded

with darkies. We had been off the island for four days, and had not seen

the sight of a native. I knew there were plenty, and the fact that they

had kept away had made me a bit suspicious. As the boat came along I

was sure they meant mischief, and was determined, no matter how friendly

they wanted to be, not to let one of the beggars on deck.

“About half a mile away we saw one of them, who appeared to be a bit

lighter in colour than the rest, stand up in the bow and wave a kind

of message. He kept one arm going like a semaphore. Then we saw that

he carried under the other arm a basket--a peace-offering of yams and

fruit, no doubt. He had only a shirt on, and still he kept his right

arm working. When he got within hailing distance, the man in the bows

shouted my name. He was a brawny chap. I thought to myself that if it

came to a row I would pot him first, for he was ringleader.

“All the rest were naked. His scanty uniform marked him out. Probably

he got that shirt from the owner of the sunken lugger. I wetted my lips

with my tongue as I thought it might be my duty to wipe him out. Then my

name was shouted out again, and, recognising the voice, I discovered the

man in the shirt to be a well-known character who goes under the name of

----.

“I've got something nice for you, captain! Don't look so nasty with that

rifle to an old friend!'

“Still keeping our rifles ready, we let the boat come alongside and the

tinted man passed up the basket, It was native-made, and all the top was

covered with green leaves. Thinking of fresh yams and fruit, I pulled

off the leaves, and there--poof!--the head of a man-an old man who must

have died a violent death about two days before.

“The man in the shirt laughed loud and long at the disgust in my face,

and, coming on board, soon told of the tragedy of which the awful head

was a symbol of retaliation.

“The owner of the sunken lugger had fitted her out with unusual care.

His crew consisted of natives of the island off which we were lying. As

a special inducement to one of the boys, whose name was Massai, he had

promised a rifle, but designedly withheld the gift until towards the end

of the term of agreement. Massai had persistently begged for the rifle,

and it having become necessary for the Boss' to take a trip to the port,

he had definitely, promised to bring it with him. Again he designedly

forgot. Massai became morose. Things went on calmly enough until one

day, when the mate was below, the 'Boss' was suddenly thrown overboard.

As he floundered on the surface one of the boys struck at him with a

tomahawk, and then he must have realised that his life was at stake.

“Diving until well clear of the boat, he swam off to the lugger, about

a quarter of a mile away. As his master came up, Massai leaned over the

side, his master's rifle in his hand.

“'Don't shoot me, Massai,' he shouted. 'I give you good rifle belonga

yourself.'

“Massai shouted back, 'Me catch 'em plenty riple! You no good!' and

fired. The bullet splashed over the man's head. The next struck him fair

in the forehead, and he sank.

“In the meantime Massai's confederates were sporting with the diver,

hauling him up to the surface, pumping sufficient air to keep him alive,

shutting it off until he must have been nearly suffocated, reviving him

with fresh supplies, and with joy prolonging life until the fun of the

thing ceased; then they had cut the pipe so that he might drown.

“The lugger having been ransacked, she was fired, and she had sunk at

her anchorage.

“A few days after the man with the shirt arrived at the island, and

since these simple children of Nature cannot keep their doings to

themselves, he very soon was made a confidant, learning the whole

details of the tragedy by pidgin English and expressive pantomime, and

obtaining as proof the coat of the reckless man who had made a promise

to Massai which, possibly, he had never intended to fulfil. The plot of

the revenge and murder had been hatched out ashore at the instigation of

Massai's mother.

“Fortified with full information, he sailed away to a neighbouring port,

where he exhibited the coat of the murdered 'Boss.' Being impressed, the

official representing the majesty of the law gave some vague commission

to the man, who now wears other clothes than a shirt, and he sailed away

for ports unknown.

“Interpreting his commission to make further inquiries very broadly,

he appeared off the island, and received a cordial welcome, for he was

'Hail fellow well met' with the inhabitants of many a remote isle. He

made himself very friendly, and the frank natives rather gloried than

otherwise in the recitation of evidence which condemned them.

“Then he made plans for unauthorised punishment. Having disarmed

suspicion--just as the boat's crew had done in the case of his

friend--he waited, and one dark night surrounded the village with a

well-armed, hostile force. These Papuan villages are fortified in a

certain sense. Some of the exits are set with traps and spring spears,

and none but those in the secret dares venture along a track when the

village has been made secure for the night.

“The man with the shirt posted his forces so that the exits were

commanded, and waited for dawn, his instructions being that no

demonstration was to be made until he gave the signal. Before the

designed time a shot was fired, and the conscience-stricken community

fled, all save one old man and infant, who met their fate.

“The village was spoiled and fired, and thus retributive justice done

to those who had wantonly murdered two white men and destroyed their

property.

“Once again,” said the captain, “my luck was out. Goodness knows! There

might have been a big pearl in that patch. We didn't wait to find it!”

SNAKE AND FROG PRATTLE

“Surely, then, it interests us to know the lot of other animal

creatures. However far below us, they are still the sole created things

which share with us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility to

pain.”--HUXLEY.

It may be edifying to confess a particular interest in man's first

enemy-not such interest as the man of science displays when he seeks to

add to the knowledge of the world, but a kind of social concern. None

of us is likely to forget that on the authority of Holy Writ the serpent

became familiar with mankind very shortly after his appearance on earth,

and whispered injurious secrets into guileless ears. Ever since the

scene in the Garden of Eden, war between man and the serpent has

prevailed, and now, if we are to credit the sayings of the wise, the end

of all reptiles, if not actually in view, cannot be long postponed.

Is it not mete, therefore, to take fair opportunity of studying the

characteristics and qualities of an animal, closely associated with

us by fable and in fact, which is doomed to extinction by the ruthless

strides of civilisation, which is regarded by some as cleanly and

decent, and by others as repulsive and direful? Plain, unromantic,

unsensational statements make for the acquirement of knowledge

illustrative of the habits and faculties of the creature against

which the hand of the average man is raised with a mixture of wrath,

vengeance, and fear.

By study and observation one may come to understand the higher

principles of Nature, and so learn how to withstand influences inimical

to his interests without upsetting laws which tend to his welfare.

Occasionally quite casual happenings and bare and slight matters of fact

show that those who study natural history first-hand acquire information

not to be obtained from authoritative works. Let one instance concerning

the varied diet of the death adder be quoted, since it confounds the

experience of one of the most learned men in Australia on the subject.

On the beach just at high-water mark, beneath an overhanging shrub,

several birds sounded an alarm, notifying by peculiar and persistent

screeching the presence of an enemy. After a few minutes' search, for

the strained attitudes of the birds indicated the direction, a death

adder was seen gliding among thickly strewn brown leaves with a limp

bird between its jaws. It was quickly killed, and then the bird, a dusky

honey-cater, was seen to be dead. Dusky honey-eaters generally spend

their days among the topmost sprays of flowering trees and shrubs, while

death adders habitually seek the seclusion of the shadiest places on the

surface of the soil. In this case the adder was small, so small that it

seemed to be a vain if not impossible feat for it to swallow the bird.

Hitherto the food of the adder had been deemed to be frogs, lizards,

beetles, and such game of the ground. Was it curiosity which brought

the sun-loving bird within reach of the shade-loving snake? Upon the

incident being referred to Mr. Dudley Le Souef, who has quite an uneasy

familiarity with Australian snakes, dating from the days of ardent

youth, when he was wont to carry some species about with him in his

pockets, that authority wrote: “I did not know that death adders ever

killed birds; I did not think they were active enough, their usual

prey being frogs, lizards, etc. The honey-eater must have been taken

unawares.”

Though scientifically regarded as “the most dangerous and probably the

most deadly” of Australian snakes, the death adder has to its credit

many everyday proofs to the contrary: so many, indeed, that some are

inclined to class it as comparatively harmless, the reasons for such

opinion being--(1) the small size of the creature, reducing the risks

of its being interfered with inadvertently; (2) its amiability; (3) the

fact that unless the sensitive membrane at the end of the tail, to which

the curved spine is the culminating-point, is trodden on or otherwise

insulted, the chances are that there will be, no active resentment.

While adopting all precautions, accepting no risks, and being very eager

to reduce the number by all and every possible means, it is well to

avoid overexcitement; for though the reptilian age is passing away,

those who live in the bush are too often reminded that snakes are still

numerous, and some of them decidedly vicious.

To disappoint the snake and at the same time to discredit its

reputation, calmness on the part of the individual who may happen to be

bitten is counselled. He should behave as a neighbour who one dark night

stepped off his verandah barefooted on to nearly cleared land. As he

strode along the scarcely distinguishable track, he trod on something

other than a half-burnt stick. Almost instantaneously the Scripture was

fulfilled--the serpent had bruised the man's heel. Now, this man has

been in many strange, not to say fear-provoking, situations, and has

listened to more than one close call without spoiling the occasion by

anticipatory and hideous outcry. He does not smoke or drink whisky or

give way to any nerve-affecting habit. He lives within hearing of the

soothing lullaby of the sea. When his heel was gripped he did not

jump or offend the air with unmanly plaint and ineffectual clamour,

or otherwise fluster his heart with pernicious apprehension. With calm

deliberation he put his hand into his pocket and drew forth--no! not a

razor-edged knife, with which to slash the region of the punctures, but

a box of matches, so that the scene might temporarily be surveyed. He

saw, not the expected death adder, not a deadly copper head, not the

venomous black which flattens and distends the neck like a cobra when

its passions are roused, not the great red pugnacious beast which has

been known to kill off-hand a big horse, but a shame-faced carpet snake,

which, though innocent and inoffensive, will, like the worm, turn if

rudely trodden on. The snake was quite ready to apologise for impulsive

and graceless misbehaviour; but it seemed fascinated by the sudden

light--how little of brightness bewilders such lovers of darkness--and

maintained its repentant attitude until the sacred law was finally

vindicated by the fatal bruising of its head.

Many years ago a locality a few miles away suffered from a raid by bush

rats, which congregated in great numbers. Similar plagues have often

been recorded from the western downs; but the coastal visitation was

singular, for it was associated with death adders, which seemed to be on

good terms with the rats. One of the settlers was growing sweet-potatoes

on a fairly large scale for pig food, the plough being used for the

harvesting of the crop. Seldom was a furrow run for the full length of

the field without turning up both adders and rats. Suddenly the rats

migrated, and then the death adders disappeared, few of either

being seen for a decade, when the association between them was again

sensationally illustrated. The daughter of a settler rose at dawn, and

with others ran off to the vegetable garden for salads for breakfast.

While she was looking for a seemly cucumber, a rat was disturbed, and

almost immediately after she was bitten by a death adder which had lain

inert at the very spot whence the rat had fled. The child recovered,

while the deceptive snake, which will not submit to have its tail

saluted even by the airiest of treads, was killed. Not only have we here

another proof of the non-fatal character of the bite of an adder, but a

singular instance of association between an adder and a rat. Why and for

what purpose does this apparent amicability exist?

Sometimes mankind is startled by the unexpected appearance of a snake.

Will credit be given to an almost magic disappearance? Those who hearken

to the voices of birds learn to discriminate between the language of

content and happiness and love and that of dismay and terror. A number

of loud and pleasant-noted fasciating honey-eaters suddenly changed

their tune to that indicative of fear. They were, gathered on a

thick-leaved tree on the edge of the jungle in a crude circle, with

heads pointing to a common centre. It was simplicity to conclude that

a snake was present, but not at all easy to see it, for the flustered

birds began to change their manoeuvres directly help was at hand.

Eventually a thin brown snake was seen doubled up and apparently sound

asleep among the branchlets The gun was called for, and two others

hastened to the scene, each of whom distinctly saw the snake. When the

shot was fired, a peephole was made through dense leafage just where the

snake had reposed, but with the report it had 'disappeared. Fragments

of twigs and leaves came to Mother Earth, but even a smart black tracker

failed to find a trace of the snake, though the force of the explosion

must have carried portions out into the open. The point of this artless

narrative is that the black boy formed the firm opinion that that which

he and two others had concluded to be a snake must have been “'Nother

kind. Him no good. Close up 'debil-debil!'” To him a visible snake was

quite commonplace; but one that vanished under the impulse of a charge

of shot represented a mystery which called for caution and hasty

departure, and the boy strode away with the suggestion of hot bricks

below. But the tell-tale birds, suspicious of the material only,

returned, stared at the vacancy, and fluttered off with--was it?--a note

of thankfulness.

The serpent has one infallible, perhaps because it is automatic, regard

for its own comfort and well-being--it cannot be induced to tie itself

into a knot. It is in mind that once in the old country a very long

and very cold lethargic boa constrictor became benumbed and forgot the

primal instinct of the family, and paid for its absent-mindedness

with its life. But the ordinary snake under extraordinary conditions,

whatsoever its length, is most careful to disentangle itself even when

knots are designed for the special purpose of embarrassing it. Though

the head of a snake be battered until all apparent sense is obliterated,

the lithe body will cleverly evade attempts to cause it to disregard the

great law. However tight the corner into which it may squeeze or narrow

the quarters into which it may be driven, and though head and tail may

be close together and in the midst of a complication of coils, and the

twisting and writhing may appear to be without method, yet the snake

emerges a triumph of single purpose.

A complication was presented to a 6 foot 8 inch specimen, and truth bids

me say that the snake did not seem in the least bewildered. From a nest

of eggs six had disappeared in one night. The loss was debited to a

snake, and it being calculated that the meal would suffice for several

days, no particular zeal was displayed in tracing out the thief.

Experience has taught that snakes do not wander very far when good and

nutritious food is to be obtained by intrusion on the cosy quarters of a

pet hen., Three days were permitted to pass, and then in the nest a rat

trap was placed baited with two eggs, the door being secured with

wire. The bait proved to be irresistible and the trap effective. In

the morning the trap was crowded with snake, which had thrust its head

between the wires, swallowed the eggs, and was a prisoner until they

were dissolved by the processes of digestion or the door was unbolted.

The natural process was not complete when the discovery was made, but

the snake had managed to make itself as comfortable as possible in its

temporary habitation. The trap seemed almost suffocatingly full, and

when the occupant thrust its head and more than half its length between

the bars, only to be checked by the hard-hearted eggs, it was thought

that possibly, in its confusion, the snake might entangle itself; but

invariably it retired into the trap without putting itself into any

false position. It was killed, the executioner justly reflecting that a

snake has mental limitations. Nothing could induce it to tie itself into

a knot, and yet, wilfully and with its eyes open, it had entered a trap

from which there was no possibility of escape until in the course of

nature it had digested the bait.

Is it generally known that a snake does everything with its eyes

open--that it is denied the privilege of closing its eyes? Such is the

indisputable fact. 'But without presuming to trespass on the preserves

of men of science, the belief may be expressed that some species, if

not in possession of a movable eyelid, have some means of suspending the

faculty of sight. Indeed, there is evidence in support of the view that

one species has a membranous eyelid similar to, but slighter than,

that of a bird. It is not to be doubted that another reptile--the green

turtle--is thus endowed, and that the “winking membrane” is found in

many animals at the inner angle or beneath the lower lid of the eye.

This membrane is represented in animals by a rudiment only. In the eyes

of human beings the small reddish patch in the corner corresponds to the

winking membrane--indeed, is the vestige of it. In monkeys, and in most

mammals below them, there is present in this vestige a small piece of

cartilage, and this is found occasionally in man. In white races it is

very rare, occurring, as far as observations have shown, in less than

one per cent. Recent investigations by Dr. Paul Bartels show that in

twenty-five South African natives whom he had examined it occurred

in twelve. Another investigation found it five times in twenty-five

Japanese. It is curious to find that vestige more common in certain

races, as it shows that in this small point they are less advanced than

the white race.

This quotation from a forgotten source supplies important links in the

chain of evidence in favour of the theory that certain species of snakes

may have the winking muscle, which exists in marine reptiles and

is present in some human beings. Apart from theory, it has been my

good-fortune to see a sleeping snake the eyes of which were obscured

by a greyish film, giving it the appearance of being “wall-eyed.”

Being satisfied that it was blind, for it betrayed no uneasiness at a

threatening demonstration, a determination was made to preserve it for

critical examination. As soon as the snake was touched the cloudy veils

were withdrawn, and the eyes flashed with the fire of malignity. It

appeared to be spiteful because it had been caught napping. The specimen

was not preserved, although it was bottled.

The blacks of this district are more nervous about adders than any

other snake, with the exception of that known to them as the “Wat-tam”

(pronounce the “a” as in cat), and believed to belong to the same genus

as the brown snake. This is a large snake, reddish-brown in colour,

the underside, for about half the length, being bright orange, the

tint gradually subsiding to pale yellow towards the tail. Post-mortem

examination of the first specimen detected on this Island cleared up a

bush tragedy. A nest had been built in a conspicuous spot by a pair

of shrike thrushes, which the blacks, according to locality, know as

“Moorgoody” and “Too-dring.” The birds are the sweetest-voiced of all

natives, and become wondrous tame and confiding. After the big spotted

and blotched eggs were hatched, the hen would perch on the side of the

nest within a foot of admirers, accepting compliments with tilted head

and bright and twinkling eyes. One night the brood disappeared, and

desperate things were held in store if ever a snake were found in the

neighbourhood. Two days after, the alert dog gave tongue, his language

demanding urgency and extreme caution. Within twenty yards of the site

of the violated nest he was found “setting” at a big snake, which had

raised the forepart of its body and appeared to be concentrating

its strength and agility on one fatal and perfidious spring. But the

faithful dog was watchful too, and agile, as he crouched fearlessly

across the track of man's first enemy, with its crafty pose and

glittering eyes. The black boys stood afar off, for the “Wat-tam” is

so arrogant and pugnacious that it does not hesitate to attack a man,

invariably with fatal results if great vigilance be not exercised--at

least, such is their belief. Science, however, shows that though the

snake has poison fangs, they are located so far back in the jaws as to

be practically ineffective. Its fierce demeanour is probably, therefore,

assumed for the purposes of intimidation. The gun speedily put the

wicked-looking snake out of action, and a bulge in the body indicated

the site of the last meal--the confiding thrush and her fledgeless

brood. The incident illustrates another favourite theory--viz., that

venomous snakes have a specific, distinctive odour, which warns animals

likely to be attacked of their presence. The dog kills green tree,

ordinary whip snakes, and the black, white-bellied species fond of

reposing in the mounds of scrub hens, without ceremony and with all the

zest and enthusiasm of a good sport; but in the case of venomous species

so far he has not failed to call for help, but if assistance be delayed

he takes the law into his own hands.

Be it far from me to cast doubt on the truth of that which follows. The

record is found in “Memoirs of the Queensland Museum,” vol. ii., page

43: “Although the scientific worker is hopelessly handicapped by

the vividly imaginative journalist when snake stories are told, yet

occasionally there are noticed incidents startling enough in their way.

During the cooler months a young and lithe DIEMENIA PSAMMOPHIS, Schleg,

popularly known as a 'whip snake,' usually retired under a piece of bark

placed in its case, and it was only to be tempted out on warm and sunny

days. On one occasion a small skink lizard was introduced, and the snake

commenced a lively chase. The lizard ran under the bark, and on reaching

the other side scampered back over the top, closely pursued by the

snake. Again the lizard entered the bark tunnel, through which the tail

of the snake was rapidly disappearing, making a spurt to keep up with

the main body. The snake darted for the lizard, missed it, and then

seized its own retreating tail about two inches from the tip. With

characteristic pertinacity it held on, and apparently the classic

episode of a snake swallowing itself was to be attempted. It was not

until the snake was taken, out of the case and forcibly handled that

it let go, there being apparently no distinction to the ophidian palate

between its own flesh and that of its favourite lizard.” The only

comment that an unversed student of Nature may presume to make on this

incident is that, possibly, the snake retained its tail because it

could not do otherwise. Are not the jaws and teeth of some snakes so

constructed, that the privilege of rejection is denied? The interests

alike of science and the speculative world demanded that in the

circumstances Nature should not have been balked. Why deprive the

serpent of having its own blundering way with its own tail?

There is no doubt that man does directly benefit by the conflicts which

rage continuously between living things lower in the scale of life

than himself; but the common slaughter is at times so cruel and so

inexplicable that it is not given the average intellect to discover good

and sufficient cause, though he may observe the more obvious habits and

appetites of frogs and snakes. The former oft implore aid against the

attacks of green tree snakes and of a big light brown lizard, fond of

sleeping in hollow logs, and since one does not understand from the

beseeching tones of the frog whether it is being molested by the

universal enemy or not, he often hastens to the rescue, laboriously cuts

down to the scene, to find, instead of a snake, a lizard, perhaps

more useful in the harmony of Nature than a frog, and certainly more

endearing, since it possesses the habit of silence. Unless the frog

is past recovery it has become a practice to scare the lizard, and to

suggest to the frog the sanctuary of another hollow.

But frogs are not always considerate of other and gayer creatures. A

friend who possessed a pet canary noticed that one morning in the cage

of his pet there sat a panting frog, blinking in the sunlight. Thinking

that the intruder had entered the cage to assuage his thirst, he did not

eject it. It was the habit of the canary to hail the smiling morn with

cheerful carol. In a few minutes unaccustomed silence prevailed, and

then it was noticed that the frog was distended to a degree which must

have caused it infinite satisfaction, while the canary had vanished. The

conclusion was obvious and damning. Being accustomed to post mortems, my

friend settled the point forthwith, the warm canary being revealed, with

but slightly disarrayed feathers.

A further illustration of the capacious and criminal appetite of the

frog may be quoted. The wet season had been generous and prolonged, the

crop of frogs prolific. The verge of a lagoon was crowded with active

and lusty creatures, belonging, if colour was to be accepted as

evidence, to different species, in fairly equal numbers. A casual glance

inspired the thought that the occasion was nothing more than a vast

assembly of greys and greens enjoying the pastime which boys imitate.

All round were leaping frogs engaged in contests--greys against

greens. Suspecting no evil intent, it was interesting thus to note the

derivation of the game we have all played in sportful youth; but closer

inspection proved that, instead of a friendly tournament on the grand

scale, the rival frogs were indulging in shocking cannibalism. A grey

frog would approach a green, when each would appear to become fascinated

by the appearance of the other. Thus would they squat for several

minutes, contemplating each other's proportions and perfections. Then

both would leap high with mouths agape, and that which timed the feat to

the best advantage, or had the widest gape, seized the less fortunate,

and slowly and with much straining and little apparent joy swallowed it.

Often the rivals would not meet in mid air, and the lapse provided the

delusion of innocent play. There were hundreds of examples of absorption

of the least fit by the fittest to survive, and the chronicling of the

cannibal feast would be incomplete if a singular detail were unrelated.

The participators seemed of like size. Complexion alone varied and

foppish discrimination was exercised, for since dog does not in a

general way eat dog, greys did not eat greys or greens greens. With

unswerving decision, greys swallowed greens and greens greys, and

extreme corpulency was the inevitable result. Does this not smack of

the snake story? It certainly does, but it has the virtue of being

unexaggerated, and why shrink from the telling of the plain truth?

An unwitnessed tragedy may be told in a very few words. About

twenty-five feet above high-water mark was the shaft of a white

sand-crab. The site was not common, for the crabs are in the habit of

burrowing well within the range of the tide. For two or three

days--for the spot was at the back of the boat-shed and under daily

observation--the alert creature was oft disturbed by my coming and

going. One morning it remained motionless on the verge of its retreat.

It seemed to be on guard, and as a companionable feeling had been

aroused, I was careful as I passed not to unduly affright it. The

statuesque position being abnormally retained, I stooped down, to find

the crab dead, with the froth still on the complicated lips, while

beside it was a huge wolf spider, “tremendous still in death,” with head

crushed to pulp. One may theorise that the spider invaded the crab's

burrow and was promptly evicted; a fight took place for possession of

the retreat, resulting in untoned tragedy. Venom and ponderous weapon

each had done its work. Each participant had been victorious, each a

victim.

A still more singular bush conflict was witnessed by a friend. He heard,

and not without concern, the pleading of a frog from the assaults of

an enemy, but having far too many of them about the premises decided on

noninterference, thinking that the hungry snake would soon silence

the clamour. But the cries becoming shriller and more piteous, he

investigated, finding among the leaves of a creeper on the verandah a

large green Mantis--religiosa, too--voraciously making a meal off the

hind-leg of a little green frog, which it grasped firmly. Almost the

whole of the flesh of the limb had been eaten, and the observer was

of opinion from the rapacity of the insect that there would have been

little left of the screaming frog if he had not interfered.

THE BUSH TRACK

“They trade with Nature and the earth--a trade by which all that breathe

upon the earth live.”--RALEIGH.

It has no beginning. It ends--who shall say where Every high tide

smooths away the footprints of those who use it now, just as it did the

erratic tramplings of the host of the past. In those free, unregulated

days piccaninnies sprawled and scampered hard, glistening beach; young

men and girls there; men lazed and fought on its convenient spaces;

women wandered on the serious business of food-getting. The camps stood

a pace or two above high-water mark in the meagre shelter of sighing

casuarinas, and were often changed, for there were six miles of gently

curving, ripple-embroidered shore on which to rest. To this day most of

the traffic is regulated by the tide. High water drives the wayfarer

to the loose, impeding sand, over which the great convolvulus sends its

tireless tentacles, to be thrown back twisted and burnt by salt surges.

The ebb discovers a broad space, firm and wellnigh unimpresslonable. The

barefooted traveller may walk for miles and be trackless, so tough and

elastic the moist sand. It is not an officious thoroughfare, made formal

and precise by coarse hands working to plans correct to a hair, but

subject to economic deviations of some soulless contractor. It was not

laid with the foundation of the earth, and compacted by heat and stress.

It is still in the making, and sand, coral, and shell-grit ground to

pollen-like fineness and certain chemicals from the reef outside

are among its component parts. One other element invokes perpetual

thanksgiving--the flaked mica, which glistens delusively with hues of

silver and gold, and gives to the tide-swept track that singular pliancy

which resists the stamp of passing generations.

Midway between high and low water is a zone sensible to the airiest

tread, being fitted for such temporary effect by a mechanical operation.

Millions of the smallest of crabs, sand-tinted, delicate, apprehensive

and alert, possess this area, working out their destiny by digging

circular shafts. Obedient agents in the execution of the imperative

ordinances of Nature, they have the quality of compacting the almost

fluid spoil and carrying it to the surface in pellets complementary to

the size of the individual, and such pellets retain their rotundity.

They are scattered about, not without design, as may be seen if the

industrious workers are closely observed, and in such profusion that the

feet of the user of a crab-infested zone must press them flat. Then

it is that the track becomes visible as far as the eyes reach. But

the incoming wavelets, babbling in unison, dissolve the myriads of

laboriously lifted pellets, effacing the record of the passing of man.

As the tides ebb, the crabs begin their work again, preparing for the

next-coming wayfarer. There is something almost incomprehensively great

in the tireless activities of the nervous crabs, for not only do they

carry compacted sand from their burrows, but they seem to spend odd

moments in forming similar globes from material gathered from the

surface. Digging, furrowing the surface in stellate patterns, moulding

pellets which to the tenderest ripple are but the plaything of a moment,

so are the lives of the shy crustaceans spent. What may be the motive

for the perpetual labour, as useless, apparently, as the rolling of

Sisyphus's stone? For part of the year the beach is the resort of the

red-necked sandpiper, which has an enormous appetite for the small, live

things of the sea's margin. To bewilder the birds and so reduce the risk

to life, Nature imposes the task upon the crabs of forming replicas of

themselves not readily distinguishable in size and tint, which

represent labour unconsciously expended as life insurance, and serve the

subsidiary purpose of detecting the passing of man.

What material has been left by the wayside for the history, not to be

altogether despised because of its rusticity, of the unstable ways of

one of the ancient peoples of the world, now few in numbers, forgetful

of the past, estranged from the customs of their fathers, and dying

without mourners and without records? Search the sites of camps the

track passes, and there is naught to tell of the manner of those who

recently occupied them save a tomahawk or a rare domestic implement of

stone, and such stones do not preach thrilling but distinctive sermons.

Why hurry along this pleasant way? Is not the one domestic appliance of

the long-deserted camps worthy of passing notice? There it rests, half

buried in the sand--a worn stone, with two others complementary to it

to be had for the searching. It is meet that the most primitive of mills

should be examined, and that one of the several and slow processes

by which a poisonous, repugnant, and intractable nut was wont to be

converted into food should be cited to the credit of the economic

forethought of the most thriftless of people.

On adjacent flats and slopes grow survivals from one of the most ancient

of all plants--a Cycad, that botanical paradox, combining some of the

characteristics of the lie palm and of the pine with the appearance of a

tree-fern, while being of distinctive order, which flourished during

the age when the Iguanodon and the Polacanthus and other monstrous and

ungainly reptiles roamed the land.

Let us rest awhile reviewing the earlier operations by which its nuts

were rendered innocuous, and while the ghosts of the past make and bake

their bread.

The fresh nuts of the plant (CYCAS MEDIA) known as Kim-alo, were

roasted, and while hot bruised between two stones, the upper (Ookara) a

sphere flattened at the poles into which the use of ages wore thumb

and finger indentations, the nether (Diban) flat with a saucerlike

depression. Fragments of the husks were carefully eliminated. The coarse

meal was put into a dilly-bag and placed in running water below a slight

fall, from the lip of which fluming, improvised from the leaf of native

ginger, conducted a gentle stream. Two days were sufficient to leach the

poisonous principle; but if the initial process of roasting the nuts

was omitted--as in some districts--the meal was submitted to the

purification of water for as long as two months, when it would be

tasteless. It was then ground on the nether stone by the Moo-ki

(almost a perfect sphere), used with a rotary action, until reduced to

flour-like fineness, when it was made into flat or sausage-shaped cakes,

wrapped in green leaves and baked. The intractability of the Cycad

is such that if cattle eat the leaves they die or become permanently

afflicted with a disease of the nature of rickets. To the human palate

the fresh nuts-are inflammatory, and are said to cause intense pain

ending with death. That the blacks discovered the means of converting

such a substance into desirable food proves that they were often

enterprisingly, daringly hungry.

Let us push on, there is far to go. Chance rather than principle, it

has been said, turned the paths of old England into roads. Here may

be studied the germ of the primal path worn by the tread of the least

reflective and least mobile of human beings, the causes of its erratic

course, and the transitions by which, with amendments due to the

irrefutable facts of topography, it becomes formal and authoritative--a

highway for the usurping race.

Leaving the shore, one branch of the track crosses the high-water fold,

follows the bend of a mangrove creek, through which it Makes a muddy

ford, and is firmly impressed through forest country where every tree is

orchid-encumbered, and where the eager soil produces its own varieties.

It wriggles up and along a ridge, with the glaucous spathes of grass

trees standing like spears on each hand, and where wattle and tough

she-oaks grow leanly out of hard soil, thickly strewn with buckshot

gravel, rust-coloured.

Soon it descends into a low valley and through a belt of fan-palms

and jungle bordering an ever-flowering stream the banks of which are

knee-deep in fat, rich loam. Huge tea-trees stand in the water, where

the fibrous roots are matted like peat.

Out of the moist coolness the track abruptly ascends to a pleasant

forest, and thence drops almost imperceptibly to tea-tree flats

intersected by Pandanus creeks, which bulge here and there into

sedge-margined lagoons. In this “devil-devil” country it is barely the

width of the foot, and it wanders sinuously like the trail of a lazy

snake. Sometimes it is barely more discernible than such a trail, and

again in the soft places it broadens and deepens, for the man with boots

has taken the place of the original soft-footed traveller, and horses

and cattle are ever fond of the short-cuts which their owners design.

Here a distinct branch is made towards a river, across which Nature, the

first of bridge-builders, many a generation ago afforded an easy, dry

passage by throwing down a huge tree. It spans from bank to bank, and

the wood is worn to slippery smoothness by the passing of shoeless feet.

Thence it leads through forest and jungle and mangrove belts to another

river, and away south.

The western branch keeps to forest and jungle, following, generally,

the ridges, for in the wet season the grass lands are flooded, when the

track is but a silvery grey ribbon on a carpet of green. With careless

indecision it trends west, with here an angle and there a curve, dipping

and twisting, crossing gullies and creeping up slopes. The men whose

feet made it in ancient days knew all the landmarks. Mostly it keeps to

sound ground, albeit its wanderings perpetuate wayward impulses.

Imagination may follow the blacks of bygone days as they swung past,

a fallen tree; where sportful youths wandered a few yards to throw

grass-tree spears at white-ants' nests on bloodwood-trees; where

they turned aside for a drink from the palm creek. Possibly the track

deviated to follow the run of a scrub turkey, or because the boys knew

of a scrub hen's mound, where the rich pink eggs were raked out by the

gins. It was gin's work to overhaul the mounds; the boys did not like

to do the digging with their hands, for often little snakes bedded

themselves in the warm compost--snakes, though they bite not to the

death, make one's hands big and sore. Why incur any risk when there was

a well-disciplined woman to take it? There was a turn off (which was

officially followed) leading to a huge tree where in the hollow bees had

hived; and another straggled up the creek to the pool where eels secrete

themselves in the moist, decaying leaves.

Six or seven miles from the beach, where the scarcely discernible

crabs, with persistency as eternal as the sea, are strewing the way with

millions of tell-tale pellets, the track, skirting swamps, following

the bends of a river, passing through forest and jungle, is lost in

vagueness and indecision.

When it was ordained that roads should be defined in the interests

of settlers, it was natural that the original track as it then

existed--broadened and amended and bridged by the good bushmen who had

used it for practical purposes--should be followed. On the plan the

formal road runs a strangely erratic course, for in many places it is

faithful to the footpad. Some of the zigzags of the long past, some of

its elbows and angles, its stringent lines and curves, have been copied

and confirmed, for the bush track is one of the fundamental things,

bearing the stamp of Nature, and no more to be obliterated by the

trivialities of art than is the sand of the shore and the illimitable

crabs.

THE LITTLE BROWN MAN

“Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his

composition.”--CHARLES LAMB.

If you chance to visit the Chief Protector of Aborigines on board

his yacht the MELBIDIR, one of the first to greet you, be you an old

acquaintance or a stranger, may be “Jimmy,” the cook.

He is a little brown man who wears blue shoes, which are also socks, and

a perpetual smile. The shoes, which are of some soft material, have

a separate compartment for the great-toe, and hook down the heel. The

Chief Protector has a similar pair of combination shoes--a gift from

“Jimmy”--and is given to smiling; but he does not pretend to compete

with his cook in that quality. “Jimmy's” smile is almost a fixture. It

is set, yet not professional. It is the smile of a happy man, and of one

who is a diplomat as well as a ship's cook. His customary costume is of

holland. When on duty he wears an exaggerated bib, and “Jimmy” without

his bib would be as little conceivable as “Jimmy” without his smile. He

may discard it when he puts on his sky-blue pyjamas for the night, but

that he smiles in his sleep is sure. The honourable wrinkles on his

mahogany-hued face forbid him to relax the appearance of unceasing

good-humour, and who would suggest that his serenity is artificial?

When he takes a hand with the whole of the ship's company to get up sail

or hoist the dinghy on board, he whistles as well as smiles, and then

the black boys laugh, and life on the trim ship is more buoyant than

ever. He goes down into the doll's-house galley backwards, smiling. Now,

it is no smiling matter to be jambed up against a hot stove on a hot

day when the seas run high and the yacht digs her crescent nose into the

blue and washes her own decks with Neptune's suds. But “Jimmy” will bob

up again in due season with a plate of hot cakes or, perhaps, even cool

cakes--and the smile. He has been smiling to the oven, which is inclined

to gymnastics, only it is restrained by effectual bolts. “Jimmy” is a

gymnast, and his free great-toes enable him to cook under circumstances

and conditions which others not so equipped would profane.

Smiles are his antidote for all injurious mental ferments, and how many

diseases of the mind are there which are not to be alleviated by such

apt physic?

It has been said that “Jimmy” is a diplomat. He certainly is. The

MELBIDIR had run within hailing distance of another yacht, the owner and

commander of which is an old friend of the Protector and “Jimmy.” When

we did hail, a silvery head and a sunburnt pair of shoulders popped

up from below, and with a comprehensive wave of sunburnt arms--the red

type--vanished. Soon the same head and the same shoulders, decently

but loosely clad in blue and followed by the rest of the hearty body,

emerged, and in a few minutes friends were gripping each other's hands

and talking furiously about a particular island, pilots, pearls, and

Torres Straits “Jimmy” passed, and the florid man in blue said, nudging

his friend, “I seem to know that boy.”

“Of course you do,” replied the Protector; “that's 'Jimmy' from T. I.”

When “Jimmy” next appeared he had a jug of water in his hand and a

bigger smile than ever.

“Well, 'Jimmy,' you haven't forgotten me?” suggested the big man in

blue.

“No. You capitain! My word, you young fellow now!”

And we all laughed, for though the years had been tender to the man in

blue, still, they had come and gone by the decade since the previous

meeting. “Jimmy's” smiles became vocal. Professional diplomats use

the great gift of speech, it is said, to delude the enemies of their

country. “Jimmy's” adroit compliment was the more delicate in that it

was not official and he cannot possess an enemy.

When he puckers his lips to whistle, “Jimmy's” smiles are singularly

infectious. The Protector's yacht is not a missionary, but merely, as

her name signifies, a messenger; but the Protector does not forbid the

hymnal. “Jimmy” has one, and as he studies the pious poems, for he reads

fluently, whistles appropriately. While we lolled on deck, familiar

tunes wooed my wandering thoughts. “Jesu, Lover of my Soul,” came line

after line, verse after verse, precisely, though the tone was soft.

Was the black boy thus accompanying his work at the pump? No; for the

strokes were not in time, and the boy occasionally chatted with his

chum. I asked, and was told that “'Jimmy' mak'm good fellow corroboree.”

Presently he came up--smiling, and with the last notes of “Abide with

Me” on his lips. Then I questioned him, and for a space we discussed our

favourite hymns and hummed them, or rather I did, for “Jimmy” was too

shy to do more than nod in time before a stranger. He confided, almost

in a whisper, that when he was alone he learned the words of the hymns,

and afterwards picked up the tunes. Is it not pretty to think of the

wrinkled Japanese in bunk beside the hot and clamorous engine conning

hymnal--a trifle blotched with grease here and there--and whistling

softly those endearing tunes on which so many of us were brought up?

Long may “Jimmy” cook and wear blue shoes a modestly supplicate “For

those in Peril on the Sea”! That he may smile to the last would be a

superfluous prayer. He cannot do else.

UP AND AWAY

“Man is the merriest species of creation; all above and below him are

serious.”--ADDISON.

“Let's up and away, Bill,” said Breezy Jim, as he started to his feet.

“I'm dog tired of this game. We're just working for tucker for the boys

and nothing--not even a smoke--for ourselves.”

“Don't be in such a flurry. We might drop on a patch yet. I vote we stay

for another week. The anchorage is all right, and the season's

young. The little bit of fish we've got ain't too stinking. It'll pay

expenses.” Placid and patient, the half-caste Solomon Islander, Billy

Boolah, kept cheek on his impetuous partner, whose restless disposition

forbade him to continue long in one stay unless circumstances were

essentially favourable.