THE ROMANCE OF TASMANIA
If, to the average Briton, Australia represents the limit of distance
from “home,” what can Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Islands of the
Southern Pacific represent? They are the limit beyond the limit; the
uttermost stretch of far-awayness. That is the reason, perhaps, why
Englishmen think of Tasmania with a shiver, especially if they happen
to know its history. The present name of the island--Tasmania--holds
less of terror than did the former name--Van Diemen’s Land. There was
something sinister in the very name, especially when it was wrongly
spelled, as by the budding aspirant to geographical fame--Van Demon’s
Land. Van Diemen himself was a shadowy personality, of whom the average
school geographer knew nothing whatever. The land itself, however, was
well known as a convict settlement, even by those who knew nothing more
about it; and with Van Diemen _plus_ the convicts, there seemed to be
a subtle suggestion of a land of fire--a second Tierra del Fuego. The
reason cannot easily be explained; but the fact is undeniably there.
Men thought of Van Diemen’s Land with a kind of horror.
But now, this same land, with the softer name of Tasmania, has become
famous as the great home of the apple, and as the sanatorium, for sick
and healthy folk alike, of the Southern Pacific. And in the new name of
the country its discoverer has at length come to his own. It frequently
happens in this world of ours that to the wrong man fall the honours.
Van Diemen was the Governor of the Batavian Dutch Settlement, and he
it was who sent out Tasman on successive voyages of discovery. Tasman
did the work, and Van Diemen reaped the honours. To Tasman belongs the
credit of discovering the great South land, of which Tasmania is now a
part. Exactly 270 years have passed since the hitherto unknown island
was marked upon the map of the world. The Dutch, however, although
the discoverers of the island, were not its occupiers. They noted its
existence and passed on. It was reserved for Britain--all-encompassing
Britain--to add this neglected strip of territory to its expanding
Empire, and that in the year 1803. I have been fortunate enough to
encounter several experts in Tasmanian history; men who, from various
points of view, have studied the life of the island; newspaper men,
librarians, the curator of the museum, an elderly clergyman, and
several old settlers. And I shall set down what they have told me.
The transition from the old state of things to the new is one of
the marvels of the New World. At the commencement of the nineteenth
century the island was a great bush waste. It consisted of mountains
and forests, rivers and lakes, as at present, but the land was
uncultivated. There were no roads. Not an apple grew. Wild beasts, wild
birds, and wild men divided the territory between them. Tasmania was
off the highway of the world--a scrap-heap upon which savages dwelt.
And to-day this island, about the size of Scotland and an integral
part of the Australasian Commonwealth, is one of the most fruitful
places upon God’s earth. It does a large trade in fruit, minerals,
wool, timber and agricultural produce. It has established a number
of important towns, each a centre of industry. It grows strawberries
and hops equal to the best grown in Kent. It offers trout fishing of
such a character as to satisfy the ambition of the biggest boaster of
grand catches. Politically it is free; the women have the franchise.
Commercially it is successful. Many men have made a fortune through its
commerce, while its small population of less than 200,000 persons has
managed to deposit in the public banks nearly four millions sterling,
and in the savings bank more than a million and a half. The railways
are owned by the State. In the matter of education, full provision
is made for the instruction of all. There is a university with an
excellent staff of professors. The education is non-sectarian in the
day schools, but the clergy of the various denominations are allowed
to give religious instruction either during or after school hours, as
may be convenient for all concerned. School fees are very moderate, and
in the case of the very poor the education is entirely free. In cases
where children reside more than two miles from a State school, free
railway tickets to and from the nearest station are provided by the
Department.
The land is thus cleared and civilised. A few ugly creatures still
infest the forests. The serpent is always to be dreaded. It is an
unwritten law that any man who encounters a serpent shall at once, if
he can, break its back. Sometimes the serpent is too sharp for its
antagonist, inflicting a wound and then escaping. Men who penetrate
into the bush carry with them a small outfit against the bite of the
snake. The remedy is drastic. The flesh around the wound is immediately
cut with a knife, permanganate of potash is dropped into it, and then
the flesh above the wound is tightly bound with a ligature. This is
first-aid until the services of a doctor are secured. The “Tasmanian
Devil” I have seen only in the museum. It is a horrible-looking
creature, in appearance like a bear, of nocturnal habits, and very fond
of attacking sheep. One day, perhaps, a substantial Saint Patrick will
be able to boast that he has cleared the land of snakes.
The story of Tasmania since it became a part of the British Empire
is not altogether a pleasant one. It opens with a page of convict
history. The Governor of New South Wales, finding himself in Sydney
with a glut of convicts on hand, thought of Tasmania as a means of
relieving the congestion. So there came to the south of the island--to
Hobart Town--an assortment of choice criminals, transported from
England for offences more or less dreadful. Those were the days when
brutality reigned upon the bench, when a man was hanged for sheep
stealing, and when, for a political offence, a man sacrificed his
liberty. We must not too hastily assume that all the convicts sent
out in those barbarous days were really bad men. Many of them to-day
would be good-naturedly allowed to continue their harangues. But
others of the convicts belonged to the dregs of society. They were
thieves, murderers, unredeemed villains. And this motley crowd came
to Hobart. Prison discipline at that time was both severe and lax.
Sometimes devilishly severe, as in the case of a soldier who, convicted
of drunkenness and using abusive language, was sentenced to receive
_nine hundred_ lashes. On the other hand, discipline was as lax as
possible. The convicts were required to work for a certain number of
hours per day for the Government. These tasks completed, they were
turned out to shift for themselves, which they did with amazing energy.
The desperadoes amongst them immediately returned to their old ways.
Robberies with violence and burglaries were of frequent occurrence.
The streets at night were quite unsafe for pedestrians. Some of the
convicts escaped from their captors and took to bushranging. When
the settlers arrived and began farming, the bushrangers immediately
attacked them, with others, as their legitimate prey. At one time the
colony was in a state of practical anarchy. Morality was unknown. The
most amazing transactions took place. The open “sale” of wives was
common. There is upon record a “deal” in which a man sold his wife for
a five-pound note and a bottle of rum. And nobody protested. And all
this less than a century ago, and under the British flag. Yet there
are men in our time, adepts at misreading the prophetical books of the
Bible, who continue to assert that the world is growing ever worse.
They do not know the history of that world which they so pitilessly
condemn.
The transportation of convicts and the importation of settlers to
Tasmania speedily created another problem--that of the aborigines. The
natives of the island had to be met and dealt with. Numerically they
were not an important people, but they were the proprietors of the
territory, hence some terms had to be made with them. The Tasmanian
native offered to anthropologists a knotty problem. Here was a pure
savage of the most degraded type known. In no way had civilisation
touched him. He belonged to an ancient age, so it was said. Cut off
from the mainland, he had experienced no contact with the aboriginal
of the great continent beyond. He possessed no stone weapons. His
instruments of killing were fabricated of wood. He had never learned
the art of fastening a sharp stone head to a piece of wood in order to
increase his power of smiting. His spears were pointed, but not with
iron. He had no domestic animal for friend. The dog was unknown to
him. His social habits were primitive and disgusting. He lived upon
shell fish, birds and eggs, and he was expert in spearing fish. He
treated his women folk badly. He never practised the delectable art of
kissing. And he was a polygamist. Of clothing he was entirely innocent.
Faint traces of religious belief were found in him. He burned his dead
and smeared his face with the ashes of the calcined corpse. Authentic
portraits of the aborigines in the museum at Hobart represent them as
exceedingly gross and repulsive people. The chiefs cultivated their
hair in a peculiar style; it fell into ringlets, like ram’s wool, over
their faces. The wives of the chiefs had little trouble with their
hair. They disposed of it all by the simple process of clean shaving.
Their heads were as smooth as a billiard ball.
Now, whence came these people? The theories concerning them are
innumerable. One claims them as perfect specimens of primitive man
of the Palæolithic Age. Another deduces evidence which shows them
to be degenerates. The truth is that all the theories are echoes of
previous prejudices. The Tasmanian savage will ever remain a mystery.
No man really knows his history. All that is really certain is that
when civilisation discovered him he was a filthy savage, more likely a
degenerate than a starting-point.
The inevitable conflict came, provoked, one is ashamed to say, not by
the savages, but by the cruelty of the early settlers. Mr. Bonwick, in
his history of Tasmania, tells some horrible tales of the devilry of
those early white men. Two gentlemen of Hobart told me that they well
remember, when boys, how white men would go into the bush on a Sunday
morning “blackbirding”--that is, shooting down the natives for “sport.”
It was considered a grand game.
The natives, themselves savage and cruel, returned the insult, and for
years there was a deadly feud between whites and blacks. Then came
a war of extermination, mingled with a mission of conciliation. The
Government issued pictorial proclamations setting forth the character
of official British justice. A black and white boy were represented
clothed, and standing with linked arms. Underneath the Governor was
seen shaking hands with a black; while at the bottom a black man
was shown shooting a white man and being hanged upon a tree for the
offence. This was completed by the representation of a white man
shooting a black and being hanged for the crime. These rude pictures,
which conveyed British ideas of justice to the blacks, were affixed to
trees in the bush.
The final work of conciliation was effected by a Mr. Robinson, a
Methodist, who did what the Government alone could not have done. This
man, a bricklayer, touched with the sorrows of the blacks, opened his
house to them and became their friend. He learned their language, and
then, aided by the Government, went out into the wilds to preach glad
tidings to the natives. In a few years he succeeded in bringing into
Hobart the entire native population, to be protected. Some of the
horrible savages became Christians, and, according to Mr. Bonwick,
died with words upon their lips of which no white Christian need be
ashamed. The rest--it is a sordid story--fell into civilised ways and
took to drinking spirits. That hastened the end--the race speedily
died out. In 1869 one male aboriginal alone survived. In 1864 he had
appeared, of all places, at a _ball_ given at Government House. He
was the last man of his race--a curiosity exhibited at a dance. From
this his decline was rapid. He was seldom sober, and in 1869, after a
drunken bout, he perished. Trucanini, the last aboriginal woman, died
in 1876. The race is now extinct. Our people have no cause to pride
themselves upon some of their history in Tasmania. But a new generation
has come, and it is for them to maintain Tasmania at that moral, as
well as commercial and social height, which it is the glory of Britain
now to maintain.