(flortiell Hittueraitij ffitbratg iltJiata, 5J*m Ifnrk BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNrVERSlTY PS isio-Arisg?""*"' ''*""' ''°"?m9iiiMiiiJflliatej|°'''"ey around t I 3 1924 022 010 130 *&«,, All books are subject to recall after two weeks. Olin/Kroch Library DATE DUE jmA mss^ " iWrTrag; nPT -fi-BS }9§- PRINTED IN U.S.A. a Cornell University J Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022010130 THIS BOOK ITS affectfonatelB Ifnecrtbeo to MY YOUNG FBIEND HAEEY ROGERS, with recognition of what he is, and apprehension of what he may become unless he form himself a little more closely upon the , model of The Author. THE PUDD'NHEAD MAXIMS. THESE WISDOMS ARE FOR THE LURING OF YOUTH TOWARD HIGH MORAL ALTITUDES. THE AUTHOR DID NOT GATHER THEM PROM PRACTICE, BUT PROM OBSERVATION. TO BE GOOD IS NOBLE ; BUT TO SHOW OTHERS HOW TO BE GOOD IS NOBLER AND NO TROUBLE. 'W.^ ---r-:-^- CONTEH 5 I A CHAPTER I. The Party — Across America to Vancouver — On Board the Wai-rimo — Steamer Chah-s — The Captain — Going Home under a Cloud — A Gritty Purser — The Brightest Passenger — Remedy for Bad Habits — The Doctor and tlie Lumbago — A Moral Pauper — Limited Smoking — Remittance-men. . 35 CHAPTER II. Change of Costume — Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories — Tests of Memory — A Brahmin Expert — General Grant's Memory — A Delicately Improper Tale . . , 35 CHAPTER III. Honolulu — Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands — King Liholiho and His Royal Equipment — The Tabu — The Population of the Island — A Kanaka Diver — Cholera at Honolulu — Hono- lulu, Past and Present — The Leper Colony . . 48 CHAPTER IV. Leaving Honolulu — Flying-fish — Approaching the Equator — Why the Ship Went Slow — The Front Yard of the Ship — Crossing the Equator — Horse Billiards or Shovel Board — The Waterbury Watch — Washing Decks — Ship Painters — The Great Meridian — The Loss of a Day — A Babe without a Birthday ,05 CHAPTER V. A Les.son in Pronunciation — Reverence for Robert Burns — The Southern Cross — Troublesome Constellations — Victoria for a Name — Islands on the Map — Alofa and Fortuna — Recruit- ing for the Queensland Plantations — Captain Warren's Note- Book — Recruiting not thoroughly Popular . , .77 (7) 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Missionaries Obstruct Business — The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka — The Planter's View — Civilizing the Kanaka — The Missionary's View — The Result — Repentant Kanakas — Wrinkles — The Death Rate in Queensland . . . .83 CHAPTER VII. The Fiji Islands — Suva — The Ship from Duluth — Going Ashore — Midwinter in Fiji — Seeing the Governor — Why Fiji was Ceded to England — Old time Fijians — Convicts among the Fijians — A Case "Where Marriage was a Failure — Immor- tality with Limitations .91 CHAPTER VIII. A Wilderness of Islands — Two Men without a Country — A Naturalist from New Zealand — The Fauna of Australasia — Animals, Insects, and Birds — The Ornithorhyncus — Poetry and Plagiarism . . . 99 CHAPTER IX. Close to Australia — Porpoises at Night — Entrance to Sydney Harbor — The Loss of the Duncan Dunbar — The Harbor — The City of Sydney — Spring-time in Australia — The Climate — Information for Travelers — The Size of Australia — A Dust- Storm and Hot Wind . . 10!) CHAPTER X. The Discovery of Australia — Transportation of Convicts — Disci- pline — English Laws, Ancient and Modern — Flogging Prison- ers to Death — Arrival of Settlers — New South Wales Corps — Rum Currency — Intemperance Everywhere — $100,000 for One Gallon of Rum — Development of the Country — Immense Resources ....... , . 119 CHAPTER XI. Hospitality of English-speaking People — Writers and their Grati- tude — Mr. Gane and the Panegyrics — Population of Sydney — An English City with American Trimming — "Squatters" — Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms — Wool and Mutton — Austra- lians and Americans — Costermonger Pronunciation — England is "Home'' — Table Talk — English and Colonial Audience.s 124 CHAPTER XII. Mr. X., a Missionary — Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India — A Large Dream — Hindoo Miracles and Legends — Sampson and Hanuman — The Sandstone Ridge — Where are the Gates? .... ... .132 CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER XIII. Public "Works in Australasia — Botanical Garden of Sydney — Four Special Socialties — The Government House — A Governor and His Functions — The Admiralty House — The Tour of the Har- bor—Shark Fishing — Cecil Ehodes' Shark and his First Fortune — Free Board for Sharks . . . . .137 CHAPTER XIV. Bad Health — To Melbourne by Rail — Maps Defective — The Colony of Victoria — A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney — Change Cars, from AVide to Narrow Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury — Customs-fences — ' ' My "Word " — The Blue Mountains — Rabbit Piles — Government R. R. Restaurants — Duchesses for Waiters —" Sheep-dip " — Railroad Coffee — Things Seen and Not Seen . . . . 151 CHAPTER XV. Wagga-Wagga — The Tichborne Claimant — A Stock Mystery — The Plan of the Romance — The Realization — The Henry Bascom Mystery — Baseom Hall — The Author's Death and Funeral ... .... ... 156 CHAPTER XVI. Melbourne and its Attractions — The Melbourne Cup Races — Cup Day — Great Crowds — Clothes Regardless of Cost — The Australian Larrikin — Is He Dead ? — Australian Hospitality — Melbourne "Wool-brokers — The Museums — The Palaces — The Origin of Melbourne . . . . 161 CHAPTER XVII. The British Empire — Its Exports and Imports — The Trade of Australia — To Adelaide — Broken Hill Silver Mine — A Round- about road — The Scrub and its Possibilities for the Novel- ist — The Aboriginal Tracker — A Test Case — How Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another ? .... 170 CHAPTER XVIII. The Gum Trees — Unsociable Trees — Gorse and Broom — A Universal Defect — An Adventurer — "Wanted £200, got £20,- 000,000 —A Vast Land Scheme — The Smash-up —The Corpse Got Up and Danced — A Unique Business by One Man — Buying the Kangaroo Skin — The Approach to Adelaide — Everything Comes to Him who Waits — A Healthy Religious Atmo.si3here — What is the Matter with the Specter ? .... 176 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. The Botanical Gardens — Contributions from all Countries — The Zoological Gardens of Adelaide — The Laughing Jackass — The Dingo — A Misnamed Province — Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco — A Mania for Holidays — The Temperature — The Death Bate — Celebration of the Beading of the Proclamation of 1836 — Some old Settlers at the Com- memoration — Their Staying Powers — The Intelligence of the Aboriginal — The Antiquity of the Boomerang . . .184 CHAPTER XX. A Caller — A Talk about Old Times — The Fox Hunt— An Accurate Judgment of an Idiot — How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy . . . ... . . . . 195 CHAPTER XXI. The " Weet-Weet " — Keeping down the Population — Victoria — Killing the Aboriginals — Pioneer Days in Queensland — Material for a Drama — The Bush — Pudding with Arsenic — Revenge — A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method — Death of Donga Billy . . ... 306 CHAPTER XXII. Continued Description of Aboriginals — Manly Qualities — Dodg- ing Balls — Feats of Spring — Jumping — Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art — Well Digging — Endurance — Surgery — Artistic Abilities — Fennimore Cooper's Last Chance — Aus- tralian Slang . . 314 CHAPTER XXIII. To Horsham (Colony of Victoria) — Description of Horsham — At the Hotel — Pepper Tree-^The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils — High Temperature — Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc. — The Bird with a Forgetable Name — The Magpie and the Lady — Fruit Trees — Soils — Sheep Shearing — To Stawell — Gold Mining Country — $75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep House — Fine Grapes and Wine — The Dryest Community on Earth — The Three Sisters — Gum Trees and Water . 333 CHAPTER XXIV. Road to Ballarat — The City — Great Gold Strike, 1851 — Rush for Au.stralia— " Great Nuggets" — Taxation — Revolt and Vic- tory — Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade — "Pencil Mark" — Fine Statuary at Ballarat — Population — Ballarat English 330 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER XXV. Bound for Bendigo — The Priest at Castlemaine — Time Saved by Walking — Description of Bendigo — A Valuable Nugget — Perseverence and Success — Mr. Blank and His Influence — Conveyance of an Idea — I Had to Like the Irishman — Corri- gan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club — My Bascom Mystery Solved ... 341 CHAPTER XXVI. Where New Zealand Is — But Few Know — Things People Think They Know — The Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z. 3r)l CHAPTER XXVII. The South Pole Swell — Tasmania — Extermination of the Natives — The Picture Proclamation — The Conciliator — The Formid- able Sixteen . . 356 CHAPTER XXVIII. When the Moment Comes the Man Appears — Why Ed. Jackson called on Commodore Vanderbilt — Their Interview — Welcome to the Child of His Friend — A Big Time but under Inspec- tion — Sent on Important Business — A Visit to the Boys on the Boat . . . . 368 CHAPTER XXIX. Tasmania, Early Days — Description of the Town of Hobart — An Englishman's Love of Home Surroundings — Neatest City on Earth — The Museum — A Parrot with an Acquired Taste — Glass Arrow Beads — Refuge for the Indigent too healthy . . 370 CHAPTER XXX. Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.— Where the Rabbit Plague Began— The Natural Enemy of the Rabbit — Dunedin — A Lovely Town — A Visit to Dr. Hookin — His Museum — A Liquified Caterpiller — The Unperf ected Tape Worm — The Public Museum and Picture Gallery 385 CHAPTER XXXI. The Express Train — " A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough "— Clocks and Bells — Railroad Service ... . . 390 CHAPTER XXXII. Description of the Town of Christ Church — A Fine Museum — Jade-stone Trinkets — The Great Moa — The First Maori in New Zealand— Women Voters —" Person " in New Zealand Law 12 CONTENTS. Includes Woman — Taming an Ornithorhyncus -- A Voyage in the Flora from Lytteltou — Cattle Stalls for Everybody — A Wonderful Time . . . . • 207 CHAPTER XXXIII. The Town of Nelson— "The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the Town — Burgess' Confession — Summit of Mount Eden — Eotorua and the Hot Lakes and Geysers — Thermal Springs District — Kauri Gum — Tangariwa Mountains . 305 CHAPTER XXXIV. The Bay of Gisborne — Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm — The Green Ballarat Fly — False Teeth — From Napier to Hast- ings by the Ballarat Fly Train — Kauri Trees — A Case of Mental Telegraphy . . ... . ... 312 CHAPTER XXXV. Fifty Miles in Four Hours — Comfortable Cars — Town of Wauga- nui — Plenty of Maoris — On the Increase — Compliments to the Maoris— The Missionary Ways all Wrong — The Tabu among the Maoris — A Mysterious Sign — Curious War-monu- ments — Wellington ... . . .318 CHAPTER XXXVI. The Poems of Mrs. Moore — The Sad Fate of William Upson — A Fellow Traveler Imitating the Prince of Wales — A Would-be Dude — Arrival at Sydney — Curious Town Names with Poem 324 CHAPTER XXXVII. From Sydney for Ceylon — A Lascar Crew — A Fine Ship — Three Cats and a Basket of Kittens — Dinner Conversations — Veuve Cliquot Wine — At Anchor in King George's Sound Albany Harbor — More Cats — A Vulture on Board — Nearing the Equator again — Dressing for Dinner — Ceylon, Hotel Bris- tol — Servant Brampy — A Feminine Man — Japanese Jin- riksha or Cart — Scenes in Ceylon — A Missionary School — Insincerity of Clothes . . 331 CHAPTER XXXVIII. Steamer Rosetta to Bombay — Limes 14 cents a Barrel — Bombay, a Bewitching City — Descriptions of People and Dress — Woman as a Road Decoration — India, the Land of Dreams and Ro- mance — Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage — Correcting a Servant — Killing a Slave — Arranging a Bedroom — Three Hours' Work and a Terrible Racket — The Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow ... . 345 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER XXXIX. -^. FACSIJIILE PAGE FEOM THE AUTHOR'S ^^OTE BOOK. \m)\ AN ENERGETIC MONARCH. 51 course of ten years he whipped out all the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that form the group. But he did more than that. lie bought ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native pro- ducts, and sent them as far as South America and China ; he sold to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage. Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way to kill each other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and apply with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in making his selections from the samples placed on vicAV. A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor, Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps, but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king has no proper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things as they are ; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them worse than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a good deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I would know how to conduct the business in the best way. When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself pos- sessed of an equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. The entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter. There was an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a 52 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Standing Army, and he was the head of that ; an Army of 114 privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Mar- shal. There was a proud and ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was the tabti — an agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was head- master of the tabu. The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted. It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow people to eat in either house ; they must eat in another place. It did not allow a man's woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the sexes to eat together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on them. Then the women could eat what was left — if anything was left — and wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or un- palatable sort was left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine things, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred to the men ; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering what they might taste like ; and they died without finding out. These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to remember them ; and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so expensive. It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground ; or defile a tabu'd thing with his touch ; or fail in due servility to a chief ; or step upon the king's shadow. Tiie nobles and the King and the priests were always suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the people that the THREW AWAY HIS ("HAXOE. KOYAL EQUIPMENTS. decorated spot oi- thing was tabu, and death lurking near. The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those days. Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and branch '. He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people ; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings ; it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone ; it cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise would be due ; but to a king who should do it, could properly" be due nothing but reproach ; reproach softened by sorrow ; sorrow for his unfitness for his position. He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic to-day, in consequence of that act. When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing for civilization and for his people's weal — but it was not " business." It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The American missionaries arrived 54 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. while the buraed idols were still smoking. They found the nation without a religion, and they repaired the defect. They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it was no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weakeii from that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in tlie islands, Kamehameha Y was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not succeeding. He had set up an Established Church and made himself the head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble, an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an Establishment ; all the people were Dis- senters. Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like a republic ; and here lately the business whites have turned it into something exactly like it. In Captain Cook's time (177s), the native population of the islands Avas estimated at 400,000 ; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in ISCO at 50,000 ; it is to-day, per census, 23,000. All intelligent people praise Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for con- ferring upon their people the great boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out of repair, now, from over-work. "When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive little son of the age of seven — attractive but not practicably companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straight- SOMBTflING TOUCHED HIS SHOULDBE. THE 1)1 VEK. 57 wa}' the boy began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve he hadn't a word of Kanaka left ; the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from his comprehension. Xine years later, when he was twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York, and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having. By trade he ^vas now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been cauglit in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on, and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the com- ]ianion\vay, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water. Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and lie turned and found a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly. He was par- alyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy peo- ple trying to dance. His senses forsook him, and in that con- dition he was drawn to the surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some days he had sea- sons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time ; and while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly ; and Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in that tongue ; but I did not understand it, of course. The doctor-books tell us that cases like this are not uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the cases and find out how to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid in a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy. Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind while Ave lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night. And pictures — pictures — pictures — an enchanting procession of them ! I was impatient for the morning to come 58 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had brolcen out in the town, and we were not allowed to have any communication with the shore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin. Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have any sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that, either. Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent ashore; but nobody could go ashore and return. There were people on shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not receive them ; to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney. They could have escaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco ; but the bars had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship could venture to give them a passage any whither. And there were hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home, always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go still a little further ; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu — positively their last westward-bound indulgence — they had made up their minds to that — but where is the use in making up your mind in this world ? It is usually a waste of time to do it. These two would have to stay with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around the world, or go back the way they had come ; the distance and the accommodations and out- lay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they might elect to take. Think of it : a projected ex- cursion of five hundred miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a possible twenty-four thou- sand. However, they were used to extentions by this time, and did not mind this new one much. And we had with us a lawver from Victoria, who had been HONOLULU OF THE PAST. 59 sent out by the Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with him and left the children at home with the servants — and now what was to be done ? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks 1 Most certainly not. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a fort- night for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks, and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in this world ; even a cat can do it ; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is notice- able that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of values. There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of the awnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue water ; shoreAvard the water was green — green and brilliant ; at the shore itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long before, with nothing of its beauty lost, noth- ing of its charm wanting. A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship. The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat. It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and feathers, have departed, and the royal trademark — that is about all that one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy was grotesque enough, in my time ; if it had held on another thirty years it would have been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race. on FOLLOWING THE EqUATOK. "We had a sunset of a veiy iine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors : great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze ; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and spectral, then became suffused with pink — dissolved itself in a pink dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the cloud-rack was flooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the surface of the sea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it. From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the Honolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my thne. In my time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs ; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as Avhite as the houses. The outside aspects of the place sug- gested the presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity — a general prosperity — perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no fine houses, no fine furni- ture. There were no decorations. Tallow candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor one would find two or three lithographs on the walls — portraits as a rule : Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind ; and may be an engraving or two : Eebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants finding the cup in Ben- jamin's sack. There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it : The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' HONOLULU OF TO-DAY. 61 Kest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies oJ: Tlie Missionairy Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a music stand, with Willie, We have Missed You, Star of the Evening, Roll on Silver Moon, Are We Most There, I Would not Live Alway, and other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assort- ment of hymns. A what-not with semi-globular glass paper- weights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships. New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing remin- iscent of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips w^ere made to San Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively speaking, nobody traveled. But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth has introduced changes; some of the old simplicities have disappeared. Here is a modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout : " Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens en- closed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brilliant liibiscus. " The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished ; the floors are either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian matting, while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for rattan or bamboo furni- ture ; there are the usual accessories of bric-a-brac, pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world, for these island dwellers are indefatigable travelers. " Nearly every house has what is called a laaai. It is a large apartment, roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a draped archway opening into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof is formed by the thick inter- lacing boughs of the hou tree, impervious to the sun and even to the rain, ex- cept in violent storms. Vines are trained about the sides — the stephanotis or some one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound in the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be drawn to ex- clude the sun or rain. The floor is bare for coolness, or partially covered with rugs, and the Immi is prettily furnished with comfortable chairs, sofas, and tables loaded with flowers, or wonderful ferns in pots. " The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social function the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served ; here morning callers are received, or gay riding parlies, the ladies in pretty divided skirts, (32 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. worn for convenience in riding astride,— the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as by the natives. "The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a seashore villa, can hardly be imagined. The soft breezes sweep across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with the white surf beating eternally against the reefs,— whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of the tropics." There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly booksj sinful bric-a-brac fetched from every^Yhere. And the ladies riding astride. These are changes, indeed. In my time the native women rode astride, but the white ones lacked the courage to adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was seldom seen in Honolulu. It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New England as ballast ; and then, if there happened to be a man- of-war in port and balls and suppers raging by consequence, the ballast was worth six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced by reputable tradition. But the ice-machine has traveled all over the world, now, and brought ice within everybody's reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native ice in our day, except the bears and the walruses. The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We know that it is there, without inquiring. It is everywhere. But for it, people could never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc ; before its day, property up there had but a nominal value. The ladies of the Hawaiian capital learned too late the right way to occupy a horse — too late to get much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from business everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be only a tradition. We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who Avait there, in sloAv- consuming misery, for death THE LEPERS OF HAWAII. (33 to come and release them from their troubles ; and we know that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen, did happen : that he became a leper himself, and died of that horrible disease. There was still another case of self-sacrifice, it appears. I asked after " Billy " Eagsdale, interpreter to the Parliament in my time — a half- white. He was a brilliant young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he would have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in the Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian speeches into English with a readiness and a volubility that were astonishing. I asked after him, and Avas told that his prosperous career was cut short in a sudden and unexpected way, just as he was about to marry a beautiful half-caste girl. He discovered, by some nearly invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in him. The secret Avas his own, and might be kept concealed for years ; but he would not be treacherous to the girl that loved him ; he would not marry her to a doom like his. And so he put his affairs in order, and went around to all his friends and bade them good-bye, and sailed in the leper ship to Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death that all lepers die. In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from " The Paradise of the Pacific " (Eev. H. H. Gowen) : ' ' Poor lepers ! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends among them to enforce the decree of segregation to the letter, but who can write of the terrible, the heart-breaking scenes which that enforcement has brought about ? " A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest, leaving behind him a helpless wife about to give birth to a babe. The devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to Honolulu, and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper with her leper husband. "A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an incipient leper, suddenly removed from her home, and her husband returns to find his two helpless babes moaning for their lost mother, 64 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. "Imagine it ! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is a trifle — less than a trifle — less than nothing — compared to what the mother must suffer ; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year, without respite, relief, or any abatement of her pain till she dies. " One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in the settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left, his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his wife has put every particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she herself was sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be freed from its burden. "I myself have known hard cases enough : — of a girl, apparently in full health, decorating the church with me at Easter, who before Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper ; of a mother hiding her child in the mountains for years so that not even her dearest friends knew that she had a child alive, that he might not be taken away ; of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and family, and compelled to become a dweller in the Leper Settlement, where he is counted dead, even by the imurance companies." And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers are innocent. The leprosy does not come of sins which they committed, but of sins committed by their ancestors, who escaped the curse of leprosy ! Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance. Would you expect to find in that awful Leper Settlement a custom worthy to be transplanted to your own country ? They have one such, and it is inexpressibly touching and beautiful. When death sets open the prison-door of life there, the baud salutes the freed soul with a burst of glad music ! CHAPTER IV. A duzeu direct censures are easier to bear tlian one morganatic compliment. — PiukVnhead Wihoji^s A''rw Calendar. SAILED from Honolulu. From diary : tSejft. -J. Flocks of flying fish — slim, shapely, grace- ful, and intensely white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards. 'Sept. ■>. In 9° 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approach- ing the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than an\' other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night — variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship — a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, ' l)ut present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 de- grees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the middle of it. Sept. Jf.. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At Y.30 it began to go off. At total — or about that — it was like a rich rosy .cloud with a tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it — a bulge of strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded acorn in its cup. Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor ex- plained to a young girl that the ship's speed is poor because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe ; but that when we should once get over, at the equator, and start 5 __ - (65) 66 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. down-hill, we should fly. When she asked him the other day what the fore-yard was, he said it was the front yard, the open area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of learning stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all. Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue ribbon stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak'd it. "We had no fool cer- emonies, no fantastics, no horse- play. All that sort of thing has gone out. In old times a sailor, dressed as Neptune, used to come in over the bows, with his suite, and lather up and shave everybody who was cross- ing the equator for the iirst time, and then cleanse these unfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them three times in the sea. This was considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that is not true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be funny on land ; no part of the old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to celebrate the passage of the line could ever be funny on shore — they would seem dreary and witless to shore people. But the shore people would change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a voyage, with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects dete- riorate ; the owners of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to prefer childish things to things of a ma- turer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest the}' take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them. This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually become? inert, dull, blunted ; it loses its accustomed interest in intellec- WATCHIKa FOB THB BLUE RIBBON. HOHSK lill.l.IARDS. 10 8 1 6 3 5 7 4 9 2 *io off DIAGBAM. (68) SHdVEL-ROARD. f,9 tual things ; nothing but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries can entertain it. On short voy- ages it makes no such exposure of itself ; it hasn't time to slump down to this sorrowful level. The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of " horse-billiards " — shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it in this ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this — on the deck. The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon of wood fastened to the end of it. With this he shoves wooden disks the size of a saucer — he gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it fifteen or twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if he can. If it stays there till the inning is played out, it will count as many points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in rep- resents. The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave his own in its place — particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10 or some other of the high numbers ; but if it rests in the " 10- off " he backs it up — lands his disk behind it a foot or two, to make it difficult for its owner to knock it out of that damag- ing place and improve hi§ record. When the inning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed his four disks where they count ; it may be found that some of them are touching chalk lines and not counting ; and very often it will be found that there has been a general wreckage, and that not a disk has been left Avithin the diagram. Anyway, the result is recorded, whatever it is, and the game goes on. The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty minutes to forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the sea. It is an exciting game, and the crowd of spectators furnish abundance of applause for fortunate shots and plenty of laugh- ter for the other kind. It is a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy motion of the ship is constantly interfering 70 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. with skill ; this makes it a chancy game, and the element of luck comes largely in. We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be "Champion of the Pacific"; they included among the participants nearly all the passengers, of both sexes, and the otRcers of the ship, and they afforded many days of stu- pendous interest and excitement, and murderous exercise — for horse-billiards is a physically violent game. The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the first tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancy the game is. The losers here represented had all been winners in the previous games of the series, some of them by fine majorities : Chase, 102 Mrs. D., 57 Mortimer, ,105 The Surgeon, 92 MissC, 105 Mrs. T., 9 Clemens, 101 Taylor, 92 Taylor, 109 Davies, 95 MissC, 108 Mortimer, 55 Thomas, 102 Roper, 76 Clemens, 111 Miss C, 89 Coomber, 106 Chase, 98 And so on ; until but three couples of winners were left. Then I beat my man, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas beat his. This reduced the combatants to three. Smith and I took the deck, and I led off. At the close of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had scored 7. The luck continued against me. AVhen I was 57, Smith Avas 97 — within 3 of out. The luck changed then. He piclved up a 10-off or so, and couldn't recover. I beat him. The next game would end tournament No. 1. Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the bat — so to speak. And there he stood, Avith the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose again, sank again. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She started up once more ; and when she was nearly ready for the turn, he let drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the CHAMPION OF THE PACIFIC. 71 10. (Applause). The umpire proclaimed "a good 10," and the game-keeper set it down. I played : my disk grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and went out of the diagram. (No applause.) Mr. Thomas played again — and landed his second disk alongside of the first, and almost touching its right-hand side. " Good 10." (Great applause.) I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.) Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right of the other two. " Good 10." (Immense applause.) There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem possible that anybody could miss them. Still I did it. (Immense silence.) Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but he actually landed that disk alongside of the others, and just to the right of them — a straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tu- multuous and long-continued applause.) Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybody could miss that row — a row which would have been 14 inches long if the disks had been clamped together ; whereas, with the spaces separating them they made a longer row than that. But I did it. It may be that I was getting nervous. I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the history of horse-billiards. To place the four disks side by side in the 10 was an extraordinary fea,t ; indeed, it was a kind of miracle. To miss them was another miracle. It will take a century to produce another man who can place the four disks in the 10 ; and longer than that to find a man who can't knock them out. I was ashamed of my performance at the time, but now that I reflect upon it I see that it was rather fine and difficult. 7-2 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Mr. Thomas kept his luck, and won the game, and later the championship. In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a Waterbury watch. I put it in my trunk. In Pretoria, South Africa, nine months afterward, my proper watch broke down and I took the Waterbury out, wound it, set it by the great clock on the Parliament House (8.05), then went back to my room and went to bed, tired from a long railway journey. The parliamentary clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the time — a peculiarity which exists in no other clock, and would not exist in that one if it had been made b}'' a sane person ; on the half-hour it strikes the succeeding hov/', then strikes the hour agahi at the proper time. I lay reading and smoking awhile ; then, when I could hold my eyes open no longer and was about to put out the light, the great clock began to boom, and I counted — ' I KEAT HER URAINS OUT. ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how it was getting along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for a three-dollar watch, but I supposed that the climate was MY PRIZE WATCH. 73 affecting it. I shoved it half an hour ahead, and took to mj^ book and waited to see what would happen. At 10 the great clock struck ten again. I looked — the Waterbury was mark- ing half -past 10. This Avas too much speed for the money, and it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour, and waited once more; I had to, for I was vexed and restless now, and my sleepiness was gone. By and by the great clock struck 11. The "Waterbury was marking 10.30. I pushed it ahead half an hour, with some show of temper. By and by the great clock struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out against the bedstead. I was sorry next day, when I found out. To return to the ship. The average human being is a perverse creature ; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is about the same : that is, he is made to suf- fer. The washing down of the decks begins at a very early hour in all ships ; in but few ships are any measures taken to protect the passengers, either by waking or warning them, or by sending a steward to close their ports. And so the deck- washers have their opportunity, and they use it. They send a bucket of water slashing along the side of the ship and into the ports, drenching the passenger's clothes, and often the pas- senger himself. This good old custom prevailed in this ship, and under unusually favorable circumstances, for in the blazing tropical regions a removable zinc thing like a sugar-shovel pro- jects from the port to catch the wind and bring it in; this thing catches the wash- water and brings it in, too — and in flooding ffbundance. Mrs. I., an invalid, had to sleep on the locker-sofa under her port, and every time she over-slept and thus failed to take care of herself, the deck-washers drowned her out. And the painters, what a good time they had ! This ship 74 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. would be going into dock for a month in Sydney for repairs ; but no matter, painting was going on all the time somewhere or other. The ladies' dresses were constantly getting ruined, nevertheless protests and supplications went for nothing. Sometimes a lad}', taking an afternoon nap on deck near a ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting, would wake up by and bj^ and find that the humorous painter had been noiselessly daubing that thing and had splattered her w^hite goAvn all over with little greasy yellow spots. The blame for this untimely painting did not lie with the sliip's officers, but with custom. As far back as Noah's time it became law that ships must be constantly painted and fussed at when at sea ; custom grew out of the law, and at sea custom knows no death ; this custom will continue until the sea goes drv. A DAY OFF. Kt fi. — Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about two meridians of longitude a day. This morning we were in longitude 178 west from Greenwich, and 57 degrees west from San Francisco. To-morrow we shall be A DAY LOST. 7:, close to the center of the globe — the 180th degree of west longitude and 180th degree of east longitude. And then we must drop out a day — lose a day out of our lives, a day never to be found again. We shall all die one day earlier than from the beginning of time we were foreordained to die. We shall be a day behindhand all through eternity. We shall alwa}-s be saying to the other angels, " Fine day to- day," and they will be always retorting, "But it isn't to-day, it's to-morrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the time and shall never know what true happiness is. ]^ext Da If. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8, Sun day; to-day, per the bulletin-board at the head of the companionway, it is September 10, TueHiluij. There is something uncanny about it. And uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, when one comes to consider it. While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Swidaij in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tucfidaij in the bow -where I was. They were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th, and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the 10th — and I could notice how stale it was, already. The family were the same age that they -were when I had left them five minutes before, but I was a day older now than I was then. The day they were living in stretched behind them half way round the globe, across the Pacific Ocean and America and Europe ; the day I was living in stretched in front of me around the other half to meet it. They were stupendous days for bulk and stretch ; apparently much larger days than we had ever been in before. All previous days had been but shrunk-up little things by comparison. The differ- ence in temperature between the two days was very marked, their day being hotter than mine because it was closer to the equator. 76 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child was born in the steerage, and now there is no way to tell which day it was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and un- certainty in its opinions about religion, and politics, and busi- ness, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible. Every one in the ship says so. And this is not all — in fact, not the worst. For there is an enormously rich brewer in the ship who said as much as ten days ago, that if the child was born on his birthday he would give it ten thousand dollars to start its little life with. His birthday was Monday, the 9th of September. If the ships all moved in the one direction — westward, I mean — the world would suffer a prodigious loss in the matter of valuable time, through the dumping overboard on the Great Meridian of such multitudes of days by ships' crews and passengers. But fortunately the ships do not all sail west, half of them sail east. So there is no real loss. These latter pick up all the discarded days and add them to the world's stock again ; and about as good as new, too ; for of course the salt water preserves them. CIIAPTEE V. Noise proves nothing. Often a lien who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid au astei'oid. — Pudd'nhead WUso7i^s New Calendar. WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. At dinner yesterday evening — present, a mixture of Scotch, Eng- lish, American, Canadian, and Australasian folk — a discussion broke out aljout the pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground, and the non-Scotch nationalities, with one exception, discreetly kept still. But I am not discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything about the subject, but I took a hand just to have something to do. At that moment the word in dispute was the word three. One Scotchman was claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three, his adversaries claimed that they didn't — that they pronounced it thraw. The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it, so I thought I would enrich him with my help. In my position I was necessarily quite impartial, and was equally as well and as ill equipped to fight on the one side as on the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry pronounced the word three, not thraw. It was 'an error of judgment. There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then weather ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising way, and I was snowed under in a very few minutes. It was a bad defeat for me — a kind of Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had better sense than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a saving (77) 7s FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. thought — at least a thought that offered a chance. While the storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke up and said : — " Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but I see my mistake. I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets." "A Snitcli poet ! O come ! IS'ame him." It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtful — but paralyzed, all the same. They were quite silent for a moment ; then one of them said — with the rever- ence in his voice which is always present in a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name : " Does Robbie Burns say — what does he say ? " " This is what he says : ' "There were nae bairns but only three — Aue at the breast, twa at the knee." ' It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane enough, disloyal enough, to say any word against a thing which Robert Burns had settled. I shall always honor that great name for the salvation it brought ]ne in this time of my sore need. It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition ; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it. We are moving steadily southward — getting further and further down under the projecting paunch of the globe. Yes- terday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our Avorld. No, not "we," but they. They saw it — somebody saw it — and told me about it. But it is no matter, I was not oaring for those SOUTHERN CROSS. Y9 things, I am tired of them, any way. I think they are well enough, but one doesn't want them always hanging around. My interest was all in the Southern Cross. I had never seen that. I had heard about it all m}' life, and it was but natural that I should be burning to see it. Ko other constellation makes so much talk. I had nothing against the Big Dipper — and naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a citizen of our own sky, and the property of the United States — but I did want it to move out of the way and give this foreigner a chance. Judging by the size of the talk which the Southern Cross had made, I supposed it would need a sky all to itself. But that was a mistake. "We saw the C'ross to-night, and it is not large. Not large, and not strikingly bright. But it -was low down toward the horizon, and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky. It is ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else. But that description does not describe ; it is too vague, too geiieral, too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a cross — a cross that is out of repair — or out of drawing ; not correctly shaped. It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is canted out of the straight line. It consists of four large stars and one little one. The little one is out of line and further damages the shape. It should have been placed at the inter- section of the stem and the cross-bar. If you do not draw an imaginary line from star to star it does not suggest a cross— nor anything in particular. One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the com- bination — it confuses everything. If you leave it out, then you can make out of the four stars a sort of cross — out of true ; or a sort of kite— out of true ; or a sort of coflftn— out of true. 80 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it ; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for. Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the fanciful name has to be discarded for a com- mon-sense one, a manifestly descriptive one. The Great Bear remained the Great Bear — and unrecognizable as such — for thousands of years ; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly ; but as soon as it became the property of the United States, Congress changed it to the Big Dipper, and now every- body is satisfied, and there is no more talk about riots. I would not change the Southern Cross to the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the Southern Kite ; for up there in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for coffins and crosses and dippers. In a little while, now — I cannot tell exactly how long it will be — the globe will belong to the English-speaking race ; and of course the skies also. Then the constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-named — the most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as the Southern Kite, or go out of business. Several towns and things, here and there, have been named for Her Majesty already. In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky "Way of islands. They are so thick on the map that one would hardly expect to find room between them for a canoe ; SOUTHERN CROSS. QUEENSLAND RECRUITING GROUND. yl yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we saw the dim bulk of a couple of them, far away, spectral and dreamy things ; mem- bers of the Home — Alof a and Fortuna. On the larger one are two rival native kings — and they have a time together. They are Catholics ; so are their people. The missionaries there are French priests. From the multitudinous islands in these regions the " re- cruits " for the Queensland plantations were formerly drawn ; are still drawn from them, I believe. Vessels fitted up like old-time slavers came here and carried off the natives to serve as laborers in the great Australian province. In the beginning it was plain, simple manstealing, as per testimony of the mis- sionaries. This has been denied, but not disproven. After- ward it was forbidden by law to " recruit " a native without his consent, and governmental agents were sent in all recruiting vessels to see that the law was obeyed — which they did, according to the recruiting people ; and which they sometimes didn't, according to the missionai'ies. A man could be lawfully recruited for a three-years term of service ; he could volunteer for another term if he so chose ; when his time was up he could return to his island. And would also have the means to do it ; for the government required the employer to put money in its hands for this purpose before the recruit was delivered to him. Captain Wawn was a recruiting shipmaster during many years. From his pleasant book one gets the idea that the recruiting business was quite popular with the islanders, as a rule. And yet that did not make the business wholly dull and uninteresting ; for one finds rather frequent little breaks in the monotony of it — like this, for instance : "The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying almost becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the island, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The boats were in sight at some dis 82 POLLOWING THE EQUATOR. tance. The recruiter-boat had run into a small nook on the rocky coast, under a high bank, above which stood a solitary hut backed by dense forest. The government agent and mate in the second boat lay about 400 yards to the vpestvrard. "Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the natives on shore, and then we saw the recruiter-boat push out with a seem- ingly diminished crew. The mate's boat pulled quickly up, took her in tow, and presently brought her alongside, all her own crew being more or less hurt. It seems the natives had called them into the place on pretence of friendship. A crowd gathered about the stern of the boat, and several fellows even got into her. All of a sudden our men were attacked with clubs and tomahawks. The recruiter escaped the first blows aimed at him, making play with his fists until he had an opportunity to draw his revolver. ' Tom Sayers,' a Mare man, received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid the scalp open but did not penetrate his skull, fortunately. ' Bobby Towns,' another Mare boat- man, had both his thumbs cut in warding ofiE blows, one of them being so nearly severed from the hand that the doctors had to finish the operation. Lihu, a Lifu boy, the recruiter's special attendant, was cut and pricked in various places, but nowhere seriously. Jack, an unlucky Tanna recruit, who had been engaged to act as boatman, received an arrow through his forearm, the head of which — a piece of bone seven or eight inches long — was still in the limb, protruding from both sides, when the boats returned. The re- cruiter himself would have got ofE scot-free had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers to the loom of the steering-oar just as they were getting off. The fight had been short but sharp. The enemy lost two men, both shot dead." The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal encounters between natives and French and English recruiting-crews (for the French are in the business for the plantations of New Caledonia), that one is almost per- suaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular among the islanders ; else why this bristling string of attacks and blood- curdling slaughter ? The captain la3rs it all to " Exeter Hall influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native fathers and mothers would be fond of seeing their children carted into exile and now and then the grave, instead of weep- ing about it and trying to kill the kind recruiters. CHAPTEE VI. He was as shy as a, newspaper is when referring to its own merits. — Puddn'head Wilson's New Calendar. GAPTAIJST Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of missionaries. They obstruct his business. They make " Eecruiting," as he calls it (" Slave-Catching," as they call it in their frank way) a trouble when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion. The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of the Traffic, and about the traffic itself : and it is distinctly uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to everything connected with it, including the law for its regula- tion. Captain Wawn's book is of very recent date ; I have by me a pamphlet of still later date — hot from the press, in fact — by Kev. "Wm. Gray, a missionary ; and the book and the pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading, to my mind. Interesting, and easy to understand — except in one detail, which I will mention presently. It is easy to understand why the Queensland sugar planter should want the Kanaka recruit : he is cheap. Very cheap, in fact. These are the figures paid by the planter : £20 to the recruiter for getting the Kanaka — or " ca,tching " him, as the missionary phrase goes ; £3 to the Queensland government for " superintending " the importation ; £5 deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage home when his three years are up, in case he shall live that long ; about £25 to the Kanaka himself for three years' wages (83) 84 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. and clothing ; total payment for the use of a man three years, £53 ; or, including diet, £60. Altogether, a hundred dollars a year. One can understand why the recruiter is fond of the business ; the recruit cheap presents cruit's relatives, not self), and the re- costs him a few (given to the re- to the recruit him- cruit is worth £20 to the recruiter Avhen delivered in Queensland. All this is clear enough ; but the thing that is not clear is, what there is about it all to ^lersuade the re- cruit. He is young and brisk ; life at home in his beauti- ful island is one lazy, long holiday to him ; or if he wants to work he can turn out a couple of bags of copra per Aveek and sell it for four or five shillings a bag. In Queensland he must get up at dawn and work from eight to twelve hours a day in the canefields — in a much hotter climate than he is used to — and get less than four shillings a week for it. I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland. It is a deej) puzzle to me. Here is the explanation, from the planter's point of view ; at least I gather from the missionary's pamphlet that it is the planter's : ""When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He feels no shame at his nakedness and want of adornment. When he returns home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, collars, cuffs. THB KANAKA S DEPARTURE. THE KANAKA'S OPPORTUNITY. 85 boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more boxes* well filled with clothing, a musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of luxury he has learned to appreciate." For just one moment we have a seeming flash of com- prehension of the Kanaka's reason for exiling himself : he goes away to acquire civiliziition. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and knows how to be ashamed ; he was unenlightened, now he has a Water- bury watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and some- thing to make him smell good ; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far countries and can show off. It all looks plausible — for a moment. Then the mission- ary takes hold of this explanation and pulls it to pieces, and dances on it, and damages it beyond recognition. "Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the average sequel is this : The cuffs and collars, if used at all, ai'e carried off by youngsters, who fasten them round the leg, just below the knee, as ornaments. The Waterbury, broken and dirty, finds its way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it ; or the inside is taken out, the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives, axes, calico, and handker- chiefs are divided among friends, and there is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys often lost on the road home, can be bought for 3s. 6d. They are to be seen rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I speak of what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry THE KANAK.\ S RETURN. * " Box " is English for trunk. 86 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. with me becaure I would not buy his trousers, which he declared were just my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for 9d. worth of tobacco — a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s. or 10s. in Queens- land. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather. The white handkerchiefs, the 'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and perhaps the hat, are kept. The boots have to take their chance, if they do not happen to fit the copra trader. ' Senet ' on the hair, streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home the dayafter landing." A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All in a day the hard-earned " civilization " has melted away to this. And even these perishable things must presently go. Indeed, there is but a single detail of his civilization that can be depended on to stay by him : according to the missionary, he has learned to swear. This is art, and art is long, as the poet says. In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The Queensland law for the regulation of the Labor Trafiic is a confession. It is a confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic had existed in the past, and that they still existed when the law was made. The missionaries make a further charge : that the law is evaded by the re- cruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them to do it. Kegulation 31 reveals two things : that sometimes a young fool of a recruit gets his senses back, after being per- suaded to sign away his liberty for three years, and dearly wants to get out of the engagement and stay at home with his own people ; and that threats, intimidation, and force are used to keep him on board the recruiting-ship, and to hold him to his contract. Eegulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law requires that he shall be allowed to go free ; and another clause of it requires the recruiter to set him ashore — per boat, because of the prevalence of sharks. Testimony from Rev. Mr. Gray : "There are 'wrinkles 'for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first ex- A^RINKLES." S7 perience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884. A vessel anchored just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me that some boys were stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and get them back. The facts were, as I found, that six boys had recruited, had rushed into the boat, the Govern- ment Agent informed me. They had all ' signed ' ; and, said the Government Agent, ' on board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were of age and willing to go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I found four of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat ! This I forbade. One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming ashore in my boat. When appealed to, the Government Agent suggested that we go and leave him to be picked up by the ship's boat, a quarter mile distant at the time ! " The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit — and properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and ignorant and persuadable to his hurt — but sym- pathy for him is not kept in stock by the recruiter. Eev. Mr. Gray says : " A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent could be taken. ' When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and pull ahead of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has not tired himself swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy generally tires of swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on board." Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the dis- tressed boy had been the speaker's son, and the captors savages, the speaker would have been surprised to see how differently the thing looked from the new point of view ; however, it is not our custom to put ourselves in the other person's place. Somehow there is something pathetic about that disappointed young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in the traiflc dialect, " boy " does not always mean boy ; it means a youth above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland laAv the age of consent, though it is held that recruiters allow them- selves some latitude in guessing at ages. Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoy- ance of "cast-iron regulations." They and the missionaries have poisoned his life. He grieves for the good old days, van- ished to come no more. See him weep ; hear him cuss between the lines ! 88 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOE. " For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all deserters who had signed the agreement on board ship, but the ' cast-iron' regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that, allowing the Kanaka to sign the agree- ment for three years' service, travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations, cadge all he could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did not extend. his pleasure trip to Queensland." Kev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a " farce." " There is as much cruelty and injustice done to natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful. The regu- lations that exist are unjust and inadequate — unjust and in- adequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his position, but they are too long for reproduction here. However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swear- ing, it must be that all the profit of the traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the traific ought to be squarely abolished. However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very healthy place for white people — death- rate 12 in 1,000 of the population — but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that. The vital statistics for 1893 place it at 52 ; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six months of the Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of the rigors of the new climate. The death-rate among the new men has reached as high as 18(» in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to Queensland — with the opportunity to acquire civilization, an umbrella, and a pretty poor quality of profanity — is twelve times as deadly for him as war. Com- mon Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require, not only that these people be returned to their homes, but that PROPHECY A RISKY BUSINESS. 89 war, pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their preservation. Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet spoke long years ago — five and fifty years ago. In fact, he spoke a little too early. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks. This prophet was the Eight Eev. M. Kussell, LL.D., D.C.L., of Edinburgh : " Is the tide of civilization to roll only to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves of the Pacific ? No ; the mighty day of four thousand years is drawing to its close ; the sun of humanity has performed its destined course ; but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west, its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas. . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth to people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second England sown in the regions of the sun. But mark the words of the prophecy : ' He shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.' It is not said Canaan shall be his slaw. To the Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe, but there is not given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack of the executioner. The East will not be stained with the same atrocities as the West ; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race -is not to mar the destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world ; humanizing, not destroying, as they advance ; uniting with, not enslaving, the inhabitants with whom they dwell, the British race may," etc., etc. And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson : " Come, bright Improvement ! on the car of Time, And rule the spacious world from clime to clime." Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her civilization, and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality profanity, and her humanizing-not-destroying ma- chinery, and her.hundred-and-eighty-death-rate, and everything is going along just as handsome ! But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the business. Rev. Mr. G-ray says : " What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should wipe out these races to enrich ourselves." And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of the early prophet : " My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this : 90 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. "1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka, de- prives him of his citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted to his home. "2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural laborer in Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there. ■ "3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the islands on the score of health. "4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the Queensland Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier to the true federation of the Aus- tralian colonies. "5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the nature of things they must re- main so. ' ' 6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, but the Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down. "7. The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a black man are of less value than those of a white man. And a Traffic that has grown out of ' slave-hunting ' will certainly remain to the end not unlike its origin." CHAPTER YII. Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. — Ptuld^nheacl Wilson's Xi-w Calendar. rROM DiAEY : — For a day or two we have been plow- ing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands, catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a mem- ber of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands this year ; the map of this region is freckled and fly -specked all over with them. Their number would seem to be un- countable. We are moving among the Fijis now — 224 islands and islets in the group. In front of us, to the west, the wilder- ness stretches toward Australia, then curves upward to New Guinea, and still up and up to Japan ; behind us, to the east, the wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the Pacific; south of us is New Zealand. Somewhere or other among these myriads Samoa is concealed, and not discoverable on the map. Still, if you wish to go there, you will have no trouble about finding it if you follow the directions given by Robert Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr. J. M. Barrie. '" You go to America, cross the continent to San Francisco, and then it's the second turning to the left." To get the full flavor of the joke one must take a glance at the map. Wednesday/, September 11. — Yesterday we passed close to an island or so, and recognized the published Fiji character- istics : a broad belt of clean white coral sand around the Island ; back of it a graceful fringe of leaning palms, with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their (91) 93 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. bases ; back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. A detail of the immediate foreground: a mouldering ship perched high up on a reef-bench. This completes the com- . position, and makes the picture artistically perfect. In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded our way into the secluded little harbor— a placid basin of brilliant blue and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few ships rode at anchor in it — one of them a sailing vessel flying the American flag; and they said she came from Duluth ! There's a journey ! Duluth is several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she is entitled to the proud name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of America. There is onl\^ one free, independent, unsubsidized American ship sailing the for- eign seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship is the American fleet. All by itself it causes the American name and power to be respected in the far regions of the globe. All by itself it certifies to the world that the most populous civil- ized nation in the earth has a just pride in her stupendous THE FIJIANS. 93 stretch of sea-front, and is determined to assert and maintain her rightful place as one of the Great Maritime Powers of the Planet. All by itself it is making foreign eyes familiar with a Flag which they have not seen before for forty years, outside of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in building, equipping, and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial Fleet, and in thus rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it high for the homage of the nations, we owe her a debt of gratitude which our hearts shall confess with quickened beats whenever her name is named henceforth. Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time, but while the flag flies and the Eepublic survives, they who live under their shelter will still drink this one, standing and uncovered : Health and prosperity to Thee, O Duluth, Ameri- can Queen of the Alien Seas ! Eow-boats began to flock from the shore ; their crews were the first natives we had seen. These men carried no overplus of clothing, and this was wise, for the weather was hot. Hand- some, great dusky men they were, muscular, clean-limb- ed, and with faces full of character and intelligence. It would be hard to find their superiors anywhere among the dark races, I should think. Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the BOATS CAME PROM THE SHORE. 94 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. land, and have that luxury of luxuries to sea- voyagers — a land-dinner. And there we saw more natives : Wrinkled old women, with their flat mammals flung over their shoulders, or hanging down in front like the cold- weather drip from the molasses-faucet; plump and smily young girls, blithe and content, easy and graceful, a pleasure to look at; young matrons, tall, straight, comely, nobly built, sweeping by with IS TOWN. chin up, and a gait incomparable for unconscious stateliness and dignity ; majestic young men — athletes for build and muscle — clothed in a loose arrange- ment of daZ- NATIVES. zling white, with bronze breast and bronze legs naked, and the head a cannon-swab of solid hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brick-red. Only sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness ; now they have the bicycle. We strolled about the streets of the white folks' little town, and around over the hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens and plantations, and past clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink, the great blossoms were so intensely red; and by and by we stopped to ask an elderly English k' '"^^MfK? f- m^M m Wti 1 ^^^^m§ - - , ' ■■% DECEPTIVE WEATHER. 95 colonist a question or two, and to sympathize with him con- concerning the torrid weather ; but he was surprised, and said : " This ? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once." " "We supposed that this was summer ; it has the ear-marlis of it. You could take it to almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it isn't summer, what does it lack 'i " " It lacks half a year. This is mid-Avinter." I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a sudden change of season, like this, could hardly fail to do me hurt. It brought on an- other cold. It is odd, these sudden jumps from season to season. A fortnight ago we left America in mid-summer, nOvW it is mid-winter ; about a week hence we shall arrive in Australia in the spring. After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known some- where else in the world, and presently made some new friends and drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of the State, who was occupying his country residence, to escape the rigors of the winter weather, I suppose, for it was on breezy high ground and much more comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's hair afire when he takes off his hat to bow. There is a noble and beautiful view of ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's high-placed house, and its immediate THE RIGORS OP WINTER. yH FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose and serenity which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands. One of the new friends who went out there with me was a large man, and I had been admiring his size all the way. I was still admiring it as he stood by the governor on the veranda, talking ; then the Fijian butler stepped out there to announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not quite dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast was quite striking. Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political suspension. I think that in the talk there on the veranda it was said that in Fiji, as in the Sandwich Islands, native kings and chiefs are of much grander size and build than the com- moners. This man was clothed in flowing white vestments, and they were just the thing for him ; they comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity. European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I know that, because they do that with every- body that wears them. It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and rever- ence for their persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great force. The educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn him in the reverence of his people. Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in spite of his lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no need to defile himself with work, or trouble his heart with the sordid cares of life ; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want, and that he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman. I had a glimpse of him down in the town. Perhaps he is a descendant of the last king — the king with the difiicult name whose memory is preserved by a notable monument of cut- stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of the town. A FORMALITY WITH A BIFFERENCE. 97 Thakombau — I remember, now; that is the name. It is easier to preserve it on a granite block than in your head. Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the gentlemen present at the governor's quoted a remark made by the king at the time of the session — a neat retort, and with a touch of pathos in. it, too. The English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by saying that the transfer of the kingdom to Great Britain was merely " a sort of hermit-crab formality, you know." " Yes," said poor Thakombau, " but with this difference — the crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but mine isn't." However, as far as I can make out from the books, the King was between the devil and the deep sea at the time, and hadn't much choice. He owed the United States a large debt — a debt which he could pay if allowed time, but time was de- nied him. He must pay up right away or the warships would be upon him. To protect his people from this disaster he ceded his country to Britain, with a clause in the contract providing for the ultimate payment of the American debt. In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters ; they were very religious, and worshiped idols ; the big chiefs were proud and haughty, and they were men of great style in many ways ; all chiefs had several wives, the biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty ; when a chief was dead and ready for burial, four or five of his wives were strangled and put into the grave mth him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped from Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider what a power they were, armed like that, and what an opportunity they had. If they had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and known how to use them, they could have achieved the sovereignty of the archipelago — twenty-seven kings and each with eight or nine islands under OS FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived worthless lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor — in most cases by violence. Only one of them had any ambition ; he was an Irishman named Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored forty-eight. He died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough with forty. It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads, and an inquiring turn of mind. It appears that their savage ancestors had a doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religion — with limitations. That is to say, their dead friend would go to a happy hereafter if he could be accumulated, but not otherwise. They drew the line; they thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too comprehensive. They called his attention to certain facts. For instance, many of their friends had been devoured by sharks ; the sharks, in their turn, were caught and eaten by other men ; later, these men were captured in war, and eaten by the enemy. The original persons had entered into the composition of the sharks ; next, they and the sharks had become part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then, could the particles of the original men be searched out from the final conglomerate and put together again ? The inquirers were full of doubts, and considered that the missionary had not examined the matter with the gravity and attention which so serious a thing deserved. The missionary taught these exacting savages many valu- able things, and got from them one — a very dainty and poetical idea : Those wild and ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers, after they perish, rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of heaven, and flourish there forever in immortal beauty ! CHAPTEK YIII. It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. — PudWnhead Wilson's New Calendar. WHEN one glances at the map the members of the stu- pendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other ; but no, there is no crowd- ing, even in the center of a group ; and between groups there are lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands, their peoples and their languages. A start- ling reminder of this is furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an unknown language. " They were picked up by a passing vessel many hundreds of miles from, any known land., floating in the same tiny canoe in which they had been blown out to sea. When found they were but skin and bone. No one could understand what they said, and they have never named their country ; or, if they have, the name does not correspond with that of any island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as happy as the day is long. In the ship's log there is an entry of the latitude and longitude in which they were found, and this is probably all the clue they will ever have to their lost homes." * What a strange and romantic episode it is ; and how one is tortured with curiosity to know whence those mysterious creatures came, those Men Without a Country, errant waifs ■ Forbes's " Two Years in Fiji." (99) 100 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. who cannot name their lost home, wandering Children of Nowhere. Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and mystery. The loneliness, the solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the bruised spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the great world ; and for men who have been hunted out of the great world for crime ; and for other men who love an esiSj and indolent ex- istence ; and for others who love a roving free life, and stir and change and adventure ; and for yet others who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and money-getting, mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life ideally perfect. ■ We sailed again, refreshed. The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English, man whose home was in New Zealand. He was a naturalist. His learning in his specialty was deep and thorough, his inter- est in his subject amounted to a passion, he had an easy gift of speech ; and so, when he talked about animals it was a pleasure to listen to him. And profitable, too, though he was some- times difficult to understand because now and then he used scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of us. They were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as he was quite Avilling to explain them I always made it a point to get him to do it. I had a fair knowledge of his subject — lay- man's knowledge — to begin with, but it was his teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity — in a word, gave it value. His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate. I already knew a good deal about the rabbits in Australasia THE FAUNA OF AUSTRALIA. 101 and their marvelous fecundity, but in my talks with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel Avas far short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were so thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get from town to town. He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other boleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways of all such pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets, and carried its young in them when it couldn't get apples. And he said that the emu was as big as an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild dog ; and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that neither of them barked ; otherwise they were just the same. He said that the only game-bird in Australia was the wom- bat, and the only song-bird the larrikin, and that both were protected by government. The most beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise. Next came the two kinds of lyres ; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying out, the other thickening up. He explained that the " Sun- downer " was not a bird^ it was a man ; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to look for work ; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run just at sundown, when the day's labor ends ; all he wants is whisky and supper and bed and breakfast ; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist spoke of the bell bird, the creature that at short intervals all day rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It is the favorite 102 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. and best friend of the •\veary and thirsty sundowner ; for he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water ; and he goes somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia was the Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa. The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an ordinary man's head or kick his hat off ; and his head, too, for that matter. He said it was wingless, but a swift runner. The natives used to ride it. It could make forty miles an hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come out reasonably fresh. It Avas still in existence when the railway was introduced into New Zealand ; still in existence, and carrying the mails. The railroad began with the same schedule it has now : two expresses a week — time, twenty miles an hour. The company exterminated the moa to get the mails. Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious depart- ures from the accepted laws governing these species of tuber- cles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combina- tion of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhyncus — grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and make-up. Said he — " You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish, for it lives in the river half the time ; it is a land animal, for it resides on the land half the time ; it is an amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which it prefers ; it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time ; it is a kind of duck, for it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles ; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in thp water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them ; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur ; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, Insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them ; it is clearly OFF GOES HIS HEAD. THE ORNITHORHYNCUS. 105 a bird, fov it lays eggs, and hatches tliem ; it is clearly a mammal, for it nurses its young ; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian, for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except refined ones, it has all the habits there are except good ones. "It is a survival — a survival of the fittest. j\Ir. Darwin invented the theory that goes by that name, but the Ornitho- rhyncus was the first to put it to actual experi- ment and prove tlrat it could be done. Hence it shoidd have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin It was never in the Ark ; you will find no mention of it there ; it nobly stayed out and worked the theory. Of all creatures in the world it was the only one properly equip- ped for tlie test. Tlie Ark was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged ; no land visi- ble above the flood, no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat, nor water for a mammal to drink ; for all mammal food was destroyed, and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the earth mingled theirwaters and rose above the moun- tain tops, the result was a drink which no bird or WAS NEVER IN THE AKIC. 106 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. beast of ordinary construction could use and live. But this combination was nuts for the Ornithorhyncus, if I may use a term like that without offense. Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea. On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were floating. Upon these the Ornithorhyncus voyaged in peace ; voyaged from clime to clime, from hemis- phere to hemisphere, in contentment and comfort, in virile interest in the con- stant change of scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-in- creasing enthusiam in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with an episode of this nature. "It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of independent means. Of things actually necessary to its existence and its happiness not a detail was wanting. When it wished to walk, it scrambled along the tree- trunk ; it mused in the shade of the leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by night ; when it wanted the refreshment of a swim, it had it ; it ate leaves when it wanted a vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms and grubs; when it wanted fish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If the grubs gave out in one tree it swam to another ; and as for fish, the very opu lence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally, when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend that would have slain a crocodile. "When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all the Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, it strode ashore, saying in its heart, ' Let them that come after me invent theories and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but I am the first that has done it ! " This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to the advent of man upon the earth ; they date back, indeed, to a time when a causeway liundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, joined Australia to Africa, and the animals of the t?jo countries were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian. Later the causeway sank under the sea ; subterranean con- vulsions lifted the African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but Australia kept her old level. In Africa's new climate the animals neces- sarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and families and species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily remained stationary, and have so remained until this day. In the course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhyncus developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off detail after detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly dis- integrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been speaking — that creature which was everything in general and nothing in particular — the opulently endowed e pluribus unum of the animal world. " Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most vener- able creature that exists in the earth to day — Ornithorhyncus Platypus Ex- traordinariensis — whom God preserve ! " BEAUTIFUL VERSES. 107 "When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease. And not only in the prose form, but in the poetical as well. lie had written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent around among the passen- gers, and was willing to let them be copied. It seemed to me that the least technical one in the series, and the one which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his INVOCATION. "Come forth from thy oozy couch, O Ornithorhyncus dear ! And greet with a cordial claw The stranger that longs to hear "Prom thy own own lips the tale Of thy origin all unknown: Thy misplaced bone where flesh should bo And flesh where should be bone ; "And fishy fin where should be paw, And beaver-trowel tail. And snout of beast equip'd with teeth Where gills ought to prevail. " Come, Kangaroo, the good and true ! Foreshortened as to legs, And body tapered like a churn. And sack marsupial, i' fegs, "And tells us why you linger here. Thou relic of a vanished time. When all your friends as fossils sleep, Immortalized in lime ! " Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist ; but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way, touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardlj^ be doubted that the author had read the works of that poet and been im- pressed by them. It is not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase, but the style and swing 108 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all are there. Compare this Invocation with "Frank Button " — particularly stanzas first and seventeenth — and I think the reader will feel convinced that he who Avrote the one had read the other : * I. "Frank Button was as fine a lad As ever you wish to see, And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake On earth no more will he be. His age was near fifteen years, And he was a motherless boy. He was living with his grandmother When he was drowned, poor boy. XVIL " He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon, On Sunday he was found. And the tidings of that drowned boy Was heard for miles around. His form was laid by his mother's side, Beneath the cold, cold ground. His friends for him will drop a tear When they view his little mound." * The Sentimental Song Book. By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36. THE NATURALIST. CHAPTEE IX. It is your human environment that makes climate. — Pudd'nhead Wiho7i's JVew Calendar. SEPT. 15 — Mght. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not follow vnth. the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction — it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presenth", a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water — a flash so sudden and so astonishingly bril- liant that it would make you catch your breath ; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the cork- screw shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the " break " spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait ! Almost before you could think, this mon- ster of light, fiity feet long, would go flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence he came you would see another flash ; and another and another and another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant ; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm of wiggling curves, a mov- ing conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle (109) 110 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. of fire and energy whose equal the most of those people will not see again until after they are dead. It was porpoises — porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played for an hour, leaping and froUicking and carrying on, turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length — eight or ten feet — but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble Avas an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance ; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea ; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking. Ey and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firm- ament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light. Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it. ISTear by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memo- rable disaster to iheDu/icaii Diuihar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing vessel ; a fine and favorite passenger packet^ FATE OF THE DUNCAN DUNBAR. Ill commanded by a popular captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was waiting, and counting the hours ; counting the hours, and making ready to give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and mothers that had been with them aU that time watching over them. Of all the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase ; only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treas- ure comes safe to port and the long dread is over. On board the Duncan Dimhar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day was done ; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter for the meet- ing, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the morning ; but this was no ordinary occasion ; all about him were appealing faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of aU that fair 112 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will con- tinue to be told to all that come, for generations ; but it will never grow old, custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it. There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of discovery ; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that the Duncan Dunhar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway the walls of the Heads were black with mourners ; and one of these, stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year. We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor — a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it, and 1 testified with a cordiality which I judged would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful — superbly beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen did not seem altogether satisfied. He said: "It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful — the Harbor; SYDNEY HARBOR. 113 but that isn ' t all of it, it ' s only half of it ; Sydney's the other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacy -bell. God made the Harbor, and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney." Of course I made an apology ; and asked him to convey it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf — a roomy sheet of lovely blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges Avith its undulating- masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other archi- tectural digni- ties and grand- eurs that break the flowing lines and give picturesque- ness to the general effect. The narrow _ inlets which. I VIEW IN SYDNEY HARBOR. haVe mCU- tioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always exploring 114 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year, and they will double that when their works are in good going order. October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring — everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home summers the perfection of climatic luxury ; I mean, when you are out in the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now — a person ■ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm weather is ; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the occupa- tion of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleas- antest and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and more. Everybody helps him, no- body hinders him. Anj^body who has an old fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home market. If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by its posi- tion on the map ; and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, S. C, A SYDNEY WINTER. 115 and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are north of it — thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river ; and at Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over, from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid- winter day there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36°, and that remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt Little Bock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, about New Year's Day, the mer- cury went up to 106° in the shade, and that is Sydney's memo- rable hot day. That would about tally with Little Bock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a government report, and are trustworthy. In the mat- ter of summer weather Arkansas has no advantage over Syd- ney, perhaps, but when it comes to winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas Avinter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas and the poor. The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has the climate of its capital — a mean winter tem- perature of 54° and a mean summer one of 71°. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90° in New South Wales is harder to bear than 112° in the neighboring colony of Victoria, because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry. The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the same as that of Nice — 60° — yet Nice is further from the equator by 460 miles than is the former. 116 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates ; stingier in the case of Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good climate nowhere but around the edges. If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was before we added Alaska. But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fer- tile land almost everywhere in the United States, it seems set- tled that inside of the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In efi'ect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places ; also the fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the Mississippi ; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mis- sissippi half-way to its head waters ; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific coast : then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia. This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid ; a part of it is fertile, the rest is desert ; it is not liberally watered ; it has no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind him, and found a A DUST-STORM. 117 new one of a quite different character. In fact, he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of the heat. "The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., in- creased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and inanimate gave way before it ; the horses stood with their backs to the wind and their noses to the ground, without the mus- cular strength to raise their heads ; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127°, out of my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 135°. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close to mo, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to the top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot find lan- guage to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed." That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is called a " dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the following description by Mr. Gane tallies very well with the alkali dust-storm of ITevada, if you leave out the " shovel " part. Still the shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all. "As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive plain. . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust, and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to seek the nearest retreat at hand When the thrifty housewife sees in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick on the carpe I. that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it." 118 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. And probably a wagon. I was mistaken ; I have not seen a proper dust-storm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, so weird, so new, so uncom- monplace, such a startling and interesting contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars — a detail here, a detail there — we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' sea-coast ; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt ; we have had the wonderful dust-storm ; and we have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good chmate around it. A DUST STOKM. CHAPTEE X. Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor iu heaven. — PadWnJiead Wilson^ s New Calendar. GAPTAIIST Cook found Australia in lYTO, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them ; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the crudest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their life.* English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven years for stealing a rabbit ! "When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and wife- beating — 25 lashes on the bare back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms ; and that no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself beyond the ninth blow ; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife- beaters ; but humane modern London could not endure it ; it ■* The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie. (119) 12Q FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. got its law rescinded. Many a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore that cruel achievement of sentimental " humanity." Twenty-flve lashes ! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense ; and sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three hundred lashes — for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than that, sometimes. "Who handled the cat^ Often it was another convict; sometimes it was the culprit's dearest com- rade ; and he had to lay on with all his might ; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy — for he was under watch — and yet not do his friend any good : the friend would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of full punishment. The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and sui- cide so difficult to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group — this murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the A\'itnesses of it by the hand of the hangman ! The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere sugges- tions of what convict life was like — they are but a couple of details tossed into view out of a shoreless sea of such ; or, to change the figure, they are but a pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand. Some of the convicts — indeed, a good many of them — were very bad people, even for that day ; but the most of them were probably not noticeably Avorse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We must believe this ; CONVICTS IN AUSTRALIA. 121 we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling offenses, was a nation to whom the term " civilized" could not in any large way be ap- plied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, dur- ing more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was still content with it, Avas not advancing in any showy way toward a higher grade of civilization. If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs, we must grant again that as be- tween the convict and his masters, and between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable monotonj'' of sameness. Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much disturbed — not as yet being in the way — it was estimated that in JSTew South "Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory. People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want this service — away off there where neither honor nor- distinction was to be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of 1,000 uniformed civilians called the " New South Wales Corps " and shipped it. This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condi- 122 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. tion of England outside of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there would be an importation of the nobility. In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries of life — food, clothing, and all — were sent out from England, and kept in great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the settlers — sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most laAvless way. They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They leagued themselves together and ruled the market ; they boycotted the government and the other dealers ; they estab- lished a close monopoly and kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to sell to them at a price named by themselves — and it was always low enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold it at an average of ten. They laade rum the currency of the country — for there was little or no money — and they maintained their devastating hold and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before they were finally conquered and routed by the government. Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed farm after farm out of the settlers' hands for rum, and thus had bountifully enriched themselves. "When a farmer was caught in the last agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. "When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered that the land was specially fitted for the wool PROSPERITY WITH HOSPITALITY. 123 culture. Prosperity followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the noble metals were opened, immi- grants flowed in, capital likewise. The result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South "Wales. It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gar- dens, art galleries, libraries, museums, hospitals, learned socie- , ties ; it is the hospitable home of every species of culture and of every species of material enterprise, and there is a church at every man's door, and a race-track over the way. NEW SOUTH "WALES COKPS. CHAPTEK XI. We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there ; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well ; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. — Ptidd^nhead WiUon's New Calendar. ALL English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, and New South Wales and its capi- tal are like the rest in this. The English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always called lav- ishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling. Mr. Gane (" I^ew South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute his gratitude, and was not lucky : "The inhabitants of Sydney are renovyned for their hospitality. The treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-liearted people ■will help more than anything else to make us recollect with pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel. The ' new chum ' needs only the acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations andthoughtful kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, none have portraj'ed home so faithfully as Sydney." JSTobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and stayed away from Dubbo — but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he had said about Sydney had grown dim : (124) AN AMERICAN TRIMMED CITY. 125 "We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its inhabitants. Sydney, tliough well deserving the character it bears of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality and reserve. In Dubbo, on the con- trary, though the same congenial manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however un- pretentious, on a town which, though possessing no picturesque natural sur- roundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of citi- zens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for benevo- lence and kind-heartedness." I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst way — any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at people's architectural pro- ductions and picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dub- bonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity No, these are old, old symptoms; and when they ap- pear we know that the man has got the panegyrics. Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be ; and the next thing that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America ; a photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that the most of the fine residences HEEDLESS MAN. 126 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. were the city residences of squatters. The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as ani- mals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be speaking of a millionaire ; in America the word indicates the possessor of a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose land- front is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been per- fected in one way or another ; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty thousand up to half a million head ; in America the word indicates a man who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is promi- nent and of the first importance ; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, in Australia you do ; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark, in Australia you ad- vertise it ; in America if your friend is a squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in Australia you may sup Avith kings if there are any around. In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pasture- land (some people say twice as many), to support a sheep ; and when the squatter has half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Ebode Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a quarter or a half million dollars. He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it, and if >-- k SyUATTEE LIFE. THE AUSTRALIAN SQUATTER. 129 will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you with the best that money can buy. On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are other squatter- owned towns in Australia. Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships has created this great trade. In Syd- ney I visited a huge establishment where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for shipment to England. The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from. Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning — from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American. To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English shvness and self-consciousness left out. Now and then — but this is rare — one hears such words as pvper for paper, lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in Sydney that this pronunci- ation is an Australianism, but people who have been " home " — as the native reverently and lovingly calls England — know better. It is " costermonger." All over Australasia this pro- nunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in Lon- don among the uneducated and the partially educated of all 130 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. sorts and conditions of people. That mislaid y is rather strik- ing when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney the chamber- maid said, one morning — "The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'U tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast." I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's custom of speaking of England as " home." It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an un- consciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head. In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed ; it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly democratic, and reserves and re- straints are things that are bred by differences of rank. English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is submerged, and with it the English reserve ; equality exists for the moment, and every individual is free ; so free from any consciousness of fetters, indeed, that the Eng- lishman's habit of watching himself and guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is forgotten, and falls into abeyance — and to such a degree indeed, that he will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to — an exhi- bition of daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world. But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, or when the company present is small, and new to him. He is on his guard then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of humor. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOR. 131 Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a couple that were made in Australia at club suppers — one of them by an Englishman, the other by an Australian. CHAPTEK XII. There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow- fet it was the schoolboy who said " Faith is believing what you know ain't so." — Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. IIST Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of God ; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous life the corpuscles. Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said: "It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are the metes and bounds of the universe itself ; and it seems to me that it almost ac- counts for a thing vehich is otherwise nearly unaccountable — the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. Perhaps they dream them, and then hon- estly believe them to be divine revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake." He told some of the legends, and said that they were im- plicitly believed by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and intelligence; and he said that this ■universal credulity was a great hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like this : "At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a hospitable reception. Then they argue like this : since the Indian believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must believe ; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they ■will no longer doubt. The natural deduction is, that as Christianity makes (133) WHY CHRISTIANITY MAKES SLOW PROGRESS. 133 but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us : we are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles. " But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in our guns, but only wads for bullets ; that is to say, our miracles are not effective ; the Hindoos do not care for them ; they have more extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own religion are proven and established by miracles ; the details of ours must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think at home — that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson, the strongest rnan that had ever lived — for so I called him, " At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the indifference remained ; I was not able to make any im- pression upon it. " A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said ' We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands — we accept no other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own. You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of Samson ; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods — he cannot do without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when there may be stronger ones to be found ? That would be foolish. No, if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or those that preside over the concerns of other nations ? By comparing the known works of his own gods with the works of those others ; there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The Christians have but few gods, and they are new — new, and not strong, as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for this has hap- pened with all gods, but that time is far away, many ages and decades of 134r FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet for beings to whom a thou- sand years is but a single moment. Our own gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gates of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed — and also awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder ; for they would compare them with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them ■ — as you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies might pass easily over ; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. It was in the night ; and, as he passed along the plain, the people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods. You must know, your- self, that Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of the gods, j ust as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two things ; First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish the supe- riority of his gods over ours ; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evi- dence, but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, tangi- ble evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall not. Have you the gates ? ' " HANUMAN MOVING THE MOUNTAINS. CHAPTEE XIII. The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par. — Puddn'head Wilson's New Calendar. NE is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works — such as legislative buildings, town haUs, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well- equipped, and architecturally handsome hospital in an Aus- tralian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in any country. This village was about to close a contract for light- ing its streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of London. London is still obscured by gas — gas pretty widely scattered, too, in some of the districts ; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difiicult to find the gas lamps. The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty -eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House — fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing (137) 138 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the inter- national matches are played. Therefore there is j)lenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work. There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant ; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago ; but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. The others were at home. The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, per- haps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself, and prefers to do it ; and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes to help ; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name. Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated SYDNEY'S FOUR ENTEKTAINMENTS. THE SIGHTS IN SYDNEY. 141 sentiment, polite life, religion ; and by his example he propa- gates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive. He is usually a lord, and this is well ; for his position com- pels him to lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped for that. Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House ; which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither ; and there, or on board the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity of his office. Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short. And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their living catching them ; for the {jrovernment pays a cash bounty on them. The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable. The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compnred to his. And he is a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to teU now, which has not as yet been in print. In 18Y0 a young stranger arrived in 142 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Sydney, and set about finding something to do ; but he knew no one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was wiUing to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him ; he could find no opening of any sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking ; he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher the man looked up and said — " Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me." " How do you know I won't make it worse ? " " Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't change it, no harm's done ; if you do change it, it's for the better, of course. Come." " All right, what will you give ? " " I'll give you the shark, if you catch one." " And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line." " Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't spoil yours ; for many and many a time I've noticed that if — there, pull in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! / knew how it would be. Why, I knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right — ■ he's landed." It was an unusually large shark — "a full nine teen-footer," the fisherman said, as he laid the creature open with his knife. " Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my luck, you see. But my good- ness, I hope you haven't changed your own." NO USE FOR THE SHARK. 143 "Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll rob him." When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay, and was starting away. " "What, you are not going ? " " Yes. Good-bye." " But what about your shaxk ? " " The shark ? "Why, what use is he to me ? " " What use is he ? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty? Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now ? " " Oh, well, you can collect it." " And Teeej[> it ? Is that what you mean ? " " Yes." "Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm believing it now. Why yours are look- ing just ratty, don't you know ; and yet you must be rich." " I am." The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a " stand-up." There was a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, " There isn't enough to buy clothes with," and went his way. At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sit- ting in his morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A servant put his head in and said : " There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir." "What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his business." 144 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. " He won't go, sir. I've tried." " He won't go 1 That's — why, that's unusual. He's one of two things, then : he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy ? " " No, sir. He don't look it." " Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants ? " " He won't tell, sir ; only says it's very important." " And won't go. Does he say he won't go ? " " Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day." " And yet isn't crazy. Show him up." The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, " No, he's not crazy ; that is easy to see ; so he must be the other thing." Then aloud, " Well, my good fellow, be quick about it ; don't waste any words ; what is it you want ? " " I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds." " Scott ! (It's a mistake ; he is crazy. . . . No — he canH be — not with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you ? " " Nobody that you know." " What is your name ? " " Cecil Rhodes." " No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then — just for curiosity's sake — what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand ? " " The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty days." " Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that 1 — sit down — you interest me. And somehow you — well, you fascinate me ; I think that that is about the word. And it isn't your proposition — no, that doesn't fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then — THE SCHEME. 145 just for curiosity's sake again, nothing more : as I understand it, it is your desire to bor — " " I said intention." " Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word — an unheedful valuing of its strength, you know." " I knew its strength." " Well, I must say — but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any. (Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy ; but as to his being remarkable — well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I believe I am be- yond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare not. What is your scheme ? " " To buy the wool crop — deliverable in sixty days." " What, the whole of it ^ " " The whole of it." " No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how you talk ! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up ? " "Two and a half million sterling — maybe a little more." " WeU, you've got your statistics right, any Avay. Now, then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days ? " " The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get." " Eight, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it ? " " I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days." " You mean, of course, that you might make it if — " "I said 'shall'." " Yes, by George, you did say ' shall ' ! You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, 10 146 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. dear, dear, look here ! Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got what you believe to be a rational reason for venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it out — I am prepared — accli- matized, if I may use the word. ^Vhy would you buy the crop, and toliy would you make that sum out of it ? That is to say, what makes you think you — " " I don't think — I know." " Definite again. IIoio do you know ? " " Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up fourteen per cent, in London and is still rising." "Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunder- bolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason : I have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no war-clouds anywhere ; and as for wool, why, it is the low- spiritedest commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now. . . . Well, why don't you jump ? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, when — " " Because I have later news." " Later news ? Oh, come — later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot from London by the — " " My news is only ten days old." " Oh, Mun-cAa-MSCTi, hear the maniac talk ! Where did you get it?" " Got it out of a shark." "Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police — bring the gun — raise the town ! All the asylums in Christen- dom have broken loose in the single person of — " 'GOT IT OUT OF A SHARK.' CECIL RHODKS' FIRST FORTUNE. 149 "Sit do^vn! And collect yourself. "Where is the use in getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. "When I make a statement which I cannot prove, it -will be time enough for you to begin to offer hospi- tality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity." " Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons ! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to Eng- land to fetch back a market report — " " "What does your middle initial stand for, sir ? " " Andrew. "What are you writing ? " " "Wait a moment. Proof about the shark — and another matter. Only ten lines. There — now it is done. Sign it." " Many thanks — many. Let me see ; it says — it says — oh, come, this is interesting ! "Why — why — look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings with you, half and half. There, now — I've signed; make your promise good if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old." " Here it is — and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swal- lowed him in the Thames, without a doubt ; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is dated ' London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, '^er confequen^ ber ^riegeg= ertldrung, rei[e ic^ ^eute nad; ®eutc^(anb ah, auf ba^ ic^ mein Seben auf bem 2t(tai; metneS 2anbe§ legen mag' — as clean native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the day was done, poor fellow." " And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend to this case further on ; other matters are 150 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. pressing, now. I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and l^uy the crop. It will cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to deliver the goods, they ^vill think they've been struck by lightning. But there is a time for mourning, and we Avill attend to that case along Avith the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say your name is ? " " Cecil Ehodes." " It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make It easier by and by, if you live. There are three kinds of peo- ple — Commonplace Men, Kemarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Kemarkables, and take the chances." The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed. The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the AVater is fairl}'' covered with the little sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; some- times the boys upset their boat for fun — such as it is — with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young fellows scramble aboard whole — sometimes — not always. Tragedies have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it Avas reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks ; but the sharks made SAvift work Avith the lives of both. The government pays a bounty for the shark ; to get the bounty the fishemien bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton ; the ncAvs spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark culture Avill be one of the most successful things in the colony. CHAPTEE XIV. We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard ; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that. — PucM'nhead Wilson's Mew Calendar. \Ji Y health had broken down in New York in May ; it I \ had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition dur- ing a succeeding period of 82 days ; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture en- gagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable. So we moved south with a westward slant, IT hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melboui-ne — that juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small ; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Aus- tralia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map — looks like a county, in fact — yet it is about as large as Eng- land, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just 8(i times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as large as the State of Texas. Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Ehode Island for a sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South "Wales. The climate of Victoria is favor- able to other great industries — among others, wheat-growing and the making of wine. (151) 152 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. "We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most rational sleep- ing car ; also the car was clean and fine and new — nothing about it to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be described as continental. The tickets were round-trip ones — to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really ex- pected to make; but then as the round trip wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs. '%'.^^ ■-^.y THE ODDEST THING IN AUSTRALASIA. ISTow comes a singular thing : the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Aus- tralasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting A PARALYTIC SCHEME. 153 cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne ! Think of the paraly- sis of intellect that gave that idea birth ; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders. It is a narrow-gauge road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies — ■ the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable. All passengers fret at the double-gauge ; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it ; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefited. Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could manufacture it economic- ally on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there Avere several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived. We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named. " My word ! " as the Australians say, but it was a stunning 15i FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite ; towering and majestic masses of blue — a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky — made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful color — just divine. A resident told me that those were not mountains ; he said they were rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have been right, but much read- ing of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis infor- mation furnished by unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one moun- tain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order. We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee ; and cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think ; but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is to have girls. ISTo, not girls, young ladies — generally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal lev6e in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. JSTot that they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how. All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through thin — not thick — forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark — erysipelas convalescents, so to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron ; and the door- steps and fences were clogged with children — rugged little simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk. SHEEP-DIP AND RAILROAD COFFEE. I55 And there were little villages, with neat stations \vell pla- carded with showy advertisements — mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of "sheep-dip." If that is the name — and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out the fliies, and has healing properties, and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed \vith railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too pas- sive ; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee ? THINGS NOT SEEN. We saw Inrds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhyncus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals — no " blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before. CHAPTEE XV. Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am raeasiirably familiar with it. — FudcV iiJieud Wilson's Xem Calendar. Ti'uth M stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. — Fiuld'nhead Wikon'KjVem Calendar. THE air was balmy and .delicious, the sunshine radiant ; it was a charming excursion. In the course of it we came to a town Avhose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago — AVagga- Wagga. This was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriet}' and hung there in the wastes of space a time, with the tele- scopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiosity — curiosity as to which of the two long-missing persons he Avas : Arthur Orton, the mislaid -roustabout of Wapping, or Sir Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then ; and the dozen kept the mvstery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played upon the world's stage to unfold it- self serenely, act by act, in a British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial development. When we recall the details of that great romance we mar- vel to see what daring chances truth may freely take in con- structing a tale, as compared with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this splendid Tichborne romance. (156) AT WAGGA-WAGGA. 157 He Avould have to drop out the chief characters ; the public Avould say such people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did happen. It cost the Tichborne estates $400,OUU to unmask the Claim- ant and drive him out ; and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still believed in him. It cost the British Gov- ernment another $400,000 to convict him of perjury ; and after the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him ; and among these believers Avere many educated and intelligent men ; and some of them had personally known the real Sir Eoger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view. He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. This was but a few months ago — not very much short of a generation since he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher — that and noth- ing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case ; a weaker article would probably disagree with them. I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for per- jury. I attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were about twenty- five gentlemen present ; educated men, men moving in good society, none of them commonplace ; some of them were men 158 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. of distinction, none of them were obscurities. Ttiey were his cordial friends and admirers. It was " S'r Roger," always " S'r Eoger," on all hands ; no one withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if it tasted good. For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 18T3 I arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently received a note from l^aples signed by a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it Avas not Henry ; but I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of about six lines, was written on a strip of Avhite paper whose end-edges were ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to the same effect : would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the specified time i A carriage would meet us at the station. These invitations were always for a long time ahead ; if we were in Europe, three months ahead ; if we were in America, six to twelve months ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and also for the end of the visit. This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive by the -i.lO p. m. train from Lon- don, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The car- riage would take us away seven days later — train specified. And there were these words : " Speak to Tom Hughes." I showed the note to the author of " Tom Brown at Eugby," and he said : — " Accept, and be thankful." He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and MY STOCK MYSTERY. 159 beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall was a particu- larly fine example of the stately manorial mansion of Eliza- beth's days, and that it was a house worth going a long way to see — like Knowle ; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition, liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort coming and going. We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years — the last one in 1879. Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a steam yacht — a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in all lands, of birds, butter- flies, and such things. The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long Island Sound ; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It Avas for my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and opened it. It was the usual note — as to paucity of lines — and was written on the customary strip of paper ; but there was nothing usual about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture-tour in Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her husband's un- timely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this note ; that the funeral was attended by the otficials of the colonial and city governments ; and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, " Henry Bascom." My first thought was, why didn't he have the cofiin opened ? He would have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those 160 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. tears, and comforted those sorrowing governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money. I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture-doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been able to catch them ; others in my trade had tried to catch theli' impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a ghost? None — and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know about that man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could Avait. When I should see Mr. Bascoui he would tell me all about it. But he passed from life, and I never saw him again. My curiosity faded away. However, when I found that I was going to Australia it re- vived. And naturally : for if the people should say that I Avas a dull, poor thing compared to what I Avas before I died, it Avould haA^e a bad effect on business. "Well, to ray surprise the Sydney journalists had nece)' heard of that Impostor! I pressed them, but they Avere lirm — they had never heard of him, and didn't believe in him. I could not understand it ; still, I thought it would all come right in Melbourne. The government Avould remember ; and the other mourners. At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the matter. But no — it turned out that they had never heard of it. So my mystery Avas a mystery still. It Avas a great disap- pointment. I believed it Avould never be cleared up — in this life — so I dropped it out of my mind. But at last ! just Avhen I Avas least expecting it — HoAvever, this is not the place for the rest of it ; I shall come to the matter again, in a far-distant chapter. CHAPTER XVr. There is a Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it. — PiidcCnhead Wilson's New Calmdar. \Ji ELBOUmSTE spreads around over an immense area of I \ gi^'ound. It is a statel)'- city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service ; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and rail- roads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped ^vith everything that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of Austra- lasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one spe- cialty ; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan of the IIorse-Racing Cult. Its raceground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice — the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day — business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico ; and every man and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm tliicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of 11 (161) 162 FOLLOAVING THE EQUATOR. transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the de- mands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and grand-stands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere. It is the " Melbourne Cup " that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlim- ited cost, and Avithout bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies^ clothes ; but one might know that. And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The cham- pagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy ; every- body bets, and gloves and fortunes change hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept at white heat ; and when each day is done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a Avhole year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy again. The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difiicult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them ? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's ; each of them evokes interest, but not every- l)odv's ; each of them rouses enthusiasm. l)ut not evervbodv's ; AUSTRALASIA'S NATIONAL DAY. 163 in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal — and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme — it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name — Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires .the whole land with a confla- gration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. ISTo day save this one ; but this one does it. In America we have no annual supreme day ; no day whose approach makes the \vhole nation glad. ^Xe have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy ; neither of them can arouse an enthu- siasm which comes near to being universal. Eiglit grown Americans out of ten dread tlie coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone — if still alive. The appi'oach of Christmas brings harrass- ment and dread to many excellent people. Tliey have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know "what to buy to hit the various tastes ; tliey put in three Aveeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day ■ — as a function — has become general of late yeai's. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their en- thusiasm. "We have a supreme day — a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an absolute univer- 164 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, sality of interest and excitement ; but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years ; tfierefore it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup. In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days — Christmas and the Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular ; there is no supremacy. I think it must be conceded that the position of the Aus- tralasian Day is unique, solitary, unfellowed ; and likely to hold that high place a long time. The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people ; next, the novelties ; and finally the history of the places and countries visited. ISTovelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is ncAV. There will be new names, but the things which they represent will some- times be found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according to his geo- graphical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they, more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At least it seemed so to me, and I had op- portunity to observe. In Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-tlieater, but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in considerable force at several of tiie street corners, and he always gave me this pleasant salutation : " HELLO, JIAKK 1 ' A PLEASANT GHEETING. 1H7 "Hello, Mark!" " Here's to you, old chap ! " " Say — Mark ! — is he dead ? — a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Mel- bourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sud- den inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. I will remark here — if it is not an indecorum — that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which Avill move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing ; he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on the l^latform, and elseAvhere, there was never anything to remind me of it. This \vas hospitality of the right metal, and would have been prominently lacking in some countries, in the cir- cumstances. And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to rele- gate the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of the water ; whereas whenever a prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumenta- tively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan, or since. I heard many public KiS FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that pros- pect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their differences so much better and also so much more definitely. JSTo, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great cap- itals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just like stockbrokers ; they all bounce from their, seats and put up their hands and yell in unison — no stranger can tell what — and the president calmly says — "Sold to Smith & Co., threppence farthing — next!" — when probably nothing of the kind happened ; for how should he know ? In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things ; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich in America, and the life in them is the same ; but there the resemblance ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have grounds — domains — about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the country mansion of an English lord ; but I was not out in the country ; I had my hands full in town. And what Avas the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats t Its THE ORIGIN OF MELBOURNE. 169 first brick was laid and its first liouse built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always picturesque ; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities ; but they are all true, they all happened. SUNRISE ht/hk mountains. CHAPTER XVII. The English are mentioned in the Bible : Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. — Puddn'head Wilson's New Calendar. V HEIST we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to belike in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one — ^ Russia — is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly pro- portioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are about the same — 400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these figures. Even Russia is left far behind. The population of Australasia — 4,000,000 — sinks into nothingness, and is lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions of dollars,* and it is claimed that more than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports •New South Wales Blue Book. (170) THE BRITISH EMPIRE. ITl r 172 FOLLOWING THE EtJUATOK. to England and imports fi"om England.'"' In addition to this, Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade amounting to a hundred and fifty millions.* In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,- 000,000 worth of goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000.t Now, here are some faith-straining figures : Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000. Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000. That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annuall}' (for ex]iort some whither), is Avorth $1.75 ; that of the individual Australasian (for export some whither), $75 ! Or, to put it in another way, the Indian family of man and ■\vife and three children sends away an annual result Avorth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends away $375 worth. There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and others, which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product, both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.5() ; or, $37.50 for the family-aggregate. (Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate production would be nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once get started. We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Pi'ovince of South Australia — a seventeen-hour ex- cursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends ; among them a Judge who Avas going out on circuit, and was going to hold court at l>roken Hill, wherethfe celebrated silver mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken Hill is close to the -western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 *D. M. Luckie. tNew South -Wales Blue Book. ADELAIDE TAKES THE DIVIDENDS. 173 miles long, drawn westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said ; southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the border into NeAV South "Wales once more — to Broken Hill. It Avas like going from Boston southwest to Eichmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over the border — to Buffalo, New York. But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world. Its stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares, and comes next month and buys y(jur house at your own price, and moves into it herself ; where the coachman takes a few shares, and next month sets up a bank ; and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook. In a Avord, it was one of those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a rush, and Avhose needs must be supplied, and at once. Adelaide "Was close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide thre^v a short railway across the border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one ; it was not worth while for Sydney to arrange at all. The Avhole vast trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South "Wales furnishes law for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles — mainly through alien countries — to administer it, but Adelaide takes the dividends and makes no moan. We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level plains until night. In the morning we had a stretch of 174 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. " scrub " country — the kind of thing which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the settler ; then slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result ; she wanders here and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and uncohscious, and the searchers pass Avithin a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal " tracker," and he will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, and looks like a level roof of bush-tops with- out a break or a crack in it — as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might as Avell walk under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt out people lost in the, scrub. Also in the ''bush"; also in the desert ; and even follow them ovei- patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints. From reading Australian books and talking with the peo- ple, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's perform- ances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minutetiess and accuracy of observation in the matter of de- tective-work not fo'und in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of Vic- toria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing THE AUSTRALIAN TRACKER. 175 opossum, but knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or yesterday. And there is the case, on record, where A., a settler, makes a bet with B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A. will produce an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow aiid lets the trackei- see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B- then drives the cow a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions, and frequently doubles back upon itself ; and he selects diffi- cult ground all the time, and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. lie finally brings his cow home ; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is after ; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic x course, and ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. JSTow wherein does one cow-track dif- fer from another? There must be a difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a differ' ence minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a mem- ber of a race charged by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human intelligence. A TEST CASE. CHAPTER XVIII. It is easier to stay out than get out. — I'lidcVnhead ]Vils(iii's Xni' Calendar. THE train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and Avent twisting in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several varieties of gum- trees ; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied and barked like the sycamore ; some w^ere of fantastic aspect, and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pict- ures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid and strenuous antl shouting green. The effect was altogether be- witching. The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart. There was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, ^ve were told. Its foliage was as tine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scat- tered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine ; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet. On some part of this railway joui-ney we saw gorse and (176) A HALF CENTURY OF EXILE. 177 broom — importations from England — and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me which was which ; but as he didn't know, he had difficulty. He said he was ashaiTied of his ignorance, but that he had never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never hap- pened to get interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most of us have his defect. "We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality usually wanting in Australian blossoms. The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his information about the gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six shillings in his pocket — an adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head : he would stay until he was worth £200, then go back home. He would allow himself five years for the accumulation of this fortune. " That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet." As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation and said there was something very pathetic about this half century of exile, and that I wished the £200 scheme had succeeded. 12 1T8 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. " With him ? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is mod- est, and he left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out £700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded £20,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village ; he could go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land boom a while before." There it is again; pictur- esque history — Australia's specialty. In 1829 South hadn't a white man in it. the British Parliament erected it — still a solitude — into a Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery. Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all sorts of people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet- iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and in Australia In 1836 "HBKE I AM YET. A CORPSE THAT DANCED. 179 these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been accustomed to do in the aristo- cratic quarters of the metropolis of the world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor had a guard, and maintained a court. Koads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious values — on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during four or five years. Then aU of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn by the governor upon the Treasurv were dishonored, the land company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grip- sacks and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good im- itation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men. Adelaide was indeed almost empty ; its population had fallen to 3,000. During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced. The wool production began to grow ; grain-raising followed — followed so vigorously, too, that four or flve years after the copper discovery, this little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay hard prices for them — once $50 a barrel for flour — had become an exporter of grain. The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, de- siring to show especial regard for New South Wales and ex- hibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all 180 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteous- ness and distinguished well-deserving, conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill ; and South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks. Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a strong word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the American told me ; for I under- stood him to say that in the world there was not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was buy- ing the kangaroo-skin crop ; buying all of it, both the Austra- lian crop and the Tasmanian ; and buying it for an American house in New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's aggregate of skins would cost him £30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After the tanning, the leather takes a new name — which I have for- gotten — I only remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago, but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really en- titled to bear that high epithet — unique. And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one Pope, there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a " permit." Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as A HOME FOR EVERY ALIEN. 181 the French say, and were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect — mountains, crags, country homes, gardens, forests — color, color, color every- where, and the air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away into dim dis- tances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and beauti- ful. On its near edge reposed the city. We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble capital of huts and sheds of the long-van- ished day of the land-boom. No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built ; with fine homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful. There was prosperity in the air ; for another boom was on. Providence, desiring to show especial regard for the neighbor- ing colony on the west — called Western Australia — and ex- hibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteous- ness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie ; and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good, and waits. But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable home for every alien who chooses to come ; and for his reUgion, too. She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from 182 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. pretty nearly every part of the globe you can think of. Tabu- lated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cos- mopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census : Church of England, 89,371 Society of Friends, 100 Roman Catholic, . 47,179 Salvation Army, . 4,356 Wesleyan, . 49,159 New Jerusalem Church, 168 Lutheran, 23,328 Jews, 840 Presbyterian, 18,206 Protestants (undefined). . 5,533 Ccngregationalist, 11,882 Mohammedans, 299 Bible Christian, 15,763 Confucians, etc.. 3,884 Primitive Methodist, . 11,654 Other religions. 1,719 Baptist, 17,547 Object, . . 6,940 Christian Brethren, 465 Not stated, . . 8,046 Methodist New Connexion, . Unitarian, 39 688 Total, . 320,431 Church of Christ, 3,367 The item in the above list " Other religions " includes the following as returned : Agnostics, Atheists, Believers in Christ, Buddhists, . Calvinists, Christadelphians, . Christians, . Christ's Chapel, . Christian Israelites, Christian Socialists, Church of God, . Cosmopolitans, Deists, . Evangelists, . Exclusive Brethren, Free Church, Free Methodists, . Freethinkers, Followers of Christ, Gospel Meetings, . Greek Church, Infidels, Maronites, 50 22 4 53 46 134 308 9 2 6 6 3 14 60 8 21 5 358 8 11 44 9 2 Memnonists, . 1 Moravians, . 139 Mormons, 4 Naturalists, . 2 Orthodox, 4 Others (indefinite). 17 Pagans, 20 Pantheists, 3 Plymouth Brethren, 111 Rationalists, . 4 Reformers, . 7 Secularists, . 12 Seventh-day Adventists, 203 Shaker, 1 Shintoists, 24 Spiritualists, 37 Theosophists, . ' . 9 Town (City) Mission, . 16 Welsh Church, . 27 Huguenot, . 3 Hussite, 1 Zoroastrians, 2 Zwinglian, . 1 A HEALTHY RELIGIOUS ATMOSPHERE. 183 About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites : they are all there. And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it : they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter with the specter? "Why do they puff him away? He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world. Am, .£i '■' "NOT WANTED HERE." CHAPTER XIX. Pity is for the living, envy is for tlie dead.— Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. rHE successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty, the Bo- tanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great : the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat — these would all be there, in place of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.* When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in vajiety ot vegetation, as the desert of Sahara ; now it has everything that grows on the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world ; and wherever one goes the results ap- pear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually name a foreign country as the place of its origin — India, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, 'New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laugh- ing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be courteous * The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January, 1880, the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 173 degrees in the sun. (184) THE DINGO. 185 to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon ; or like a maniac who ^vas consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will extermi nate the rest of the wild crea tures of Aus tralia, but this one will prob ably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone Man always has a good reason for his charities to wards wild things, human or animal — when he has any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. will take my advice he will not kill all of them. In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog — the dingo. He was a beautiful creature — shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The dingo is not an importation ; he was present in great force when the wliites first came to the LAUGHING JACKASS. 186 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOU. continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe ; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors first ap- peared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for man — the white man. South Australia is confusingly named. All of, the colonies have a southern exposure except one — Queensland. Properly speaking. South Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000 miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its population ; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere — as elsewhere as they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is plenty of room. A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean. South Australia built the line ; and did it in 1871-2 when her population num- bered only 185,000. It was a great work ; for there were no roads, no paths ; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but once before by white men ; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried over immense stretches of desert ; wells had to be dug along the route to supply the men and cattle with water. A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to India, and there was telegraphic communi- cation with England from India. And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it meant connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could watch THE WHITE MAN'S WORLD. HOW THE TELEGRAPH WAS PUT UP. 189 the London markets daily, now ; the profit to the wool-growers of Australia was instant and enormous. A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers ap- proximately 20,000 miles — the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated ; still, but little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are here tabulated.* Miles. Melbourne — Mount Gambier, 300 Mount Gambier — Adelaide, 270 Adelaide — Port Augusta, . 200 Port Augusta — Alice Springs, 1,036 Alice Springs — Port Darwin, 898 Port Darwin — Banjoewangie, 1,150 Ban j oc wangle — Bata via, 480 Batavia — Singapore, . 553 Singapore — Penang, . 399 Penang — Madras, . . 1,280 Madras — Bombay, Bombay — Aden, Aden — Suez, Suez — Alexandria, Alexandria — Malta, Malta— Gibraltar, Gibraltar — Falmouth, . Falmouth — London, London — New York, Miles. 650 1,662 1,346 224 828 1,008 1,061 350 2,500 New York — San Francisco, 3,500 I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg to com- memorate the Eeading of the Proclamation — in 1836 — which founded the Province. If I have at any time called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it is a Pro^dnce ; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm ; it was the Province's national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the j^re-eminent holiday ; and that is saying much, in a countrj^ where they seem to have a most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's holidays ; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign ; his vote is the desire of the politician — indeed, it is the very breath of the politician's being ; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be bewil- *Frora " Kound the Empire." (George R, Parkin), all but the last two. 190 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. dering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but was not able to do it. You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commem- oration banquet — the Minister of Public "Works — was an American, born. and reared in New England. There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. No amount of horse-racing can damn this community. The mean temperature of the Province is 62°. The death- rate is 13 in the 1,000 — about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, and l^ew York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the average citizen of the Prov- ince, but there seems to be no death-rate for the old people. There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had all been present at the original Eeading of the Proclamation, in 1836. They showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward aspect, but they were young within ; young and cheerful, and ready to talk ; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted ; in their turn, and out of it. They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most animated way ; and the more the mayor gesticu- lates, and shouts " Sit down ! Sit down ! " the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and reminiscent and en- thusiastic they get ; and next, when they see the whole house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three THE OLD SETTLERS. THE COMMEMORATION BANQUET. 193 think the laughter is caused by the jokes they have been un- corking — jokes of the vintage of 1836 — and then the way they do go on ! And finally when ushers come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired — I could bang along a week ! " and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of their oratory, and whoUy unconscious of what is going on at the other end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully- prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity — "When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, of wis- dom, of forethought, of — " Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous " Hey, I've thought of another one ! " and at it they go, with might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away till the im- ploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity, too ; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over, in these days of their honored antiquity ; and cer- tainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the tell- ing and the hearing. It was a stirring spectacle ; stirring in more ways than one, for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic ; for they had seen so much, these time-worn veterans, and had suffered so much ; and had built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance ; and had lived to see the structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised for their honorable work. One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward ; things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent — remarkably so in some directions — and he 13 lU FOLLOWliS'G THE EQUATOR. said that along with their unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones ; and he considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced their invention of the boomerang and the " Aveet-weet " as evidences of their bright- ness ; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged to con- fess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in perfection ; that it had possibilities which they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, could not make it obey him ; but the aboriginal could. He told me some wonderful things — some almost incredible things — which he had seen the blacks do Avitli the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books. It is contended — and may be said to be conceded — that the boomerang was known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of this, Virgil and two other Koman poets are quoted. It is also contended that it was known to the ancient Egyptians. One of tAvo things .S is then apparent: either some one Avith >/(.fH^'^: a boomerang arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity be- fore European knoAvl- edge of the thing had been lost, or the Aus- ---■-''^" '^ "-—■■- -'-- tralian aboriginal re- ADAM AT PRACTICE. . i • t -ii invented it. It will take some time to find out which of these tAvo propositions is the fact. But there is no hurry. CHAPTER XX. It Is by the gooduess of God that in our country we have those three un- speakably precious things : freedom o( speech, freedom of conscience, and the pru- dence never to practice either of them. — Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. rEOM diary : Mr. G. called. I had not seen him. since IS'auheim, Germany — several years ago ; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had known there, or had casually met ; and G. said : " Do you remember my introducing you to an earl — the Earl of C. ? " " Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, just starting — belated — for the train. I remember it." " I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was not looking for. He had told me a while be- fore, about a remarkable and interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours, and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that day at ISTauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time ; but the thing that surprised me was this : when I in- troduced you, you said, ' I am glad to meet your lordship — again.' The ' again ' was the surprise. He is a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, ' "Why, what do you know about him ? ' and I understood you to say, ' Oh, nothing, except that he is the quickest judge (195) 196 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. of — ' Then we were gone, and I didn't get the rest. I won- dered what it was that he was such a quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess it out. He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good judge of those — no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else ; it must be that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of course you hadn't — had you ? " " Yes, I had." "Is that so? Where?" " At a fox-hunt, in England." " How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollec- tion of it. Had you any conversation with him ? " " Some — yes." " Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk about ? " " About the fox. I think that was all." " Why, that would interest him ; that ought to have left an impression. What did he talk about ? " " The fox." "It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an impression upon you ? " " Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of — how- ever, I will tell you all about it, then you will understand. It was a quarter of a century ago — 1873 or '74. I had an Amer- ican friend in London named F., who was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the morn- ing the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter before, and it seemed to me that I THE FOX HUNT. 199 could hunt a fox safer on the ground. I had always been diffi- dent about horses, anyway, even those of the common alti- tudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and there Ave should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by. " When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with heavy Avood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited, dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating ; then all of a sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by and disappeared in the forest on the right ; there was a pause, and then a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he came spur- ring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to see him ride ; he was a master horseman. He came like a storm till he was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall, then he stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails, and shouted like a demon : " ' "Which way'd the fox go ? ' " I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on ; for he was excited, you know. But I was calm ; so I said softly, and without acrimony : "' Which ioxV 200 FOLLOWING- THE EQUATOR. " It seemed to anger Mm. I don't know why ; and he thundered out : " ' Which fox ? Why, the fox ? Which way did the fox go ? ' " I said, with great gentleness — even argumentatively : " ' If you could be a little more definite — a little less vague ^ because I am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you will know even better than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify, and — ' " 'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand years ! ' and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man. " I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too — oh, all alive. She said : " ' He spolce to you ! — didn't he ? ' " ' Yes, it is what happened.' " ' I knew it ! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew he spoke to you ! Do you know who it was ? It was Lord C, — and he is Master of the Buckhounds ! Tell me — what do you think of him?' " ' Him ? WeU, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.' " It pleased her. I thought it would." G. got away from JSTauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the quarantine-bars on the frontiers ; and so did we, for we left the next day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but for the thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. BLe introduced me to the Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In PASSING ITALIAN CUSTOMS. 201 addition to a raft of ordinary baggage, we liad six or eight trunks which were filled exclusively with dutiable stuff — house- hold goods purchased in Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going to ship these through by express ; but at the last moment an order went throughout Ger- many forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined aU sorts of terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I was courier for the party — the most incapable one they ever employed. We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and the usual worries began ; everybody crowd- ing to the counter and begging to have his baggage examined iirst, and all hands clattering and chattering at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing ; it would be better to give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the language ; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a taU handsome man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the station-master — and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap and made a beautiful bow to me, and said in English — " Which is your baggage ? Please show it to me." I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it ; nobody was interested in it ; all the family's attempts to get attention to it had failed — except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable goods. It was just being opened. My officer said — " There, let that alone ! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk 202 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. all of the lot. Now please come and show me the hand-bag- gage." He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he gave orders again, in his emphatic military way — " Chalk these. Chalk all of them." Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were present getting their baggage chalked ; and as we passed down in review on our way to the door, I Avas conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy which gave me deep satisfaction. But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with German cigars and linen packages of Ameriean smoking tobacco, and a porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered it up in his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead of him past that long wall of passengers again — he chattering and exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at heart I was cruelly humbled. When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of it was at the worst, the stately station-mas- ter stepped out from somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him ; and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying to him the whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very > Q a Ki a -5 a o 3 a a O O f' gj/a* -^ f'/^4 -"■■,. y:i "^h^i* %' THE HONORS OF WAH. 205 angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian ; then suddenly took off his hat and made that beautiful bow and said — " Oh, it is you ! I beg a thousands pardons ! This idiot here — " He turned to the exulting soldier and burst out with a ilood of white-hot Italian lava, and tlie next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were moving in procession again — he in the lead and asliamed, this time, I with my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all. THE ROYAL LETTER. CHAPTER XXr. Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied. — Paddri'head WUson's Xnit Cuhndar. EFOEE I saw Australia I had never heard of the " weet-weet '" at all. I met but few men who had seen it thrown — at least I met but few who mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This feather — so to call it — is not thrown through the air, but is flung with an underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front of the thrower ; then it glances and makes a long skip ; glances again, skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good chance ; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards ; but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, and earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured distance of two hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards ; and so weightless a toy — a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect ; and not sailing through the accomodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff at every jump. It looks wholly impossible ; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the feat and did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government. (206) ABORIGINAL SCIENCE. 207 What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance. It must be art. But no one ex- plains what the art of it is ; nor how it gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any two-ounce thing 221) yards, either through the air or bumping along the ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says : " The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can he thrown is truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo-rat completely across it." (Width of Kenning- ton Oval not stated.) " It darts through the air with the sharp and menac- ing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground being some seven or eight feet When properly thrown it looks just like a living itnimal leaping along. . ... Its movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it." The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary an instrument as the boomerang. There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual reputation which they" bear-and have borne this long time in the world's estimate of them. They were lazy — always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a killing defect. Surely they could have in- vented and built a competent house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and Uved on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just plain savages, for all their smartness. With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and with no epidemic diseases among them tiU the 208 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. THE WHITE man's APPLIANCES. white man came with those and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept popu- lation down by infanticide — largely ; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population 80 per cent, in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as that before. For example, there is the case of the country now called Yictoria — a country eighty times as large as Ehode Island, as I have already said. By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the whites came along in the middle of the ' Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Ehode Islands : they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities ; indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily : from lis persons it faded to 34 in twenty years ; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 when the white man came ; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven years later, in 18Y5. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes scattered about the colony of Yictoria, but I THE PROPER MEDICINE. 2U9 ■was told that natives of full blood are very scarce now. Il is said that the aboriginals continue in some force in the huge territory called Queensland. The early Avhites were not used to savages. They could not understand the primary law of savage life : that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe is responsible — each individual of it — and you may take your change out of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law, and killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a child, in the early days, and in her " Sketches of Australian life," we get informing pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each other. Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. Praed says : " At first the natives retreated before the whites ; and, except that they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual event. "The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in words. Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where perhaps foot of white man has never trod — interminable vistas where the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic pendants like crimson stalactites ; ravines along the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows rankly ; level untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast and desolate ; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where the wattle, when in 14 210 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle. ■ • The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures ; of which in the day- time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the rustle of H wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack- ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher." That is the theater for the drama. "When you comprehend one or two other details, you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that profound wilderness miles and miles apart — at each station half a dozen persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always ill- nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had not bought it, and couldn't buy it ; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in authority, nobody competent to sell and convey ; and the tribes themselves had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak : "At Nie Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept." One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was up. It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was determined — and permanently : " There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my childish sense of justice. . They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some cases were destroyed like vermin. A CHRISTMAS PUDDING. 211 "Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an attack, parleyed with them from his house-door. He told them it was Christmas-time — a time at which all men, black or white, feasted ; that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed of — a great pudding of wliich all might eat and be filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was made and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic ! " The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was merely a technical departure, not a real one ; still, it was a departure, and there- fore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter. THE USUAL SPIRIT. and much more humane than a number of tlie methods which have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it. Its un- usual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of exhibi- tion of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our civiliz- ation, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had 212 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. no such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him to death ; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake ; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us. to it ; yet a quick death is lovingkindness to it. In more than one country we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns through the woods and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild sup- plications for mercy ; but this method we do not mind, because custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks ; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In the Matabeleland to-day — why, there we are confining ourselves to sanctified custom, we Ehodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes in London ; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old holy customs, and all we ask is that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the poisoner, " That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the contempt of posterity." I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and severely, but I stop there. I blame him for the indiscretion of introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it is every loyal man's duty ONE HUMOROUS THING. 213 to protect that heritage in every way he can ; and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The squat- ter's judgment was bad — that is plain ; but his heart was right. He is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and tried to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity ; for it deserves to be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence. This paragraph is from a London journal : "To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost the wretched natives years of toil, whilst the latter had a few five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea." You observe the combination ? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift release of his poi- soned pudding. There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.* -| 8 7 4 *See Chapter on Tasmania, ;30s(. CHAPTEE XXII. Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left liand, except a lady's watch. — PudcVnheacl Wilson's New (Julmdur. YOU notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Gor- don, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and one which must endure. Mate- rials — there is no end to them ! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties — varieties not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any picturesquenesses ; whatever you want in that line he can fur- nish you ; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but real- ities and authentic. In his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is everything — everything that a hu- man creature can be. He covers the entire ground. He is a coward — there are a thousand fact to prove it. He is brave — there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous — oh, beyond imagination ! he is faithful, loyal, true — the white man's records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger who comes begging for food and shelter — there is proof of it. He succors, and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on him only yester- (314)" TRAITS OF CHARACTER. 215 day — there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through along life — it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm — it is of record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, and ■will kill another of his children because the family is large enough without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain de- tails of the white man's food ; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little constellations, and has names for them ; he has a symbol- writing by means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes ; he has a correct eye for form and ex- pression, and draws a good picture ; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot mas- ter ; le makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model — if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years ; and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot ap- proach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. "Within certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest known to history or tradition ; and yet the poor creature was never able to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel that he could boil water in. He is the prize- curiosity of all the races. To all intents and purposes he is 216 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. dead — in the body; but he has features that will live in literature. Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Govern- ment, contributed to its archives a report' of his personal ob- servations of the aboriginals Avhich has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraor- dinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of those balls, properly placed, could have killed him ; " Yet he depended, with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his agility." The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not 1)6 a protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but slopes away from the center- line like a boat's bow. The difficulty about a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific " twist " is, that it suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes straight for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for half-an-hour, or less. Mr. Chauncy once saw " a little native man " throw a cricket- ball 119 yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen yards. "We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr. Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven ; EXPERT NATIVES. 21Y and was assured that he had sometimes done it over fom^teen. But what is that to this : " I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting upright on horseback — both man and horse being of the average size. The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld." I should think so ! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a side-twist over a bar that was five and' one-half feet high ; but he could not have stood still and cleared a bar that was, four feet high. I know this, because I tried it myself. One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art. Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore — dug them in the sand — wells that were "quite cir- cular, carried straight down, and the work beautifully exe- cuted." Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from such a depth ? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in on them ? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming impossi- bilities. Swallowed the sand, may be. Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the kangaroo, and other game : " As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye ; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the lower ani- mals, instantly arrests his attention ; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal or warn him of danger. A little examination of the 218 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending and descending is sufficient to inform Ijim whether one went up the night before loitliout coming down again or not." Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these people. He wouldn't have traded the dull- est of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented. All savages draw outline pictures upon bark ; but the re- semblances are not close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely- accurate in form, attitude, carriage ; and he put spirit into them, and expres- sion. And his pic- tures of white peo- ple and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pic- tures of the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, both the ladies and the gen- tlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people. His place in art — as to drawing, not color- work — is well up, all things considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both ; also in group- ing and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His " corrobboree " of the Australian wilds reappears in De Mau- IIIS PLACE IN .\RT. SURGERY AND STOLIDITY. 219 rier's Belgravian ballrooms, with clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the cori'obboree further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. And well enough as to intention, lut — my word ! The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that. All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, Avho had been a surgeon before he became a clergyman : 1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, collect the hot embers of the fire to- gether, and deliberately place his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long- drawn guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange conduct, he only said, ' Me carpenter-make 'em ' ( ' I am mending my foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which had been torn off by a tea- tree stump, in which it had been caught during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above de- scribed." And he proceeded on the journey the next day, " as if nothing had happened" — and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a surgeon and then do his own surgery. 2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his chest, just missing the heart, and jDenetrated the viscera to a considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action gradually toward the back ; and when I examined him I could feel a hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I made a deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly digested, so to speak, by 220 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. the maceration to which it had been exposed during its four months' Journey through the body. The wound made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small cicatrix ; and after the operation, which the native bore without flinching, he appeared to sufiEer no pain. Indeed, judging from his good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not materially an- noy him. He was perfectly well in a few days." But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that the patient enjoyed — whatever it v\ras : 3. " Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I ex- amined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about two inches of the partially calcined 1 ■dM fj> k . -■' 1 "I. V ^'^' < f''