CHAPTER II.
Increase of the Settlement.—Separation of the States.—Ecclesiastical Communities.—Concord among Sects.—Houses and Towns.—Penal Colonies.—Southlanders’ Hospitality.—Mode of receiving Company.—Feasts.—Animal Food.—Tame Animals.—Surprise at English Customs.—Carnivorous Propensity.—Lighting the Streets.—City of Bath.
The settlement, on being thus (about five or six years from its commencement) freed from all external molestation, increased in prosperity, and extended itself rapidly in several directions inland. Towards the sea they had no temptation to advance; being separated from it by an extensive district of great sterility, and of difficult passage. Inward, the abundance of fertile land, and the numerous lakes with which our travellers had been struck, and which afforded easy intercourse even between settlements at a considerable distance, invited them to overspread the country as fast as their rapidly-increasingpopulation required. Their numbers seem to have advanced at about the same rate as those of some of the North-American settlements.
The division into separate states was not, as the travellers found to their surprise, the result of discord, but had been planned and commenced by their founder himself. He had, it seems, foreseen, or fancied that he foresaw, an ultimate necessity for such a separation; and he judged it best that it should begin even in his own lifetime, before there was any advantage in it, except that of setting an example and establishing a precedent for amicable separation. He founded, accordingly, within forty years from their first settling, a second perfectly independent community, on the opposite side of the lake, near which the first had been located. The original settlement still forms one of the states, and retains the name of Müllersfield, which it received from the founders: the new one, from its singular beauty of situation, he called Eutopia (fine place), probably with something of a covert allusion also to the well-known fabulous Utopia (no place). The most perfect friendliness and freedom of intercourse continuedbetween the two states; and, without owning any common authority, they consulted together, like any two individual neighbours who are on friendly terms, respecting any matters in which they had a common concern: and the principles of the procedure having been clearly laid down, and practically established, the example was afterwards repeatedly followed as the colonization extended itself; and fresh swarms, as it were, issued forth, till the number of the separate states amounted to eleven.
A similar principle has been acted on with respect to ecclesiastical communities. The number of separate churches amounts to no less than seventeen; though some of these consist chiefly of converted native tribes, together with the missionaries residing among them. These churches are, of course, not coextensive with the several states, but on the footing of the early churches founded by the apostles, who instituted several distinct ones,—for instance, in the single province of Macedonia; viz. those of Philippi, Thessalonica, Berœa, &c. They are all, and have ever been, with a few temporary exceptions,in concord and communion with each other, but under distinct governments, and differing in some non-essential customs and institutions. They seem to have made good a favourite maxim of Müller’s on that subject;—that men are always most likely to live in friendly agreement in essentials, when they are not so closely connected as to be obliged to agree in matters intrinsically indifferent. “Two men,” he used to observe, “who may be very friendly as neighbours, might quarrel, if they were obliged to live together, as to the hour at which they should dine,—the keeping of the windows open or shut, &c.;—in which one party would necessarily be compelled to give way to the other: whereas they may be very good friends while each follows his own taste in such matters.”
We shall subjoin such scattered extracts as our space will admit, of those portions of our travellers’ Journal which illustrate the more strange and singular particulars of the habits of this interesting people.
Nearly all their houses—in the towns, all, without exception—are flat-roofed, like those in the East; whether from a fancy of imitating the custom they read of in Scripture, or for the convenience of having an airy unconfined place to walk or sit on. In the towns, there is, as in those of the East, a thoroughfare for foot-passengers along the tops of the houses; and, in the larger towns, the streets are crossed occasionally by light bridges.
The houses in the towns, and all but the meaner sort of cottages in the newly-settled part of the country, are without any chimneys opening to the air: the smoke from the fireplaces of one or two, or more, adjoining houses, passes into a sort of chamber (swept from time to time), from which it is forced out by machinery into a flue branching off into pipes, which carry it back to the bottom of each fire; so that it burns its own smoke. When the visitors were describing to some Eutopians the European towns, these people remarked that London, for instance, though so much improved since the times of which they had historical records from their ancestors, must still havea very smoky atmosphere; and that, to walk along the streets, shut in by houses on both sides, must be very unpleasant, for want of open prospect and free circulation of air.
It was with much difficulty that these people were brought to understand the nature of the colony from which their visitors came; not that they were in general dull of apprehension, but they could scarcely satisfy themselves that they had rightly understood the accounts given them. To people a new settlement with convicted criminals,—to form a new nation of the scum and refuse of mankind,—appeared to them so preposterous, that for some time they could not help supposing they must have misunderstood their informants. “To bring together a number of villains,” they said, “to a country where good character is not the rule, but the exception, allowing them free intercourse with each other must be the most effectual mode of hardening and confirming them in wickedness, and entailing the same character on successive generations:” and though it wasexplained to them that one great object of the plan was to reform the criminals, the accounts which truth constrained their visitors to give of the actual state of morals in the colony did not seem to satisfy them. They had wondered at first, they said, that such a scheme should have been originally thought of, and now they wondered still more that it should be persevered in.
The travellers were entertained with the kindest and most liberal hospitality, according to the notions of the Southlanders (such is the general name by which the inhabitants of all the states distinguish themselves from their European ancestors and other Europeans); but their hospitality differs considerably from ours. When residing as guests with any family, they partook of the family meals; but when invited to a party, as they frequently were, to meet the principal gentry of the neighbourhood,—who were anxious both to show attention to the strangers and to gratify their own curiosity,—it was found that there is no such thing inthis country as what we call a dinner-party; that is, the company did not sit down together to a regular meal, but partook of refreshments something more of the character of an English luncheon, which was provided in all the superior houses in a separate room. The guests dropped into this eating-room irregularly, and seating themselves in small promiscuous parties at small tables set out there, were served by the attendants with the various dishes provided. They stayed as long as they pleased; conversed occasionally with their neighbours, as we do at an irregular luncheon, and returned to the “company-room” (as it is called), without ceremony, whenever they chose. No refreshments were brought into this last, except such as correspond to what we have at evening parties,—such as cakes, lemonade, wine and water, ices (in those districts which are near the mountains), dried or fresh fruits, &c.: this they consider as what they call the most “honourable”—what we should call “stylish”—mode of receiving company.
When our habits were described to them, they expressed their wonder that a civilizedpeople shouldmake feasts as the savages do. “The half-reclaimed native tribes,” they said, “invite their friends whom they wish to honour to a solemn feast, at which, having provided a large quantity of their best provisions and liquor, and exerted what skill they have in cookery, the guests all seat themselves, with sundry formalities, round the food that is dressed, and regale themselves altogether; but with the Southlanders such an arrangement as this is only adopted as a convenience, when there is a large number of persons to be fed in the least troublesome way.” They accordingly promised, laughingly, to take their visitors to something like an English dinner-party; and the party to which they invited them (it was during the season of hay harvest) consisted of about two dozen mowers, with several of their wives and children, seated round a long table, with the master at the head of it, and supping on an ample supply of substantial food, served up in five or six huge dishes.
The cookery among the higher classes is for the most part plain and simple, and the few who have refined much upon the luxuries ofthe table are exposed to something of the same sort of contemptuous ridicule that the being called a dandy incurs among us. But a circumstance which early attracted the attention of the visitors was, that they found the animal food to consist (besides eggs, cheese, and various preparations of milk) entirely of fish and game. The pork, which they often met with, they found to be always the flesh of the wild swine: these were derived from those brought over by the first settlers, who turned them all loose into the woods; and the chase of the wild-boar is eagerly pursued by many of the gentry. Wild cattle are also met with in some parts, descended from such as had accidentally strayed; and the flesh of these is eaten, as well as that of the kangaroo, emu, and other indigenous animals: but the visitors one day, in the course of conversation in the eating-room, expressed their surprise at having never seen any mutton served up, though sheep were not uncommon. The Southlanders had never heard the word mutton; but, when it was explained to them that it meant the flesh of the sheep, they replied, “That they kept their sheep verycarefully for their wool, and that there were no wild sheep in the country: but when it was explained to them that we kept both sheep and oxen chiefly for the purpose of feeding on their flesh, they were both astonished and disgusted that we should have retained such abarbariancustom (for they regard themselves as many degrees more civilized than their European ancestors) as that of killing and eating domestic animals.”
It was urged (and they freely admitted it) that the loss of life is no greater to a tame than to a wild animal: “That is true,” they said, “as far as theanimalis concerned; but it makes a great difference toourfeelings. A tame animal is a sort of friend, a member of the family: it seems a sort of treacherous breach of hospitality to kill in cold blood a creature which you have reared and fed from its birth, and then devour its flesh.” They expressed still more surprise (for they are keen sportsmen) at learning that some Europeans were vehement in their censures of hunting, fowling, and fishing, as cruel; and yet fed without scruple on beef and mutton. “We declare war,” they said,laughing, “perhaps an unjust war, against wild animals, and kill them as enemies; but you assassinate your friends.”—“We urged,” says the journalist, “the necessity of keeping within bounds the numbers of our domestic animals; and expressed our apprehension that the Southlanders would in time find themselves quite overstocked with sheep, oxen, and fowls.” They replied at the moment, merely, “that no such apprehension had ever occurred to them.”
But, on returning to what we should call the drawing-room, we soon found that much interest was excited by the accounts of what appeared to this most singular people our strange custom. We were surrounded by ladies, who inquired, with an amusing mixture of good-humoured ridicule, wonder, and horror, into all the particulars respecting mutton; and one lady surprised us by asking, among other things, what kind of flesh was that of horses, dogs, and cats, and by what name we called it. When informed that, though we kept these animals, we never thought of eating them, she replied, “Why, I had understood that you atetheflesh of domestic animals, and that you found itnecessaryto do so, for fear of theiroverstocking you with their numbers! How comes it that you are not overrun with horses, dogs, and cats?” To say the truth, we were rather dumbfounded by this question; having, in fact, assigned as a reason what we had been accustomed to hear and repeat without any examination into its soundness. We could only allege that, in all these points, we conformed to what had always been the practice of our ancestors and theirs, and of almost all other nations: in this we were borne out by the testimony of those of the company who were well read in antiquities.
Several of these people, indeed, are good scholars, and well acquainted with the history (as far as was known three hundred years ago) of other nations, besides their own. They adverted to the descriptions of Homer’s heroes: one of them would, when about to entertain his friends, have a sheep brought into his tent, cut its throat with his own royal hands, and then, with a skilful hand,—which the poet never fails to celebrate,—cut it up into slicesand broil them on skewers over a charcoal fire. They remembered, also, the accounts given of some East-Indian tribes, who, when their relatives are grown old and infirm, kill them, to save them from lingering decay, and hold a pious and solemn feast on their flesh. But as these customs had worn away in the early progress of civilization, they wondered that a still further refinement had not, among us, confined the carnivorous propensity of man to wild animals exclusively, and led us, as it had them, to regard with disgust the eating of (as they expressed it) one of the family, whose eggs, milk, labour, or wool had long ministered to our comforts.
The description of our cities in their present condition, as contrasted with that of the sixteenth century, and of our whole mode of life, was exceedingly interesting to these people; but nothing did they admire more than our description of the gas-lights. In the midst, however, of their enquiries and admiration, one sly-looking old gentleman observed, “thatif we would honour him with a visit in his city of Bath (capital of a state of the same name), he would excite even our admiration by the spectacle of an illumination still more splendid.” In our visit there, where we were most kindly received, our host walked through the streets with us, showing us the principal buildings, and introduced us into the Senate-house, where the public business was going on.
On our return to his house, he asked us (this was about seven o’clock in the morning) what we thought of the lighting of the streets. We answered, that we observed neither any lighting of them, nor need of it, as it was a bright sunshine. “And is not this,” said he, “as good a light as your gas? We have not,” he added, “gone so far as you in arts; but we have the advantage of you in availing ourselves of the gifts of nature; for, as you must have observed, we are all alert and about our business at day-break; while you, by your own account, allow three or four hours of daylight in the spring and summer to be utterly wasted, while you are abed; and then go about your business at night, like owls and bats, but withouttheir advantage of being able to see in the dark; so that you are forced to light yourselves with gas. It was,” said he, “a very ingenious contrivance you were telling us of t’other day, by which you distil fresh water from the sea; but pray do you, when there are plenty of fresh springs, let all the water run to waste, that you may have the triumph of distilling from the brine?”
We endeavoured to explain to him the causes of our late hours; but we were astounded when he had made us compute the saving in oil, and gas, and tallow, which might be effected by a general resolution touse daylight as far as it would go.
The city at which this conversation took place is named from its celebrated warm baths, supplied by springs issuing from a mountain in the vicinity; one of the greatest curiosities in the country, both from the natural phenomena it exhibits (being evidently an extinct volcano), from which it received its name of Mount Peril, and from the extraordinary tradition of the superstitious ordeal formerly connected with it.