Mr. Dooleete’s Station—Sheep-shearing—Patriarchal Life improved—Snakes—Drought.
Ididnot see much of station life in Australia. I was to have visited Mr. Angas’s in South Australia, one of the show-places of the colony, but the heat prevented me. However, Mr. Dooleete, of Adelaide, very kindly took me to one he has in conjunction with a friend, about 100 miles from Adelaide, and I much enjoyed the trip. We started early in the morning from Mr. Dooleete’s romantic residence among the hills, and were swiftly carried to the junction where the Melbourne train arrives. From here we were to take with us a gentleman who was purchasing horses for the Indian Government, Australia having a breed of horses particularly suited for our cavalry out there. A gentleman in Adelaide told me, when his fatherwas a Congregational minister at Bury St. Edmund’s, in Suffolk, he persuaded the eccentric Rowland Hill to come and preach for him. There being no Great Eastern Railway in those days, Mr. Hill travelled, as was his wont, in his carriage and pair, and was naturally anxious as to who was to look after his horses.
‘Oh,’ said the minister, ‘they will be taken care of by a member of my church—a horse-dealer.’
‘What!’ said Rowland Hill, lifting up his hands in amazement; ‘a horse-dealer a member of a Christian Church! who ever heard of such a thing?’
The horse-dealer who joined our party was, if not a member of a Christian Church, at any rate a particularly good judge of a horse, and was at once able to recognise the animal he considered useful for his work.
It was a pretty country through which we travelled. Here and there we came to a station, around which was rising up a small town; but mainly we saw nothing but forest and scrub with few signs of life. We stopped at a small town situated on Lake Alexandria, and, after lunching at an hotel kept by a worthy colonist from Essex, who seemed perfectly contented with his lot, we got on board a small yacht,the management of which was left to bulky blacks belonging to the mission station at Port Macleay, on the other side. A small crowd of black children greeted us on our landing, and then we climbed up into a commodious waggonette drawn by two horses, and in a couple of hours had reached the end of our journey. All the way neither house nor road was to be seen. On our left was the lake, far ahead was the Murray River, and on our right seemed to be a grand park many miles in extent, only a little more parched-looking than a park at home, and everywhere strewed with trees that had fallen, which would have fetched a good price for firewood in the towns if they could be got there. There were sheep by the hundred, and there were horses roaming, as it were, monarchs of all they surveyed. The scene was slightly monotonous. Now and then we came to a rough fence, through the gates of which we had to make our way, and I was not sorry when we dashed up to a handsome residence on the brow of a hill commanding a fine view of the lake. We had brought with us a respectable young woman, who was to wait on us, and a good supply of eatables, so that my fears on that important head were soon set at rest. One does hear strange stories of life at a station. I heard of a colonial governor who, meeting one of the original squatters in theenjoyment of all the luxury of a Melbourne Club, asked him how, after that, he could put up with such lenten fare at home. He replied to the effect that the governor was quite mistaken—the squatters did live well; and, by way of clinching his contention, he went on to state that he had repeatedly seen at the same time on the table both sardines and pickles! I think we had neither, but we lived as luxuriously as in any gentleman’s house either in the colony or at home. We had the best of everything, and the place was furnished in the most sumptuous manner, including even a piano, which must have come a long way, and which could find but little to do, as the house was only open when we were there, and was again locked up as we drove away. Visitors are rare in that part of the world; and as to the doctor, if his services were required, the patient would have to wait a good while. Death, or, what is more likely, recovery, might occur before the doctor could arrive. There was little time to lose and early in the morning Mr. Dooleete and his friend were driving in a buggy across the plain to look at the horses. After I had had my breakfast I toiled down in the sun to where the sheep were penned in previous to being partially shorn. They had all been driven in the night before, and the men—blacks, who had come fromthe missionary station, with their wives and little ones—were lodged in tents on the shore of the lake. They were stout and dull-looking, with wives, as a rule, still stouter and duller-looking, with the exception of one young woman—a very pretty half-breed.
A white man was the superintendent, and he had a dry and dusty time of it as he did his duty—that is, divide the sheep, the Merinos from the Leicesters, I believe. First, they had to be driven into yards—and here the sheep-dogs were specially serviceable—till they were all collected, to the number, if I remember aright, of five or six thousand (of course, they were not all in one pen); then they were driven along a little lane, fenced in, where the superintendent stood at a double gate, to divide the sheep according to their breed. This was done by blocking one gate and opening the other side as the sheep approached. Thus separated, they were taken, a few at a time, into the shearing-shed, a large brick building, with the sheep in the middle and the shearers on each side. Operations were at once commenced. The shearer selects his animal, holds it up between his legs, and quickly cuts off the wool, which is swept off the stone floor by women, who separate it and put it into sacks, while the frightened animal, released from the graspof his persecutor, bounds through an opening in the wall and rejoins his companions who have undergone a similar process. It is warm work this, and every now and then the workman stops to have a drink of water—a beverage available, fortunately, to any amount. As soon as the sheep are shorn, the wool is packed up and sent off to market. A small steamer, which goes slowly up and down the lake, is thus utilised for commercial purposes. I returned by that steamer. It may be sure; it certainly is slow. Being at this station was a vastly pleasant change to me. I had had quite enough of city life. It may be very lonely to live on that hill, in that fine house, with no neighbours with whom to chat, far from shops and post-office and newspapers; but with books and one’s family it must be a noble existence. There may be stormy winds out there, for I saw many a fine tree blown down; but mostly the country round rejoices in blue skies and an unclouded sun. In that region there is no particular chance of overcrowding at any rate, just at present. The worst of the squatter is that he does not require much labour. A very few hands suffice for him—except at the shearing season—to look after his flocks and herds. You realize in such a place something of the life of the Patriarchs, only considerably improved. The owner of a stationmust spend a good deal of his time in the saddle, and a horse, I imagine, is infinitely to be preferred to the camel. The noble steed enjoys himself as he springs along the turf. At all times, whether lying down or rising up, whether loaded or not, whether ungainly walking or hideously trotting, a camel is a picture of bitter woefulness and abject despair. The station, too, has its innocent amusements. I have a friend who has a station about a hundred miles from Melbourne. To him came when I was there a city gentleman, who betted that he would kill a hundred snakes within the hour, and he shot ninety-eight! A fond mother who lives in a fine station in New South Wales, told me how once upon a time she had to snatch away her little one sleeping on the lawn, as a black snake had crept up to within a foot of its precious head. Then there is a drought, and your flocks have to be taken miles to water. After all, there is plenty of excitement—for those who seek it—even in station life.
His Persecution—His Usefulness—His Intellectual Ability.
TheChinese in Australia have a grievance. We have opened up China against the wishes of their rulers, and when they take a leaf out of our book, and commence opening up the world, we turn round and refuse them admission. It is so in America, and it is so in Australia. At every election meeting in Victoria when I was there, the candidate had to declare that he was ready to vote for the exclusion of the Chinese. This is how democracy uses its power. The Chinaman is civil, and obliging, and hard-working; besides, he is sober; but the Australians won’t have him at any price, and raise the cry of Australia for the Australians, which means that no poor English emigrant may go there to take lower wages than hismates rather than starve at home. As each colony is isolated, this will mean in time that the work of each colony is to be done only by its own workmen. Already in Queensland I see that a complaint has been made because some workmen from Sydney have been brought in to work. Australia wants opening up. It has only a sparse population on its borders, and in many parts the workman, who is master of the situation, will not work himself, nor allow any one else to do so. The general public suffer, but that is their look-out. Prices are kept up by Protection, and the protected further protect themselves by keeping out the labourer anxious to earn an honest living. As the Chinese are weak and friendless, it is against them chiefly that this policy is enforced. I heard one day of a sturdy workman who had applied for relief. When asked what he had been doing of late, he replied that he had been picking grapes. Questioned why he had given the occupation up, he answered that he was working with Chinese, and the boss expected him to work as hard as they did.
Australia wants to compete with the cheap wine-sellers of Bordeaux; but she is sadly handicapped in this and other ways. The farmer finds his corn-fields eaten up by the parroquets, because he can hire no cheap labour to scare away the birds. In the bigtowns it is the Chinaman who supplies the people with cheap fish and vegetables. I own to a liking for the ‘heathen Chinee.’ ‘Ah,’ said a well-known London Democrat to me after I had returned home, ‘I see what you want. You want to reduce the British workman to the level of the heathen Chinee.’ ‘No,’ was my reply. ‘I want to bring the British workman up to the level of the heathen Chinee. He is economical, industrious, sober, and always civil, and one cannot say that in all cases of the British workman.’ And in the northern district they are sadly wanted. While in Adelaide, I read a letter inThe South Australian Register, in which the writer emphatically declares that if any development of the northern territory is to take place, it must be by the Chinese, or not at all. The writer remarks: ‘If the Chinese are excluded or kept out here, all development will cease, and the northern territory will just resolve itself into a great Government camp, where some will be employed to watch the telegraph wires, while others are scraping the rust off the wheels of the railway carriages.’ And then he goes on to speak of the bogus telegrams and Munchausen reports that caused the Chinese scare. This northern territory, be it remembered, which has been tacked on to South Australia and governed from Adelaide, embraces an immense extent of country,and contains an area of about 323,620 square miles. Its principal harbour is Port Darwin, which is one of the finest in Australia, almost equalling that of Sydney. It is rich in mineral resources, and gold and rubies. The climate is tropical, and the soil in many parts is very rich. Already it contains many great cattle stations. The writer I have referred to says: ‘I have had a nearly three years’ residence here, trying to develop a large run for a Victorian owner. This enables me to speak with complete knowledge of the climate, and the kind of labour suitable for the country; for out-of-door work the European may be dismissed at once.’ Clearly, in such a case, the Chinaman is the right man in the right place. But ‘No,’ say the Queenslanders; ‘if you allow the Chinese there, they will cross the border and come to us.’ Again, says an intelligent Adelaide editor to me: ‘It cannot be; the Chinese are many, we are few—they will take possession of all Australia.’ Surely it would not be a difficult thing to limit the extent of Chinese immigration. A Chinaman cannot disguise his nationality. Dress him in Christian clothes—histout ensemble, his oval face, his brown skin, his high cheek-bones, his little twinkling eyes, will betray him, to say nothing of his pigtail and his pigeon English. By all means, in the interests ofcivilization, I would say, let him come. It would be better for Australia and the world that it should be opened up, than allowed to remain a waste.
In Adelaide I have seen a splendid specimen of what a Chinaman may become when he is naturalized and turned into a British subject. His name is Mr. Way Lee, and a more agreeable man I have not seen for a long time. His shop was full of China ware and Chinese tea. He had on a black coat, a white waistcoat, a light pair of trousers, and his pigtail was rolled into a neat plait at the back of his head. In his drawing-room he had a piano, and a portrait of her Majesty in a very rich gold frame. His only peculiarity of costume was as regards his small feet, which were encased in Chinese slippers. He offered me a glass of wine much as an ordinary Christian would have done; I refused it, but, however, accepted a Manilla cheroot, and we got into a pleasant talk. He told me that he was thirty-seven; I should have guessed that he was not more than twenty-five. He had two extraordinary, highly-coloured religious Chinese pictures, which made me believe that he was a follower of Confucius. However, I was deceived. ‘I go,’ said he, with a bland smile, ‘to the Baptist, the Congregational, the Wesleyan Churches—any vere my friends take me.’
Not a bigot, at any rate, is Mr. Way Lee. In Adelaide he has won golden opinions. He has traded there for years; is straightforward in all his doings; has deservedly gained the reputation of being an exemplary citizen—strict in his regard for municipal rights and regulations, and vigilant in his endeavours to enforce the maintenance of law and order. And his own Government have conferred upon him the dignity of a Mandarin. He is renowned for his charity. Well, he has succeeded in business, and has an establishment in Sydney which, naturally, he desires to visit, but by crossing the border into New South Wales he renders himself liable to a heavy fine of £100. He has written to Sir Henry Parkes on the subject, but the Free Trade Premier tells him he cannot help him. Why, asks the paper which has taken, and rightly taken, up his case, should Mr. Way Lee, who has established as strong a claim upon the goodwill of his fellows, and the protection of the State as any of his trade competitors, be placed at a serious disadvantage in carrying on his business, because he happens to have been born in the Flowery Land? Why should he be held up to the ridicule and scorn of his fellow colonists because he hails from China? The time will come when Australia will be heartily ashamed of conduct which savours moreof the narrow and intolerant spirit of the dark ages than of the enlightenment and liberality of modern times. There are not many such decent Chinese in Australia. Whose fault is that? Certainly the Caucasian has set the heathen Chinee a very sorry example. ‘Government have inspectors,’ said Way Lee to me; ‘Government can put them down if they gamble and be wicked.’ Surely the Caucasian can take care of himself; at any rate, he has the credit of being able to do so. The little almond-eyed heathen cheats him when he is drunk; then let him keep sober. I have been in an opium den; I have been in a gin-palace. The opium den is a heaven compared with the latter. In Australia every drunken larrikin thinks it good fun to push down or ill-treat a Chinee. Such brutality makes one’s blood boil. Nor can it be well with a people where such ruffianism exists in its midst. Australia is big, and so big that the Australians themselves are little acquainted with it. Surely there is room enough for the Chinaman, and he can open up such parts of it as are unhealthy for the European. Mr. Way Lee, in every respect, is as good an Australian as any I have met with; his manners are unexceptionable; he goes into society. Such as he do not level down, but are levelled up, and Australia might do with China a large and profitable trade. Iquestion whether the leaders in the anti-Chinese crusade are really in earnest; they join in it as a means to an end; by means of it they trust to get place and power. All I could do was to assure Mr. Lee that we in England were not responsible for such treatment as he had received; that we had little else to do than to supply the colonies with governors and a fleet. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said; but he felt the hardship, nevertheless.
Intellectually the heathen Chinee is coming to the front. In describing the results of recent examinations at the University of Melbourne, a newspaper writer says: ‘Dr. Bevan’s eldest son (Willett) carried off no less than nine prizes at the Church of England Grammar School, including the Dux and Speaker’s Prize, another son of the doctor’s also doing well. It is not without satirical suggestion, however, that Cheong (who was second Dux) beat Bevan in English spelling and New Testament Greek. It is curious, to say the least of it, that a Chinese should excel an English boy inEnglishspelling, and that the son of a convert from heathenism should surpass the son of a Christian pastor in an examination upon the textbook of the Christian faith.’
As to the usefulness of the Chinee in Australia I am glad to supplement my remarks with an extractfrom a letter of a gentleman in theLondon and China Express.
The writer, Mr. Sampson, an intelligent resident of many years in China, says: ‘During a recent visit to Victoria, during which I made it my particular business to inquire into matters connected with the Chinese, I found that the objection to Chinese immigration is by no means universal in that colony. The principal objectors are the labour-aristocracy and the politicians who seek to gain their votes; on the other side are the employers of labour generally—farmers, fruit-growers, masters of steamers, women burdened with domestic cares, and sometimes even diggers and unskilled labourers, who are not bound to accept the doctrines dictated by a labour union. “We don’t want the Chinese to go,” said a labouring man to me, at a wayside inn, some ten miles from Sandhurst; he was an Irishman, and was celebrating the news of the defeat of theTimesin the matter of the forged letters. “We don’t want the Chinese to go; we want them to stop here, and grow cabbages for us.” This pithily-expressed view of the question I found very prevalent. A lady fellow-passenger in a steamer said to me, with a sigh, “Ah, if women had votes there would be no restrictions on the immigration of Chinese.” She valued them asfaithful and dutiful domestic servants, and as polite, obliging, and honest hawkers of vegetables and other small household requirements. I visited a large orchard in which every grape had been sucked dry by birds, and the parrots were making sad havoc amongst the apples, pears, and peaches. I remarked to the owner that in China a couple of men could be employed to keep away the birds at ten shillings a month. “Ah!” was the reply. “Here I should have to pay eight shillings a day, and then I should have to stay on the grounds myself to see that they did their work.” The following characteristic story was told me: An Australian, being about to leave the colony for a year or two, instructed a broker to let for that period a piece of land which he owned. The broker secured a tenant, and the owner agreed to the terms without inquiring who the tenant was. When the time arrived for him to sign the legal documents he found that the proposed tenant was a Chinaman. ‘He wished to repudiate the bargain, but matters had advanced too far for him to do so. On his return from England he found that the Chinese tenant had improved the ground so much that he said, “If ever I have to go away again I will let a Chinaman have the use of my landfor nothing rather than accept rent from a white man.” These anecdotes are, of course, only isolated cases, but they serve to illustrate opinions, and to show forth facts of importance.’
What the Larrikin is—A Social, Moral, and Political Danger—A Natural Foe of the Chinaman.
Onceupon a time, so the story runs, an old gentleman was walking along the streets of London, when he was accosted by a little boy, who asked him for a light for his cigarette. The old gentleman, of course, was shocked, and indignantly remarked that when he was young little boys were not allowed to smoke. ‘Oh,’ replied the lad, ‘there ain’t any boys now; they are all young men; that’s what we call ’em, and old men we call thundering fools.’ This feeling, unfortunately, exists wherever there are civilized men and women. In savage countries it may be that the hoary head is a crown of honour; but where the schoolmaster has gone abroad the first impression made on the mind of the favoured scholar is that he is a man and hisfather but a fool. Old customs, old traditions, somewhat interfere with this idea in English towns and villages, yet the increasing tendency of the age is in another direction. All kindly correction has been denied the youth, especially of the working-classes. Let the lad ever so richly deserve a flogging, father or mother threatens ‘if you dare to lay a hand upon my boy,’ and so the master spares the rod and spoils the child. In some quarters the boy soon begins to earn his living, and then he spends his wages and his time in bad company, and is a terror to father and mother, and master, and all with whom he has to do. It is to this phase of civilization is due, in that highly-favoured country of Australia, the existence of the larrikin. It was while I was out there that there died the policeman who invented the name. In the course of his arduous duties he had to catch and bring before the magistrates a group of troublesome lads. ‘What were they doing?’ asked the magistrates. ‘I caught them a-larrikin,’ was the reply, and ever since then the name of larrikin denotes a lad in a hobbledehoy state, who is a torment to himself and everyone around. Worst of all, the chances are that he develops into a rough, and brutal, and unmannerly man. As it is, he is a nuisance everywhere, but a special danger in Australia in a social, and moral,and political point of view. In a new country naturally the young people assert themselves more than in an old one. You see this in America as well as in Australia, but in the latter country the press does its duty and points out the danger. In one of the best of the Australian papers—The South Australian Register—a leader-writer, in recommending the volunteer movement, remarks that there is no hardship in asking the Australian young man to take his place among the defenders of his country. On the contrary it would be of great physical and moral benefit to him to undergo the training of a citizen soldier. ‘Impatience of control, lack of discipline, a contempt for authority, the absence of a sense of duty—these are the prevailing faults of the youth of the day, and it is certain that a course of military exercises would have a bracing effect upon the moral nature, helping to make the young men better sons, better husbands, better fathers—in every way better qualified to discharge the important functions of responsible citizens in a State where all possess equal political rights and perfect freedom of action.’ As I write I read in a New South Wales paper: ‘Larrikinism is on the increase in the suburbs of Brisbane. Constant complaints are made of insults to pedestrians, drunken quarrels and profane language. On Sunday thehotels a short distance from the city are visited, and under the influence of the potations indulged in the most unholy scenes of rioting and revelling take place on the roads. Church-goers are subjected to insult. Decent parents are obliged to shut their children within doors to prevent their ears being assailed by the oaths and curses freely uttered by these lawless pests. The police generally are nowhere to be seen, and when present are indisposed to arrest the offenders. Our laws are badly applied.’
The larrikin is the natural foe of the heathen Chinee; not that he dislikes his imputed vices, but his real virtues. A friend of mine was walking near the suburbs of Melbourne, and he came across a Chinaman working in his garden, where only parsley was growing. ‘How is this?’ said my friend. ‘Why don’t you grow vegetables and flowers? I should have thought they would have paid you better.’ ‘Ah, sir,’ replied the heathen, ‘if I were to grow vegetables and flowers, the larrikins would come and pull them all up; so I can only grow parsley.’ And thus the people of Melbourne suffer, for those of them who have no gardens of their own have to depend for their supplies on the ever civil and industrious Chinamen. Since I have returned home, I see a Melbourne judge declared that it was unsafe towalk the streets of Melbourne by night or by day, and that that is so is, I take it, mainly due to the larrikins, who exist in such numbers as to defy the power of the police. When a larrikin gets drunk and quarrelsome he naturally goes in for the Chinese; they are few, and he and his friends are many. They are fond of fighting, and a Chinaman is a man of peace. It is fine sport for the larrikin to trample down and devastate the well-kept garden of the heathen Chinee, to get into his little shop and spoil his goods, to knock about and ill-treat the son of the Celestial Empire; nor does he object to murder one if he has the chance, as probably by means of perjury and hard swearing he will be able to escape the punishment due to his crime. By night the larrikins sleep in the parks, which are the glory of all the Australian cities, and the scenes there, so I was informed, are disgraceful. It is not safe for a respectable person to walk across the parks alone of a night. As in London, almost all respectable people live out of town, and they have but a faint idea of what goes on in their absence. The climate allows anyone, at any rate during the summer months, to sleep in the open air, and the rascals of the community for the time being may each one say for himself:
‘I am monarch of all I survey,My right there is none to dispute.’
It is one of the drawbacks of the Australian climate that it gives the larrikin a chance such as he has nowhere else. Walking one evening with a friend in one of the parks which adorn Adelaide, we came to a young tree which had the bark cut off in a circle round the trunk—in other words, it was ring-barked. My friend indignantly exclaimed: ‘See what the larrikins have been up to!’ That tree was doomed to die. It was a valuable one. It had been planted for a special purpose—to add to the attractions of the park, and to be, when fully grown, a benefit to the entire community. It had leaves on. It did not seem to have suffered much damage; but it was doomed to die, nevertheless. As a resident in Adelaide, my friend was very much provoked at the sight; and no wonder.
Wherever you go you meet the detestable larrikin, but it is in Melbourne that he chiefly abounds. Fathers and mothers are much to be blamed on his account. There is an old commandment about honouring thy father and mother, to which, if I were a Melbourne parson, I should devote many sermons; but, alas! in a young community, with many questionable emigrants, where the fever of gold-getting in any way rages fiercely, it is not always that a young man can honour his father and mother. At any rate, theevil exists, and Church and State between them will have hard work to put it down. The larrikin delights in mischief for mischief’s sake. He is not necessarily very poor or wretched. Perhaps he gets too much flesh meat, and a vegetarian diet would suit him better. Dr. Dale tells us a good deal of the high spirits of the Australian youth—a phase of Australian life which did not strike me at all. Was he thinking of the Australian larrikin? Such high spirits are not to my taste. In one respect the larrikin reminds one of the days of Tom and Jerry as depicted in the vivid caricatures of the late George Cruikshank, but Tom and Jerry were gentlemen, and that makes a great difference. Rather I should take him to be a son of Belial, and thus give him a more ancient origin. His delight is to join himself to a gang of twenty or thirty to break street lamps, to wrench off knockers, tear down fences, mob and maltreat policemen, hustle respectable people at all hours by day and by night, and to assault some poor pedestrian, especially when a little the worse for liquor, and rob him. ‘Scarce a week passes,’ says a writer in the Colonies, ‘without some larrikin outbreak.’ It was even with difficulty that I could steer clear of him at times. I fear we have too much of the larrikin at home, but that is no reason why he should be allowedto taint the virgin soil of a new world. Our colonies ought to be an improvement on the old country. What is wrong at home they should avoid. Let them imitate our virtues. On a new soil they have a better chance.
Fruit Supply—Tintarra Wine—Mr. Thomas Hardy—The Temperance Question.
One of the charms of South Australia is the fruit, which, in the shape of grapes, and pears, and peaches, and apples, you see everywhere displayed, and at astonishingly low prices. Grapes are sold at five pounds for sixpence in the retail shops, and I have seen magnificent grapes three pounds for sixpence, which in London would be held cheap at half-a-crown. If the colony is ever to be very rich, its fruit trade will be no inconsiderable factor in the consummation so devoutly to be wished. The farmer and the squatter have to contend with difficulties which often end in bankruptcy, owing to the terrible droughts common in this part of the world. But if the merchants of Adelaide will send us their spare fruit, we in Londoncan take any amount and at very remunerative prices. I saw during my tour the vineyards of Mr. Thomas Hardy, within a short distance of Adelaide, and I must own that the place is well worth a visit. Though of small extent (the area is only 60 acres), Bankside, as the vineyard is called, yields a more varied produce, and furnishes a better illustration of the capabilities of the soil and climate of the district in which it is situated, than any other estate in Australia. Mr. Hardy is a fine specimen of a horticulturist, and well deserves the splendid silver trophy which ornaments his drawing-room—and of which he is justly proud—given him as one who has done more than anyone in the colony to develop its resources. He has made good use of his grapes. We are not all teetotalers, and he grows more grapes on his various estates than the Australians can eat, whether as grapes for dessert, or in the shape of raisins and currants. With the rest he makes wine. He is proud of his wine—proud of the fact that even at Bordeaux, in the heart of the enemy’s country, as it were, he won a gold medal for its excellence; proud of the fact that his celebrated Tintara wine has found a good place in the London market. As I have seen it manufactured I can testify as to its purity. He was sending this year 45,000 gallons to London. He would prefer to keep itlonger in his cellars, but the Londoners want it, and he cannot keep them waiting. Why not sell the original grapes? asks the teetotaler. I reply, He grows more grapes than the community can devour with a decent regard to its health, and as people exist who are mistaken enough to think Paul was right when he recommended Timothy a little wine for his stomach’s sake and his often infirmities, Mr. Hardy thinks he is a public benefactor if he supplies the public with a genuine wine, the produce of the grape and of the grape alone.
Mr. Hardy is no ignoramus; he is a much-travelled man, and has studied the vineyards of France and Spain and California. In his establishment he uses the best machinery—which of course is French—for the distillation of the purest and strongest spirits of wine, to which purpose such grapes are devoted as are not good enough for the production of wine of the best quality. As to the manufacture of wine, that is a very simple affair. The grapes are picked and placed in carts, and carried to the mill, where they lie fermenting in a mass; the juice is then pressed off into slate vats, a brown and by no means attractive-looking fluid. The red wines take longer to ferment, as the outside skin contains the colouring matter. In the case of the white grapes, the stalks are cut awayby a machine invented for the purpose, otherwise the astringency of the wine would be too great. After a time the juice is put into casks, where it lies stored in cool and capacious cellars till it is required by the outside public. In some of the casks I saw the wine had been kept ten or twelve years. Last year Mr. Hardy made in this way 160,000 gallons of wine. He began life as a gold-digger. He commenced growing grapes for wine in 1853, and has been at it ever since. Another charming vineyard is that of Sir Samuel Davenport, to which Thomas Binney, when in Australia, was always ready to retreat. It is very interesting, this original vineyard of Mr. Hardy’s. Since 1853 he has purchased several vineyards in various districts, the most important one being Tintara, about 25 miles to the South of Adelaide, where he has 150 acres under vines. It is in the town cellars that most of the blending is accomplished. A good deal of wine is bottled off at Bankside, but the main bulk of the generous fluid, to be poetical, is carted away in casks, on waggons which are as un-romantic as the horses which draw them or the men who drive. There is little of the picturesque in the manufacture of Australian wine.
But as to the grounds, no words can describe their exuberance. Some of the pears Mr. Hardy exhibitedat the London Exhibition weighed three pounds each, and were afterwards, I believe, eaten by Royalty. The Bankside property consists of a very deep chocolate soil, resting on a strong clay. Irrigation is easily practised over this small area. Water is raised from the bed of the Torrens River to the top of the bank, and, that being higher than the surrounding country, is easily distributed. It is curious what good a little water can accomplish. In one part the ground rises, and as water will not run uphill—at any rate, in Australia—the trees have to do without, and it is astonishing to note the difference between the trees and the fruit they bear, compared with the others, although but a few feet from each other. Everywhere around me were oranges ripening for the home market. ‘An acre of oranges is a fortune, is it not?’ I asked, with my head full of what I had read. ‘Ah,’ replied Mr. Hardy, with a smile, ‘those books are written by men who have land to sell.’ Then we came to the lemons. What a wonderful plant is the lemon tree! You may see the ripe fruit growing side-by-side with the blossom. It is productive all the year round, like—I will not say whose; let the reader fill up the blank—like Mr. —’s great mind. As to the quinces, I never saw anything like them, and though I intimated that inEngland we did not make much of them, Mr. Hardy assured me that in his opinion quince jam was the finest in the world. The citrons, however, were still finer than the quinces. We had also quite a show of olives; they grow in rows, and, like the almonds on the estate, they are made to do duty as fencing-posts. A vine in the open air over the house attracted my notice; it had spread over a surface of many yards, and was a good illustration of what may be done on Australian soil. Surely every Australian ought to grow his own grapes; and then as to making them into raisins and currants, nothing seems easier under such a sun. The grapes at Bankside are gathered and laid on boards to dry. Those for raisins for the table are laid on gravel—a custom Mr. Hardy borrowed from the Spaniards. It is not found necessary to turn them, the under grapes drying as well as the top ones, from the heat of the gravel floor. The turning of grapes into raisins is a more complicated process than merely growing them for the market. The bunches of ripe fruit are placed in oblong sieves and plunged for twenty seconds into a tank of boiling lye made from ashes, which are got from the vine prunings. The dipping takes the bloom off the fruit, but causes it to dry in one-third the time it would otherwise take. They are thenspread evenly on wooden trays and exposed to the sun. When the grapes are about three-parts dried, they are removed to kilns, heated with hot-air pipes, and the drying is completed in from twelve to twenty-four hours, when they are taken out and rubbed partly free of most of the stalks. The next process is to run them through a winnowing machine which still further strips them of their stalk. They are then packed up in boxes by girls and pressed with a handy screw-press, six at a time. Currants are treated in a similar manner, minus the dipping. The raisins intended for the table, I may mention, are also not dipped, as that would spoil their appearance by removing the bloom. In the grounds a good many sultanas are also grown; quite equal to the fruit imported. Altogether, at Bankside, they turn out about twenty tons of dried fruit every year.
Australia, Mr. Hardy anticipates, will be able to equal the best wine districts in the world. A similar remark may apply to its almonds and raisins and currants. Adelaide rejoices in a trade which bids fair to become greater every year. As the Select Committee upon Vegetable Produce reported at the end of 1887: ‘If the whole area of our colony now devoted to the growth of wheat were one vast vineyard, the yield would not be equal to the deficiencyin the wine production of France through the devastation of the phylloxera.’ Hence South Australia, to the disgust of Dr. Hannay, calculates much on her growing wine trade. Statistics furnished by Mr. Hayter, the Government Statist of Victoria, give evidence of the way in which wine in South Australia is superseding the consumption of spirits. This may account for the sobriety which seems to characterise South Australia as compared with the rest of the colonies. Altogether, Adelaide may claim to be the fairest city of Australia, and to contain the kindest and best-mannered people—so far as they may be judged by the passing stranger at their gates, and if I was in search of an ideal life I should say it would be that of one who sits under his own vine and fig-tree, as the South Australian grape-grower does.
While writing of wine, it may be as well to sum up here what I have to say on intemperance in Australia. No little excitement was produced in Adelaide when the writer was there by a telegraphic report of a speech by Dr. Hannay on his return from Australia, as to the amount of drinking in Adelaide, certainly the most sober of all the prosperous cities on the Australian Continent. As usual, the telegraphic report was wrong, andDr. Hannay assures me that what he did say was that he regretted to find that so many gentlemen in Adelaide looked to the increase of the Australian wine trade as a source of colonial revenue and colonial prosperity. As a devoted temperance reformer, it is clear Dr. Hannay could not have said less. It was an opinion which he was quite at liberty to utter, and with which no one could find fault. Had the telegraphic abridgment been correct, he would certainly have been to blame, as, undoubtedly, Adelaide is a sober city—that is, sober as compared with Sydney and Melbourne. In the older cities there are yet traces of the times when, as during the madness created by the discovery of alluvial gold, miners, who in England had been content with beer and porter, would drink twenty pounds’ worth of champagne at a sitting, pouring it all into a pail, and asking every passer-by to have a drink; but that awful time of extravagance is past; however, the taint of it remains, and there is still a startling amount of drunkenness, especially among that part of the population who can least afford it—the wage-earning class, who, in Australia, if they are sober and industrious, have advantages in the way of investment which assuredly they lack at home. Workmen as a rule are paid high wages, and, when they receive a large amount at atime, as they often do, do not know what to do with it. In too many cases, in the interior more especially, they still adhere to the custom of knocking a cheque down, as they call it. The workman repairs to the nearest public-house, gives his cheque into the publican’s hands, and then begins a drunken orgie in which everyone is asked to join, till the landlord tells him his money is all gone, gives him a bottle of rum, and then kicks him out of the house, often to perish by the road-side, thus once more illustrating the old remark, ‘that the tender mercies of the wicked are very cruel.’ One publican is said to have made £40,000 a year at one time in this way. The temperance reformers in Australia have, it is very evident, a wide field of usefulness before them. Many of the Australians spend enormous sums of money in drink. I travelled with an Australian, who seemed to me never what is vulgarly called the worse for liquor, yet whose weekly bill on board the steamer amounted to between four and five pounds, a sum of money which assuredly might have been better employed. In one respect Australia sets us a good example. It has taken to building temperance coffee hotels, or palaces, as they term them, on the grandest scale. As the meals are all served up without intoxicating drinks, these places must have a good effect,as the guest, however fond of drink he may be, is compelled for the time to be an abstainer. Adelaide unfortunately has no good temperance hotels worthy of the name.
It is a great question in Australia as to which is the finer city—Melbourne or Sydney—and the inhabitants of each are wonderfully jealous of each other. You offend a Melbourne man if you have anything to say in favour of Sydney, and at the latter city you hear little in favour of Melbourne. Both cities show too many public-houses, and both cities contain far too many drunkards; but in Sydney they are an especial nuisance, as every house has, as a rule, two rooms on each side the principal entrance which are used as bars, and which all day long, very much to the annoyance of the traveller, who is compelled to use them, are filled by a disreputable crowd, boozing from morning till night. It is the same as regards the theatre—the bar is as conspicuous, and quite as well filled, as the theatre itself. In many cases the bar is hired and carried on as a separate speculation, independently of the hotel proprietor. Two or three showy barmaids are engaged, a screen is put before the door to shield it from public gaze, and inside there is a license of which few people have an idea. The girls sell the drink, and they drink themselves.As the evening advances the hilarity is of a somewhat boisterous character. Now and then a girl comes from behind the bar and waltzes round the room with some admirer—while she leers over his shoulder at another. The utmost freedom is permitted, and hundreds of idiots thus waste their time and spend their money, and injure their health, and learn how easy and how pleasant is the road to destruction. Fortunately, the bars are closed at eleven, and they are shut up on a Sunday, or they would be a great deal more mischievous than they really are; but the mischief they do is very great. In Australia the population is of an exceedingly shifting character; men are always on the move from one place to another, and of an evening, as they are strangers in the city and have no friends, and time hangs heavy on their hands, they have recourse to the nearest bar. It is there the sharper always takes his victim. In every case, and I heard of several, in which inexperienced travellers had been fleeced, I always found that the dupe had first been taken to the bar and treated to a drink. As I came back I fell in with a poor steerage passenger who had been done out of £20, a sum he could ill afford to lose, by a repetition of the confidence trick. He made the acquaintance of the sharper by means of the latter offering him a drink.Hundreds and thousands of pounds have been lost in this way. There is no place so dangerous to a ‘new chum,’ as the emigrant to Australia is called, as the bar of a public-house. Alas! in Sydney these pitfalls are on every side; I think that there is only one hotel in the town without its bar.
It was the old custom to sell lots of land by auction at which a good deal of wine was drunk, under the excitement produced by which many a purchaser bought his whistle at a dearer price. ‘If such lunches cost £40,’ writes one of the oldest of the Melbourne colonists, Mr. Westgarth, ‘which was given to me as a moderate average, who suffered? argued their justifiers; the exhilaration they produced gave £400 more to the net proceeds.’ The brisk liquor appreciably blew up the prices, as the same lots, cut up and rearranged, would come again and yet again under the hammer; and no doubt many a poor speculator burnt his fingers in that way, especially when we remember how at one time there came such a wonderful depreciation of property in what its admirers still love to term ‘Marvellous Melbourne.’ It may be that there is less drinking now, and that people go to business and to sales with less muddled brains. But no one can walk in the shipping quarter of Melbourne on a Saturday afternoon, or stop at a Sydney hotelfor a day or two, without feeling that in either town there is vast room for improvement in the matter of drink. In both places there is a fearful amount of gambling and betting and wild speculation, and undoubtedly a good deal of that goes on under the influence of the drink. Many of the suicides which, as I told the people of Adelaide, were such a matter of wonderment to me, are to be attributed to drink, or the depression caused by it when the excitement is over, and the poor shattered drinker is, indeed, a cup too low and quite unable in his dazed condition to face the stern realities of life. Travelling one day from Brisbane to Sydney, the writer met a gentleman, of whom he asked if Mr. Blank was known to him.
‘Yes, well,’ was the reply.
‘I am going to see him.’
‘Why,’ said the gentleman, ‘he committed suicide only a little while ago; and the Western Australian papers are full of the details.’
There was no need to say any more. The poor fellow had gone out as an emigrant. At home he had been in the habit of drinking to excess, and in Australia the loneliness and difficulty of his life was too much for him; he drank to excess, and then took away with his own rash hand his blighted life. In Australia the number of such blighted lives through drink is far too plentiful.
AsI was seated in the dining-saloon of theOrizaba, an Australian, pointing to a particular table, remarked to me that there were three millionaires dining there. I am no company for such. They are out of my sphere. However, one of them kindly invited me to dine with him in Melbourne. I would like to have accepted the invitation. Alas! I was engaged to dine elsewhere. One would like to dine with a millionaire. Tom Hood evidently did, or he would not have told how
‘The company ate and drank from gold,They revelled, they sang, and were merry;And one of the gold sticks rose from his chair,And toasted the “Lass with the golden hair,”In a bumper of golden sherry.’
‘The company ate and drank from gold,They revelled, they sang, and were merry;And one of the gold sticks rose from his chair,And toasted the “Lass with the golden hair,”In a bumper of golden sherry.’
According to popular report, the great millionairesof Australia are Mr. James Tyson, six millions; Sir William Clarke, three; and Mr. George Lawson, one and a half.
James Tyson, the well-known Australian millionaire, was born near Sydney in 1823. His father was the scion of a good old Cumberland family, but having offended his parents by marriage against their wishes, he found things so unpleasant at home that he enlisted in the army. His discharge was purchased in 1818, when he emigrated from England in the service of Mr. Commissioner Bigge, who was sent out to investigate the charges against Governor Macquarie. In time, he commenced his career as a farmer, and died. His son, after assisting his mother on her farm, entered the service of a firm of agriculturists, on a salary of £30 a year. Many were his ups and downs. At one time he had to go to a station for a draft of cattle, which were to be placed under the care of himself and brother. James Tyson, to prepare himself for his journey, cooked as many rations as he could carry on his horse, and of money he had just one shilling, which was demanded of him by the ferryman for taking him with his horse over the Murrumbidgee. Declining to part with his shilling, he swam over the river, if not at the risk of his life, greatly to the detriment of his rations. Again, wefind him in another part of the colony, where, while his brother kept a dairy, James went jobbing and cattle-driving, until a few of his cattle were fat, and fit for market. He afterwards, with the neighbouring stock-owners, sold a lot at Sydney. He and his brother, in time, obtained possession of a run near the junction of the Lachland and Murrumbidgee rivers. In 1851, when the gold discoveries were made, James Tyson commenced cattle-driving to Sandhurst, where he opened up a large business as a butcher, wholesale and retail, and where he made a good deal of money. After carrying on business successfully till 1855, he made some purchases of stations, and next extended his operations to Queensland. He afterwards acquired several immense stations on the Warrego, where, as in Victoria and New South Wales, he now holds large areas of freehold land. His mother is naturally very proud of her distinguished son. When the Duke of Edinburgh was in the colony he was taken to see the old lady. ‘There,’ said the old woman, as the Prince bade her good-bye, ‘you can tell your mother you have shaken hands with Jem Tyson’s mother,’ and no doubt the message was faithfully reported.
Mr. Tyson is a broad-shouldered, robust man, standing 6 feet 3½ inches high. He has never had aday’s illness in his life; has lived much in the open air, and prefers it; is a keen sportsman, and a good shot. Nevertheless, he is a good deal of a vegetarian. On one occasion, it is said, according to the custom of the country, in the course of his travels he rode up to a station for a night’s lodging. ‘Oh, is that you?’ said the woman of the house. ‘You can go and hobble yourself,’ throwing him the leathern straps by means of which the Australian colonists hobble their horses for the night. The millionaire is reported often to indulge in an economical supper of boiled grass, and hence the woman’s allusion. A stricter teetotaler there is not in Australia. Mr. Tyson has never indulged in a glass of wine or spirits in his life, nor has he ever smoked an ounce of tobacco. It is to be questioned whether he would have had such a successful career as he has marked out for himself, had he indulged in the drinking customs which were the disgrace of all Australia at one time. He owes his good fortune almost entirely to his energy, his untiring industry, and his great self-denial. He is a true friend and a staunch protector of the aborigines on his various stations, who are all much attached to him, and render willing service. He is of a very retiring disposition, and has always refused to allow parliamentary or any other public honours to bethrust upon him. He is a bachelor, and mingles but little in society—is, however, very fond of children, and has always been a liberal supporter of all local schools and other popular institutions, though generally averse to having his name paraded before the public. The exact amount of his wealth is not known, but he is supposed to have amassed from four to six millions, and, on one occasion, he offered the Government of Queensland the loan of half a million towards the construction of a trans-continental railway. Those who know him best, say of him as Disraeli said of Gladstone, ‘He has not one redeeming vice.’ It is to his credit that his temper is so even that, under the most trying circumstances, no profane word has ever been heard to escape from his lips. On one occasion, riding late at night to one of his many stations, he was refused admission by the keeper, to whom he told his name in vain, as the man did not believe him. He slept out that night, and, when he returned in the morning, rewarded the man handsomely for his obedience to orders. Of course Mr. Tyson is not very popular. He is too wealthy to be that. Impecunious people always make a dead set at a millionaire, and are very wrath if he does not see his way to set them on their legs again, or, at any rate, to give them a start in life. ‘The simplicityand frugality of his habits,’ observes Mr. Henniker-Heaton, M.P., from whom I borrow most of the particulars of this sketch, ‘should disarm the envy of those who might be disposed to covet his great riches.’ Alas! the reverse is the case. I found few who had a good word to say of the richest man in any of the Australian colonies, and all sorts of wild stories are told of him—even as to his exploits when in a state of alleged drunkenness. Mr. Tyson has, at any rate, one fault, and that is he is a very great hater of women; he even dislikes, I was told, to employ married men. ‘He sees no good in having a man who is under the influence of a woman.’ Clearly he holds that no man can serve two masters. Poor fellow! I asked:
‘What is to become of all his wealth?’
‘It will help to make work for the lawyers,’ was the somewhat cynical reply.
We admire Mr. Tyson for his abstinence, and for his energy, his industry, and economy. In this respect he sets the Australians a good example, but he is not a model to be followed in every respect. The best of us, it is to be feared, are poor creatures after all.
Increase of the Colonies—Further Emigration Required—New South Wales and Free-trade—The Australian Type.
Statisticsare not pleasant reading. They are so easily twisted to serve the writer’s purpose rather than to develop the real truth of the case, but to please certain readers who are always wanting to know, I give the Australasian statistics for 1888 laid before the New South Wales Parliament, which show another year of steady progress on the part of these colonies. The total population of Australasia on December 31 last is estimated at 3,672,803, Victoria standing highest with 1,090,869; New South Wales, 1,085,740; New Zealand, 607,380; South Australia, 313,065; Queensland, 387,463; Tasmania, 146,149; Western Australia, 42,137. The total increase for the year was 126,077, the Queensland ratio of increase being 5.59; Victoria, 5.28; New South Wales, 4.10; Tasmania,2.57; New Zealand, .66; South Australia, .21; while Western Australia showed a decrease of 351 persons, or .82 per cent. There was a total of 26,584 marriages, 122,982 births, and 48,400 deaths last year; the average birth-rate per 1,000 being 34.05, and death-rate 13.40. The number of immigrants and emigrants during the year was respectively 24,889 and 188,230, the excess of emigrants being 65,599. The Victorian net gain by immigration was 41,803; that of New South Wales, 21,545; Queensland, 11,805; whilst in South Australia there were 113 less immigrants than emigrants, Western Australia being on the same side of the balance to the extent of 1,196, and New Zealand to the extent of 9,175. Of sheep the Australian Colonies possess 96,487,811. Of these New South Wales has 48.20 per cent.; Victoria, 11.20; Queensland, 13.93; South Australia, 7.41. Horned cattle, total 9,248,949, New South Wales possessing 17.54 percent.; Victoria, 14.19; Queensland, 50.32; South Australia, 4.65. Horses amount to 1,136,683, New South Wales having 21.88 per cent.; Victoria, 21.31; Queensland, 607; South Australia, 14.95. The imports for the colonies in 1888 were: New South Wales, £20,885,557; Victoria, £23,972,134; South Australia, £5,413,638; Queensland, £6,544,324. Exports: New South Wales, £20,859,715; Victoria,£13, 853,763; South Australia, £6,984,098; Queensland, £5,226,929. Total imports and exports for the whole of the colonies, £121,859,908, or £33 15s. 2d. per head. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia exceeded this average, whilst the other colonies were considerably below it. The total tonnage entered and cleared at Australian ports amounted to 14,689,766 tons, of which New South Wales represented 4,765,419 tons; Victoria, 4,307,883 tons; South Australia, 1,973,651 tons.
In answer to the question why Australia does not attract a far larger European emigration, the reply is, the mistaken policy of the Australian Parliament. The working man in Australia is opposed to it, and M.P.’s truckle to his wishes. An Australian M.P. is paid, and he naturally wishes to retain his pay, and hence he bows to the majority, whether right or wrong. If English emigrants went to Australia, as they do to Canada or America, the Australian colonies would flourish, labour would be cheap, agriculture would prosper, and the railways would be filled with passengers whose payments would enable them to yield good dividends. Mr. Macfie, a gentleman who resided ten years in Australia, and who is a master of Australian statistics, in a paper read before the Royal Colonial Society last year,contended that the most urgently needed aid to Australian development is selecting British and European population suitable for settlement on the land, and for raising productions for which there is a large demand in the colonies, the United Kingdom, and in foreign countries. Under the present system of government, this seems to be quite out of the question. He describes, for instance, the operatives of Victoria as organized into a compact phalanx under leaders who have succeeded by dogged persistence in imbuing the colony with the notion that they constitute the party which controls the voting power at elections. ‘So widely,’ says Mr. Macfie, ‘is this assumption believed, that candidates for the Legislative Assembly, to whom a Parliamentary salary or political influence is a consideration, defer with real or affected humility to the wishes of the Trades Hall Council of Melbourne. The inevitable outcome of this state of political subjection on the part of members of the House, and in many cases of the Government also, is the injustice of class legislation. On the unjustifiable plea that the tendency of emigration is to reduce the rate of wages in the colony, the working-classes make no secret of their determination that the Government shall be prohibited from taking steps to encourage immigration of any kind, or even todiffuse information systematically, by pamphlets and lectures throughout Europe, in localities where thousands are thirsting to learn about Australia, and who would gladly proceed thither at their own cost, and engage in profitable branches of land culture.’ It is really discouraging to find that while the Argentine Confederation receives an addition to its population on an average of 7,000 a week, and the United States 10,000, Australia, with its splendid climate and other advantages, only attracts a little over 1,000 persons, old and young, male and female, per week. This state of things is mischievous in many ways. It is not pleasant to find that, as Mr. Herbert Tritton pointed out, the Australasian Government debts increase in a very much larger ratio than the population. On this head Mr. Macfie makes a rather alarming statement. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘recently been informed that a large investor in Australasian securities, deeply impressed with the necessity of investigating this subject for himself, proceeded to Australasia for the purpose of doing so. He returned to England convinced that in most of the self-governing colonies the working classes were barring the door against any effort whatsoever being made to promote immigration, extend widely agricultural settlement, and thus develop export wealth to Europe and America. He arrived atthe conclusion that there was a tendency in the Local Governments and Parliaments to pander to the prejudices of those who indiscriminately discourage the introduction of even desirable immigrants. The belief was forced upon him that it is no sufficient answer to the fears of the bondholders to say that the money lent by them goes into reproductive works, such as railways. He saw railways constructed to serve an extremely sparse population in country districts, instead of a population twenty times the size, which would have rendered the line proportionately remunerative, had as much care been taken to attract people from Europe as to obtain British capital to build new lines for the limited number of settlers established in the districts through which they pass. The result of that visitor’s observation was that he sold out—I think, with unwarrantable haste—his interest in Australasian stocks on his return home. Whether his views are correct or erroneous is not the question.’
The one colony that seems to flourish most is New South Wales, under a system of Free Trade, which, however, I fear is losing its popularity every day. ‘Compared with the other colonies,’ said Sir Henry Parkes, when I was there—‘the only statesman in the colonies,’ observed a gentleman to me one day—thepopular Premier of New South Wales, ‘New South Wales was the oldest, the richest and the most powerful. Ten or twelve years ago Victoria was far in advance of this colony—a quarter of a million of population in advance of us; but now we were in advance of her, and intended to keep in advance of her. In no other country in the world,’ said Sir Henry, ‘had anyone a chance of making a fortune as he had in New South Wales, and yet how melancholy is the spectacle, only peopled, as it were, on the fringe, with cities congested, while the land remained untilled; with all Europe waiting to buy if the colonies would but attract people to settle on its vacant lands and till its soil.’
Naturally you ask whether there is arising a distinct type of Australian. I think there is. The young Australian is tall, dark, has high cheek-bones and prominent teeth. Dr. MacLaurin, who lived a long time in Australia, and who is able to form a better opinion on the subject, in a paper read before the British Association, says in New South Wales and in Tasmania three generations have been exposed to the new conditions, and the greatgrandchildren of the first settlers cannot be distinguished from Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen, by anything in ‘configuration and type.’ There is no essentiallyAustraliantype ofman. It is true that we find a certain ‘sallowness in complexion’ among the inhabitants of the colonies, but this may be observed also among those who have been only a few years resident there. It is due, Dr. MacLaurin thinks, much more to the effects of the sun’s rays on the skin than to anyanæmiaarising from climate. The alleged ‘lankiness’ of the Australians is also very much a myth. Dr. MacLaurin can find no trace of it, after twenty years of experience in connection with assurance society examinations. He thinks, if it exists at all, it is only during the period of youth, when growth goes on more rapidly and under healthier conditions than in Europe. ‘The fact is, the Australian youth are, as a whole, better fed, better clad, and better lodged than the inhabitants of Europe. They are not so much exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, and they are not obliged to work too hard or too early.’ Hence the tendency to a ‘tall, active, and athletic figure.’ With regard to muscular vigour, the Australian has proved himself well able to hold his own in the struggle for existence. If we think only of the great love of out-door life, of athletic sports, of racing, rowing, cricketing, and the like, manifested by all native Australians, we shall come to the conclusion that they certainly are not deficient inmuscular force. Dr. MacLaurin thinks the native Australian has no need to fear comparison with the youth of the mother land. The professors in the universities and colleges assure us that Australians are quite as bright and capable as the youth in British schools of learning; and Australian young men who study in Europe are always able to take a high position in intellectual competitions. Some of them, indeed, have recently taken the very highest places. When this subject is studied from the standpoint of longevity and fertility, we find the same excellent results. It is true that the deaths among persons over sixty-five years of age are more numerous here than in England, but every decade the standard of age is increasing, and when we take the general death-rate, we find that New South Wales is decidedly healthy as compared with any part of Great Britain and Ireland. In like manner the native Australian is as able as anyone to resist disease, which is only another way of saying that his physique is thoroughly healthy and capable of great endurance.
People at home have curious ideas as to Australian distances. I was asked to see a woman employed in some charitable institution near Sydney. When I got to Sydney, on asking for that particular locality, I was told it was seventy-two miles off.
One sees a great many people who enjoy life in Australia who could not live at home. That is one great charm of a country which, as has been well remarked, would get on very well if the inhabitants would grumble less at the climate and dam the rivers more.
The whites and the blacks do not seem yet to have hit on amodus vivendi. It is true the savant does not do as he did in the old times, coolly shoot a black when he wanted to add a skull to his collection. But while I was in Queensland a couple of whites did fire on a black, and a black did kill a white. Under the new constitution to be granted to Western Australia, the aborigines are to be placed under the care of a Commissioner, independent of the Parliament, and responsible only to the Governor. £5,000 a year is to be devoted to the purpose, but it is not clear how a body without police organization can watch and protect the inhabitants of a thousand square miles. I quote a case which occurred to show how matters are at present. In March last the blacks near Kimberley speared the horses of a man named Howard. Whether Howard had given them just cause I am unable to say. Howard himself evidently thought they were the aggressors, as he, with the assistance of a constable, followed them, andshot some three or four. The affair came to the ears of justice, and Howard and the constable were put on their trial for murder. They were acquitted, of course, owing to the absence of direct proof that any lives were actually taken, and owing to the doubts that existed as to whether they simply fired at the blacks on coming up to them, or resorted to arms in self-defence.
The forests want looking after. In New South Wales, Victoria, New Zealand, and South Australia, the Governments are growing alive to the fact that the forests cannot last for ever. In many districts the traveller passes through hundreds of miles of ring-barked country, very desolate to look upon. It is pleasant to note that in some quarters steps have been taken to find a remedy. Especially is this the case in South Australia. Last year as many as 40,000 trees were sent out from the State nursery for planting.
The land question gives a good deal of trouble. It has, in New South Wales, much to answer for, as the great want of the farmer is water, and he will not improve his property by sinking Artesian wells, at a cost of £ 1,000 each, unless he has a better title. On the other hand, it is held that Victorian prosperity is chiefly due to its liberal land laws. In New SouthWales the farmer is given 2,500 acres with no cultivation conditions. He can hold it as he gets it till his time is up, and transfer it to the squatter, and then go and re-select as long and as often as he likes, with this result, that there is no real settlement in the land—no progress, and no employment for the agricultural labourer.