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