At Cape Town, the halfway house to Australia, Sir George chartered a schooner for detailed exploring work. In it, a trifle on the water, he completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from a boat, needed practice.
'You were,' he laid down the conditions, 'at issue with a heavy roll of the sea, even in glorious weather. Fortunately, I had always been an expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion. You found your chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had a wider target.' Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British Museum. His word on that point was crisp. 'You had only to walk or row a little, and you secured a new living thing. The cry of the outlook was something discovered. The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was not half so happily situate as we. It was all surprises.'
His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay—the Promised Land, but naked and unkindly. What a contrast to the bouquet of Brazil! Still, why should there not be acres rich and worthy, behind those dull grey rocks? The idea of an incorrigible country was not to be entertained, for overcrowded England stood, with her hand for ear- trumpet, and the question on her tongue, 'What is the message?' Adventure followed adventure in the effort to secure it.
'Somehow,' quoth Sir George, 'we didn't seem to mind the risks, and I imagine that is the experience of everybody who has encountered any. A man is zealous upon some task, it quite occupies him, and the dangers are just details. Afterwards, his friends make him out to be a bit of a hero, and he has leisure to fancy so himself, which is all entirely harmless. Now, I had to swim across an arm of the sea, where a violent tide ran, and where alligators and sharks had their haunts. The latter, I believed from observations made when we bathed off the schooner, could smell a human body in the water from a long distance. But the plain necessity was that, for the succour of certain members of the expedition, I must swim the lagoon.'
A nearer hazard furnished Sir George with a knowledge, which a call from his friend Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, enabled him to use in fun. Lyell walked in on him, in London, with a spear-head and the curiosity, 'How old do you judge that would be?' The weapon was of stone, uncouth, barbarous. 'A thousand years, eh?' Lyell pursued. Sir George let him go on for a while, then broke in, 'If that's a thousand years old, I likewise am a thousand years old, because one has been taken out of me.' 'What do you mean?' was Lyell's ejaculation. 'Oh,' said Sir George, 'a head almost similar was on the spear which an Australian native drove into my thigh.'
Whereupon laughter, and tale of the fight.
There never had been such a drama in that forest of North-West Australia. The noise of the white man's war fell upon the primeval silence, breaking it.
This battle dwelt acutely with Sir George Grey as the single occasion, amid all his adventures, on which he had been the instrument of taking human life. He carried his own wounds to the grave, but only sorrowed for the bullet he sped, though sheer necessity drove it. The sacred light might burn in a savage, ignorant of its nobler gleams, yet it was the gift of the Creator. Moreover, Sir George's whole dealing, towards native races, was guided by a pole-star principle. The duty civilisation owed them, he affirmed, was the larger in proportion to their state of darkness. He held this to be the simple rule for the Christian.
The natives of the Australian North-West were a fine race physically, and, he judged, had an ingrain of Malay blood. 'To see one for the first time,' said Sir George, 'produced a great effect upon you. These people were hardly known then.' They coloured themselves in fearsome style, red being the favourite daub. No matter, the strangers from over sea would have greeted them gladly, being anxious to cultivate friendship. The wild men responded not; but hovered in the distance of the bush, or peered curiously from some covering of the rocks.
'I did everything I could,' Sir George remarked in that relation, 'to get acquainted with them, but at this period they would have nothing to do with me. Their fires might still be smoking, as we beat up a camping place, but they had left, suspicious of us. When travelling, I frequently had grave cause to be anxious lest we should be attacked, especially at night. Therefore, I made my men sleep a little apart from each other, in order that, if assailed, we might at least have some warning.'
It was full day when the assault did take place; otherwise Sir George would hardly have lived to describe it. He went back with spirit on the details, more armour of youth to be placed in the scabbard of age. One item held a small essay on the influences which determine human action in a crisis of life or death. He was speaking of the feeling that seized him when spear after spear cut into his flesh. Here was a struggle between mind and body, each determined to conquer—a study in the inner sanctuary; but how began the fight?
With two of his men, Sir George was on the march, notching trees by the way, so that the rest of the party could follow. At a turn they found themselves beset by a swarm of blacks, who had gathered in strength, determined to act against so small a force. Not many of the warriors could be seen at the outset, the rough ground sheltering them. But there they were, and in a most warlike humour.
A spear clove the air, singing their menace, as they yelled it in a hundred raucous voices. Scare shots, fired by Sir George, had no effect, not even when an incautious warrior was winged as an object-lesson. The Aborigines grew bolder, leaping hither and thither in the attack—evil spirits of the bush. The sight they made, all pigments, was expressed in the shout of one of Sir George's men, 'Good God, sir! Look at them!'
The cry rose from behind a rack, where Sir George had ordered the man and his comrade to seek shelter. Fortunately, a series of rocks made a natural parapet to the right, and in a degree in front. Sir George, his gun empty at the moment, placed himself on the exposed left position. The spears rained round him, as if they were falling from the clouds. Things could not go on thus for long, and the natives planned to end them.
A superbly built fellow, lighter of skin than his companions, arrogant of air, showed to the front, evidently a general in command. He clambered, shouting the lust of battle, on to the summit of a rock, not more than thirty yards from the spot where Sir George lay. Then he swung a spear, with agile trick, and it grazed the hem of the white captain's coat. It would have done more, had not Sir George by instinct, which is ever alert, jerked himself free of its path. Another spear, from the same supple hand, just missed his breast, striking the stock of his gun. This was too near for comfort and the future well-being of the expedition.
Sir George passed his empty gun to the Englishman handiest, with the direction 'Please re-load it.' He had tried to do that himself, but his cramped position made it difficult to ram home the powder and ball. For his own gun, he snatched an unshot one which the man was struggling to release from its cover. In the hurry, piece and cover got entangled, but, with a wrench, Sir George tore the two apart. His plan of campaign was settled; he advanced to the rock where the light-coloured native had head-quarters. In bold initiative, there remained the only hope for Sir George and his following, against imminent massacre. Would it be a moral victory, won by a simple advance on the rock, or would it be necessary to strike? He had hesitated, as yet, to shoot straight; and he trusted still to avoid that extreme measure.
Three strides in the open, and three spears had him square and fair, a rent archery target. The first struck his watch, denting it, the second caught the fleshy part of his arm, the third tore into his thigh. The Aborigines were skilled spear-men, and proving it by Sir George's impalement, they shouted triumph. The shook of the weapons drove him to his knees, but what stung him was the crow of the blacks.
'That,' he said, 'produced in me a heated anger, and I was in the fight as I had not been till then. Stung by their mockery, I pulled myself together and was on my feet again in a trice. A spear was still sticking in my thigh, and blood flowed freely from the wound. I dragged out the spear, covered the wound with my haversack, so that neither enemy nor friend might be aware of it, and once more advanced.'
The chief grew alarmed at this steady investment of himself, and showed it by brandishing a club, as if to convey, 'Just you come nearer and this will drum on your head.'
Sir George's faculties were so keenly edged that he noted, in this bravado, a common link of mankind, high and low, civilised and barbarian. As long as the chieftain had been sure of his skin, he flung spears and sang valiantly; but when alarm entered him, those deadly measures were replaced by a mighty show. On the surface there was vast play of battle, but inwardly quaking. And Sir George marched forward, his right hand gripping the gun hard, his lip quivering, his eye burning.
The injured physical man was triumphant over the peace-loving soul, and anyhow there must now be a lesson. Of all those lines of thought Sir George was not, perhaps, conscious in his peril, yet, fetching back, he could trace them as they had worked. Seeking a solution by measures not violent, he had been given sore spears, whereon his finger tightened at the trigger, and he was a wound automaton; fixed, stern, a fate on feet, bearing down upon the chief in the shelter of the rock.
The brandished club was no stop; no more did the skirmishing support of the clan bring pause to the oncomer. The black general bobbed quite behind his rock, considering the necessity of absolute retreat. Next, he snapped off quickly, dodging here and there, as the aboriginal plan was, to avoid a cast of spears. It was not suited to avoid lead.
Everything had occurred within the space of a few minutes; for such crises do, otherwise the tension would kill. The chief ran; a tall dark body, with many other bodies watching it. Sir George raised his gun and pointed it at the warrior, struggling to a shelter from which the attack could be renewed. Snap went the trigger. With a bullet, the marksman could shoot a greater seabird, by the head, at a range of a hundred yards. This bullet caught the black between the shoulders, and he fell with a thud and a groan. In Sir George, the physical being surrendered itself again to the intellect. The situation was saved, his wounds stung him no more to vindication—he was sorrowful, a-weary.
There was no sound after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him off. His head hung on his breast; he could just stagger.
Faint from loss of blood, Sir George watched the serpent-like procession twine itself into the inner depths of the forest. Having conquered; he had to console himself on the victory and bind up his own hurts. These made him so weak that he must send to the camp for assistance, and he awaited its coming, a loaded gun on his knee. The blacks assailed no more; instead, the birds sang in the sun, and he asked himself, 'Is it all a dream?'
'Why,' declared one of his men, helping him towards the camp, 'should you worry yourself over having shot that black fellow? If you hadn't, where should we all have been? and anyhow there are plenty more like him in the country.' This comforter was himself to need comfort, by and by, on a less sombre subject. He dashed in upon Sir George, crying, 'Sir, I have seen the Old Gentleman,' and with his frame shaking as if he had. It was the Australian bat on midnight circuit, a strange serenade to the European. Another of nature's creatures was to figure amid circumstances which did hold cause for terror.
'It's curious,' Sir George mused, 'how we remember trifles of the long ago with preciseness, when often bigger events are blurred. I recollect, very well, a slight incident of the scene on the island of Dorre, off the north-west coast of Australia, when a storm caught us. In turn, I caught an old cormorant by the neck, and the bird was all we had for breakfast next morning. A most sedate character he was, trying hard to maintain a dignified attitude in face of a very tempest of wind. He wished to fly, but could not, the violence of the gale pinning him to the ground. That was his death, which we all regretted; and I'm sorry to add that we were grudging enough to call him tough in the eating.'
This gale was preface to the great adventure of the second stage of Sir George Grey's Australian explorations. He was to have plenty of opportunity for the study of the Australian Aborigine, who, by and by, received him in better wise than at the point of a spear. Somewhere, an old crone felt inspired to hug and kiss him, in the belief that he was her own dead son, spun white, and back on earth. Having recruited from his earlier sufferings, he had gone by Perth, up the coast to Shark's Bay in an American whaler. He arranged to make a depot of Bernier Island, in the region of Shark's Bay, and there, on a lovely day, he landed his stores, burying them for safety in the soil. Up blew this storm, three nights later, when the explorers laid hands upon the solitary cormorant of Dorre. Had they been on Bernier, instead, the spoil might have been a kangaroo, for it owned a special breed of that family.
But to Bernier Island, the larder, Sir George returned, having completed a section of exploration. He had a dread lest the gale might have ravished his stores during his absence. Accordingly, he took only one or two of his people with him when he went, full of anxiety, to the spot where the provisions had been buried. He did not desire to alarm the others, should affairs turn out ill, as indeed they did.
'O God, we are all lost!' This was the wail for Sir George's ears, as the spade made it clear that the food-stuffs, with a trifling salvage, had been uprooted and scattered by the storm. It was almost the pronouncing of a sentence of death upon the party, having regard to the desert country which surrounded them, and their distance from civilisation.
'I hadn't an hour to lose,' Sir George realised, 'so back we hurried to the main camp and I delivered the news, counselling calmness and courage. I added my decision that we must endeavour to make Perth in the whale boats we had with us. It was a forlorn chance.'
The boats strained in a boisterous sea, and ultimately flung the voyagers ashore, three hundred miles, in a direct line, from Perth. Never were men given a harder tramp than across those miles, so parched and barren that they hardly echoed the koo-ee of a native. Yet there was no succour, no hostel, unless they could be covered.
For a little while fair progress was made, then strength declined through want of food and water. Sir George Grey sought courage and consolation in the dog-eared New Testament which he had in his knapsack. The hymns his mother had taught him came back into his head and heart, true comforters. The land where she dwelt swam dim before his eyes, but his courage found strength anew. He pushed on, with a small company, in order to send back relief for those unequal to a sally. It was the perishing to the rescue. A bird shot, was welcome as manna from heaven, and a muddy water-hole the sweetest of discoveries. The dew was eagerly licked from shrubs and reeds while the sun lingered a-bed. Lips grew black, tongues swollen, eyes wild, and the hopeless cry was: 'Water, or we die.'
The native guide schemed to lead Sir George from the others, begging, when discovered, 'Yes, we two may be saved if we go on; the others are so weak that they can't walk.' The master cocked his gun until the guide had carried him back to the party. They moved Perth-ward, a stricken line of famished men, wondering dumbly what was to happen. Did they really care?
If the leader had cheering and example, what were these set against this final ordeal: a blistering thirst of three days and two nights? Happily a water-hole, not bereft of all moisture, was found in the nick of time. A few birds flew about it in the evening, but Sir George Grey's hand shook so that he could take no aim. He headed a last desperate spurt for Perth; the reaching of succour, or the arrival of death. Which would it be?
How attractive to lie down and rest for ever on the parched grass, with some thin bush to keep off the sun. In the other extreme a shepherd of the hills, caught in a snowstorm, folds him in his plaid and goes to the sound sleep. Life in those wrestlers for it had sunk low; better die than hang on to a mere tether of living. Yet the better instinct asserted itself. And the second half of the expedition, far in the rear, cried for relief. On, on!
Sir George staggered across the miles until, in the goodness of fortune, he met natives who gave him food and water. He crawled into Perth, black with the sun, bones from want; he was not recognised by friends. A Malay, daft but harmless, led a vagrant life at Perth, getting bit and sup from the open tables of the colonists. The good wife of the outermost settlement, where Sir George Grey knocked, seeking refreshment, took him for 'Magic.'
'When I spoke to her in English,' he said, 'she looked so surprised that I feared she might run away, leaving me without the food and drink I needed. However, she merely exclaimed, "Well if you're not 'Magic,' who are you?" Being told, and in time convinced, she brewed Sir George the most delicious cup of tea he ever drank. Soon, relief to the expedition was scurrying across the plains.
At the start of the journey Sir George had his sextant, but, having to walk hungry and thirsty, he needed to walk light. Therefore he hid the sextant in a tree, where many a year later it was found, a rustic relic, by some settlers. Death raced him so hard that he eased the burden of keeping in front of it by tearing the boards from his New Testament. To the Word itself he clung impregnably.
The perils of Sir George Grey, as an Australian explorer, match some of those experienced by Captain Sturt. That brought up the name of the latter, and Sir George passed the eulogy: 'Australia owes to Sturt a greater debt, perhaps, than to any other of her explorers. His discoveries, apart from their own stir and colour; were of the first importance in the successful settlement of the country. I knew him well; a man who would do anything for anybody, and never think of his own interests.'
Admiring Sturt so heartily, Sir George, with others, had urged that the honour of a title should be conferred upon him. He died in England before actually receiving it, 'Whereupon,' said Sir George, 'I next suggested that his widow should have the rank which otherwise would have been hers, and from that, I judge, sprang the very proper rule now obtaining in such a case.'
'I always got what I wanted in life,' Sir George Grey made arch comment on himself, 'and many things, also, that I did not want.'
His appointment as Governor of South Australia, with the steps leading up to it, he could group under the first head. His explorations had shown that no great river, no second Murray, drained the North-West area of Australia. This was information for geographers, and he had more, since, to quote his own words, 'We learned as much about the region, in a general way, as was necessary.' Next, he acted for a while as Government Resident at King George's Sound, and he investigated the country thereabout.
'The settlement of King George's Sound,' he said, 'was quite small, and I discharged all the duties of the State. I don't remember that I fined anybody; just decreeing: "Oh, you must make up your disputes yourselves." Perth, now so grown, was at that date a mere townlet. It had few people, ships called rarely, and practically it was shut off from the world.'
This was the brand-new Australia. Beside it, there is a glimpse of olden England, in the manner Sir George Grey was bid to be Pro-Consul. A special messenger pelted down to Bodiam, where, after his return to England, he had been staying for a month, the hero of his relatives. The messenger brought the other London, news that the guns of the Tower had been firing, to announce the birth of the Queen's first child, the Princess Royal. Therefore his arrival caused a double commotion in the family circle, two notes of joy and gratulation. Sir George posted express to London, changing horses at short stages in order to make the better speed.
It was his supreme wish to serve the Colonies, and he had a glimmering notion that the chance would come. Still, he was at one of the crossings in a young man's life, when it is hard to know what the road is to be. He had always his commission in the army, but was that his definite signpost? He sighed for a wider door of usefulness, and behold it opened! That it should be open so soon, was, perhaps, remarkable, only the word was to be his constant accomplice.
'I had never met Lord John Russell, who made me the offer,' Sir George explained. 'He was going upon what little I had done, in regard to Australian affairs, especially a kind of despatch by me on native administration. After adequate thought, and acting upon good advice, I confirmed my first resolve to accept the Governor-ship of South Australia. It was, apparently, to be an onerous post.'
To Adelaide went this Queen's Governor, not yet thirty, his mission the undoing of a tangle; for South Australia was on the verge of bankruptcy, almost before it had entered into business. Hardly an acre of land was in cultivation, and most of the people were in Adelaide with nothing to do, clamouring for food. Sir George perceived at once that they must be got on to the land. To have the settlers securely there, from the first, meant that they were to grow into a nation, not to amass temporary riches, and then return to an already overcrowded world.
Again, in South Australia, as elsewhere, he endeavoured to carry out what he regarded as a cardinal principle in the making of a new country. This was to draw capital direct from the soil, not by the raising of too heavy loans. How to rear a nation? Keep its conditions of life natural, even simple; make it self-creative and self-reliant, train it as if it were an individual. Let it build its national homestead, as a man might lay out his own little stance of ground. Then, the community would have the parents' love and pride towards all that had been created. Sir George put his shoulder to the wheel of the settlers' cart in South Australia, and shoved until the harvest drove home.
'I ascertained,' he spoke of those efforts, 'that the soil was very suitable for wheat, and we sowed widely. The crop, vital to the Colony; depended upon the weather. Would there be enough rain? I often crawled out of bed in the morning, while it was half-dawn, to ascertain if there was any promise of rain for that day. The wheat was at the critical stage, and if I had made the weather, it could not have proved more suited in its conditions.
'It was the first extensive wheat crop of South Australia; the first harvest-home of the bunch of people, who had there been shaken on to the sea-beach. When the wheat had ripened, everybody—including, I am glad to say, the Governor—turned to the harvesting of it. Riots had threatened earlier, the result of the state of affairs in the Colony, and the measures which I deemed it necessary to introduce. As a precaution, I had some soldiers, about a hundred and fifty, I think, sent to me from New South Wales. That was a step on which I was entitled to congratulate myself. At the pruning hook, in getting in that harvest, they were of vast assistance, and not often have soldiers been more nobly occupied.'
Yet the pruning hook, which Sir George associated with the historic harvest, and with Ridley, an early Australian colonist, was hardly of the Scriptural pattern. It was a subtle machine, invented for a harvest where the wheat-ears were needed, not the straw. The former were chopped off, collected in a sort of trough; and the straw was burned for manure. Here was waste, only there was no avoiding it, and, moreover, the meaning of 'waste' is defined by circumstances. The South Australian soil was so fruitful that it only needed to be thrown seed. Sir George satisfied himself that it contained gypsum, such as belongs to the fertile parts of Egypt. Thus gypsum reared wheat, under the foot-print of the black man, who shod his spear in obsidian. Things that began before history, were meeting from very different sides. Nature extended one hand to the inflow of civilisation, another to the rude holding of it back. There was a point of contact in the adventure of a settler, Turner by name, whom Sir George Grey met near the Murray River. It fell out comedy, but might have been tragedy; and how often those two flirt with each other round a corner!
The fact, upon which the affair hinged, was that Turner wore a wig, no doubt for sufficient reason. He was making a journey across country, and with him were a few natives, guides and packmen. Perhaps his head grew hot; anyhow, at some stage he took a penknife from his pocket, and ran the blade under the edge of the wig. The native nearest to him, suspicious of witchcraft, stared at this act, terror written on every feature. With a deft lift of the knife, Turner had the wig clear of his head. The native stayed no longer to consider 'Is this a sorcerer?' He whipped off, to what he considered a safe distance. The innocent Turner followed his retreat with laughing eye, amused at the effect produced. For acknowledgment, a spear cracked through the satchel on his back, and wounded him slightly. His load had saved his life, and he warily resumed the wig.
The quality of the early settlers in South Australia, gave Sir George Grey great trust in the new Anglo-Saxondom to be built up in the south. Many of them were Nonconformists, which suggested to him the Puritan founding of New England. As a body they had a worth, a sincerity, a true ring which could not fail of fine records. That knowledge helped him, in the difficult task of setting South Australia on its feet. His policy of severe economy made shoes pinch, but he held on, ever ready with the courteous word for those who most assailed him.
He could contrast Adelaide, when town sites went at auction for about five pounds an acre, with the Adelaide of our day. 'If you had yourself,' somebody put it to him, 'invested in a few of these sites, you would be rich instead of poor?' The remark bore partly upon the enormously enhanced value of city lands all over Australia, partly upon Sir George's simple unconcern for wealth, his disregard of mere money. He was almost inclined to pity millionaires, as being among the afflicted. The tinkle of gold was never in his golden dreams.
'Yes,' he answered, 'the land which sold for five pounds in Adelaide, might, at the present moment, be worth nearer five thousand. Throughout my career, I followed a very strict rule in those matters. I never had any dealings in land, or other property, except as Governor, charged with the interests of the whole community. My despatches were my sole title- deeds.'
'There is no virtue,' he laid down, 'in honest duty, such as we claim from every public servant. Our lofty ideal in that regard is true British wisdom. Moreover, need a man, estimating wealth on its merits, care to be rich? What private means I inherited, I have spent largely on public ends. I mean, in particular, those libraries at Cape Town and Auckland, which I was enabled to help. Why, the bargain is all mine; I am the debtor for the opportunity.'
To Sir George Grey, Oceana had seemed a fertile land, crying across the depths, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' His mission was to pass that invitation freely to the shores of the Old World, and to be vigilant on the spot, keeping a clear ring. He did not want folks to come, only to find a path strewn with the obstacles and ills they thought to have left behind. His purpose was to make life as generous, as unfettered as possible. Keep the Old World out of the New! It became a passion with him; and he counted on making the New World an influence towards regenerating the Old. The line, in respect of both aims, was to retain the control of the New World for the Anglo- Saxon. That meant freedom, because the non-intrusion of arrayed nations, which would hinder it.
When Greece needed a king, Sir George Grey was mentioned as one with likely parts for the post. 'I should think,' wrote Freeman the historian, 'he would be just the man to deal with any unruly elements in the country.' The absolute offer of the crown of Greece would not have tempted Sir George for an hour.
As he said seriously, while joking on the point, 'In the far south there was literally nobody to lead, whereas Greece had men sufficient to mould her destinies. Anyhow, one given the administration of Greece, would not have had a work more honourable than the development of Australasia, a larger business altogether. 'Here was a region where several kingdoms were in the raising, where the pattern could take something from yourself. What drew me to the far south, as a fairy-tale might, was that charm, "Yes, it's all new. Hardly anything has yet been done. It's mine to do with as I will."'
There was the white man's history to fashion, and the black man's history to discover. Sir George did not neglect the second inquiry, because the other was the more important. His explorations had given him the idea that Australia was of a volcanic origin. He judged it to have been, at some period, a series of islands, each with its own volcano. These islands had risen from the sea, been licked into shape probably by earthquakes, and coming gradually together, had formed a continent. During his Governorship of South Australia, Sir George fell upon a piece of evidence which materially supported this belief. The skeleton of a whale, as Sir Richard Owen certified the specimen, was discovered quite inland, beyond the first mountain range. If Sir George had arrived at some view, after long deliberation, he liked it to be accepted, as we all do. Therefore he welcomed the discovery of that whale.
'I was laughed at,' he commented, 'when I insisted that the natives of Australia must have come from a race more civilised than themselves. A variety of reasons supported my estimate of their origin; as that, all over native Australia, there appeared to prevail a rigorous law governing marriage.
'It demonstrated that the natives understood the effect which blood kinship would exercise upon the stamina of a race. There was no single great tribe in Australia, but a series of tribes; yet this law was general among them. No conqueror could have imposed it; instead, it must have sprung from a family coming in, and bringing it with them. Where did that family come from? I cannot tell. But we see, among the Aborigines of Australia, customs resembling those of the African continent.'
Studying those customs, Sir George had been witness of the ancient rite of circumcision, which also argued a higher civilisation. The blacks built themselves, layer upon layer, into a human altar, and on it the sacrifice was performed. Meanwhile a grunting noise, 'Ha-ha-ha,' sonorous, even solemn, a savage mass, arose from the heap. Sir George imagined that he was almost the first Englishman to behold this ceremony, on the part of the Aborigines of Australia. To them it was religion; whence did they get it? Their common rule Sir George found expressed as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but they had their lighter moments. He discovered, in a lady savage, a humorous link between the vanity of all womankind. There had been a native dance, and he was leaving, when the chieftainess approached him with the request, 'Oh, don't go away until you have seen my son dance; he will be beautiful!'
'I waited, of course,' Sir George consented, ever gallant, 'and the son presented himself, daubed over with dirt of divers colours, and began to hop about. He was well built, he danced cleverly, he cackled in his finery, and his mother was hugely proud of him. She might have been an English duchess, introducing a pretty daughter to a first ball. It was seeing the parent in the child, the most marked form of self-flattery. Actually, tears of joy ran down those black, wizened cheeks. I wouldn't have had it otherwise, and I was glad I stayed for the young buck.'
Wherever Sir George Grey went in Australia, he found the natives living from hand to mouth, on roots and the reward of the chase. They were equally primitive, in a system of punishment, which stood an offender up as a mark for spears. But they were sportsmen, for it was prescribed that the quarry must only be chastened in the legs. The tribes also reached out to civilisation, in that each had its ground marked off, with the accuracy of a European estate.
'I believe'—Sir George carried this subject wider—'that the cardinal trouble in the settlement of new countries, has lain in the desire of the white man to possess the lands of the black man. Perhaps it has been inevitable, but the thing should be done on a proper method, and that has not always obtained.'
Sir John Franklin, at Van Diemen's Land, was a brother Australian Governor to Sir George Grey, but they never met. 'I had correspondence with him,' Sir George observed, 'and from all I heard he was a most interesting personality. Subsequently, I did meet Lady Franklin, who had much character, allied to womanly gentleness. Everybody admired her laving persistence to unravel the fate which had overtaken her husband in the Arctic regions.'
It was almost a discovery to Sir George, with his wide knowledge of Australasia, that he had never set foot in Tasmania. He passed it variously, on board ship, yet had not been ashore. How was that? 'Maybe,' he replied, 'because all my life I made it a rule, not to let anything turn me aside from what I had immediately in hand. If you set out for a place, with some definite object in view, your road should be the most direct one. Don't branch off, because there is something elsewhere which might gratify your curiosity.'
Sir George disciplined the hours, holding himself accountable for them to his fellow-men and to the Great Accountant.
There had been a reception in London, by Gladstone, following the usual dinners which ministers of the Queen give in honour of her birthday.
To Sir George Grey, who was in the splendid crowd, came the wife of an eminent member of the Government, carrying to an old friend a woman's eager news of her own dinner. 'Oh,' she whispered in that still small voice which rises a clarion note above a general buzz, 'oh, everything went off admirably, and Bob's delighted. But the soup was just a little cold.'
The soup often got cold at the Governor's board in Adelaide, the while he was laying the foundations of the Colony. This implied study of the problem, 'How are we to utilise the natives for the civilisation which has begun to invade them in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?' Already, in Western Australia, Sir George had devoted earnest study to the subject, and method ripened with him. He felt, perhaps, that he had been given a unique work, in the sense of moulding raw human materials to higher ends. He was a master craftsman, and as he contrived, so there might be issues near and remote. The future dwelt with Sir George when to others, lacking the seer's eye, it was still below the farthest horizon. Call it the second-sight of statesmanship—something which is born with a person rather than acquired. He had simple words for the ideas that underlay his life's labour, in bringing barbarous races under the harrow of cultivation.
'It is quite evident that man's great line of exertion, is towards getting more food for himself and his family. This truth applies to him in all his states; only the more he advances in material welfare, the more he needs to satisfy him. With a savage, mere food is enough, but in the centres of civilisation beautiful clothes, fine horses and carriages, marble palaces, all form the prize. Ever, it is the same impelling desire.
'Well, the way to adopt with natives, was to show them how to obtain more food. Benefit them in that manner, and they would regard you as their friend, and you would have influence over them. I always paid a native, doing unskilled work, the wage a white would have received for the same effort. It was mere justice. Yet, so small a thing had immense results, for manhood was cultivated in the black. Self-respect infected him. He discovered himself, with proud surprise, to be a man instead of a chattel.
'The mystery of managing native races, resolves itself into a few natural laws. My hardest trouble was the witchcraft, which held in bonds, the savage peoples whom I had to govern. It might differ, here or there, in its characteristics; the evil was there all the same. Not merely did the natives believe in witch-craft, having been swathed in it for ages, but their chiefs made a profit therefrom, and were staunch for its maintenance. My antidote was the introduction of medical aid, so that in the cures wrought, those children of the dark, might see what surpassed their own magic. They were discomfited, as it were, on their own ground.
'Superstition, which I distinguish from witchcraft, though the greater evil flourished on the less, had its best treatment in the spread of the Christian religion. Surely, a wonderful witness of its divine origin, lies in the fact that it applies to the elevation and happiness of all the world's races—is understandable to all. Farther, native schools made advances upon sheer ignorance, as hospitals did in respect to witchcraft; and it was possible, in some measure, to eradicate native indolence by affording youths a training in a trade, or grown men work on public improvements: Here we return to where we began—food as the primitive impulse driving mankind.'
No trait of human nature was neglected by Sir George Grey, in his exertions to plant the better ideas of living. He detected that the Kaffirs of South Africa were sharp to humour, owners of a lively sense of the ridiculous. On that hung an incident, which brought out the value of the personal equation in dealing with natives, whether in South Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. It was an item of Sir George Grey's whole native policy. An old witch doctor, he mentioned, had been inciting unrest among the dark masses of Kaffraria. Sir George had him put comfortably in prison, where he could be certain of medical attendance and rest. That was the least office, demanded towards a human being evidently in a disturbed state of health.
It confounded the witch doctor. Never was such a father to his people as Sir George Grey, and the tribes of a hemisphere acclaimed it. The witch doctor had his doubts, took his physic wryly, and begged piteously to be set free. He was released, on the strict promise that he would cease being a firebrand. Not that alone, for he publicly recanted among the Kaffirs, gathered on a market morning, to their huge amusement and derision. He made no more trouble, and could not, had he tried, his fame being ruined.
'A joust of fun like that,' was Sir George Grey's moral from the incident, 'had a wonderful effect upon natives. It was much better than shooting the witch doctor, and quite as effective. Even among whites, ridicule may be a very serious punishment.'
But the Pro-Consul was not always warranted to win, in his encounters of wit and wisdom. He put to the debit account, a dialogue he had with a batch of Kaffir chiefs, on the proper employment of their moneys. He wondered if the wages, earned from native work on the roads, and in cultivating the lands, were always wisely spent. The broad inquiry was well enough, as the chiefs took it, but unfortunately Sir George went on to state a case in proof.
'For instance,' he innocently pleaded, 'is it necessary that so much should be expended on the jewellery and ornaments of the women? Would they not really look more handsome, without all those gew-gaws of brass and metal, which they wear round their arms and ankles?' An aged chief rose and gravely replied, 'You are a great chief, Governor, and you have done marvellous things. You have persuaded us to labour, yea, to make roads which we knew would lead to the conquest of our country. But you had better rest and be content, not allowing success in other things to induce you to enter upon what no man can accomplish. If you attempt, O Governor, to wage war with woman and her love of ornament, you will assuredly fail.'
'The assembled chiefs,' Sir George wound up the tale, 'roared with delight at this answer, which really left me without a word to say.'
In South Australia he established one of his first schools, and the lessons obtained from it were widely useful. They suggested the difficulties that had to be overcome, wherever the alphabet was spread before the Aborigine. Children made bright pupils, but, as they grew up, were apt to go back on what they had learned. The reason was not far to seek. An educated native found himself out of touch with his uneducated fellows; education made a barrier. He was not the equal of the Europeans, and could form no friendships with them. Neither was he happy with his own people, whom he had passed in civilisation. He swung between two poles, and very frequently was dragged back into the volume of native life.
'You see the difficulty,' Sir George pointed out, 'as one that is necessarily present with regard to all savage races. But it has its cure, which I put into practice, namely, to provide males and females with an equally good education. Especially, I mean a technical education, the learning of some trade or art, for that was all important. Natives, on leaving school, could then make a living by plying among the Europeans the industry they had learned. Should a native learn shoemaking, he could find a wife in a girl trained to domestic service. Such a couple were not compelled to return to their own people, and they were independent of the Europeans. It was lifting a race by its two halves, these being essential to each other, not leaving one of them behind.'
Next, a picture in black and white. It wandered into the gallery of Sir George's Pro-Consulship in South Australia. At the entrance to Spencer's Gulf lies an island, on which a fortuitous little colony had established itself. The colonists were mostly escaped convicts, from the penal settlements of Australia and Van Diemen's Land, or sailors who had deserted their ships. The men killed the seals which frequented the island, trading in their skins with vessels that now and then called for the purpose.
'I had never judged it my business,' Sir George spoke of this matter, 'to interfere with those sealers. They kept the peace among themselves, and did not come into contact with the settlement at Adelaide. Indeed, they had some form of justice, under which a member who did anything wrong, was transported for a time to a smaller neighbouring island. There he could live on oysters of a sort, and on fish caught with lines supplied to him. It was being sent to Coventry, new style, including oysters, which, like all delicacies, will, I suppose, cause surfeit.
'The chief of this settlement, as he might be termed, had brought a native woman with him from Van Diemen's Land. He was fairly educated, not without considerable power of reasoning, and I had repeated talks with him. Most of his companions had Australian black women living with them, and there was a story that these had been taken by force from the mainland. The natives of Van Diemen's Land were entirely distinct from the natives of Australia, and the differences have been much debated. The hair of a Van Diemen's Land woman was curly and woolly, Kaffir like; that of the Australian woman long and straight.
'Very well, I was anxious to obtain a genuine specimen of the Tasmanian female's hair. It would, I believed, be valuable to posterity, as bearing upon the divergencies of two neighbouring races. Of course, the Tasmanians have now been extinct for years, and their disappearance was then rapidly approaching. It was best, to prevent any doubt, that I should myself cut the tress of hair from the woman's head. The chief of the colony, in response to my request, said he was quite willing that she should visit Adelaide for this purpose. She was agreeable herself; curious as to the scenes, strange to her, which she might witness in Adelaide. As we are all born hungry, so we are all born curious; merely we differ in degree. In due time she arrived, and I secured the necessary sample of her hair, which remains, probably, in the Auckland Museum.
'Delighted with a new stock of clothes, the woman left Adelaide on her return to the island, this also having been arranged. She was to light a fire on a crag of the mainland, at which signal her lord and master would put over with his boat to fetch her. Now recur my conversations with him, which included the question, "Is it not rather bad that you should all be living here with these native women?"
'His answer, coming from such a quarter, surprised me, and proved him a regular controversialist. "It does nobody harm," he argued, "and we are much more comfortable than we should otherwise be. There was nothing hasty in what we did; every step was taken deliberately. Knowing we could not re-enter the world, and there being no settlers, then, in these parts, we considered: Could we not found a small nation ourselves? The greatest nation of ancient times, cast in very similar circumstances, did not feel it wrong to carry off, by force, the females of another people. Thus, they acquired women to look after their homes, while otherwise they would have been living in a pitiable state, with no ties. What that nation did, we have done." Such was the word of the island chief, and no appeal, in justification, to history, could ever have been made in stranger circumstances.
'Was it not,' Sir George felt, 'extraordinary to hear the case of the Romans and the Sabine women, pleaded in defence of a tiny outlawed community, situate on the wild Australian coast, where another empire, more magnificent even than that of Rome, was just planting itself? The thing almost swept one's mind from the question itself—a difficult one to answer as submitted.' Then, in this odd affair, the untutored far south was springing to the support of Sir George's views as to cause and effect. Imitators of ancient Rome, on an island of Spencer's Gulf, Australia, many centuries later! The theory of the universe, expressed as 'cause and effect,' had been borne in upon Sir George from the moment he turned thinker. It was a favourite text between him and Babbage, into whose ear he poured his reasonings.
'Subjects occurred to me,' he said, 'which I believed had not been given sufficient prominence, and this was one of them. I fancy Babbage wrote about it.'
Every motion, every word spoken, they agreed, abode an eternal influence in the world. Nothing, either in action or in reasoning, was lost; the unborn ages made response. If we could go back far enough we should be able to trace, by the influence it had wrought, that red streak, the murder of Abel. Had we a divine intellect, we could see the whole universe, a complete machine, at work. Sir George would marvel at the splendour of that creation, asking himself, 'Might it, if fully revealed, not be all too dazzling for human eyes?'
The Aborigine—Australian, Maori, and Kaffir—was to him a guarantee, by physical evidence, of the same law of the universe. They three had passed intimately before him, and he had mapped the intertwine of their paths. These were noteworthy, being a fruit of Sir George's observation on the human race in primitive lands. First, consider the women, who, among barbarians, not having animals of burden, had always been pack horses.
'In New Zealand,' he said, 'with its forests, the females had to carry their loads along narrow paths. The proper way to carry a pack is on the head, but the trees made that impossible. Hills, too, had often to be climbed, and to ease the ascent a bending posture must be taken. Add that fact to the load on the back, and it was a consequence that Maori women should evolve clumsy figures.
'In Australia there was more open ground, and in many parts the method was to carry a load on the head. Thus, the native women were better of figure, though quite unequal to their 116 THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL. lithe, graceful Kaffir sisters of South Africa. Here the country was free and open, and the carrying of a weight on the head naturally followed.' Second, the men of those races.
'The Australians,' Sir George went on, 'were hunters, and had to climb trees in search of opossums. They drove holes into the trunks with their stone axes, dug in their big toes, and ascended. Such efforts provided them with long legs, while, again, they walked with turned-in toes. Why? Having scrub to penetrate, they must cut roads through it—a tiresome labour, not pursued more than was necessary. If they turned in their toes, they could sidle along a mere bee-line of clearing.
'The Maoris were very short in the limbs, this arising from the amount of time they spent in their canoes. Peculiarities of environment equally distinguish the Kaffirs, who were the most agile of the three races. Set against any of the others, all in the primitive state, the Kaffirs might have prevailed, though who could say? Neither the Maoris, nor the Australians, worked in iron weapons, while the Kaffirs did, and that circumstance would have told, in the clash of prevailing or going down.'
Contrasts were sharp in Oceana when she was young, which entitles you to pass quickly from Sir George Grey's careful estimate of the native races he ruled, to a little romance of South Australia. A Highland settler, with the Highland name McFarland, lived in a cottage some twenty miles from Adelaide. He was an informed and interesting Scot, and when the Governor was tired, he would ride over to his shieling and stay a day or two.
'A number of German colonists,' Sir George's narrative on this proceeded, 'had come to South Australia, seeking to improve their condition. Labour being scarce and highly paid, the German girls went out and did shearing. They moved from farm to farm, accompanied by some of the older women, and at night they would be housed by the settler who happened to be employing them.
'Among the shearers was a girl who had a great reputation for beauty. She was quite a belle, and so winning that everybody liked her. One morning old McFarland rushed in upon me at Adelaide, in a state of high excitement. His nephew, a genuine McFarland also, had, the previous night, eloped with the German beauty. The uncle was indignant that the nephew should run away with a foreigner—yes, a foreigner! He implored me to send the police to search for them, but I replied that I could do nothing. He must go to the Justices of the Peace and petition, if he wished to take action, on which point I offered no advice.
'Scarcely had he left, when the relatives of the girl, escorted by the German pastor, invaded me, full of an equal indignation and also demanding the police. I could only repeat the answer I had given to McFarland, even when it was pleaded that the girl, like other members of the German community, had pledged herself not to marry outside it. It was urged that anything she might do to the contrary would not count, but that argument would not hold. We heard, by the evening, of the marriage of the runaways.
'They had been united by some Justice of the Peace, a frequent occurrence then, there being few ministers, and the match proved a happy one in every respect. How the bold young McFarland managed to carry off his bride from her custodians I never learned, and I suppose I did not inquire.'
Only in a South Australia, rescued from the chasms, grown stalwart under the hand of Sir George Grey, could there have been such a romance. It needed a stout heart and a trustful, loving one, and these are the characteristics of a healthy community.
The war song of Lamech, father of Tubal Cain, called Sir George Grey hurriedly to New Zealand. The Maoris were exploiting the legacy of the first artificer in brass and iron.
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:For I have slain a man to my wounding,And a young man to my hurt.If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
In this genesis of verse, Sir George also found the noise of all combat with skilled weapons. A cry of sorrow and repentance by Lamech, at some ill-starred act, which filled him with remorse? Surely, rather the exultant note of a rude spirit, handling mastery anew in the ingenuity of his son.
There stood Lamech, on the edge of creation, crowing over the cunning forces Tubal Cain had discovered. 'I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt!' It was to be a long roll. Sir George would recite the lines once, twice, yet again, and the thunder tramp of a Maori impi sang in his ears. 'The story of my going to New Zealand,' he thought, 'may appear quaint in these days, when the cable anticipates all pleasant surprises. We had heard at Adelaide, through a coaster arriving from Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, also from a British man-of-war on the Australian station, of serious fighting in New Zealand. A friend of my own was in command of the war-ship in question, which had put into Adelaide for supplies. I spoke to him of events in New Zealand, the heavy slaughter of British soldiers, and the evident critical situation. I had no distinct authority to order his vessel to New Zealand, but I felt it to be a wise step.
Accordingly, I wrote him a letter saying he ought to proceed to the scene of trouble, and that I was prepared to assume the responsibility. We got together what materials of war were available in South Australia, and what money we could spare from the Treasury of the Colony. So furnished, he sailed for New Zealand.
'A few days later, I was out riding with my step-brother from England, who was on a visit to me at Adelaide. We were cantering along a road near the coast, when a man with a light cart stopped us. An unknown ship had been sighted before we left Adelaide, and this man came from the quarter where she had taken up anchor. He stated that it was the "Elphinstone," belonging to the East India Company, that despatches had been brought for me, and that he had them in his cart. He added that the "Elphinstone" had come to take me away, and that some of the officers would very likely be landed by the time I got to the place of anchor-age. This was all very puzzling. I jumped off my horse, sat down beside some trees, opened the despatch bag, and devoured its contents.'
It had been carried express from London, first overland to Suez where the "Elphinstone" awaited, and then by sea to Adelaide. The British Government, much alarmed as to affairs in New Zealand, borrowed the "Elphinstone" from the East India Company. In effect, it was adopting the Suez Canal route, long before the Suez Canal existed. Not often, perhaps, did the Colonial Office, of the young Oceana period, have such a healthy attack of nerves. Also, it spoke of Sir George Grey handsomely in these despatches; which was encouraging.
Noting his career as a whole, you seem to perceive the scales of official praise and disgrace rising and falling, like a see-saw. Now, he was being set to the straightening-out of some twist in Oceana, to the healing of a sore which threatened one of her limbs. Then, when Oceana, in that quarter, was waxing strong on his regimen, Downing Street, not having prescribed it all, would trounce him. The calls to South Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were in the agreeable key. The other note piped in the good-byes to South Africa and New Zealand, and in the registered blue-book phrase 'a dangerous man.' It was the ancient, merry way of regarding the Colonies; with, in conflict, a masterful Pro-Consul who, being on the spot, would there administer. Whether the see-saw had him up, or dropped him down, Sir George kept the good heart, as school- children do.
The tribute of Lord John Russell was that, in South Australia, he had given a young Governor as difficult a problem in administration as could arise. He pronounced the problem to have been solved with a degree of energy and success, hardly to be expected from any man. In New Zealand, Lord Stanley gave Sir George difficulties more arduous, duties even more responsible. The ability they demanded, the sacrifices they involved, were their best recommendation to one of Sir George's character. 'Before I mounted my horse again, after reading the despatches,' he recalled his decision, 'I made up my mind to go to New Zealand. Indeed, I had not two opinions on the matter from the moment I became acquainted with the wish of the Colonial Secretary. It was a clear duty lying before me, and that is ever the light to steer by.'
He sailed for New Zealand in the "Elphinstone," and retained her on war service there, another of his new departures. 'As far as I know,' he said, 'no East India Company's ship had previously been the consort, in active operations, of men-of-war, of the Royal Navy. There was a row afterwards, as to paying for the "Elphinstone," and I suppose I had no right to keep her. However, I realised that everything hung on how effective a blow I could at once strike in New Zealand.' Several men-of- war were at his orders, and later they were strengthened by the first steamer ever seen in these parts. It had come to New Zealand from the China station, and was a show alike to colonists and to Maoris.
A trifling incident of the naval activity, during the Maori wars, dwelt in Sir George's memory by reason of its droll comedy. An officer, thoroughly tired out, went to his bunk, leaving directions that he should be called at a particular hour. It happened that the awakening of him, fell to a blithesome midshipman having the sombre surname D'Eth. The sleeper turned himself lazily, half asleep, wishful only to be left to sleep on, and asked, 'Who's there?'
The midshipman held up the blinking, old-fashioned lantern which was in his hand, and answered 'D'Eth.' The weirdly lit cabin solemnly echoed the word, making its sound uncanny—'D'Eth!'
'Good God,' the officer in the bunk exclaimed, sitting up with a jerk, as if the last trumpet had sounded: 'D'Eth, where?'
Then he saw 'D'Eth' grinning, realised that there was still time for repentance, and bundled forth to the quarter deck.
The larger quarter deck on to which Sir George Grey had stridden, much needed cleaning up. In the north of New Zealand, a flag staff carrying the Union Jack, had been cut down by an insurgent chief. A settlement had been sacked, with completeness and the chivalry innate in the Maoris. No hurt was done the whites, that could be avoided, nor was there looting of property. The Maoris let Bishop Selwyn wash the earth with the contents of a spirit cask. It was all sobriety in victory.
'They were,' Sir George noted of his favourite native race, 'naturally ambitious of military renown; they were born warriors.' British troops had been hurled against their pas, or fortresses, only to be hurled back, heaps of slain. A Maori pa, in some forest fastness, stoutly built for defence from within, held by determined men with firearms, was hard to storm. Gallantry rushed to suicide.
The Maori wars, in their broad sense, are history. It is enough here to define them as the collision of two races. The white tide of civilisation was beating upon the foreshores of native New Zealand. There were King Canutes, tattooed warriors of the flying day, who would have ordered it back. You see how easily troubles grew, although they might have been the last desire of anybody.
Two Maori chieftains, Heke and Kawiti, were the centre of disturbance, and Sir George Grey was to have faithful dealing with them. Heke he called the fighting chief, Kawiti the advising chief; one the complement of the other.
'When I met Heke after the war,' he mentioned, 'it was said that he was somewhat nervous. I thought I was the person who should have been nervous, because I was in his country almost alone. I liked him, and really all the old Maori chiefs were fine fellows—shrewd, dignified, with a high sense of honour. Heke made me his heir when he died, to the neglect of his wife, but of course I gave her everything.'
This Heke was the son-in-law of Hongi, a Napoleonic figure in Maori annals. Hongi was before Sir George's time, but he heard all about him from contemporaries.
New Zealand, when Hongi had the guidin' o't, was still a land remote from the concern of the Old World. Missionaries had begun to spread light in the country; runaway convicts from Australia arrived stealthily, seeking refuge. For the rest, Hongi and the Maoris were the war lords, and the fiery torch was generally abroad. Hongi visited England, was lionised as a New Zealand trophy, and presented, with every ceremony, to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV. He got many presents, and, before reaching New Zealand again, he exchanged them to a purpose which the givers could hardly have foreseen. Hongi had been quick to discern the road to conquest, which musket, gun-powder, and bullet would give him in New Zealand against the native weapons. He chortled to himself as did Lamech: 'I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.'
'Landing with his battery of muskets,' Sir George had the tale, 'Hongi lost no time in carrying slaughter through Maoriland. His lurid fame spread far and wide; his bill of slaughter grew bigger and bigger. Yet, he met his death by a stray shot. Te-Whero-Whero, another Maori chief, complained to me, while we were discussing Hongi, that it was quite unfair he, should have been cut down in that fashion. When a veteran warrior could be destroyed, almost by accident, to the gun of a nobody, then all honest fighting was at an end. "You should," I was earnestly counselled by Te-Whero-Whero, "not let Maoris have arms which lend themselves to such ways."'
One English gift Hongi had not converted into muskets, a suit of armour that had probably been in the Tower of London. 'Another chief near Wellington'—Sir George stated this item arising out of Hongi—'had been given the armour, either to inspect or to keep. Anyhow, his interest took the form of hanging it on a tree, and firing at it. The bullet, it was alleged, penetrated the armour, and a native ran to Wellington with the report that the chief had been shot. That was incorrect, for he wisely wanted to test the armour before trusting himself in it. But the English settlers, just beginning to arrive in Wellington, were disturbed lest the tribe should fall foul of the representatives of a country which has produced so treacherous a suit of mail.'
Knowledge of arms, on the part of the Maoris, had advanced; indeed, they were in no wise tardy to pit themselves against British troops. Their own success, or rather the want of success of the British, had brought about this state of feeling. Careful, direct study of the situation, upheld Sir George in the intuition that he must strike firmly at the rebellion, and take every civil step that would tend to lay it. He stopped the sale of arms to the natives, though for another reason than that advanced by Te- Whero-Whero. Some fancied that his action might occasion discontent, if not revolt, among the friendly Maoris. 'Well,' was his answer, 'if that is a risk, we must run it.'
He gripped the nettle of land dealing, as between whites and natives, admonishing: 'The State shall conduct it. Then, it will be seen what the Maori has to sell, and the European will be made certain of a proper title. We shall have a regular system, the State standing between the parties to secure that all is fair. Thus friction may be avoided.' Again, Sir George organised a native police force, which paid a double debt. It not only waited upon law and order, but exercised a civilising influence towards the Maoris, through those who were trained in its ranks. That aim was at the end of all his plans; every road was marked 'To Civilisation.'
Next, Sir George took the field. By accompanying the soldiers, he was able to gain a variety of advantages. He was at hand to sanction what steps might be necessary, an advance on cumbrous despatch writing. His presence was especially valuable when sea and land forces happened to be co-operating. He could order both, being Governor, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, and everything else, in New Zealand. Finally, he could speak, face to face, with the Maoris, friends and enemies in the name of the Queen.
On the "Elphinstone" he had devoted his hours to the study of Maori, following his principle, 'You cannot govern a race to the best advantage unless you are able to communicate with them in their own language. They will receive you more intimately if you thus meet them; they will tell you things which they would not care to confide to an interpreter. Moreover, to know the language of a people is a great assistance to the entire understanding of them, their needs and characteristics. My Maori helped me enormously, and the language, with its rich folk-lore and tradition, fascinated me as I grew in knowledge of it.'
The main stronghold of Heke and Kawiti was a pa designated, in Maori, Ruapekapeka, of which the English equivalent is 'Bat's Nest.' Here the Maoris were in martial clover, having reasoned with themselves: 'We'll build a pa the Pakehas can't take, if we are behind its walls. We await them in this place, and if they want us, just let them come on.' That was Sir George Grey's summary of the resistance which the English forces, moving to invest Ruapekapeka, had to meet. Fortune smiled, and exacted little as return sacrifice.
'Our force,' he narrated, 'was strengthened by a detachment of friendly Maoris under the command of Waka Nene, a grizzled warrior. He was my chief adviser among the Maoris, and his services were of the utmost value to me. Waka Nene recognised the necessity, in New Zealand, of a government which could control both races. The former mistake, of trying to storm a well-defended pa, was replaced at Ruapekapeka by an artillery bombardment. Having made myself familiar with the method of warfare pursued by the Maoris, I decided this to be our line of tactics. They could use their Tower muskets with effect, but of artillery they had none, except a few old ship's guns, which they would have been better without.
'We had pounded the "Bat's-Nest" heavily, when, on a Sunday, Waka Nene's brother, Wi Waka, made out, from our front, that it seemed to be more or less empty. The Maoris had gone to a sheltered spot to celebrate divine service, thinking perhaps that Sunday was not a battle day with us. They relied upon our observing Sunday for praise and rest, unaware that Christian nations have done much of their hardest fighting on that day. Immediately we learned of Wi Waka's discovery, our men advanced into the pa. Rushing back to occupy it, at the alarm, the Maoris met us already in possession. They endeavoured, with vigour and gallantry, to drive us out, but could not, and the whole affair was over in a quarter of an hour.
'Wi Waka sustained a severe wound in the encounter, being shot through the ribs, on the left side. Hearing of this, I ran to him, and he asked me would he die of the wound or not? I replied that I could not tell, that possibly it might not be a fatal wound, but on the other hand it might be. When I had spoken he took my hand and said, "Have I done my duty to-day? Say!"
'Several chiefs had by this time gathered round, and we were all much touched by Wi Waka's appeal. I could only answer, "Yes, certainly! You have done your duty nobly." He turned to the chiefs: "Did you hear the Governor's word? I don't care now if I die." Happily he recovered, but the incident showed the spirit of the man, and he was an example of the others.'
The English force, Sir George made the postscript, was to have assailed the 'Bat's-Nest' on the Monday, the defences being much knocked about. The intention was to assault from the rear, and he believed they would have been certain of the enemy, without incurring any considerable loss. The fall of Ruapekapeka brought peace to the northern half of New Zealand, and when the Governor visited Heke it was 'To explain to him that I was his friend, which he admitted.'
Some of the folks in New Zealand blamed Sir George for being too indulgent towards revolted Maoris, fearing, 'In thanks they will raid Auckland some day, and massacre us all.' A retired military officer, inclined to that view, was staying at Government House, Auckland, the night a fire destroyed it and Sir George's earliest group of literary treasures.
'When a shout went up, on the discovery of the fire,' Sir George laughed in recollection, 'my guest fancied that his prophecy about the Maoris had come true. He looked out of his bedroom window, saw Maoris about, and assured himself that an attack on us had begun. He barricaded his door with a chest of drawers, the chairs, whatever he could lay hands on. Being a man of military training he prepared for a desperate siege, and this so effectively, that I believe he had, on learning the real state of matters, to escape the fire by crawling through the window.
Afterwards, the Governor had a critic the fewer, of his olive branch to the Maoris.