CHAPTER IV.The Pacific Ferry.—Another Route.The Hawaiian Islands—King and Parliament—Pleasant Honolulu—A Government Hotel—Honeysuckle-covered Theatre—Productions of the Islands—Grand Volcanoes—Ravages of Lava Streams and Earthquakes—Off to Fiji—A Rapidly Christianised People—A Native Hut—Dinner—Kandavu—The Bush—Fruit-laden Canoes—Strange Ideas of Value—New Zealand—Its Features—Intense English Feeling—The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities—The Maories—Trollope’s Testimony—Facts about Cannibalism—A Chief on Bagpipes—Australia—Beauty of Sydney Harbour—Its Fortifications—Volunteers—Its War-fleet of One—Handsome Melbourne—Absence of Squalor—No Workhouses Required—The Benevolent Asylums—Splendid Place for Working Men—Cheapness of Meat, &c.—Wages in Town and Country—Life in the Bush—“Knocking Down One’s Cheque”—Gold, Coal, and Iron.A popular route now to New Zealand and Australia is thatviâSan Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, the bulk of the voyage being usually over the quieter parts of the Pacific; it takes the passenger, of course, through the tropics.Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, is now a civilised and pleasant city, while the natural attractions of the islands themselves are many and varied. One need not now fear the fate of poor Captain Cook. Most of the natives, of whom there are 50,000, are clothed in semi-European style: the men in coats and trousers of nankeen, and the women more picturesquely clad in long robes fastened round the neck, and pretty often of pink or some other bright colour. There is a white population of some 10,000 souls scattered over the islands, a large proportion of whom are English and American. Honolulu is the Government centre and residence of King Kalakau, who used to be called“Calico”in the United States, and who, in fact, is a very slightly tinted,[pg 46]good-looking, and most intelligent gentleman. The Ex-Queen Emma, who visited England some years ago, has a villa beautifully situated a few miles out of town. The king devotes his energies to bettering the condition of his people, and some few years ago, when the money was voted to build a new palace, declined to accept it, at least for two years. The Hawaiian Parliament consists of a House of seventeen nobles and twenty-eight commoners, who, strange to say, sit in the same hall, their votes being of equal weight. There are always several Europeans or Americans in this council.Mr. Guillemard thus describes Honolulu20:—“The town, which is built on the low land bordering the shore—partly, indeed, on land reclaimed from the sea, thanks to the industry of the architects of the coral reef—looks mean and insignificant from the harbour, but on going ashore to breakfast we get glimpses of fine public buildings and numerous shops and stores, of neat houses nestling among bowers of shrubs and flowers, and evidences of a busy trade and considerable population. The streets are narrow, and the houses built of wood, without any attempt at decoration or even uniformity. In the by-streets or lanes pretty verandah-girt villas peep out from shrubberies of tropical foliage, honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and a hundred flowers strange to English eyes. Tiny fountains are sending sparkling jets of water up in the hot, still air; and other music is not wanting, for here and there we hear the tinkle of a distant piano, telling us that early rising is the rule in Honolulu, and suggesting as a consequence asiestaat mid-day.“But here we are at the grand Hawaiian Hotel, a fine verandahed building, standing back from the road in a pretty garden, the green lawn, cool deep shade, and trickling fountain of which are doubly grateful after the glare of the scorching sunlight, scorching even though it is not yet seven a.m. The theatre, half-hidden by its wealth of honeysuckle and fan-palm, is not fifty yards distant, but is quite thrown into insignificance by the hotel. This was built by Government, at a cost of £25,000, and is admirably planned and appointed.”Its large airy rooms and cool verandahs, shaded with masses of passion flowers, its excellent food and iced American drinks, all combine to make it a capital resting-place.In the streets Mr. Guillemard noted bevies of gaily-attired girls on horseback, their robes being gathered in at the waist with bright scarves, which fling their folds far over the horses’ tails. Their jaunty straw hats were wreathed with flowers, and now and then some dark-eyed beauty would be found wearing a necklace of blossoms. The girls rode astride up and down the main streets, making them ring again with their merry laughter. Mosquitoes were abundant, and, as some compensation, so also were delicious melons, guavas, mangoes, bananas, and commoner fruit.The sugar-cane was first grown on these islands in 1820; now over 20,000,000 pounds of sugar are produced annually by the aid of Hawaiian and Chinese labour and steam-mills. Not a quarter of the land suitable for this purpose is yet under cultivation, though some of the plantations are of thousands of acres in extent. Hides and wool are staple exports.[pg 47]A few hours’ sail from Honolulu some of the largest and most wonderful volcanoes in the world are to be found. Two of them, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, are each over 13,000 feet in elevation. The eruptions from the great crater of Kilauea, which isten milesin circumference, are something fearful. One explosion ejected streams of red mud three miles, killing thirty-one people and 500 head of cattle. This was followed by several earthquakes, which destroyed a number of houses. These, again, were succeeded by a great earthquake wave, during the continuance of which three villages were swept away and seventy people killed. Next a new crater formed upon Mauna Loa, from which rose four fountains of red-hot lava to a height of 600 feet. A lava stream, eight to ten miles long, and half a mile wide in some places, carried all before it. In one place it tumbled, in a molten cataract of fiery liquid, over a precipice several hundred feet in height. The interior of Hawaii is a vast underground lake of fire, and were it not for the safety-valves provided by Nature in the form of craters, it would be shaken to pieces by successive earthquakes.THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).And now the passenger has before him a fortnight of the most tranquil part of the ocean called the Pacific. He must not be surprised if the heat rises to 90° or so in the saloon. The distance from San Francisco to Sydney direct is 6,500 miles, and Fiji is naturallyen route; the detour to New Zealand considerably increases the length of the voyage. It will be remembered that these islands were formally annexed to Britain in 1874, after vain attempts at a mixed native and European government. The population was then 140,000; in a year or two afterwards 40,000 of the poor natives fell victims to the measles, another of the importations apparently inseparable from civilisation. The Wesleyan missionaries, in particular, have worked with so much zeal in these islands that more than half the people are Christians. There are 600 chapels in the 140 islands comprising the Fiji group. Formerly the natives were the worst kind of cannibals. They not merely killed and ate the victims of their island wars, but no shipwrecked or helpless person was safe among them. Numbers were slain at the caprice of the chiefs, especially at the building of a house or canoe, or at the reception of a native embassy. Widows were strangled at the death of their husbands, and slaves killed on the decease of their masters. The introduction of Christianity and partial civilisation has changed all that for the better; and the natives of to-day are described as mild and gentle, and little given to quarrelling. Among their customs is that of powdering the hair (always closely cropped) with lime, which is often coloured. Their huts are of dried reeds, lashed to a strong framework of poles, and have lofty arched roofs, but are without windows or chimneys. Each has two low doors, through which one must crawl. The best native huts have a partition between the dwelling and bed room, and all are carpeted with mats. The only furniture consists of one article, a short piece of wood on two small legs, used for a pillow! Clay pots are used for cooking their principal diet, yams and fish. Many of them nowadays have houses well furnished with mats, curtains, baskets, jars, &c.Mr. Guillemard describes a tropical dinner, served to himself and companions in one of these huts. A couple of banana-leaves formed the dishes, on which boiled fish and half a dozen yams, or sweet potatoes, were offered. A large block of rock-salt was handed them to useà discretion. Then followed ripe cocoa-nuts. Dried leaves of somewhat[pg 48]tasteless wild tobacco, rolled up rapidly and neatly, and tied round with a fibre, formed the post-prandial cigars, which were lighted by the women at the fire, and passed from their lips to the guests’.The natural productions of this group are extensive, and comprise bread-fruit, taro, cocoa-nuts, yams, bananas, plantains, guavas, oranges and lemons, wild and cultivated tobacco, sugar, cotton, and coffee. The india-rubber tree is cultivated, and among the leading exports are dried cocoa-nut and pearl-shell. As there are at the present time comparatively few white settlers—perhaps not over 2,500 in all the islands—there are innumerable openings for settlement, and Fiji, with many other neighbouring islands, will doubtless soon afford fresh examples of British enterprise.The point touched by the steamers is Kandavu, on one of the southernmost islands, where Mount Washington, a fine mountain, rears its head 3,000 feet into the clouds. A visitor says:—“From the eastern point of land run out miles of coral reef, on which the ocean rollers are breaking grandly, and outside this barrier we take our pilot on board. The entrance to Kandavu harbour is narrow and intricate, and here theMacgregor, one of the mail steamers, struck on a submerged reef, and remained for several days hard and fast aground.”The passage has been properly buoyed and lighted, and the New Company have built offices and stores, and established a coaling station here.“The view of Port Ugaloa from the entrance is very beautiful. On our left the coral reef encloses a still lagoon of the softest, lightest green; before us hills and mountains, covered from base to summit with the richest vegetation, are tipped with fleecy cloud; and on our right, dividing the waters of the bay, is Ugaloa Island, its slopes feathery with the foliage of the cocoa-palm and banana, half hidden in which appear here and there the low brown huts of the natives.... The brothers L. accompany me ashore on Ugaloa, landing close to a small collection of huts scattered about just above the coral-strewn beach. It is Sunday afternoon, and a native missionary is preaching to some fifty men, women, and children, squatting on their hams on the mat-covered floor of a neat, white-washed mission house. Amongst the congregation is a tall native, with a thick cane, keeping silence by tapping the heads of the inattentive. The preacher is eloquent and energetic in gesture; but Fiji is hardly a pretty language to listen to, being decidedly characterised by queer guttural sounds, and spoken very fast. The sermon over, a hymn is read out and sung to a rather monotonous dirge-like chant, and the congregation disperse. We are at once surrounded by an olive-skinned crowd; the ladies’ dresses are minutely examined, for a white lady has scarcely been seen in Kandavu before the present year. The gentlemen have to display their watches and chains, and by means of shouting and signs every one is soon carrying on a vigorous conversation. Why is it that one always elevates the voice when trying to make one’s native tongue intelligible to a foreigner?“We wander away into the bush, and are soon lost in a wilderness of ferns, creepers, bananas, cocoa-palms, and chestnut-trees. We meet with a young native, and make signs to him that we are thirsty, and wish to refresh ourselves with the juice of a green cocoa-nut. Clutching the trunk with both hands, he almost runs up a palm, and our wants are soon plentifully supplied. He receives hisdouceurwith apparent nonchalance, and proceeds to tie it up in a corner of his sulu with a fibre of banana bark.[pg 50]“Monday morning breaks fine and clear, and our slumbers are early disturbed by the chattering of a hundred natives, a whole squadron of whose fruit-laden canoes are alongside the steamer. Queer crank-looking craft are these, roughly dug out of the trunk of a tree, and kept steady on the water by an outrigger consisting of a log half the length of the canoe, attached to it amidships by a few light poles projecting some four or five feet from its side. They are usually propelled by means of a long oar worked between the poles, after the fashion of sculling a boat from the stern; but sometimes we see the ordinary short paddle being plied at bow and stern. Some of the larger craft hoist a large long sail, but they do not seem very weatherly under canvas, which they use but little compared with the Society Islanders.“The scene on deck is amusing enough. Forward, fifty natives, their olive skins blackened and begrimed with dust, are hard at work replenishing the coal bunkers from the hold, and thoroughly earning their shilling a day; on the poop as many more, laden with lemons, huge bunches of bananas, cocoa-nuts, shells, coral, matting, tappa—a soft, white fabric, called by the natives‘marse’—and a few clubs and other weapons, are driving a brisk trade with the passengers. Everything is to be had for a shilling.‘Shillin’is the only English word that all the natives understand; in fact, this useful coin seems to be the‘almighty dollar’of Kandavu. You take a lemon, and ask,‘How much?’‘Shillin’is the reply; but you can obtain the man’s whole stock of sixty, basket and all, for the same money!”Our next stopping place is one of particular interest to the British colonist. New Zealand, albeit one of the youngest, is now among the most promising of England’s outposts. Auckland, in the North Island, is the port at which the steamers touch. The harbour is very fine, and residents compare it to the Bay of Naples.Every schoolboy knows that New Zealand includes two large and one small island, respectively known as North, Middle, and Stewart’s Island. One great feature of the coast line consists of its indentations; the colony is rich in fine natural harbours and ports. The area of the islands is nearly as great as that of Britain and Ireland combined, and about half of that area consists of excellent soil. The climate is that of England, with a difference: there are many more fine days, while winter is not so cold by half. The islands are volcanic; on the North Island, Mount Ruapahu, a perpetually snow-capped peak, rises to a height of 9,000 feet, while in the same range, the Tongariro mountain, an active volcano, rises to a height of 6,000 feet. The highest mountain range is on the Middle Island, where Mount Cook rises to a height of 14,000 feet. One can understand that in such a country there should be an abundance of evergreen forests of luxuriant growth. These are interspersed with charming fern-clad slopes and treeless grassy plains. Water is everywhere found; but none of the rivers are navigable by large vessels for more than fifty miles or so. One great advantage found in the country is the absence of noxious reptiles or insects: of the latter there is not one as offensive as an English wasp. The pigs, introduced by Captain Cook, run wild over the island, and there is plenty of large and small game: the red and fallow deer, the pheasant, partridge, and quail. Everything that grows in England will thrive there, while the vine, maize, taro, and sweet potato grow in many districts. A traveller21says of the (Thames) gold fields:—“Mines here, like everywhere else, are now dull. At one time there[pg 51]was a population of 22,000, but now this is only 13,000. Everybody one sees seems to have lost in the gold-diggings, and it is a mystery to me who is the lucky person that wins—one never seems to meet him.”This somewhat random statement may be takencum grano salis, as the gold-fields have yielded largely at times. Nevertheless, mining is always more or less a lottery.Mr. Anthony Trollope testifies to the intense British feeling in New Zealand, where he felt thoroughly at home. Australia he found tinged with a form of boasting Yankeeism.“The New Zealander,”says he,22“among John Bulls is the most John Bullish. He admits the supremacy of England to every place in the world, only he is more English than any Englishman at home.”Discovered by Tasman in 1642, England only commenced to take an interest in the islands more than a century and a quarter later, when Cook surveyed the coasts. The missionaries came first, in 1814, and a British Resident was appointed in 1833. All this time a desultory colonisation was going on, and the natives were selling parcels of their best lands for a few cast-iron hatchets or muskets, shoddy blankets, or rubbishy trinkets. In 1840 a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed from home, and his presence was indeed necessary. The previous year a corporation, calling itself the New Zealand Company, had made pretended purchases of tracts of the best parts of the country, amounting toone-thirdof its whole area! The unscrupulous and defiant manner in which this company treated the natives and the Government brought about many complications, and led to very serious wars with natives not to be trifled with. The New Zealand Company was“bought out”by the Government in 1852 for £268,000. During 1843-7, and in 1861 and after, England had to fight the Maories—foes that she learned to respect. At last, weary of war, all our troops were withdrawn, and the colonists, who of course knew the bush and bush life better than nine-tenths of the soldiers, were left to defend their homes and property, and in the end to successfully finish the fight. The natives now are generally peaceful and subdued, while many are even turning their attention to agriculture and commerce. Nine years ago they numbered 37,500, but are fast dying out.Physically and intellectually, the Maories are the finest semi-savage natives on the face of the earth. Mr. Trollope is an author and traveller whose words carry weight, and he has given us the following concise summary of their qualities and character:—“They are,”says he,“an active people, the men averaging 5 feet 6½ inches in height, and are almost equal in strength and weight to Englishmen. In their former condition they wore matting; now they wear European clothes. Formerly they pulled out their beards, and every New Zealander of mark was tattooed; now they wear beards, and the young men are not tattooed. Their hair is black and coarse, but not woolly like a negro’s, or black like a Hindoo’s. The nose is almost always broad and the mouth large. In other respects their features are not unlike those of the European race. The men, to my eyes, were better-looking than the women, and the men who were tattooed better-looking than those who had dropped the custom. The women still retain the old custom of tattooing the upper lip. The Maories had a mythology of their own, and believed in a future existence; but they did not recognise[pg 52]one supreme God. Virtue with them, as with other savages, consisted chiefly in courage and a command of temper. Their great passion was revenge, which was carried on by one tribe against another to the extent sometimes of the annihilation of tribes. The decrease of their population since the English first came among them has been owing as much to civil war as to the injuries with which civilisation has afflicted them. They seem from early days to have acquired that habit of fighting behind stockades or in fortified pahs which we have found so fatal to ourselves in our wars with them. Their weapons, before they got guns from us, were not very deadly. They were chiefly short javelins and stones, both flung from slings. But there was a horror in their warfare to the awfulness of which they themselves seem to have been keenly alive. When a prisoner was taken in war he was cooked and eaten.“I do not think that human beings were slaughtered for food in New Zealand, although there is no doubt that the banquet when prepared was enjoyed with a horrid relish.“I will quote a passage from Dr. Thompson’s work in reference to the practice of cannibalism, and will then have done with the subject.‘Whether or not cannibalism commenced immediately after the advent of the New Zealanders from Hawaiki, it is nevertheless certain that one of Tasman’s sailors was eaten in 1642; that Captain Cook had a boat’s crew eaten in 1774; that Marion de Fresne and many other navigators met this horrible end; and that the pioneers of civilisation and successive missionaries have all borne testimony to the universal prevalence of cannibalism in New Zealand up to the year 1840. It is impossible to state how many New Zealanders were annually devoured; that the number was not small may be inferred from two facts authenticated by European witnesses. In 1822, Hougi’s army ate three hundred persons after the capture of Totara, on the River Thames, and in 1836, during the Rotura war, sixty beings were cooked and eaten in two days.’I will add from the same book a translation of a portion of a war-song:—‘Oh, my little son, are you crying? are you screaming for your food? Here it is for you, the flesh of Hekemanu and Werata. Although I am surfeited with the soft brains of Putu Rikiriki and Raukauri, yet such is my hatred that I will fill myself fuller with those of Pau, of Ngaraunga, of Pipi, and with my most dainty morsel, the flesh of the hated Teao.’”Mr. Laird testifies to their cleanliness, but states that they are, like most savages, and for that matter, most white men, very improvident. If a bad potato or other crop occurred, they would eat it all at once, and half starve afterwards.The same author tells a good story of the nonchalance of a leading Maori chief who was invited to dinner at Government House during the visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner the Duke’s chief bagpiper came in and played. The chief was asked how he liked the music. He replied briefly:“Too much noise for me; but suit white man well enough.”And now we are approaching that great continent which has had, has, and will increasingly have, so much interest for the emigrant, who must be, more or less, a voyager and man of the sea. Australia, a country nearly as large as the United States, must be for many a day to come a very Paradise for the poor man.The American steamers from San Francisco land one at Sydney, of which charming place Mr. Trollope says:—“I despair of being able to convey to my readers my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour;”he considers that it excels Dublin Bay, Spezzia, and[pg 53]New York. And the colonists, left to themselves—for England maintains no troops there now—have fortified it strongly. Mr. Trollope tells us of five separate armed fortresses, with Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons’ weight, with loopholed walls and pits for riflemen, as though Sydney was to become another Sebastopol.“It was shown,”says he,“how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemated batteries, shell-rooms and gunpowder magazines,[pg 54]barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour, and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready for use in an hour or two. It was explained to me that‘they’could not possibly get across the trenches, or break the boom, or escape the torpedoes, or live for an hour beneath the blaze of the guns.‘They’would not have a chance to get at Sydney. There was much martial ardour, and a very general opinion that‘they’would have the worst of it.”New South Wales and Victoria have about 8,000 volunteers and a training-ship for sailor boys; while an enormous monitor, theCerberus, presented by the mother country, forms its war-fleet of one.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings,“the internal appearance of the city is,”Mr. Trollope assures us,“certainly magnificent.”It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens.“One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.”There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by“Benevolent Asylums.”In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid.“Could a pauper,”says Trollope,“be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,”so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly.The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well-to-do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.Mr. Trollope says:—“There is perhaps no town in the world in which an ordinary working man can do better for himself and for his family with his work than he can at Melbourne.”The rates of wages for mechanics are slightly greater than at home, and all the necessaries of life are cheaper. With meat at 4d. per pound, butter from 6d. upwards, bread, tea, and coffee about the same prices or rather under, coals the same or a trifle higher, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits generally considerably cheaper, all can live well and plentifully. Meat three times a day is common all over Australia, and in some parts the price is as low as 1½d. or 2d. per pound. Wages for good mechanics and artisans average about 10s. a day; gardeners receive about 50s., and labourers about 30s. per week; men-servants, in the house, £40 to £50 per annum; cooks, £35 to £45 per year; girls, as housemaids, &c., 8s. or 10s. per week. It is usual to hire the last named by this[pg 55]short term. Some of these prices rule all over the country, but are liable to rule lower, rather than higher, outside of Melbourne.In the country sheep-shearers can earn 7s. to 14s. per day for about four months in the year; shepherds, £30 to £40 per year, with rations. The common labourer can count on 15s. to 20s. per week, with rations: these consist generally of 14 lbs. meat (usually mutton), 8 lbs. flour, 2 lbs. sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea. Of course, where fruit or vegetables are plentiful they would be added. The meat, bread, and tea diet, however, is that characteristic of the whole country. In the great sheep runs and cattle ranges23it would be the shepherd’s diet invariably.Mr. Trollope advises the poor man to save for three or four years, and then invest in land, which in some places is to be had at 3s. 9d. an acre, payable to the Government in five instalments of ninepence per acre. Of course, he would require money for the erection of a house, farm implements, &c. The great trouble with most men working in the bush as shepherds or shearers, or at the mines, or elsewhere at distant points, is that the enforced absence from civilisation and social life makes them inclined for reckless living when they have accumulated a sum of money. The tavern-keepers of the nearest town or station reap all the benefit, and there are numbers of men who, for ten or eleven months of the year perfectly steady and sober, periodically give themselves up to drink until their earnings are melted, it is called“knocking down”one’s cheque, and it is a common practice for them to hand such cheque to the publican, who lets them run on recklessly in drink and food untilheconsiders it exhausted. A good story is told by Mr. Trollope of a man who had been accustomed to do this at regular intervals, but who on one occasion, having some loose silver,“planted”his cheque in an old tree, and proceeded to the usual haunt, where he set to work deliberately to get drunk. The publican showed evident doubt as to the propriety of supplying him freely. Why had not the man brought his cheque as usual? The tavern-keeper at last put him to bed; but the man, though drugged and stupefied, had his wits about him sufficiently to observe and remember that the host had examined his clothes, his hat, and boots, for the lacking cheque. Next morning he was ignominiously expelled from the house, but he didn’t mind: the cheque was found by him safely in the tree by the roadside, and he surprised his master by returning to the station a week or two before he was expected richer than he had ever come home before. Let us hope he was cured of that form of folly for ever.The gold yield of Australia for the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 was 50,750,000 ozs. But gold-fields die out sooner than most mines, and Australia has a more permanent source of prosperity for the future in its coal and iron-fields, which are in close proximity to each other. The coal is already worked to great profit, and is one of the principal steamship fuels of the Pacific.The steamship route homeward from Australia is that by the Indian Ocean (usually touching at Ceylon), then reaching the Mediterraneanviâthe Red Sea and Suez Canal. These points of interest have already been fully described in early chapters of this work.[pg 56]CHAPTER V.Woman at Sea.Poets’ Opinions on Early Navigation—Who was the First Female Navigator?—Noah’s Voyage—A Thrilling Tale—A Strained Vessel—A Furious Gale—A Birth at Sea—The Ship Doomed—Ladies and Children in an Open Boat—Drunken Sailors—Semi-starvation, Cold, and Wet—Exposed to the Tropical Sun—Death of a Poor Baby—Sharks about—A Thievish Sailor—Proposed Cannibalism—A Sail!—The Ship passes by—Despair—Saved at Last—Experiences of a Yachtswoman—Nearly Swamped and Carried Away—An Abandoned Ship—TheSunbeamof Service—Ship on Fire!—Dangers of a Coal Cargo—The Crew Taken off—Noble Lady Passengers—Two Modern Heroines and their Deeds—The Story of Grace Darling—The Longstone Light and Wreck of theForfarshire—To the Rescue!—Death of Grace Darling.“Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted firstRude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.”So sings Waller, and his words are only the repetition of a sentiment much more grandly expressed by Horace, who wrote now near two thousand years ago:—“Surely oak and threefold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean.”And once more, just to show the unanimity of the poets on this point, Dr. Watts has said:—“It was a brave attempt! advent’rous heWho in the first ship broke the unknown sea.”Now, if all this is said of man, what shall be said of the woman who first trusted herself on the great deep? Who was she? It would be most difficult to satisfactorily answer this question, but there can be no doubt that“Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons,”whose voyage and enforced residence in the ark lasted no less than twelve months and three days24are the earliest females on record who embarked in a great vessel on a boundless expanse of waters.These pages have already presented episodes in the lives of many seafaring ladies, but till now no chapter has been specially devoted to the subject. In these days of general travel ladies make, as we have often seen, long voyages to and from far distant parts. One of them, some nineteen years ago, underwent the horrors of shipwreck, and her subsequent sufferings were admirably told by her under the title of“Ten Terrible Days.”The account, which should be read in its entirety, is here, for obvious reasons, considerably condensed.One day late in the year 1861 a grain-laden vessel, a fine clipper, might have been seen slowly and gracefully sailing out of the noble bay of San Francisco. On her as passengers were two or three ladies with children, among them Mrs. William Murray, the authoress, who had been recommended to take the long voyage home in a roving clipper, in preference to taking a passage in the over-crowded steamers running to Panama and New York. Let her open the story.“The sun,”says she,“was shining as it always does in California,[pg 57]until the sea and the rocks and the vast city seemed literally glittering with sunlight. One long look back to the happy home of the last six years, to the home still of the husband and brothers obliged to remain behind, and at last I had only the sea that parted us to look at through my tears. Our friends had seen us set sail in what seemed a gallant ship. It had been chosen from all others as the one to send us home in for its show of perfectness. There were men in San Francisco who knew that the ship was unseaworthy (having been frightfully strained in her last voyage to China), and that she was in no fit condition to be trusted with the lives of helpless women and children, yet they let us sail without a word of warning.”The dreaded Horn had been easily rounded in good weather, and on the evening of January 4th, 1862, they had been eighty-six days out; in ten more they expected to be in England. The sailors had predicted a stormy night, and a terrific gale followed closely on that prophecy. The wind increased in fury, and the ship rolled till those on board were often thrown from their feet. That night a child was born on board, and the kindly lady passengers did all in their power for the poor mother.“At dawn,”says Mrs. Murray,“taking my little girl by the hand, I went on deck. The storm had in some measure abated, but the sea looked black and sullen, and the swell of the vast heavy waves seemed to mock our frailty. The sailors had been up all night, and were[pg 58]as men playing at some ferocious game: some working in desperation at the pumps, and singing at the pitch of their voices wild sea-songs to time their common efforts; others employed in throwing hundreds of bags of grain into the sea, that they might thus lighten the ship. This, I think, more than all, showed me our peril. I wandered about, too miserable to remain in any one spot, till the captain assembled us all once more in the cabin to get some food, saying that it was impossible to save the ship, and that we should have need of all our fortitude. I remembered my own vain attempt to eat some bread, but the poor little children took their breakfast and enjoyed it.“We were then each provided with a large bag made of sailcloth, and were advised by the captain to fill it with the warmest articles of clothing we possessed.“All my worldly possessions were on board, comprising many memorials of dear friends, portraits of loved ones I shall never see again, and my money loss I knew would be no trifle. In perfect bewilderment I looked round, and filled my bag with stockings and a couple of warm shawls. On the top of a box I saw a little parcel that had been entrusted to me by a lady in California to deliver to her mother in Liverpool. I put that in my bag, and she got it.... There had been no thought of removing the breakfast, and with the rolling of the ship, which was every moment becoming worse, everything had fallen on the floor, and was dashing about in all directions. Boxes, water-jugs, plates, dishes, chairs, glasses, were pitching from one end of the saloon to the other. Children screaming, sailors shouting and cursing, and loud above all there was the creaking of timbers, and the sullen sound of water fast gaining upon us in the hold of the ship, which groaned and laboured like a living thing in agony.”How the ridiculous will intrude even at such times is shown in the following. A little boy was discovered helping himself out of the medicine-chest, particularly busy with the contents of a broken calomel bottle! Lamp-oil served as an emetic in this emergency, and the youngster’s life was saved. And now the first mate, upon whose decision and firmness much depended, having lost his presence of mind, had drunk deeply of whisky. He was intoxicated, and so, too, were many of the sailors, who had followed his example. The captain, meantime, had been busily employed in ordering out food and water to supply the boats, collecting the ship’s papers, &c. The lowering of the boats he had entrusted to his officers. On hearing of the drunkenness on deck, his first thought was to get the women and children off at once, for should the sailors seize the boats, what would become of them? Two boats had already been smashed whilst lowering them into the sea, and there were only two remaining. Forty-seven people to cram into two frail boats, fifteen hundred miles from land: delicately-nurtured women, helpless children, drunken and desperate men.“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”(p. 58).By the help of the most sober of the sailors, the captain’s own boat was lowered; some small mattresses, pillows, blankets, a cask of water, sacks of biscuit, and nautical instruments, were first put in; then the passengers were let down by ropes.“It seems marvellous,”says Mrs. Murray,“when I think of it now, that in our descent we were not dashed to pieces against the ship’s side. We had to wait for each descent a favourable moment while she was leaning over. Then the word of command was given, and we were slung down like sheep. My heart stood still whilst my little one was going down, and then I followed. It was a terrible sight for a woman to see that poor creature whose baby was born the night before, looking like a corpse in a long dressing-gown of white[pg 59]flannel, with the poor little atom of mortality tightly clasped in her arms. I thought she would die before the day was over.”At last they were all in the boat: four women, five children, the second mate, and sixteen sailors. The captain stayed on the ship, providing for the safety of the drunken creatures who could not take care of themselves, and then he came off. How small the boat looked by the side of the tall ship! And they had to get quickly out of her reach, for she was rolling so heavily that the waters near her boiled up like a maelström.Away they drifted, a mere speck upon the ocean. Before night there came a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, that lasted through the darkness, and by which they were drenched through and through.“I sat up,”says the narrator,“for some twelve or fourteen hours on a narrow plank, with my child in my arms, utterly miserable, cold, and hopeless, soaked to the skin, blinded by the salt spray, my face and hands smarting intolerably with the unusual exposure.”During the storm and confusion the greater part of their biscuit had been soaked with salt water, and made useless. It was also discovered that the food collected for the captain’s boat had been thrown by mistake into the other, therefore it was necessary at once to put them on allowance: half a pint of water and half a biscuit a day to each person. Except the biscuit, there were only a few small tins of preserved strawberries and Indian corn, and these were given to the ladies.“How the poor children cried with hunger as the days dragged on!”The boat leaked from the beginning, and the sailors by turns baled the water out in little cans. Exposed to the glare of a tropical sun for hours together, nearly mad with thirst, bearing her child in her weak arms, for she was too much exhausted to stand, Mrs. Murray says that often she would sit for hours without any thought at all, vacantly gazing on the ocean.“We had,”says she,“three days of dead calm. The sun glared down upon us pitilessly, and I thought how pleasant it would be to throw myself into the sea, and sink calmly to death beneath its waves. I lost all wish to live—for life seemed horrible. I cannot describe the days as they passed separately, one by one; when I look back upon them, they all seem to have been one misery. I remember that on the third day out poor Kitty’s baby died—indeed, it had been dying from the first. It never had a chance of living, for it had no fit attention and no sustenance. The poor mother cried bitterly when at last it became cold on her bosom, but its death was a merciful release. Wrapped in a shawl of bright colours, it was thrown overboard, but was so light that it could not sink, and floated for hours on a sea so calm in the hot sun that scarce a ripple could be seen. At last it disappeared suddenly, the prey of some hungry shark, and when afterwards the horrid monsters crowded round our boat they added to our misery. Hitherto the children had been plunged into the sea every morning to preserve them in health, but we dared not continue this practice with those horrid creatures on our lee.... I must not forget one incident, trifling in itself, but which might have caused the death of one of the sailors. On the day of the wreck I had caused two or three bottles of ale and one of claret to be put in the boat, thinking it might be of great use to us. On the third or fourth night out, when we were shivering helplessly after a drenching[pg 60]shower of rain, we thought that a bottle of ale should be opened for the women and children, but not a bottle of any sort was to be found.”The rage of the captain was awful, and but for the intercession of the ladies, he swore that he would have thrown the man overboard.It was on the morning of the tenth day that the frightful thought of eating the children came into the heads of three or four desperate men, and the captain and a few trustworthy companions had made up their minds to slay the would-be murderers that very night in their sleep. The last and fatal hour of their great agony seemed to be come. On the morning of the tenth day a sail was reported, and a white towel hoisted to attract her attention. She came near enough for the captain to make out that she carried the Hamburg flag, and then“passed by on the other side.”Curses loud and deep came from the sailors’ lips. Then the women looked into each other’s faces and the children cried, and the wolfish eyes of the would-be cannibals were again fixed upon them.But Heaven was merciful, and again a sail was reported. Nearer and nearer she came, faster rowed the hungry sailors, when there rose a wild shout,“She has stopped!”and surely there she was at rest in the water, waiting to see what manner of beings they were.“Row faster, my men, and keep down the women and children,”sang out the[pg 61]captain, for he was fearful that if their number was discovered the vessel might pass them, as had that seen in the morning.“Oh, what a lovely afternoon,”says Mrs. Murray,“that was when we were saved—such a blaze of sunshine, such blue skies, such a glistening, glowing sea, as if even the treacherous ocean were rejoicing with us. At length we were close alongside of the ship, and saw crowds of human beings clustering about to look at us—dark, swarthy faces, for they were all Spaniards, but full of pity, wonderment, and horror. They took us all in, one by one, and when they saw the women and little children they wept. They could not speak our language, and looked upon us with bewilderment, but when I (who fortunately could speak Spanish), kneeling down on deck, said‘Gracias a Dios’(Thank God), their tongues were loosened, and there was a flood of questions and crowding round us, with weeping and laughing and shaking of hands. How good were those kind-hearted men! How I thank them all, every one, now as I write, from the worthy captain down to the lowest of his crew. And they brought us bread and wine and water—precious water, how good it was!”A few of Mrs. Brassey’s experiences on her husband’s yacht will be read with interest. One day, after their five o’clock dinner, she and some of her children very nearly met with a most serious accident.“We were all sitting,”writes that lady,“or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests mountains high. Each wave, as it approached, appeared as if it must overwhelm us, instead of which it rushed grandly by, rolling and shaking us from stem to stern, and sending fountains of spray on board.... A new hand was steering, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us he unfortunately allowed the vessel to broach to a little. In a second the sea came pouring over the stern, above Allnut’s head. The boy was nearly washed overboard, but he managed to catch hold of the rail, and with great presence of mind stuck his knees into the bulwarks. Kindred, our boatswain, seeing his danger, rushed forward to save him, but was knocked down by the return wave, from which he emerged gasping.“The coil of rope on which Captain Lecky and Mabelle were seated was completely floated by the sea. Providentially, however, he had taken a double turn round his wrist with a reefing point, and, throwing his other arm round Mabelle, held on like grim death; otherwise, nothing could have saved them. She was perfectly self-possessed, and only said quietly,‘Hold on, Captain Lecky, hold on!’to which he replied,‘All right.’I asked her afterwards if she thought she was going overboard, and she answered,‘I did notthinkat all, mamma, but felt sure we were gone.’Captain Lecky, being accustomed to very large ships, had not in the least realised how near we were to the water in our little vessel, and was proportionately taken by surprise. All the rest of the party were drenched, with the exception of Muriel, whom Captain Brown held high above the water in his arms, and who lost no time in remarking, in the midst of the general confusion‘I’m not at all wet, I’m not!’Happily, the children don’t know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail-boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of the fore-boom gave way.[pg 62]“Soon after this adventure we all went to bed, full of thankfulness that it had ended as well as it did; but also not, so far as I am concerned, to rest in peace. In about two hours I was awakened by a tremendous weight of water suddenly descending upon me and flooding the bed. I immediately sprang out, only to find myself in another pool on the floor. It was pitch dark, and I could not think what had happened; so I rushed on deck, and found that, the weather having moderated a little, some kind sailor, knowing my love of fresh air, had opened the skylight rather too soon, and one of the angry waves had popped on board, deluging the cabin.”TheSunbeamencountered a wreck, and the account given of its inspection will be read with interest. Mrs. Brassey says:—“When I went on deck, at half-past six, I found a grey, steamy, calm morning, promising a very hot day, without wind.“About 10.30 a.m. the cry of‘Sail on the port helm!’caused general excitement, and in a few minutes every telescope and glass in the ship had been brought to bear upon the object which attracted our attention, and which was soon pronounced to be a wreck. Orders were given to starboard the helm and to steer direct for the vessel; and many were the conjectures hazarded and the questions asked of the fortunate holders of glasses.‘What is she?’‘Is there any one on board?’‘Does she look as if she had been long abandoned?’Soon we were near enough to send a boat’s crew on board, whilst we watched their movements anxiously from the bridge. We could now read her name—theCarolina—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her stern. She was of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue with a red streak. Beneath her white bowsprit the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts had been snapped short off about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each wave washed over and through her. The roof and supports of the deck-house and the companions were still left standing, but the sides had disappeared, and the ship’s deck was burst up in such a manner as to remind one of a quail’s back.... We saw the men on board poking about, apparently very pleased with what they had found; and soon our boat returned to the yacht for some breakers, as theCarolinahad been laden with port wine and cork, and the men wished to bring some of the former on board. I changed my dress, and putting on my sea-boots, started for the wreck.“We found the men rather excited over their discovery. The wine must have been very new and very strong, for the smell from it as it slopped about all over the deck was almost enough to intoxicate anybody. One pipe had already been emptied into the breakers and barrels, and great efforts were made to get some of the casks out whole; but this was found to be impossible, without devoting more time to the operation than we chose to spare. The men managed to remove three half empty casks with their heads stove in, which they threw overboard, but the full ones would have required special appliances to raise them through the hatches. It proved exceedingly difficult to get at the wine, which was stowed underneath the cork, and there was also a quantity of cabin bulkheads and fittings floating about under the influence of the long swell of the Atlantic. It was a curious sight, standing on the roof of the deck-house, to look into the hold, full of floating bales of cork, barrels, and pieces of wood, and to watch the sea surging up in every direction through and over the deck, which was level with the water’s edge. I saw an excellent modern iron[pg 63]cooking-stove washing about from side to side; but almost every other movable article, including spars and ropes, had apparently been removed by previous boarders.”It would have delayed them too long to tow her into port, or they might have recovered some £1,500 as salvage, while to blow her up would have required more powder than they had on board. So she was left helplessly drifting about, a danger to any vessel running into her full steam or sail almost as great as a sunken rock.Later, the owner of theSunbeamwas of real service, for a fine vessel was encountered, under full sail and on fire, her cargo being smelting coal. Her red Union Jack was upside down, while her signals read the terrible announcement,“Ship on fire!”These were followed by the signal,“Come on board at once,”and a boat’s crew was at once despatched to the rescue. They were purposely well armed, and for the sufficient reason that there was little sign of fire or smoke on board, and it was thought that there might be a mutiny on board. In a few minutes the boat returned with the chief mate, a fine-looking Norwegian, who reported his vessel theMonkshaven, sixty-eight days from Swansea, and bound for Valparaiso. The fire had been discovered five days previously, and the morning following the first day the crew had got all their clothes and provisions on deck, and had thrown everything of a combustible nature—tar, oil, pitch, spare spars, and so forth—overboard. The hatches had then been battened down, but all efforts to subdue the fire were unavailing. The officers and men had been living on deck under a canvas screen, the water being a foot deep even there. When the hatches were opened for a moment, dense clouds of hot, suffocating yellow smoke immediately poured forth, driving back all who approached. In such cases it is often difficult to find the location of the fire, which may at any time burst open the deck or burn a hole through the hull. The dangerous nature of such cargoes may be inferred from the fact that of every three vessels going out to Valparaiso or Callao, one catches fire, although, of course, the flames are often got under control. They had encountered a terrific gale, and while burning had signalled a large American steamship, which had contemptuously steamed away from them. When the men had all been transferred to the yacht—for it was found impossible to save the barque—the poor fellows were almost wild with joy and excitement. Soon after the fated vessel was blazing like a tar-barrel, and the yacht steamed round her near enough for all on board to feel the heat. Fifteen extra mouths to feed was a serious addition to the passengers and crew of theSunbeam, and the water ration had to be cut down, but otherwise they had all they could wish, and a week later were transferred to the Pacific Company’s mail steamerIllimani, then homeward bound. The satisfaction which must have been felt by Mr. and Mrs. Brassey at having the ability as well as the will to save fifteen lives may well be imagined.One of woman’s noblest attributes is her readiness to help in the hour of need, and its exercise has been by no means confined to the land. Late in 1879 the British India Steam Navigation Company’s steamerEldoradohad a hairbreadth escape from destruction in the Bay of Biscay. The rascally Lascar crew abandoned their posts and gave themselves up to despair, and the passengers“passed”coal to the stoke-hole and worked hard at baling; many ladies even volunteered to assist, and two American ladies acted as stewardesses and dispensed coffee and provisions to the rest.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.How often of late years have female swimmers saved life? The case to be cited, and[pg 64]which occurred in fresh water, is only one of scores that might be recorded here. On the 5th December, 1879, two men had to cross the St. Lawrence River, from La Rue Island to a wharf on the main shore. It was an intensely cold day, and a heavy gale was blowing strongly from the north-east up the river. The men loaded their punt with a sleigh, and had managed to reach the middle of the channel, when a sudden and violent gust of wind swamped the punt and turned her over. The men clung to her while bottom upward, and tried to“tread”the water so as to get her to the shore, but in vain; the cold was so intense that their legs were benumbed above the knees, and they gave themselves up for lost. They remained in this perilous position for a considerable time, shouting loudly for help till their throats were sore. Making a final effort, they shouted again, and this time their cries were heard at the house of a Mr. Darling, who, with his family, resided close to the shore. That gentleman was ill in bed, but his wife and daughters, Maggie and Jessie, were at home, the men and boys being at work in the fields at a distance. On hearing the last painful shout of the drowning men, they quickly opened the door, to see them struggling in the great river—a stream the width and volume of which surpass anything in Europe. The first suggestion from the mother was to fetch the men from the fields, but before this could be done brave Maggie and Jessie—the latter a girl of sixteen years—had, without a word, launched the skiff, and were rowing with all their strength through the troubled waters and driving storm. They had the greatest difficulty in reaching the exhausted and helpless men, but at last their noble effort was rewarded, and in ten minutes the poor fellows were being chafed and warmed by their father’s fire. Brave Maggie and Jessie! worthy successors, indeed, to your namesake, the heroine of the Longstone Light!The story of Grace Darling must be familiar to our readers. The circumstances which called forth her courage and humanity were as follow:—TheForfarshire, a steamer of moderate size, left Hull for Dundee on the evening of September 5th, 1838, having on board a considerable amount of freight and sixty-three passengers and crew. Soon after leaving the Humber the boilers began to leak, and on Thursday morning the weather became very tempestuous, while a thick mist enveloped the vessel. The steamer managed to pass the Fern Islands, on the way north, early on Thursday evening, but had all she could do to make headway in a very heavy sea, while the alarming fact was discovered that her boilers’ leakage was increasing. As the night advanced the weather became more and more boisterous, and somewhere off Berwick it was found that the water from above was deluging the furnace fires. Off St. Abb’s Head, the engineer reported that the machinery would work no longer; the sails were accordingly set, and the vessel allowed to drive before the wind, which took her southward. Before daybreak on Friday morning the roar of breakers near at hand was heard; and the captain tried hard to avert the appalling catastrophe which seemed inevitable, and steer the vessel between the islands and the mainland, through a channel known as the Fair Way. But theForfarshirewould not answer her helm, and was driven hither and thither by a furious sea. The scene at this juncture baffles description. Utter darkness enveloped the doomed vessel, over which the sea broke in tremendous waves, and the noise of which almost drowned the agonising shrieks of the passengers. The vessel, a few minutes later, struck a rock, her bows banging and crashing upon it. At this moment[pg 65]a rush was made by eight of the crew to a boat, which they lowered successfully, one almost naked and frenzied passenger jumping into it after them. The ship was now at her last extremity.“Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,As eager to anticipate their grave;And the sea yawned around her like a hell,And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,Like one who grapples with his enemy,And strives to strangle him before he die.”A moment or two after the first shock, another great sea struck her, raising her high in the air and then bringing her down with a terrific crash on the jagged reef, and with a shock so tremendous that she literally broke in two. The whole of the upper part of the vessel, including the chief cabin, filled with passengers, was swept away, and sank almost immediately. Every soul on that part of the vessel was engulfed in an ocean grave. Good George Herbert says truly,“He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.”The fore part of the vessel remained spitted on a rocky projection; and had theForfarshiredrifted a few yards further to the south-west she would have escaped her terrible fate, as the rock there descends almost precipitously into deep water. Meantime, at the Fern Lighthouse, a mile off, nothing had been seen of the actual occurrence, but at seven o’clock the vessel was noticed lying on the rock. The weather was so bad that the lighthouse-keeper, Mr. Darling, doubted the possibility of rendering assistance. But his daughter Grace entreated her father to go off in the boat at all risks, and offered herself to take one oar. Mr. Darling, thus urged, though knowing the danger of the attempt, agreed, and mother and daughter aided him in launching the boat. After a hard pull through the boiling foam, they reached the rock, where they found nine persons shivering in the cold and wet, and trembling for their lives. As illustrative of the heroism displayed in this rescue, it may be mentioned that had it not been ebb tide the boat could not have passed between the islands; and Darling and his daughter knew that the tide would be flowing on their return, and that their united strength would have been quite insufficient to pull back to the lighthouse. But for the assistance of the survivors all would have had to remain on the fatal rock. The joy of the rescued people may well be imagined, and their surprise, and indeed amazement, at finding that one of their deliverers was a young girl. At the lighthouse food and warmth soon restored their exhausted powers. Among those rescued was a bereaved mother, who had seen her two only children perish before her eyes.Grace Darling’s name and fame are historic; she lived but a short time after the tragic event just recorded, but long enough to receive the honours due to her for an act of unparalleled heroism, even receiving the acknowledgments of the Queen and a handsome sum of money from the public.“She who amid the tempest shone,The angel of the wave,”was not, as might be supposed, a robust girl, but, on the contrary, quite delicate. Her spirit peacefully passed away a few months after the event above recorded.
CHAPTER IV.The Pacific Ferry.—Another Route.The Hawaiian Islands—King and Parliament—Pleasant Honolulu—A Government Hotel—Honeysuckle-covered Theatre—Productions of the Islands—Grand Volcanoes—Ravages of Lava Streams and Earthquakes—Off to Fiji—A Rapidly Christianised People—A Native Hut—Dinner—Kandavu—The Bush—Fruit-laden Canoes—Strange Ideas of Value—New Zealand—Its Features—Intense English Feeling—The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities—The Maories—Trollope’s Testimony—Facts about Cannibalism—A Chief on Bagpipes—Australia—Beauty of Sydney Harbour—Its Fortifications—Volunteers—Its War-fleet of One—Handsome Melbourne—Absence of Squalor—No Workhouses Required—The Benevolent Asylums—Splendid Place for Working Men—Cheapness of Meat, &c.—Wages in Town and Country—Life in the Bush—“Knocking Down One’s Cheque”—Gold, Coal, and Iron.A popular route now to New Zealand and Australia is thatviâSan Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, the bulk of the voyage being usually over the quieter parts of the Pacific; it takes the passenger, of course, through the tropics.Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, is now a civilised and pleasant city, while the natural attractions of the islands themselves are many and varied. One need not now fear the fate of poor Captain Cook. Most of the natives, of whom there are 50,000, are clothed in semi-European style: the men in coats and trousers of nankeen, and the women more picturesquely clad in long robes fastened round the neck, and pretty often of pink or some other bright colour. There is a white population of some 10,000 souls scattered over the islands, a large proportion of whom are English and American. Honolulu is the Government centre and residence of King Kalakau, who used to be called“Calico”in the United States, and who, in fact, is a very slightly tinted,[pg 46]good-looking, and most intelligent gentleman. The Ex-Queen Emma, who visited England some years ago, has a villa beautifully situated a few miles out of town. The king devotes his energies to bettering the condition of his people, and some few years ago, when the money was voted to build a new palace, declined to accept it, at least for two years. The Hawaiian Parliament consists of a House of seventeen nobles and twenty-eight commoners, who, strange to say, sit in the same hall, their votes being of equal weight. There are always several Europeans or Americans in this council.Mr. Guillemard thus describes Honolulu20:—“The town, which is built on the low land bordering the shore—partly, indeed, on land reclaimed from the sea, thanks to the industry of the architects of the coral reef—looks mean and insignificant from the harbour, but on going ashore to breakfast we get glimpses of fine public buildings and numerous shops and stores, of neat houses nestling among bowers of shrubs and flowers, and evidences of a busy trade and considerable population. The streets are narrow, and the houses built of wood, without any attempt at decoration or even uniformity. In the by-streets or lanes pretty verandah-girt villas peep out from shrubberies of tropical foliage, honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and a hundred flowers strange to English eyes. Tiny fountains are sending sparkling jets of water up in the hot, still air; and other music is not wanting, for here and there we hear the tinkle of a distant piano, telling us that early rising is the rule in Honolulu, and suggesting as a consequence asiestaat mid-day.“But here we are at the grand Hawaiian Hotel, a fine verandahed building, standing back from the road in a pretty garden, the green lawn, cool deep shade, and trickling fountain of which are doubly grateful after the glare of the scorching sunlight, scorching even though it is not yet seven a.m. The theatre, half-hidden by its wealth of honeysuckle and fan-palm, is not fifty yards distant, but is quite thrown into insignificance by the hotel. This was built by Government, at a cost of £25,000, and is admirably planned and appointed.”Its large airy rooms and cool verandahs, shaded with masses of passion flowers, its excellent food and iced American drinks, all combine to make it a capital resting-place.In the streets Mr. Guillemard noted bevies of gaily-attired girls on horseback, their robes being gathered in at the waist with bright scarves, which fling their folds far over the horses’ tails. Their jaunty straw hats were wreathed with flowers, and now and then some dark-eyed beauty would be found wearing a necklace of blossoms. The girls rode astride up and down the main streets, making them ring again with their merry laughter. Mosquitoes were abundant, and, as some compensation, so also were delicious melons, guavas, mangoes, bananas, and commoner fruit.The sugar-cane was first grown on these islands in 1820; now over 20,000,000 pounds of sugar are produced annually by the aid of Hawaiian and Chinese labour and steam-mills. Not a quarter of the land suitable for this purpose is yet under cultivation, though some of the plantations are of thousands of acres in extent. Hides and wool are staple exports.[pg 47]A few hours’ sail from Honolulu some of the largest and most wonderful volcanoes in the world are to be found. Two of them, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, are each over 13,000 feet in elevation. The eruptions from the great crater of Kilauea, which isten milesin circumference, are something fearful. One explosion ejected streams of red mud three miles, killing thirty-one people and 500 head of cattle. This was followed by several earthquakes, which destroyed a number of houses. These, again, were succeeded by a great earthquake wave, during the continuance of which three villages were swept away and seventy people killed. Next a new crater formed upon Mauna Loa, from which rose four fountains of red-hot lava to a height of 600 feet. A lava stream, eight to ten miles long, and half a mile wide in some places, carried all before it. In one place it tumbled, in a molten cataract of fiery liquid, over a precipice several hundred feet in height. The interior of Hawaii is a vast underground lake of fire, and were it not for the safety-valves provided by Nature in the form of craters, it would be shaken to pieces by successive earthquakes.THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).And now the passenger has before him a fortnight of the most tranquil part of the ocean called the Pacific. He must not be surprised if the heat rises to 90° or so in the saloon. The distance from San Francisco to Sydney direct is 6,500 miles, and Fiji is naturallyen route; the detour to New Zealand considerably increases the length of the voyage. It will be remembered that these islands were formally annexed to Britain in 1874, after vain attempts at a mixed native and European government. The population was then 140,000; in a year or two afterwards 40,000 of the poor natives fell victims to the measles, another of the importations apparently inseparable from civilisation. The Wesleyan missionaries, in particular, have worked with so much zeal in these islands that more than half the people are Christians. There are 600 chapels in the 140 islands comprising the Fiji group. Formerly the natives were the worst kind of cannibals. They not merely killed and ate the victims of their island wars, but no shipwrecked or helpless person was safe among them. Numbers were slain at the caprice of the chiefs, especially at the building of a house or canoe, or at the reception of a native embassy. Widows were strangled at the death of their husbands, and slaves killed on the decease of their masters. The introduction of Christianity and partial civilisation has changed all that for the better; and the natives of to-day are described as mild and gentle, and little given to quarrelling. Among their customs is that of powdering the hair (always closely cropped) with lime, which is often coloured. Their huts are of dried reeds, lashed to a strong framework of poles, and have lofty arched roofs, but are without windows or chimneys. Each has two low doors, through which one must crawl. The best native huts have a partition between the dwelling and bed room, and all are carpeted with mats. The only furniture consists of one article, a short piece of wood on two small legs, used for a pillow! Clay pots are used for cooking their principal diet, yams and fish. Many of them nowadays have houses well furnished with mats, curtains, baskets, jars, &c.Mr. Guillemard describes a tropical dinner, served to himself and companions in one of these huts. A couple of banana-leaves formed the dishes, on which boiled fish and half a dozen yams, or sweet potatoes, were offered. A large block of rock-salt was handed them to useà discretion. Then followed ripe cocoa-nuts. Dried leaves of somewhat[pg 48]tasteless wild tobacco, rolled up rapidly and neatly, and tied round with a fibre, formed the post-prandial cigars, which were lighted by the women at the fire, and passed from their lips to the guests’.The natural productions of this group are extensive, and comprise bread-fruit, taro, cocoa-nuts, yams, bananas, plantains, guavas, oranges and lemons, wild and cultivated tobacco, sugar, cotton, and coffee. The india-rubber tree is cultivated, and among the leading exports are dried cocoa-nut and pearl-shell. As there are at the present time comparatively few white settlers—perhaps not over 2,500 in all the islands—there are innumerable openings for settlement, and Fiji, with many other neighbouring islands, will doubtless soon afford fresh examples of British enterprise.The point touched by the steamers is Kandavu, on one of the southernmost islands, where Mount Washington, a fine mountain, rears its head 3,000 feet into the clouds. A visitor says:—“From the eastern point of land run out miles of coral reef, on which the ocean rollers are breaking grandly, and outside this barrier we take our pilot on board. The entrance to Kandavu harbour is narrow and intricate, and here theMacgregor, one of the mail steamers, struck on a submerged reef, and remained for several days hard and fast aground.”The passage has been properly buoyed and lighted, and the New Company have built offices and stores, and established a coaling station here.“The view of Port Ugaloa from the entrance is very beautiful. On our left the coral reef encloses a still lagoon of the softest, lightest green; before us hills and mountains, covered from base to summit with the richest vegetation, are tipped with fleecy cloud; and on our right, dividing the waters of the bay, is Ugaloa Island, its slopes feathery with the foliage of the cocoa-palm and banana, half hidden in which appear here and there the low brown huts of the natives.... The brothers L. accompany me ashore on Ugaloa, landing close to a small collection of huts scattered about just above the coral-strewn beach. It is Sunday afternoon, and a native missionary is preaching to some fifty men, women, and children, squatting on their hams on the mat-covered floor of a neat, white-washed mission house. Amongst the congregation is a tall native, with a thick cane, keeping silence by tapping the heads of the inattentive. The preacher is eloquent and energetic in gesture; but Fiji is hardly a pretty language to listen to, being decidedly characterised by queer guttural sounds, and spoken very fast. The sermon over, a hymn is read out and sung to a rather monotonous dirge-like chant, and the congregation disperse. We are at once surrounded by an olive-skinned crowd; the ladies’ dresses are minutely examined, for a white lady has scarcely been seen in Kandavu before the present year. The gentlemen have to display their watches and chains, and by means of shouting and signs every one is soon carrying on a vigorous conversation. Why is it that one always elevates the voice when trying to make one’s native tongue intelligible to a foreigner?“We wander away into the bush, and are soon lost in a wilderness of ferns, creepers, bananas, cocoa-palms, and chestnut-trees. We meet with a young native, and make signs to him that we are thirsty, and wish to refresh ourselves with the juice of a green cocoa-nut. Clutching the trunk with both hands, he almost runs up a palm, and our wants are soon plentifully supplied. He receives hisdouceurwith apparent nonchalance, and proceeds to tie it up in a corner of his sulu with a fibre of banana bark.[pg 50]“Monday morning breaks fine and clear, and our slumbers are early disturbed by the chattering of a hundred natives, a whole squadron of whose fruit-laden canoes are alongside the steamer. Queer crank-looking craft are these, roughly dug out of the trunk of a tree, and kept steady on the water by an outrigger consisting of a log half the length of the canoe, attached to it amidships by a few light poles projecting some four or five feet from its side. They are usually propelled by means of a long oar worked between the poles, after the fashion of sculling a boat from the stern; but sometimes we see the ordinary short paddle being plied at bow and stern. Some of the larger craft hoist a large long sail, but they do not seem very weatherly under canvas, which they use but little compared with the Society Islanders.“The scene on deck is amusing enough. Forward, fifty natives, their olive skins blackened and begrimed with dust, are hard at work replenishing the coal bunkers from the hold, and thoroughly earning their shilling a day; on the poop as many more, laden with lemons, huge bunches of bananas, cocoa-nuts, shells, coral, matting, tappa—a soft, white fabric, called by the natives‘marse’—and a few clubs and other weapons, are driving a brisk trade with the passengers. Everything is to be had for a shilling.‘Shillin’is the only English word that all the natives understand; in fact, this useful coin seems to be the‘almighty dollar’of Kandavu. You take a lemon, and ask,‘How much?’‘Shillin’is the reply; but you can obtain the man’s whole stock of sixty, basket and all, for the same money!”Our next stopping place is one of particular interest to the British colonist. New Zealand, albeit one of the youngest, is now among the most promising of England’s outposts. Auckland, in the North Island, is the port at which the steamers touch. The harbour is very fine, and residents compare it to the Bay of Naples.Every schoolboy knows that New Zealand includes two large and one small island, respectively known as North, Middle, and Stewart’s Island. One great feature of the coast line consists of its indentations; the colony is rich in fine natural harbours and ports. The area of the islands is nearly as great as that of Britain and Ireland combined, and about half of that area consists of excellent soil. The climate is that of England, with a difference: there are many more fine days, while winter is not so cold by half. The islands are volcanic; on the North Island, Mount Ruapahu, a perpetually snow-capped peak, rises to a height of 9,000 feet, while in the same range, the Tongariro mountain, an active volcano, rises to a height of 6,000 feet. The highest mountain range is on the Middle Island, where Mount Cook rises to a height of 14,000 feet. One can understand that in such a country there should be an abundance of evergreen forests of luxuriant growth. These are interspersed with charming fern-clad slopes and treeless grassy plains. Water is everywhere found; but none of the rivers are navigable by large vessels for more than fifty miles or so. One great advantage found in the country is the absence of noxious reptiles or insects: of the latter there is not one as offensive as an English wasp. The pigs, introduced by Captain Cook, run wild over the island, and there is plenty of large and small game: the red and fallow deer, the pheasant, partridge, and quail. Everything that grows in England will thrive there, while the vine, maize, taro, and sweet potato grow in many districts. A traveller21says of the (Thames) gold fields:—“Mines here, like everywhere else, are now dull. At one time there[pg 51]was a population of 22,000, but now this is only 13,000. Everybody one sees seems to have lost in the gold-diggings, and it is a mystery to me who is the lucky person that wins—one never seems to meet him.”This somewhat random statement may be takencum grano salis, as the gold-fields have yielded largely at times. Nevertheless, mining is always more or less a lottery.Mr. Anthony Trollope testifies to the intense British feeling in New Zealand, where he felt thoroughly at home. Australia he found tinged with a form of boasting Yankeeism.“The New Zealander,”says he,22“among John Bulls is the most John Bullish. He admits the supremacy of England to every place in the world, only he is more English than any Englishman at home.”Discovered by Tasman in 1642, England only commenced to take an interest in the islands more than a century and a quarter later, when Cook surveyed the coasts. The missionaries came first, in 1814, and a British Resident was appointed in 1833. All this time a desultory colonisation was going on, and the natives were selling parcels of their best lands for a few cast-iron hatchets or muskets, shoddy blankets, or rubbishy trinkets. In 1840 a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed from home, and his presence was indeed necessary. The previous year a corporation, calling itself the New Zealand Company, had made pretended purchases of tracts of the best parts of the country, amounting toone-thirdof its whole area! The unscrupulous and defiant manner in which this company treated the natives and the Government brought about many complications, and led to very serious wars with natives not to be trifled with. The New Zealand Company was“bought out”by the Government in 1852 for £268,000. During 1843-7, and in 1861 and after, England had to fight the Maories—foes that she learned to respect. At last, weary of war, all our troops were withdrawn, and the colonists, who of course knew the bush and bush life better than nine-tenths of the soldiers, were left to defend their homes and property, and in the end to successfully finish the fight. The natives now are generally peaceful and subdued, while many are even turning their attention to agriculture and commerce. Nine years ago they numbered 37,500, but are fast dying out.Physically and intellectually, the Maories are the finest semi-savage natives on the face of the earth. Mr. Trollope is an author and traveller whose words carry weight, and he has given us the following concise summary of their qualities and character:—“They are,”says he,“an active people, the men averaging 5 feet 6½ inches in height, and are almost equal in strength and weight to Englishmen. In their former condition they wore matting; now they wear European clothes. Formerly they pulled out their beards, and every New Zealander of mark was tattooed; now they wear beards, and the young men are not tattooed. Their hair is black and coarse, but not woolly like a negro’s, or black like a Hindoo’s. The nose is almost always broad and the mouth large. In other respects their features are not unlike those of the European race. The men, to my eyes, were better-looking than the women, and the men who were tattooed better-looking than those who had dropped the custom. The women still retain the old custom of tattooing the upper lip. The Maories had a mythology of their own, and believed in a future existence; but they did not recognise[pg 52]one supreme God. Virtue with them, as with other savages, consisted chiefly in courage and a command of temper. Their great passion was revenge, which was carried on by one tribe against another to the extent sometimes of the annihilation of tribes. The decrease of their population since the English first came among them has been owing as much to civil war as to the injuries with which civilisation has afflicted them. They seem from early days to have acquired that habit of fighting behind stockades or in fortified pahs which we have found so fatal to ourselves in our wars with them. Their weapons, before they got guns from us, were not very deadly. They were chiefly short javelins and stones, both flung from slings. But there was a horror in their warfare to the awfulness of which they themselves seem to have been keenly alive. When a prisoner was taken in war he was cooked and eaten.“I do not think that human beings were slaughtered for food in New Zealand, although there is no doubt that the banquet when prepared was enjoyed with a horrid relish.“I will quote a passage from Dr. Thompson’s work in reference to the practice of cannibalism, and will then have done with the subject.‘Whether or not cannibalism commenced immediately after the advent of the New Zealanders from Hawaiki, it is nevertheless certain that one of Tasman’s sailors was eaten in 1642; that Captain Cook had a boat’s crew eaten in 1774; that Marion de Fresne and many other navigators met this horrible end; and that the pioneers of civilisation and successive missionaries have all borne testimony to the universal prevalence of cannibalism in New Zealand up to the year 1840. It is impossible to state how many New Zealanders were annually devoured; that the number was not small may be inferred from two facts authenticated by European witnesses. In 1822, Hougi’s army ate three hundred persons after the capture of Totara, on the River Thames, and in 1836, during the Rotura war, sixty beings were cooked and eaten in two days.’I will add from the same book a translation of a portion of a war-song:—‘Oh, my little son, are you crying? are you screaming for your food? Here it is for you, the flesh of Hekemanu and Werata. Although I am surfeited with the soft brains of Putu Rikiriki and Raukauri, yet such is my hatred that I will fill myself fuller with those of Pau, of Ngaraunga, of Pipi, and with my most dainty morsel, the flesh of the hated Teao.’”Mr. Laird testifies to their cleanliness, but states that they are, like most savages, and for that matter, most white men, very improvident. If a bad potato or other crop occurred, they would eat it all at once, and half starve afterwards.The same author tells a good story of the nonchalance of a leading Maori chief who was invited to dinner at Government House during the visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner the Duke’s chief bagpiper came in and played. The chief was asked how he liked the music. He replied briefly:“Too much noise for me; but suit white man well enough.”And now we are approaching that great continent which has had, has, and will increasingly have, so much interest for the emigrant, who must be, more or less, a voyager and man of the sea. Australia, a country nearly as large as the United States, must be for many a day to come a very Paradise for the poor man.The American steamers from San Francisco land one at Sydney, of which charming place Mr. Trollope says:—“I despair of being able to convey to my readers my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour;”he considers that it excels Dublin Bay, Spezzia, and[pg 53]New York. And the colonists, left to themselves—for England maintains no troops there now—have fortified it strongly. Mr. Trollope tells us of five separate armed fortresses, with Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons’ weight, with loopholed walls and pits for riflemen, as though Sydney was to become another Sebastopol.“It was shown,”says he,“how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemated batteries, shell-rooms and gunpowder magazines,[pg 54]barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour, and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready for use in an hour or two. It was explained to me that‘they’could not possibly get across the trenches, or break the boom, or escape the torpedoes, or live for an hour beneath the blaze of the guns.‘They’would not have a chance to get at Sydney. There was much martial ardour, and a very general opinion that‘they’would have the worst of it.”New South Wales and Victoria have about 8,000 volunteers and a training-ship for sailor boys; while an enormous monitor, theCerberus, presented by the mother country, forms its war-fleet of one.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings,“the internal appearance of the city is,”Mr. Trollope assures us,“certainly magnificent.”It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens.“One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.”There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by“Benevolent Asylums.”In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid.“Could a pauper,”says Trollope,“be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,”so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly.The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well-to-do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.Mr. Trollope says:—“There is perhaps no town in the world in which an ordinary working man can do better for himself and for his family with his work than he can at Melbourne.”The rates of wages for mechanics are slightly greater than at home, and all the necessaries of life are cheaper. With meat at 4d. per pound, butter from 6d. upwards, bread, tea, and coffee about the same prices or rather under, coals the same or a trifle higher, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits generally considerably cheaper, all can live well and plentifully. Meat three times a day is common all over Australia, and in some parts the price is as low as 1½d. or 2d. per pound. Wages for good mechanics and artisans average about 10s. a day; gardeners receive about 50s., and labourers about 30s. per week; men-servants, in the house, £40 to £50 per annum; cooks, £35 to £45 per year; girls, as housemaids, &c., 8s. or 10s. per week. It is usual to hire the last named by this[pg 55]short term. Some of these prices rule all over the country, but are liable to rule lower, rather than higher, outside of Melbourne.In the country sheep-shearers can earn 7s. to 14s. per day for about four months in the year; shepherds, £30 to £40 per year, with rations. The common labourer can count on 15s. to 20s. per week, with rations: these consist generally of 14 lbs. meat (usually mutton), 8 lbs. flour, 2 lbs. sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea. Of course, where fruit or vegetables are plentiful they would be added. The meat, bread, and tea diet, however, is that characteristic of the whole country. In the great sheep runs and cattle ranges23it would be the shepherd’s diet invariably.Mr. Trollope advises the poor man to save for three or four years, and then invest in land, which in some places is to be had at 3s. 9d. an acre, payable to the Government in five instalments of ninepence per acre. Of course, he would require money for the erection of a house, farm implements, &c. The great trouble with most men working in the bush as shepherds or shearers, or at the mines, or elsewhere at distant points, is that the enforced absence from civilisation and social life makes them inclined for reckless living when they have accumulated a sum of money. The tavern-keepers of the nearest town or station reap all the benefit, and there are numbers of men who, for ten or eleven months of the year perfectly steady and sober, periodically give themselves up to drink until their earnings are melted, it is called“knocking down”one’s cheque, and it is a common practice for them to hand such cheque to the publican, who lets them run on recklessly in drink and food untilheconsiders it exhausted. A good story is told by Mr. Trollope of a man who had been accustomed to do this at regular intervals, but who on one occasion, having some loose silver,“planted”his cheque in an old tree, and proceeded to the usual haunt, where he set to work deliberately to get drunk. The publican showed evident doubt as to the propriety of supplying him freely. Why had not the man brought his cheque as usual? The tavern-keeper at last put him to bed; but the man, though drugged and stupefied, had his wits about him sufficiently to observe and remember that the host had examined his clothes, his hat, and boots, for the lacking cheque. Next morning he was ignominiously expelled from the house, but he didn’t mind: the cheque was found by him safely in the tree by the roadside, and he surprised his master by returning to the station a week or two before he was expected richer than he had ever come home before. Let us hope he was cured of that form of folly for ever.The gold yield of Australia for the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 was 50,750,000 ozs. But gold-fields die out sooner than most mines, and Australia has a more permanent source of prosperity for the future in its coal and iron-fields, which are in close proximity to each other. The coal is already worked to great profit, and is one of the principal steamship fuels of the Pacific.The steamship route homeward from Australia is that by the Indian Ocean (usually touching at Ceylon), then reaching the Mediterraneanviâthe Red Sea and Suez Canal. These points of interest have already been fully described in early chapters of this work.[pg 56]CHAPTER V.Woman at Sea.Poets’ Opinions on Early Navigation—Who was the First Female Navigator?—Noah’s Voyage—A Thrilling Tale—A Strained Vessel—A Furious Gale—A Birth at Sea—The Ship Doomed—Ladies and Children in an Open Boat—Drunken Sailors—Semi-starvation, Cold, and Wet—Exposed to the Tropical Sun—Death of a Poor Baby—Sharks about—A Thievish Sailor—Proposed Cannibalism—A Sail!—The Ship passes by—Despair—Saved at Last—Experiences of a Yachtswoman—Nearly Swamped and Carried Away—An Abandoned Ship—TheSunbeamof Service—Ship on Fire!—Dangers of a Coal Cargo—The Crew Taken off—Noble Lady Passengers—Two Modern Heroines and their Deeds—The Story of Grace Darling—The Longstone Light and Wreck of theForfarshire—To the Rescue!—Death of Grace Darling.“Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted firstRude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.”So sings Waller, and his words are only the repetition of a sentiment much more grandly expressed by Horace, who wrote now near two thousand years ago:—“Surely oak and threefold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean.”And once more, just to show the unanimity of the poets on this point, Dr. Watts has said:—“It was a brave attempt! advent’rous heWho in the first ship broke the unknown sea.”Now, if all this is said of man, what shall be said of the woman who first trusted herself on the great deep? Who was she? It would be most difficult to satisfactorily answer this question, but there can be no doubt that“Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons,”whose voyage and enforced residence in the ark lasted no less than twelve months and three days24are the earliest females on record who embarked in a great vessel on a boundless expanse of waters.These pages have already presented episodes in the lives of many seafaring ladies, but till now no chapter has been specially devoted to the subject. In these days of general travel ladies make, as we have often seen, long voyages to and from far distant parts. One of them, some nineteen years ago, underwent the horrors of shipwreck, and her subsequent sufferings were admirably told by her under the title of“Ten Terrible Days.”The account, which should be read in its entirety, is here, for obvious reasons, considerably condensed.One day late in the year 1861 a grain-laden vessel, a fine clipper, might have been seen slowly and gracefully sailing out of the noble bay of San Francisco. On her as passengers were two or three ladies with children, among them Mrs. William Murray, the authoress, who had been recommended to take the long voyage home in a roving clipper, in preference to taking a passage in the over-crowded steamers running to Panama and New York. Let her open the story.“The sun,”says she,“was shining as it always does in California,[pg 57]until the sea and the rocks and the vast city seemed literally glittering with sunlight. One long look back to the happy home of the last six years, to the home still of the husband and brothers obliged to remain behind, and at last I had only the sea that parted us to look at through my tears. Our friends had seen us set sail in what seemed a gallant ship. It had been chosen from all others as the one to send us home in for its show of perfectness. There were men in San Francisco who knew that the ship was unseaworthy (having been frightfully strained in her last voyage to China), and that she was in no fit condition to be trusted with the lives of helpless women and children, yet they let us sail without a word of warning.”The dreaded Horn had been easily rounded in good weather, and on the evening of January 4th, 1862, they had been eighty-six days out; in ten more they expected to be in England. The sailors had predicted a stormy night, and a terrific gale followed closely on that prophecy. The wind increased in fury, and the ship rolled till those on board were often thrown from their feet. That night a child was born on board, and the kindly lady passengers did all in their power for the poor mother.“At dawn,”says Mrs. Murray,“taking my little girl by the hand, I went on deck. The storm had in some measure abated, but the sea looked black and sullen, and the swell of the vast heavy waves seemed to mock our frailty. The sailors had been up all night, and were[pg 58]as men playing at some ferocious game: some working in desperation at the pumps, and singing at the pitch of their voices wild sea-songs to time their common efforts; others employed in throwing hundreds of bags of grain into the sea, that they might thus lighten the ship. This, I think, more than all, showed me our peril. I wandered about, too miserable to remain in any one spot, till the captain assembled us all once more in the cabin to get some food, saying that it was impossible to save the ship, and that we should have need of all our fortitude. I remembered my own vain attempt to eat some bread, but the poor little children took their breakfast and enjoyed it.“We were then each provided with a large bag made of sailcloth, and were advised by the captain to fill it with the warmest articles of clothing we possessed.“All my worldly possessions were on board, comprising many memorials of dear friends, portraits of loved ones I shall never see again, and my money loss I knew would be no trifle. In perfect bewilderment I looked round, and filled my bag with stockings and a couple of warm shawls. On the top of a box I saw a little parcel that had been entrusted to me by a lady in California to deliver to her mother in Liverpool. I put that in my bag, and she got it.... There had been no thought of removing the breakfast, and with the rolling of the ship, which was every moment becoming worse, everything had fallen on the floor, and was dashing about in all directions. Boxes, water-jugs, plates, dishes, chairs, glasses, were pitching from one end of the saloon to the other. Children screaming, sailors shouting and cursing, and loud above all there was the creaking of timbers, and the sullen sound of water fast gaining upon us in the hold of the ship, which groaned and laboured like a living thing in agony.”How the ridiculous will intrude even at such times is shown in the following. A little boy was discovered helping himself out of the medicine-chest, particularly busy with the contents of a broken calomel bottle! Lamp-oil served as an emetic in this emergency, and the youngster’s life was saved. And now the first mate, upon whose decision and firmness much depended, having lost his presence of mind, had drunk deeply of whisky. He was intoxicated, and so, too, were many of the sailors, who had followed his example. The captain, meantime, had been busily employed in ordering out food and water to supply the boats, collecting the ship’s papers, &c. The lowering of the boats he had entrusted to his officers. On hearing of the drunkenness on deck, his first thought was to get the women and children off at once, for should the sailors seize the boats, what would become of them? Two boats had already been smashed whilst lowering them into the sea, and there were only two remaining. Forty-seven people to cram into two frail boats, fifteen hundred miles from land: delicately-nurtured women, helpless children, drunken and desperate men.“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”(p. 58).By the help of the most sober of the sailors, the captain’s own boat was lowered; some small mattresses, pillows, blankets, a cask of water, sacks of biscuit, and nautical instruments, were first put in; then the passengers were let down by ropes.“It seems marvellous,”says Mrs. Murray,“when I think of it now, that in our descent we were not dashed to pieces against the ship’s side. We had to wait for each descent a favourable moment while she was leaning over. Then the word of command was given, and we were slung down like sheep. My heart stood still whilst my little one was going down, and then I followed. It was a terrible sight for a woman to see that poor creature whose baby was born the night before, looking like a corpse in a long dressing-gown of white[pg 59]flannel, with the poor little atom of mortality tightly clasped in her arms. I thought she would die before the day was over.”At last they were all in the boat: four women, five children, the second mate, and sixteen sailors. The captain stayed on the ship, providing for the safety of the drunken creatures who could not take care of themselves, and then he came off. How small the boat looked by the side of the tall ship! And they had to get quickly out of her reach, for she was rolling so heavily that the waters near her boiled up like a maelström.Away they drifted, a mere speck upon the ocean. Before night there came a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, that lasted through the darkness, and by which they were drenched through and through.“I sat up,”says the narrator,“for some twelve or fourteen hours on a narrow plank, with my child in my arms, utterly miserable, cold, and hopeless, soaked to the skin, blinded by the salt spray, my face and hands smarting intolerably with the unusual exposure.”During the storm and confusion the greater part of their biscuit had been soaked with salt water, and made useless. It was also discovered that the food collected for the captain’s boat had been thrown by mistake into the other, therefore it was necessary at once to put them on allowance: half a pint of water and half a biscuit a day to each person. Except the biscuit, there were only a few small tins of preserved strawberries and Indian corn, and these were given to the ladies.“How the poor children cried with hunger as the days dragged on!”The boat leaked from the beginning, and the sailors by turns baled the water out in little cans. Exposed to the glare of a tropical sun for hours together, nearly mad with thirst, bearing her child in her weak arms, for she was too much exhausted to stand, Mrs. Murray says that often she would sit for hours without any thought at all, vacantly gazing on the ocean.“We had,”says she,“three days of dead calm. The sun glared down upon us pitilessly, and I thought how pleasant it would be to throw myself into the sea, and sink calmly to death beneath its waves. I lost all wish to live—for life seemed horrible. I cannot describe the days as they passed separately, one by one; when I look back upon them, they all seem to have been one misery. I remember that on the third day out poor Kitty’s baby died—indeed, it had been dying from the first. It never had a chance of living, for it had no fit attention and no sustenance. The poor mother cried bitterly when at last it became cold on her bosom, but its death was a merciful release. Wrapped in a shawl of bright colours, it was thrown overboard, but was so light that it could not sink, and floated for hours on a sea so calm in the hot sun that scarce a ripple could be seen. At last it disappeared suddenly, the prey of some hungry shark, and when afterwards the horrid monsters crowded round our boat they added to our misery. Hitherto the children had been plunged into the sea every morning to preserve them in health, but we dared not continue this practice with those horrid creatures on our lee.... I must not forget one incident, trifling in itself, but which might have caused the death of one of the sailors. On the day of the wreck I had caused two or three bottles of ale and one of claret to be put in the boat, thinking it might be of great use to us. On the third or fourth night out, when we were shivering helplessly after a drenching[pg 60]shower of rain, we thought that a bottle of ale should be opened for the women and children, but not a bottle of any sort was to be found.”The rage of the captain was awful, and but for the intercession of the ladies, he swore that he would have thrown the man overboard.It was on the morning of the tenth day that the frightful thought of eating the children came into the heads of three or four desperate men, and the captain and a few trustworthy companions had made up their minds to slay the would-be murderers that very night in their sleep. The last and fatal hour of their great agony seemed to be come. On the morning of the tenth day a sail was reported, and a white towel hoisted to attract her attention. She came near enough for the captain to make out that she carried the Hamburg flag, and then“passed by on the other side.”Curses loud and deep came from the sailors’ lips. Then the women looked into each other’s faces and the children cried, and the wolfish eyes of the would-be cannibals were again fixed upon them.But Heaven was merciful, and again a sail was reported. Nearer and nearer she came, faster rowed the hungry sailors, when there rose a wild shout,“She has stopped!”and surely there she was at rest in the water, waiting to see what manner of beings they were.“Row faster, my men, and keep down the women and children,”sang out the[pg 61]captain, for he was fearful that if their number was discovered the vessel might pass them, as had that seen in the morning.“Oh, what a lovely afternoon,”says Mrs. Murray,“that was when we were saved—such a blaze of sunshine, such blue skies, such a glistening, glowing sea, as if even the treacherous ocean were rejoicing with us. At length we were close alongside of the ship, and saw crowds of human beings clustering about to look at us—dark, swarthy faces, for they were all Spaniards, but full of pity, wonderment, and horror. They took us all in, one by one, and when they saw the women and little children they wept. They could not speak our language, and looked upon us with bewilderment, but when I (who fortunately could speak Spanish), kneeling down on deck, said‘Gracias a Dios’(Thank God), their tongues were loosened, and there was a flood of questions and crowding round us, with weeping and laughing and shaking of hands. How good were those kind-hearted men! How I thank them all, every one, now as I write, from the worthy captain down to the lowest of his crew. And they brought us bread and wine and water—precious water, how good it was!”A few of Mrs. Brassey’s experiences on her husband’s yacht will be read with interest. One day, after their five o’clock dinner, she and some of her children very nearly met with a most serious accident.“We were all sitting,”writes that lady,“or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests mountains high. Each wave, as it approached, appeared as if it must overwhelm us, instead of which it rushed grandly by, rolling and shaking us from stem to stern, and sending fountains of spray on board.... A new hand was steering, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us he unfortunately allowed the vessel to broach to a little. In a second the sea came pouring over the stern, above Allnut’s head. The boy was nearly washed overboard, but he managed to catch hold of the rail, and with great presence of mind stuck his knees into the bulwarks. Kindred, our boatswain, seeing his danger, rushed forward to save him, but was knocked down by the return wave, from which he emerged gasping.“The coil of rope on which Captain Lecky and Mabelle were seated was completely floated by the sea. Providentially, however, he had taken a double turn round his wrist with a reefing point, and, throwing his other arm round Mabelle, held on like grim death; otherwise, nothing could have saved them. She was perfectly self-possessed, and only said quietly,‘Hold on, Captain Lecky, hold on!’to which he replied,‘All right.’I asked her afterwards if she thought she was going overboard, and she answered,‘I did notthinkat all, mamma, but felt sure we were gone.’Captain Lecky, being accustomed to very large ships, had not in the least realised how near we were to the water in our little vessel, and was proportionately taken by surprise. All the rest of the party were drenched, with the exception of Muriel, whom Captain Brown held high above the water in his arms, and who lost no time in remarking, in the midst of the general confusion‘I’m not at all wet, I’m not!’Happily, the children don’t know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail-boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of the fore-boom gave way.[pg 62]“Soon after this adventure we all went to bed, full of thankfulness that it had ended as well as it did; but also not, so far as I am concerned, to rest in peace. In about two hours I was awakened by a tremendous weight of water suddenly descending upon me and flooding the bed. I immediately sprang out, only to find myself in another pool on the floor. It was pitch dark, and I could not think what had happened; so I rushed on deck, and found that, the weather having moderated a little, some kind sailor, knowing my love of fresh air, had opened the skylight rather too soon, and one of the angry waves had popped on board, deluging the cabin.”TheSunbeamencountered a wreck, and the account given of its inspection will be read with interest. Mrs. Brassey says:—“When I went on deck, at half-past six, I found a grey, steamy, calm morning, promising a very hot day, without wind.“About 10.30 a.m. the cry of‘Sail on the port helm!’caused general excitement, and in a few minutes every telescope and glass in the ship had been brought to bear upon the object which attracted our attention, and which was soon pronounced to be a wreck. Orders were given to starboard the helm and to steer direct for the vessel; and many were the conjectures hazarded and the questions asked of the fortunate holders of glasses.‘What is she?’‘Is there any one on board?’‘Does she look as if she had been long abandoned?’Soon we were near enough to send a boat’s crew on board, whilst we watched their movements anxiously from the bridge. We could now read her name—theCarolina—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her stern. She was of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue with a red streak. Beneath her white bowsprit the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts had been snapped short off about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each wave washed over and through her. The roof and supports of the deck-house and the companions were still left standing, but the sides had disappeared, and the ship’s deck was burst up in such a manner as to remind one of a quail’s back.... We saw the men on board poking about, apparently very pleased with what they had found; and soon our boat returned to the yacht for some breakers, as theCarolinahad been laden with port wine and cork, and the men wished to bring some of the former on board. I changed my dress, and putting on my sea-boots, started for the wreck.“We found the men rather excited over their discovery. The wine must have been very new and very strong, for the smell from it as it slopped about all over the deck was almost enough to intoxicate anybody. One pipe had already been emptied into the breakers and barrels, and great efforts were made to get some of the casks out whole; but this was found to be impossible, without devoting more time to the operation than we chose to spare. The men managed to remove three half empty casks with their heads stove in, which they threw overboard, but the full ones would have required special appliances to raise them through the hatches. It proved exceedingly difficult to get at the wine, which was stowed underneath the cork, and there was also a quantity of cabin bulkheads and fittings floating about under the influence of the long swell of the Atlantic. It was a curious sight, standing on the roof of the deck-house, to look into the hold, full of floating bales of cork, barrels, and pieces of wood, and to watch the sea surging up in every direction through and over the deck, which was level with the water’s edge. I saw an excellent modern iron[pg 63]cooking-stove washing about from side to side; but almost every other movable article, including spars and ropes, had apparently been removed by previous boarders.”It would have delayed them too long to tow her into port, or they might have recovered some £1,500 as salvage, while to blow her up would have required more powder than they had on board. So she was left helplessly drifting about, a danger to any vessel running into her full steam or sail almost as great as a sunken rock.Later, the owner of theSunbeamwas of real service, for a fine vessel was encountered, under full sail and on fire, her cargo being smelting coal. Her red Union Jack was upside down, while her signals read the terrible announcement,“Ship on fire!”These were followed by the signal,“Come on board at once,”and a boat’s crew was at once despatched to the rescue. They were purposely well armed, and for the sufficient reason that there was little sign of fire or smoke on board, and it was thought that there might be a mutiny on board. In a few minutes the boat returned with the chief mate, a fine-looking Norwegian, who reported his vessel theMonkshaven, sixty-eight days from Swansea, and bound for Valparaiso. The fire had been discovered five days previously, and the morning following the first day the crew had got all their clothes and provisions on deck, and had thrown everything of a combustible nature—tar, oil, pitch, spare spars, and so forth—overboard. The hatches had then been battened down, but all efforts to subdue the fire were unavailing. The officers and men had been living on deck under a canvas screen, the water being a foot deep even there. When the hatches were opened for a moment, dense clouds of hot, suffocating yellow smoke immediately poured forth, driving back all who approached. In such cases it is often difficult to find the location of the fire, which may at any time burst open the deck or burn a hole through the hull. The dangerous nature of such cargoes may be inferred from the fact that of every three vessels going out to Valparaiso or Callao, one catches fire, although, of course, the flames are often got under control. They had encountered a terrific gale, and while burning had signalled a large American steamship, which had contemptuously steamed away from them. When the men had all been transferred to the yacht—for it was found impossible to save the barque—the poor fellows were almost wild with joy and excitement. Soon after the fated vessel was blazing like a tar-barrel, and the yacht steamed round her near enough for all on board to feel the heat. Fifteen extra mouths to feed was a serious addition to the passengers and crew of theSunbeam, and the water ration had to be cut down, but otherwise they had all they could wish, and a week later were transferred to the Pacific Company’s mail steamerIllimani, then homeward bound. The satisfaction which must have been felt by Mr. and Mrs. Brassey at having the ability as well as the will to save fifteen lives may well be imagined.One of woman’s noblest attributes is her readiness to help in the hour of need, and its exercise has been by no means confined to the land. Late in 1879 the British India Steam Navigation Company’s steamerEldoradohad a hairbreadth escape from destruction in the Bay of Biscay. The rascally Lascar crew abandoned their posts and gave themselves up to despair, and the passengers“passed”coal to the stoke-hole and worked hard at baling; many ladies even volunteered to assist, and two American ladies acted as stewardesses and dispensed coffee and provisions to the rest.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.How often of late years have female swimmers saved life? The case to be cited, and[pg 64]which occurred in fresh water, is only one of scores that might be recorded here. On the 5th December, 1879, two men had to cross the St. Lawrence River, from La Rue Island to a wharf on the main shore. It was an intensely cold day, and a heavy gale was blowing strongly from the north-east up the river. The men loaded their punt with a sleigh, and had managed to reach the middle of the channel, when a sudden and violent gust of wind swamped the punt and turned her over. The men clung to her while bottom upward, and tried to“tread”the water so as to get her to the shore, but in vain; the cold was so intense that their legs were benumbed above the knees, and they gave themselves up for lost. They remained in this perilous position for a considerable time, shouting loudly for help till their throats were sore. Making a final effort, they shouted again, and this time their cries were heard at the house of a Mr. Darling, who, with his family, resided close to the shore. That gentleman was ill in bed, but his wife and daughters, Maggie and Jessie, were at home, the men and boys being at work in the fields at a distance. On hearing the last painful shout of the drowning men, they quickly opened the door, to see them struggling in the great river—a stream the width and volume of which surpass anything in Europe. The first suggestion from the mother was to fetch the men from the fields, but before this could be done brave Maggie and Jessie—the latter a girl of sixteen years—had, without a word, launched the skiff, and were rowing with all their strength through the troubled waters and driving storm. They had the greatest difficulty in reaching the exhausted and helpless men, but at last their noble effort was rewarded, and in ten minutes the poor fellows were being chafed and warmed by their father’s fire. Brave Maggie and Jessie! worthy successors, indeed, to your namesake, the heroine of the Longstone Light!The story of Grace Darling must be familiar to our readers. The circumstances which called forth her courage and humanity were as follow:—TheForfarshire, a steamer of moderate size, left Hull for Dundee on the evening of September 5th, 1838, having on board a considerable amount of freight and sixty-three passengers and crew. Soon after leaving the Humber the boilers began to leak, and on Thursday morning the weather became very tempestuous, while a thick mist enveloped the vessel. The steamer managed to pass the Fern Islands, on the way north, early on Thursday evening, but had all she could do to make headway in a very heavy sea, while the alarming fact was discovered that her boilers’ leakage was increasing. As the night advanced the weather became more and more boisterous, and somewhere off Berwick it was found that the water from above was deluging the furnace fires. Off St. Abb’s Head, the engineer reported that the machinery would work no longer; the sails were accordingly set, and the vessel allowed to drive before the wind, which took her southward. Before daybreak on Friday morning the roar of breakers near at hand was heard; and the captain tried hard to avert the appalling catastrophe which seemed inevitable, and steer the vessel between the islands and the mainland, through a channel known as the Fair Way. But theForfarshirewould not answer her helm, and was driven hither and thither by a furious sea. The scene at this juncture baffles description. Utter darkness enveloped the doomed vessel, over which the sea broke in tremendous waves, and the noise of which almost drowned the agonising shrieks of the passengers. The vessel, a few minutes later, struck a rock, her bows banging and crashing upon it. At this moment[pg 65]a rush was made by eight of the crew to a boat, which they lowered successfully, one almost naked and frenzied passenger jumping into it after them. The ship was now at her last extremity.“Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,As eager to anticipate their grave;And the sea yawned around her like a hell,And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,Like one who grapples with his enemy,And strives to strangle him before he die.”A moment or two after the first shock, another great sea struck her, raising her high in the air and then bringing her down with a terrific crash on the jagged reef, and with a shock so tremendous that she literally broke in two. The whole of the upper part of the vessel, including the chief cabin, filled with passengers, was swept away, and sank almost immediately. Every soul on that part of the vessel was engulfed in an ocean grave. Good George Herbert says truly,“He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.”The fore part of the vessel remained spitted on a rocky projection; and had theForfarshiredrifted a few yards further to the south-west she would have escaped her terrible fate, as the rock there descends almost precipitously into deep water. Meantime, at the Fern Lighthouse, a mile off, nothing had been seen of the actual occurrence, but at seven o’clock the vessel was noticed lying on the rock. The weather was so bad that the lighthouse-keeper, Mr. Darling, doubted the possibility of rendering assistance. But his daughter Grace entreated her father to go off in the boat at all risks, and offered herself to take one oar. Mr. Darling, thus urged, though knowing the danger of the attempt, agreed, and mother and daughter aided him in launching the boat. After a hard pull through the boiling foam, they reached the rock, where they found nine persons shivering in the cold and wet, and trembling for their lives. As illustrative of the heroism displayed in this rescue, it may be mentioned that had it not been ebb tide the boat could not have passed between the islands; and Darling and his daughter knew that the tide would be flowing on their return, and that their united strength would have been quite insufficient to pull back to the lighthouse. But for the assistance of the survivors all would have had to remain on the fatal rock. The joy of the rescued people may well be imagined, and their surprise, and indeed amazement, at finding that one of their deliverers was a young girl. At the lighthouse food and warmth soon restored their exhausted powers. Among those rescued was a bereaved mother, who had seen her two only children perish before her eyes.Grace Darling’s name and fame are historic; she lived but a short time after the tragic event just recorded, but long enough to receive the honours due to her for an act of unparalleled heroism, even receiving the acknowledgments of the Queen and a handsome sum of money from the public.“She who amid the tempest shone,The angel of the wave,”was not, as might be supposed, a robust girl, but, on the contrary, quite delicate. Her spirit peacefully passed away a few months after the event above recorded.
CHAPTER IV.The Pacific Ferry.—Another Route.The Hawaiian Islands—King and Parliament—Pleasant Honolulu—A Government Hotel—Honeysuckle-covered Theatre—Productions of the Islands—Grand Volcanoes—Ravages of Lava Streams and Earthquakes—Off to Fiji—A Rapidly Christianised People—A Native Hut—Dinner—Kandavu—The Bush—Fruit-laden Canoes—Strange Ideas of Value—New Zealand—Its Features—Intense English Feeling—The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities—The Maories—Trollope’s Testimony—Facts about Cannibalism—A Chief on Bagpipes—Australia—Beauty of Sydney Harbour—Its Fortifications—Volunteers—Its War-fleet of One—Handsome Melbourne—Absence of Squalor—No Workhouses Required—The Benevolent Asylums—Splendid Place for Working Men—Cheapness of Meat, &c.—Wages in Town and Country—Life in the Bush—“Knocking Down One’s Cheque”—Gold, Coal, and Iron.A popular route now to New Zealand and Australia is thatviâSan Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, the bulk of the voyage being usually over the quieter parts of the Pacific; it takes the passenger, of course, through the tropics.Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, is now a civilised and pleasant city, while the natural attractions of the islands themselves are many and varied. One need not now fear the fate of poor Captain Cook. Most of the natives, of whom there are 50,000, are clothed in semi-European style: the men in coats and trousers of nankeen, and the women more picturesquely clad in long robes fastened round the neck, and pretty often of pink or some other bright colour. There is a white population of some 10,000 souls scattered over the islands, a large proportion of whom are English and American. Honolulu is the Government centre and residence of King Kalakau, who used to be called“Calico”in the United States, and who, in fact, is a very slightly tinted,[pg 46]good-looking, and most intelligent gentleman. The Ex-Queen Emma, who visited England some years ago, has a villa beautifully situated a few miles out of town. The king devotes his energies to bettering the condition of his people, and some few years ago, when the money was voted to build a new palace, declined to accept it, at least for two years. The Hawaiian Parliament consists of a House of seventeen nobles and twenty-eight commoners, who, strange to say, sit in the same hall, their votes being of equal weight. There are always several Europeans or Americans in this council.Mr. Guillemard thus describes Honolulu20:—“The town, which is built on the low land bordering the shore—partly, indeed, on land reclaimed from the sea, thanks to the industry of the architects of the coral reef—looks mean and insignificant from the harbour, but on going ashore to breakfast we get glimpses of fine public buildings and numerous shops and stores, of neat houses nestling among bowers of shrubs and flowers, and evidences of a busy trade and considerable population. The streets are narrow, and the houses built of wood, without any attempt at decoration or even uniformity. In the by-streets or lanes pretty verandah-girt villas peep out from shrubberies of tropical foliage, honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and a hundred flowers strange to English eyes. Tiny fountains are sending sparkling jets of water up in the hot, still air; and other music is not wanting, for here and there we hear the tinkle of a distant piano, telling us that early rising is the rule in Honolulu, and suggesting as a consequence asiestaat mid-day.“But here we are at the grand Hawaiian Hotel, a fine verandahed building, standing back from the road in a pretty garden, the green lawn, cool deep shade, and trickling fountain of which are doubly grateful after the glare of the scorching sunlight, scorching even though it is not yet seven a.m. The theatre, half-hidden by its wealth of honeysuckle and fan-palm, is not fifty yards distant, but is quite thrown into insignificance by the hotel. This was built by Government, at a cost of £25,000, and is admirably planned and appointed.”Its large airy rooms and cool verandahs, shaded with masses of passion flowers, its excellent food and iced American drinks, all combine to make it a capital resting-place.In the streets Mr. Guillemard noted bevies of gaily-attired girls on horseback, their robes being gathered in at the waist with bright scarves, which fling their folds far over the horses’ tails. Their jaunty straw hats were wreathed with flowers, and now and then some dark-eyed beauty would be found wearing a necklace of blossoms. The girls rode astride up and down the main streets, making them ring again with their merry laughter. Mosquitoes were abundant, and, as some compensation, so also were delicious melons, guavas, mangoes, bananas, and commoner fruit.The sugar-cane was first grown on these islands in 1820; now over 20,000,000 pounds of sugar are produced annually by the aid of Hawaiian and Chinese labour and steam-mills. Not a quarter of the land suitable for this purpose is yet under cultivation, though some of the plantations are of thousands of acres in extent. Hides and wool are staple exports.[pg 47]A few hours’ sail from Honolulu some of the largest and most wonderful volcanoes in the world are to be found. Two of them, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, are each over 13,000 feet in elevation. The eruptions from the great crater of Kilauea, which isten milesin circumference, are something fearful. One explosion ejected streams of red mud three miles, killing thirty-one people and 500 head of cattle. This was followed by several earthquakes, which destroyed a number of houses. These, again, were succeeded by a great earthquake wave, during the continuance of which three villages were swept away and seventy people killed. Next a new crater formed upon Mauna Loa, from which rose four fountains of red-hot lava to a height of 600 feet. A lava stream, eight to ten miles long, and half a mile wide in some places, carried all before it. In one place it tumbled, in a molten cataract of fiery liquid, over a precipice several hundred feet in height. The interior of Hawaii is a vast underground lake of fire, and were it not for the safety-valves provided by Nature in the form of craters, it would be shaken to pieces by successive earthquakes.THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).And now the passenger has before him a fortnight of the most tranquil part of the ocean called the Pacific. He must not be surprised if the heat rises to 90° or so in the saloon. The distance from San Francisco to Sydney direct is 6,500 miles, and Fiji is naturallyen route; the detour to New Zealand considerably increases the length of the voyage. It will be remembered that these islands were formally annexed to Britain in 1874, after vain attempts at a mixed native and European government. The population was then 140,000; in a year or two afterwards 40,000 of the poor natives fell victims to the measles, another of the importations apparently inseparable from civilisation. The Wesleyan missionaries, in particular, have worked with so much zeal in these islands that more than half the people are Christians. There are 600 chapels in the 140 islands comprising the Fiji group. Formerly the natives were the worst kind of cannibals. They not merely killed and ate the victims of their island wars, but no shipwrecked or helpless person was safe among them. Numbers were slain at the caprice of the chiefs, especially at the building of a house or canoe, or at the reception of a native embassy. Widows were strangled at the death of their husbands, and slaves killed on the decease of their masters. The introduction of Christianity and partial civilisation has changed all that for the better; and the natives of to-day are described as mild and gentle, and little given to quarrelling. Among their customs is that of powdering the hair (always closely cropped) with lime, which is often coloured. Their huts are of dried reeds, lashed to a strong framework of poles, and have lofty arched roofs, but are without windows or chimneys. Each has two low doors, through which one must crawl. The best native huts have a partition between the dwelling and bed room, and all are carpeted with mats. The only furniture consists of one article, a short piece of wood on two small legs, used for a pillow! Clay pots are used for cooking their principal diet, yams and fish. Many of them nowadays have houses well furnished with mats, curtains, baskets, jars, &c.Mr. Guillemard describes a tropical dinner, served to himself and companions in one of these huts. A couple of banana-leaves formed the dishes, on which boiled fish and half a dozen yams, or sweet potatoes, were offered. A large block of rock-salt was handed them to useà discretion. Then followed ripe cocoa-nuts. Dried leaves of somewhat[pg 48]tasteless wild tobacco, rolled up rapidly and neatly, and tied round with a fibre, formed the post-prandial cigars, which were lighted by the women at the fire, and passed from their lips to the guests’.The natural productions of this group are extensive, and comprise bread-fruit, taro, cocoa-nuts, yams, bananas, plantains, guavas, oranges and lemons, wild and cultivated tobacco, sugar, cotton, and coffee. The india-rubber tree is cultivated, and among the leading exports are dried cocoa-nut and pearl-shell. As there are at the present time comparatively few white settlers—perhaps not over 2,500 in all the islands—there are innumerable openings for settlement, and Fiji, with many other neighbouring islands, will doubtless soon afford fresh examples of British enterprise.The point touched by the steamers is Kandavu, on one of the southernmost islands, where Mount Washington, a fine mountain, rears its head 3,000 feet into the clouds. A visitor says:—“From the eastern point of land run out miles of coral reef, on which the ocean rollers are breaking grandly, and outside this barrier we take our pilot on board. The entrance to Kandavu harbour is narrow and intricate, and here theMacgregor, one of the mail steamers, struck on a submerged reef, and remained for several days hard and fast aground.”The passage has been properly buoyed and lighted, and the New Company have built offices and stores, and established a coaling station here.“The view of Port Ugaloa from the entrance is very beautiful. On our left the coral reef encloses a still lagoon of the softest, lightest green; before us hills and mountains, covered from base to summit with the richest vegetation, are tipped with fleecy cloud; and on our right, dividing the waters of the bay, is Ugaloa Island, its slopes feathery with the foliage of the cocoa-palm and banana, half hidden in which appear here and there the low brown huts of the natives.... The brothers L. accompany me ashore on Ugaloa, landing close to a small collection of huts scattered about just above the coral-strewn beach. It is Sunday afternoon, and a native missionary is preaching to some fifty men, women, and children, squatting on their hams on the mat-covered floor of a neat, white-washed mission house. Amongst the congregation is a tall native, with a thick cane, keeping silence by tapping the heads of the inattentive. The preacher is eloquent and energetic in gesture; but Fiji is hardly a pretty language to listen to, being decidedly characterised by queer guttural sounds, and spoken very fast. The sermon over, a hymn is read out and sung to a rather monotonous dirge-like chant, and the congregation disperse. We are at once surrounded by an olive-skinned crowd; the ladies’ dresses are minutely examined, for a white lady has scarcely been seen in Kandavu before the present year. The gentlemen have to display their watches and chains, and by means of shouting and signs every one is soon carrying on a vigorous conversation. Why is it that one always elevates the voice when trying to make one’s native tongue intelligible to a foreigner?“We wander away into the bush, and are soon lost in a wilderness of ferns, creepers, bananas, cocoa-palms, and chestnut-trees. We meet with a young native, and make signs to him that we are thirsty, and wish to refresh ourselves with the juice of a green cocoa-nut. Clutching the trunk with both hands, he almost runs up a palm, and our wants are soon plentifully supplied. He receives hisdouceurwith apparent nonchalance, and proceeds to tie it up in a corner of his sulu with a fibre of banana bark.[pg 50]“Monday morning breaks fine and clear, and our slumbers are early disturbed by the chattering of a hundred natives, a whole squadron of whose fruit-laden canoes are alongside the steamer. Queer crank-looking craft are these, roughly dug out of the trunk of a tree, and kept steady on the water by an outrigger consisting of a log half the length of the canoe, attached to it amidships by a few light poles projecting some four or five feet from its side. They are usually propelled by means of a long oar worked between the poles, after the fashion of sculling a boat from the stern; but sometimes we see the ordinary short paddle being plied at bow and stern. Some of the larger craft hoist a large long sail, but they do not seem very weatherly under canvas, which they use but little compared with the Society Islanders.“The scene on deck is amusing enough. Forward, fifty natives, their olive skins blackened and begrimed with dust, are hard at work replenishing the coal bunkers from the hold, and thoroughly earning their shilling a day; on the poop as many more, laden with lemons, huge bunches of bananas, cocoa-nuts, shells, coral, matting, tappa—a soft, white fabric, called by the natives‘marse’—and a few clubs and other weapons, are driving a brisk trade with the passengers. Everything is to be had for a shilling.‘Shillin’is the only English word that all the natives understand; in fact, this useful coin seems to be the‘almighty dollar’of Kandavu. You take a lemon, and ask,‘How much?’‘Shillin’is the reply; but you can obtain the man’s whole stock of sixty, basket and all, for the same money!”Our next stopping place is one of particular interest to the British colonist. New Zealand, albeit one of the youngest, is now among the most promising of England’s outposts. Auckland, in the North Island, is the port at which the steamers touch. The harbour is very fine, and residents compare it to the Bay of Naples.Every schoolboy knows that New Zealand includes two large and one small island, respectively known as North, Middle, and Stewart’s Island. One great feature of the coast line consists of its indentations; the colony is rich in fine natural harbours and ports. The area of the islands is nearly as great as that of Britain and Ireland combined, and about half of that area consists of excellent soil. The climate is that of England, with a difference: there are many more fine days, while winter is not so cold by half. The islands are volcanic; on the North Island, Mount Ruapahu, a perpetually snow-capped peak, rises to a height of 9,000 feet, while in the same range, the Tongariro mountain, an active volcano, rises to a height of 6,000 feet. The highest mountain range is on the Middle Island, where Mount Cook rises to a height of 14,000 feet. One can understand that in such a country there should be an abundance of evergreen forests of luxuriant growth. These are interspersed with charming fern-clad slopes and treeless grassy plains. Water is everywhere found; but none of the rivers are navigable by large vessels for more than fifty miles or so. One great advantage found in the country is the absence of noxious reptiles or insects: of the latter there is not one as offensive as an English wasp. The pigs, introduced by Captain Cook, run wild over the island, and there is plenty of large and small game: the red and fallow deer, the pheasant, partridge, and quail. Everything that grows in England will thrive there, while the vine, maize, taro, and sweet potato grow in many districts. A traveller21says of the (Thames) gold fields:—“Mines here, like everywhere else, are now dull. At one time there[pg 51]was a population of 22,000, but now this is only 13,000. Everybody one sees seems to have lost in the gold-diggings, and it is a mystery to me who is the lucky person that wins—one never seems to meet him.”This somewhat random statement may be takencum grano salis, as the gold-fields have yielded largely at times. Nevertheless, mining is always more or less a lottery.Mr. Anthony Trollope testifies to the intense British feeling in New Zealand, where he felt thoroughly at home. Australia he found tinged with a form of boasting Yankeeism.“The New Zealander,”says he,22“among John Bulls is the most John Bullish. He admits the supremacy of England to every place in the world, only he is more English than any Englishman at home.”Discovered by Tasman in 1642, England only commenced to take an interest in the islands more than a century and a quarter later, when Cook surveyed the coasts. The missionaries came first, in 1814, and a British Resident was appointed in 1833. All this time a desultory colonisation was going on, and the natives were selling parcels of their best lands for a few cast-iron hatchets or muskets, shoddy blankets, or rubbishy trinkets. In 1840 a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed from home, and his presence was indeed necessary. The previous year a corporation, calling itself the New Zealand Company, had made pretended purchases of tracts of the best parts of the country, amounting toone-thirdof its whole area! The unscrupulous and defiant manner in which this company treated the natives and the Government brought about many complications, and led to very serious wars with natives not to be trifled with. The New Zealand Company was“bought out”by the Government in 1852 for £268,000. During 1843-7, and in 1861 and after, England had to fight the Maories—foes that she learned to respect. At last, weary of war, all our troops were withdrawn, and the colonists, who of course knew the bush and bush life better than nine-tenths of the soldiers, were left to defend their homes and property, and in the end to successfully finish the fight. The natives now are generally peaceful and subdued, while many are even turning their attention to agriculture and commerce. Nine years ago they numbered 37,500, but are fast dying out.Physically and intellectually, the Maories are the finest semi-savage natives on the face of the earth. Mr. Trollope is an author and traveller whose words carry weight, and he has given us the following concise summary of their qualities and character:—“They are,”says he,“an active people, the men averaging 5 feet 6½ inches in height, and are almost equal in strength and weight to Englishmen. In their former condition they wore matting; now they wear European clothes. Formerly they pulled out their beards, and every New Zealander of mark was tattooed; now they wear beards, and the young men are not tattooed. Their hair is black and coarse, but not woolly like a negro’s, or black like a Hindoo’s. The nose is almost always broad and the mouth large. In other respects their features are not unlike those of the European race. The men, to my eyes, were better-looking than the women, and the men who were tattooed better-looking than those who had dropped the custom. The women still retain the old custom of tattooing the upper lip. The Maories had a mythology of their own, and believed in a future existence; but they did not recognise[pg 52]one supreme God. Virtue with them, as with other savages, consisted chiefly in courage and a command of temper. Their great passion was revenge, which was carried on by one tribe against another to the extent sometimes of the annihilation of tribes. The decrease of their population since the English first came among them has been owing as much to civil war as to the injuries with which civilisation has afflicted them. They seem from early days to have acquired that habit of fighting behind stockades or in fortified pahs which we have found so fatal to ourselves in our wars with them. Their weapons, before they got guns from us, were not very deadly. They were chiefly short javelins and stones, both flung from slings. But there was a horror in their warfare to the awfulness of which they themselves seem to have been keenly alive. When a prisoner was taken in war he was cooked and eaten.“I do not think that human beings were slaughtered for food in New Zealand, although there is no doubt that the banquet when prepared was enjoyed with a horrid relish.“I will quote a passage from Dr. Thompson’s work in reference to the practice of cannibalism, and will then have done with the subject.‘Whether or not cannibalism commenced immediately after the advent of the New Zealanders from Hawaiki, it is nevertheless certain that one of Tasman’s sailors was eaten in 1642; that Captain Cook had a boat’s crew eaten in 1774; that Marion de Fresne and many other navigators met this horrible end; and that the pioneers of civilisation and successive missionaries have all borne testimony to the universal prevalence of cannibalism in New Zealand up to the year 1840. It is impossible to state how many New Zealanders were annually devoured; that the number was not small may be inferred from two facts authenticated by European witnesses. In 1822, Hougi’s army ate three hundred persons after the capture of Totara, on the River Thames, and in 1836, during the Rotura war, sixty beings were cooked and eaten in two days.’I will add from the same book a translation of a portion of a war-song:—‘Oh, my little son, are you crying? are you screaming for your food? Here it is for you, the flesh of Hekemanu and Werata. Although I am surfeited with the soft brains of Putu Rikiriki and Raukauri, yet such is my hatred that I will fill myself fuller with those of Pau, of Ngaraunga, of Pipi, and with my most dainty morsel, the flesh of the hated Teao.’”Mr. Laird testifies to their cleanliness, but states that they are, like most savages, and for that matter, most white men, very improvident. If a bad potato or other crop occurred, they would eat it all at once, and half starve afterwards.The same author tells a good story of the nonchalance of a leading Maori chief who was invited to dinner at Government House during the visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner the Duke’s chief bagpiper came in and played. The chief was asked how he liked the music. He replied briefly:“Too much noise for me; but suit white man well enough.”And now we are approaching that great continent which has had, has, and will increasingly have, so much interest for the emigrant, who must be, more or less, a voyager and man of the sea. Australia, a country nearly as large as the United States, must be for many a day to come a very Paradise for the poor man.The American steamers from San Francisco land one at Sydney, of which charming place Mr. Trollope says:—“I despair of being able to convey to my readers my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour;”he considers that it excels Dublin Bay, Spezzia, and[pg 53]New York. And the colonists, left to themselves—for England maintains no troops there now—have fortified it strongly. Mr. Trollope tells us of five separate armed fortresses, with Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons’ weight, with loopholed walls and pits for riflemen, as though Sydney was to become another Sebastopol.“It was shown,”says he,“how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemated batteries, shell-rooms and gunpowder magazines,[pg 54]barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour, and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready for use in an hour or two. It was explained to me that‘they’could not possibly get across the trenches, or break the boom, or escape the torpedoes, or live for an hour beneath the blaze of the guns.‘They’would not have a chance to get at Sydney. There was much martial ardour, and a very general opinion that‘they’would have the worst of it.”New South Wales and Victoria have about 8,000 volunteers and a training-ship for sailor boys; while an enormous monitor, theCerberus, presented by the mother country, forms its war-fleet of one.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings,“the internal appearance of the city is,”Mr. Trollope assures us,“certainly magnificent.”It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens.“One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.”There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by“Benevolent Asylums.”In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid.“Could a pauper,”says Trollope,“be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,”so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly.The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well-to-do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.Mr. Trollope says:—“There is perhaps no town in the world in which an ordinary working man can do better for himself and for his family with his work than he can at Melbourne.”The rates of wages for mechanics are slightly greater than at home, and all the necessaries of life are cheaper. With meat at 4d. per pound, butter from 6d. upwards, bread, tea, and coffee about the same prices or rather under, coals the same or a trifle higher, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits generally considerably cheaper, all can live well and plentifully. Meat three times a day is common all over Australia, and in some parts the price is as low as 1½d. or 2d. per pound. Wages for good mechanics and artisans average about 10s. a day; gardeners receive about 50s., and labourers about 30s. per week; men-servants, in the house, £40 to £50 per annum; cooks, £35 to £45 per year; girls, as housemaids, &c., 8s. or 10s. per week. It is usual to hire the last named by this[pg 55]short term. Some of these prices rule all over the country, but are liable to rule lower, rather than higher, outside of Melbourne.In the country sheep-shearers can earn 7s. to 14s. per day for about four months in the year; shepherds, £30 to £40 per year, with rations. The common labourer can count on 15s. to 20s. per week, with rations: these consist generally of 14 lbs. meat (usually mutton), 8 lbs. flour, 2 lbs. sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea. Of course, where fruit or vegetables are plentiful they would be added. The meat, bread, and tea diet, however, is that characteristic of the whole country. In the great sheep runs and cattle ranges23it would be the shepherd’s diet invariably.Mr. Trollope advises the poor man to save for three or four years, and then invest in land, which in some places is to be had at 3s. 9d. an acre, payable to the Government in five instalments of ninepence per acre. Of course, he would require money for the erection of a house, farm implements, &c. The great trouble with most men working in the bush as shepherds or shearers, or at the mines, or elsewhere at distant points, is that the enforced absence from civilisation and social life makes them inclined for reckless living when they have accumulated a sum of money. The tavern-keepers of the nearest town or station reap all the benefit, and there are numbers of men who, for ten or eleven months of the year perfectly steady and sober, periodically give themselves up to drink until their earnings are melted, it is called“knocking down”one’s cheque, and it is a common practice for them to hand such cheque to the publican, who lets them run on recklessly in drink and food untilheconsiders it exhausted. A good story is told by Mr. Trollope of a man who had been accustomed to do this at regular intervals, but who on one occasion, having some loose silver,“planted”his cheque in an old tree, and proceeded to the usual haunt, where he set to work deliberately to get drunk. The publican showed evident doubt as to the propriety of supplying him freely. Why had not the man brought his cheque as usual? The tavern-keeper at last put him to bed; but the man, though drugged and stupefied, had his wits about him sufficiently to observe and remember that the host had examined his clothes, his hat, and boots, for the lacking cheque. Next morning he was ignominiously expelled from the house, but he didn’t mind: the cheque was found by him safely in the tree by the roadside, and he surprised his master by returning to the station a week or two before he was expected richer than he had ever come home before. Let us hope he was cured of that form of folly for ever.The gold yield of Australia for the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 was 50,750,000 ozs. But gold-fields die out sooner than most mines, and Australia has a more permanent source of prosperity for the future in its coal and iron-fields, which are in close proximity to each other. The coal is already worked to great profit, and is one of the principal steamship fuels of the Pacific.The steamship route homeward from Australia is that by the Indian Ocean (usually touching at Ceylon), then reaching the Mediterraneanviâthe Red Sea and Suez Canal. These points of interest have already been fully described in early chapters of this work.
The Hawaiian Islands—King and Parliament—Pleasant Honolulu—A Government Hotel—Honeysuckle-covered Theatre—Productions of the Islands—Grand Volcanoes—Ravages of Lava Streams and Earthquakes—Off to Fiji—A Rapidly Christianised People—A Native Hut—Dinner—Kandavu—The Bush—Fruit-laden Canoes—Strange Ideas of Value—New Zealand—Its Features—Intense English Feeling—The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities—The Maories—Trollope’s Testimony—Facts about Cannibalism—A Chief on Bagpipes—Australia—Beauty of Sydney Harbour—Its Fortifications—Volunteers—Its War-fleet of One—Handsome Melbourne—Absence of Squalor—No Workhouses Required—The Benevolent Asylums—Splendid Place for Working Men—Cheapness of Meat, &c.—Wages in Town and Country—Life in the Bush—“Knocking Down One’s Cheque”—Gold, Coal, and Iron.
The Hawaiian Islands—King and Parliament—Pleasant Honolulu—A Government Hotel—Honeysuckle-covered Theatre—Productions of the Islands—Grand Volcanoes—Ravages of Lava Streams and Earthquakes—Off to Fiji—A Rapidly Christianised People—A Native Hut—Dinner—Kandavu—The Bush—Fruit-laden Canoes—Strange Ideas of Value—New Zealand—Its Features—Intense English Feeling—The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities—The Maories—Trollope’s Testimony—Facts about Cannibalism—A Chief on Bagpipes—Australia—Beauty of Sydney Harbour—Its Fortifications—Volunteers—Its War-fleet of One—Handsome Melbourne—Absence of Squalor—No Workhouses Required—The Benevolent Asylums—Splendid Place for Working Men—Cheapness of Meat, &c.—Wages in Town and Country—Life in the Bush—“Knocking Down One’s Cheque”—Gold, Coal, and Iron.
A popular route now to New Zealand and Australia is thatviâSan Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, the bulk of the voyage being usually over the quieter parts of the Pacific; it takes the passenger, of course, through the tropics.
Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, is now a civilised and pleasant city, while the natural attractions of the islands themselves are many and varied. One need not now fear the fate of poor Captain Cook. Most of the natives, of whom there are 50,000, are clothed in semi-European style: the men in coats and trousers of nankeen, and the women more picturesquely clad in long robes fastened round the neck, and pretty often of pink or some other bright colour. There is a white population of some 10,000 souls scattered over the islands, a large proportion of whom are English and American. Honolulu is the Government centre and residence of King Kalakau, who used to be called“Calico”in the United States, and who, in fact, is a very slightly tinted,[pg 46]good-looking, and most intelligent gentleman. The Ex-Queen Emma, who visited England some years ago, has a villa beautifully situated a few miles out of town. The king devotes his energies to bettering the condition of his people, and some few years ago, when the money was voted to build a new palace, declined to accept it, at least for two years. The Hawaiian Parliament consists of a House of seventeen nobles and twenty-eight commoners, who, strange to say, sit in the same hall, their votes being of equal weight. There are always several Europeans or Americans in this council.
Mr. Guillemard thus describes Honolulu20:—“The town, which is built on the low land bordering the shore—partly, indeed, on land reclaimed from the sea, thanks to the industry of the architects of the coral reef—looks mean and insignificant from the harbour, but on going ashore to breakfast we get glimpses of fine public buildings and numerous shops and stores, of neat houses nestling among bowers of shrubs and flowers, and evidences of a busy trade and considerable population. The streets are narrow, and the houses built of wood, without any attempt at decoration or even uniformity. In the by-streets or lanes pretty verandah-girt villas peep out from shrubberies of tropical foliage, honeysuckle, roses, lilies, and a hundred flowers strange to English eyes. Tiny fountains are sending sparkling jets of water up in the hot, still air; and other music is not wanting, for here and there we hear the tinkle of a distant piano, telling us that early rising is the rule in Honolulu, and suggesting as a consequence asiestaat mid-day.
“But here we are at the grand Hawaiian Hotel, a fine verandahed building, standing back from the road in a pretty garden, the green lawn, cool deep shade, and trickling fountain of which are doubly grateful after the glare of the scorching sunlight, scorching even though it is not yet seven a.m. The theatre, half-hidden by its wealth of honeysuckle and fan-palm, is not fifty yards distant, but is quite thrown into insignificance by the hotel. This was built by Government, at a cost of £25,000, and is admirably planned and appointed.”Its large airy rooms and cool verandahs, shaded with masses of passion flowers, its excellent food and iced American drinks, all combine to make it a capital resting-place.
In the streets Mr. Guillemard noted bevies of gaily-attired girls on horseback, their robes being gathered in at the waist with bright scarves, which fling their folds far over the horses’ tails. Their jaunty straw hats were wreathed with flowers, and now and then some dark-eyed beauty would be found wearing a necklace of blossoms. The girls rode astride up and down the main streets, making them ring again with their merry laughter. Mosquitoes were abundant, and, as some compensation, so also were delicious melons, guavas, mangoes, bananas, and commoner fruit.
The sugar-cane was first grown on these islands in 1820; now over 20,000,000 pounds of sugar are produced annually by the aid of Hawaiian and Chinese labour and steam-mills. Not a quarter of the land suitable for this purpose is yet under cultivation, though some of the plantations are of thousands of acres in extent. Hides and wool are staple exports.
A few hours’ sail from Honolulu some of the largest and most wonderful volcanoes in the world are to be found. Two of them, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, are each over 13,000 feet in elevation. The eruptions from the great crater of Kilauea, which isten milesin circumference, are something fearful. One explosion ejected streams of red mud three miles, killing thirty-one people and 500 head of cattle. This was followed by several earthquakes, which destroyed a number of houses. These, again, were succeeded by a great earthquake wave, during the continuance of which three villages were swept away and seventy people killed. Next a new crater formed upon Mauna Loa, from which rose four fountains of red-hot lava to a height of 600 feet. A lava stream, eight to ten miles long, and half a mile wide in some places, carried all before it. In one place it tumbled, in a molten cataract of fiery liquid, over a precipice several hundred feet in height. The interior of Hawaii is a vast underground lake of fire, and were it not for the safety-valves provided by Nature in the form of craters, it would be shaken to pieces by successive earthquakes.
THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).
THE VOLCANOES OF MAUNA LOA AND MAUNA KEA, SANDWICH ISLANDS (FROM THE SEA).
And now the passenger has before him a fortnight of the most tranquil part of the ocean called the Pacific. He must not be surprised if the heat rises to 90° or so in the saloon. The distance from San Francisco to Sydney direct is 6,500 miles, and Fiji is naturallyen route; the detour to New Zealand considerably increases the length of the voyage. It will be remembered that these islands were formally annexed to Britain in 1874, after vain attempts at a mixed native and European government. The population was then 140,000; in a year or two afterwards 40,000 of the poor natives fell victims to the measles, another of the importations apparently inseparable from civilisation. The Wesleyan missionaries, in particular, have worked with so much zeal in these islands that more than half the people are Christians. There are 600 chapels in the 140 islands comprising the Fiji group. Formerly the natives were the worst kind of cannibals. They not merely killed and ate the victims of their island wars, but no shipwrecked or helpless person was safe among them. Numbers were slain at the caprice of the chiefs, especially at the building of a house or canoe, or at the reception of a native embassy. Widows were strangled at the death of their husbands, and slaves killed on the decease of their masters. The introduction of Christianity and partial civilisation has changed all that for the better; and the natives of to-day are described as mild and gentle, and little given to quarrelling. Among their customs is that of powdering the hair (always closely cropped) with lime, which is often coloured. Their huts are of dried reeds, lashed to a strong framework of poles, and have lofty arched roofs, but are without windows or chimneys. Each has two low doors, through which one must crawl. The best native huts have a partition between the dwelling and bed room, and all are carpeted with mats. The only furniture consists of one article, a short piece of wood on two small legs, used for a pillow! Clay pots are used for cooking their principal diet, yams and fish. Many of them nowadays have houses well furnished with mats, curtains, baskets, jars, &c.
Mr. Guillemard describes a tropical dinner, served to himself and companions in one of these huts. A couple of banana-leaves formed the dishes, on which boiled fish and half a dozen yams, or sweet potatoes, were offered. A large block of rock-salt was handed them to useà discretion. Then followed ripe cocoa-nuts. Dried leaves of somewhat[pg 48]tasteless wild tobacco, rolled up rapidly and neatly, and tied round with a fibre, formed the post-prandial cigars, which were lighted by the women at the fire, and passed from their lips to the guests’.
The natural productions of this group are extensive, and comprise bread-fruit, taro, cocoa-nuts, yams, bananas, plantains, guavas, oranges and lemons, wild and cultivated tobacco, sugar, cotton, and coffee. The india-rubber tree is cultivated, and among the leading exports are dried cocoa-nut and pearl-shell. As there are at the present time comparatively few white settlers—perhaps not over 2,500 in all the islands—there are innumerable openings for settlement, and Fiji, with many other neighbouring islands, will doubtless soon afford fresh examples of British enterprise.
The point touched by the steamers is Kandavu, on one of the southernmost islands, where Mount Washington, a fine mountain, rears its head 3,000 feet into the clouds. A visitor says:—“From the eastern point of land run out miles of coral reef, on which the ocean rollers are breaking grandly, and outside this barrier we take our pilot on board. The entrance to Kandavu harbour is narrow and intricate, and here theMacgregor, one of the mail steamers, struck on a submerged reef, and remained for several days hard and fast aground.”The passage has been properly buoyed and lighted, and the New Company have built offices and stores, and established a coaling station here.
“The view of Port Ugaloa from the entrance is very beautiful. On our left the coral reef encloses a still lagoon of the softest, lightest green; before us hills and mountains, covered from base to summit with the richest vegetation, are tipped with fleecy cloud; and on our right, dividing the waters of the bay, is Ugaloa Island, its slopes feathery with the foliage of the cocoa-palm and banana, half hidden in which appear here and there the low brown huts of the natives.... The brothers L. accompany me ashore on Ugaloa, landing close to a small collection of huts scattered about just above the coral-strewn beach. It is Sunday afternoon, and a native missionary is preaching to some fifty men, women, and children, squatting on their hams on the mat-covered floor of a neat, white-washed mission house. Amongst the congregation is a tall native, with a thick cane, keeping silence by tapping the heads of the inattentive. The preacher is eloquent and energetic in gesture; but Fiji is hardly a pretty language to listen to, being decidedly characterised by queer guttural sounds, and spoken very fast. The sermon over, a hymn is read out and sung to a rather monotonous dirge-like chant, and the congregation disperse. We are at once surrounded by an olive-skinned crowd; the ladies’ dresses are minutely examined, for a white lady has scarcely been seen in Kandavu before the present year. The gentlemen have to display their watches and chains, and by means of shouting and signs every one is soon carrying on a vigorous conversation. Why is it that one always elevates the voice when trying to make one’s native tongue intelligible to a foreigner?
“We wander away into the bush, and are soon lost in a wilderness of ferns, creepers, bananas, cocoa-palms, and chestnut-trees. We meet with a young native, and make signs to him that we are thirsty, and wish to refresh ourselves with the juice of a green cocoa-nut. Clutching the trunk with both hands, he almost runs up a palm, and our wants are soon plentifully supplied. He receives hisdouceurwith apparent nonchalance, and proceeds to tie it up in a corner of his sulu with a fibre of banana bark.
“Monday morning breaks fine and clear, and our slumbers are early disturbed by the chattering of a hundred natives, a whole squadron of whose fruit-laden canoes are alongside the steamer. Queer crank-looking craft are these, roughly dug out of the trunk of a tree, and kept steady on the water by an outrigger consisting of a log half the length of the canoe, attached to it amidships by a few light poles projecting some four or five feet from its side. They are usually propelled by means of a long oar worked between the poles, after the fashion of sculling a boat from the stern; but sometimes we see the ordinary short paddle being plied at bow and stern. Some of the larger craft hoist a large long sail, but they do not seem very weatherly under canvas, which they use but little compared with the Society Islanders.
“The scene on deck is amusing enough. Forward, fifty natives, their olive skins blackened and begrimed with dust, are hard at work replenishing the coal bunkers from the hold, and thoroughly earning their shilling a day; on the poop as many more, laden with lemons, huge bunches of bananas, cocoa-nuts, shells, coral, matting, tappa—a soft, white fabric, called by the natives‘marse’—and a few clubs and other weapons, are driving a brisk trade with the passengers. Everything is to be had for a shilling.‘Shillin’is the only English word that all the natives understand; in fact, this useful coin seems to be the‘almighty dollar’of Kandavu. You take a lemon, and ask,‘How much?’‘Shillin’is the reply; but you can obtain the man’s whole stock of sixty, basket and all, for the same money!”
Our next stopping place is one of particular interest to the British colonist. New Zealand, albeit one of the youngest, is now among the most promising of England’s outposts. Auckland, in the North Island, is the port at which the steamers touch. The harbour is very fine, and residents compare it to the Bay of Naples.
Every schoolboy knows that New Zealand includes two large and one small island, respectively known as North, Middle, and Stewart’s Island. One great feature of the coast line consists of its indentations; the colony is rich in fine natural harbours and ports. The area of the islands is nearly as great as that of Britain and Ireland combined, and about half of that area consists of excellent soil. The climate is that of England, with a difference: there are many more fine days, while winter is not so cold by half. The islands are volcanic; on the North Island, Mount Ruapahu, a perpetually snow-capped peak, rises to a height of 9,000 feet, while in the same range, the Tongariro mountain, an active volcano, rises to a height of 6,000 feet. The highest mountain range is on the Middle Island, where Mount Cook rises to a height of 14,000 feet. One can understand that in such a country there should be an abundance of evergreen forests of luxuriant growth. These are interspersed with charming fern-clad slopes and treeless grassy plains. Water is everywhere found; but none of the rivers are navigable by large vessels for more than fifty miles or so. One great advantage found in the country is the absence of noxious reptiles or insects: of the latter there is not one as offensive as an English wasp. The pigs, introduced by Captain Cook, run wild over the island, and there is plenty of large and small game: the red and fallow deer, the pheasant, partridge, and quail. Everything that grows in England will thrive there, while the vine, maize, taro, and sweet potato grow in many districts. A traveller21says of the (Thames) gold fields:—“Mines here, like everywhere else, are now dull. At one time there[pg 51]was a population of 22,000, but now this is only 13,000. Everybody one sees seems to have lost in the gold-diggings, and it is a mystery to me who is the lucky person that wins—one never seems to meet him.”This somewhat random statement may be takencum grano salis, as the gold-fields have yielded largely at times. Nevertheless, mining is always more or less a lottery.
Mr. Anthony Trollope testifies to the intense British feeling in New Zealand, where he felt thoroughly at home. Australia he found tinged with a form of boasting Yankeeism.“The New Zealander,”says he,22“among John Bulls is the most John Bullish. He admits the supremacy of England to every place in the world, only he is more English than any Englishman at home.”
Discovered by Tasman in 1642, England only commenced to take an interest in the islands more than a century and a quarter later, when Cook surveyed the coasts. The missionaries came first, in 1814, and a British Resident was appointed in 1833. All this time a desultory colonisation was going on, and the natives were selling parcels of their best lands for a few cast-iron hatchets or muskets, shoddy blankets, or rubbishy trinkets. In 1840 a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed from home, and his presence was indeed necessary. The previous year a corporation, calling itself the New Zealand Company, had made pretended purchases of tracts of the best parts of the country, amounting toone-thirdof its whole area! The unscrupulous and defiant manner in which this company treated the natives and the Government brought about many complications, and led to very serious wars with natives not to be trifled with. The New Zealand Company was“bought out”by the Government in 1852 for £268,000. During 1843-7, and in 1861 and after, England had to fight the Maories—foes that she learned to respect. At last, weary of war, all our troops were withdrawn, and the colonists, who of course knew the bush and bush life better than nine-tenths of the soldiers, were left to defend their homes and property, and in the end to successfully finish the fight. The natives now are generally peaceful and subdued, while many are even turning their attention to agriculture and commerce. Nine years ago they numbered 37,500, but are fast dying out.
Physically and intellectually, the Maories are the finest semi-savage natives on the face of the earth. Mr. Trollope is an author and traveller whose words carry weight, and he has given us the following concise summary of their qualities and character:—“They are,”says he,“an active people, the men averaging 5 feet 6½ inches in height, and are almost equal in strength and weight to Englishmen. In their former condition they wore matting; now they wear European clothes. Formerly they pulled out their beards, and every New Zealander of mark was tattooed; now they wear beards, and the young men are not tattooed. Their hair is black and coarse, but not woolly like a negro’s, or black like a Hindoo’s. The nose is almost always broad and the mouth large. In other respects their features are not unlike those of the European race. The men, to my eyes, were better-looking than the women, and the men who were tattooed better-looking than those who had dropped the custom. The women still retain the old custom of tattooing the upper lip. The Maories had a mythology of their own, and believed in a future existence; but they did not recognise[pg 52]one supreme God. Virtue with them, as with other savages, consisted chiefly in courage and a command of temper. Their great passion was revenge, which was carried on by one tribe against another to the extent sometimes of the annihilation of tribes. The decrease of their population since the English first came among them has been owing as much to civil war as to the injuries with which civilisation has afflicted them. They seem from early days to have acquired that habit of fighting behind stockades or in fortified pahs which we have found so fatal to ourselves in our wars with them. Their weapons, before they got guns from us, were not very deadly. They were chiefly short javelins and stones, both flung from slings. But there was a horror in their warfare to the awfulness of which they themselves seem to have been keenly alive. When a prisoner was taken in war he was cooked and eaten.
“I do not think that human beings were slaughtered for food in New Zealand, although there is no doubt that the banquet when prepared was enjoyed with a horrid relish.
“I will quote a passage from Dr. Thompson’s work in reference to the practice of cannibalism, and will then have done with the subject.‘Whether or not cannibalism commenced immediately after the advent of the New Zealanders from Hawaiki, it is nevertheless certain that one of Tasman’s sailors was eaten in 1642; that Captain Cook had a boat’s crew eaten in 1774; that Marion de Fresne and many other navigators met this horrible end; and that the pioneers of civilisation and successive missionaries have all borne testimony to the universal prevalence of cannibalism in New Zealand up to the year 1840. It is impossible to state how many New Zealanders were annually devoured; that the number was not small may be inferred from two facts authenticated by European witnesses. In 1822, Hougi’s army ate three hundred persons after the capture of Totara, on the River Thames, and in 1836, during the Rotura war, sixty beings were cooked and eaten in two days.’I will add from the same book a translation of a portion of a war-song:—‘Oh, my little son, are you crying? are you screaming for your food? Here it is for you, the flesh of Hekemanu and Werata. Although I am surfeited with the soft brains of Putu Rikiriki and Raukauri, yet such is my hatred that I will fill myself fuller with those of Pau, of Ngaraunga, of Pipi, and with my most dainty morsel, the flesh of the hated Teao.’”
Mr. Laird testifies to their cleanliness, but states that they are, like most savages, and for that matter, most white men, very improvident. If a bad potato or other crop occurred, they would eat it all at once, and half starve afterwards.
The same author tells a good story of the nonchalance of a leading Maori chief who was invited to dinner at Government House during the visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner the Duke’s chief bagpiper came in and played. The chief was asked how he liked the music. He replied briefly:“Too much noise for me; but suit white man well enough.”
And now we are approaching that great continent which has had, has, and will increasingly have, so much interest for the emigrant, who must be, more or less, a voyager and man of the sea. Australia, a country nearly as large as the United States, must be for many a day to come a very Paradise for the poor man.
The American steamers from San Francisco land one at Sydney, of which charming place Mr. Trollope says:—“I despair of being able to convey to my readers my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour;”he considers that it excels Dublin Bay, Spezzia, and[pg 53]New York. And the colonists, left to themselves—for England maintains no troops there now—have fortified it strongly. Mr. Trollope tells us of five separate armed fortresses, with Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons’ weight, with loopholed walls and pits for riflemen, as though Sydney was to become another Sebastopol.“It was shown,”says he,“how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemated batteries, shell-rooms and gunpowder magazines,[pg 54]barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour, and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready for use in an hour or two. It was explained to me that‘they’could not possibly get across the trenches, or break the boom, or escape the torpedoes, or live for an hour beneath the blaze of the guns.‘They’would not have a chance to get at Sydney. There was much martial ardour, and a very general opinion that‘they’would have the worst of it.”New South Wales and Victoria have about 8,000 volunteers and a training-ship for sailor boys; while an enormous monitor, theCerberus, presented by the mother country, forms its war-fleet of one.
VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
VIEW IN COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings,“the internal appearance of the city is,”Mr. Trollope assures us,“certainly magnificent.”It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens.“One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.”There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by“Benevolent Asylums.”In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid.“Could a pauper,”says Trollope,“be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,”so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly.
The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well-to-do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.
Mr. Trollope says:—“There is perhaps no town in the world in which an ordinary working man can do better for himself and for his family with his work than he can at Melbourne.”The rates of wages for mechanics are slightly greater than at home, and all the necessaries of life are cheaper. With meat at 4d. per pound, butter from 6d. upwards, bread, tea, and coffee about the same prices or rather under, coals the same or a trifle higher, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits generally considerably cheaper, all can live well and plentifully. Meat three times a day is common all over Australia, and in some parts the price is as low as 1½d. or 2d. per pound. Wages for good mechanics and artisans average about 10s. a day; gardeners receive about 50s., and labourers about 30s. per week; men-servants, in the house, £40 to £50 per annum; cooks, £35 to £45 per year; girls, as housemaids, &c., 8s. or 10s. per week. It is usual to hire the last named by this[pg 55]short term. Some of these prices rule all over the country, but are liable to rule lower, rather than higher, outside of Melbourne.
In the country sheep-shearers can earn 7s. to 14s. per day for about four months in the year; shepherds, £30 to £40 per year, with rations. The common labourer can count on 15s. to 20s. per week, with rations: these consist generally of 14 lbs. meat (usually mutton), 8 lbs. flour, 2 lbs. sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea. Of course, where fruit or vegetables are plentiful they would be added. The meat, bread, and tea diet, however, is that characteristic of the whole country. In the great sheep runs and cattle ranges23it would be the shepherd’s diet invariably.
Mr. Trollope advises the poor man to save for three or four years, and then invest in land, which in some places is to be had at 3s. 9d. an acre, payable to the Government in five instalments of ninepence per acre. Of course, he would require money for the erection of a house, farm implements, &c. The great trouble with most men working in the bush as shepherds or shearers, or at the mines, or elsewhere at distant points, is that the enforced absence from civilisation and social life makes them inclined for reckless living when they have accumulated a sum of money. The tavern-keepers of the nearest town or station reap all the benefit, and there are numbers of men who, for ten or eleven months of the year perfectly steady and sober, periodically give themselves up to drink until their earnings are melted, it is called“knocking down”one’s cheque, and it is a common practice for them to hand such cheque to the publican, who lets them run on recklessly in drink and food untilheconsiders it exhausted. A good story is told by Mr. Trollope of a man who had been accustomed to do this at regular intervals, but who on one occasion, having some loose silver,“planted”his cheque in an old tree, and proceeded to the usual haunt, where he set to work deliberately to get drunk. The publican showed evident doubt as to the propriety of supplying him freely. Why had not the man brought his cheque as usual? The tavern-keeper at last put him to bed; but the man, though drugged and stupefied, had his wits about him sufficiently to observe and remember that the host had examined his clothes, his hat, and boots, for the lacking cheque. Next morning he was ignominiously expelled from the house, but he didn’t mind: the cheque was found by him safely in the tree by the roadside, and he surprised his master by returning to the station a week or two before he was expected richer than he had ever come home before. Let us hope he was cured of that form of folly for ever.
The gold yield of Australia for the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 was 50,750,000 ozs. But gold-fields die out sooner than most mines, and Australia has a more permanent source of prosperity for the future in its coal and iron-fields, which are in close proximity to each other. The coal is already worked to great profit, and is one of the principal steamship fuels of the Pacific.
The steamship route homeward from Australia is that by the Indian Ocean (usually touching at Ceylon), then reaching the Mediterraneanviâthe Red Sea and Suez Canal. These points of interest have already been fully described in early chapters of this work.
[pg 56]CHAPTER V.Woman at Sea.Poets’ Opinions on Early Navigation—Who was the First Female Navigator?—Noah’s Voyage—A Thrilling Tale—A Strained Vessel—A Furious Gale—A Birth at Sea—The Ship Doomed—Ladies and Children in an Open Boat—Drunken Sailors—Semi-starvation, Cold, and Wet—Exposed to the Tropical Sun—Death of a Poor Baby—Sharks about—A Thievish Sailor—Proposed Cannibalism—A Sail!—The Ship passes by—Despair—Saved at Last—Experiences of a Yachtswoman—Nearly Swamped and Carried Away—An Abandoned Ship—TheSunbeamof Service—Ship on Fire!—Dangers of a Coal Cargo—The Crew Taken off—Noble Lady Passengers—Two Modern Heroines and their Deeds—The Story of Grace Darling—The Longstone Light and Wreck of theForfarshire—To the Rescue!—Death of Grace Darling.“Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted firstRude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.”So sings Waller, and his words are only the repetition of a sentiment much more grandly expressed by Horace, who wrote now near two thousand years ago:—“Surely oak and threefold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean.”And once more, just to show the unanimity of the poets on this point, Dr. Watts has said:—“It was a brave attempt! advent’rous heWho in the first ship broke the unknown sea.”Now, if all this is said of man, what shall be said of the woman who first trusted herself on the great deep? Who was she? It would be most difficult to satisfactorily answer this question, but there can be no doubt that“Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons,”whose voyage and enforced residence in the ark lasted no less than twelve months and three days24are the earliest females on record who embarked in a great vessel on a boundless expanse of waters.These pages have already presented episodes in the lives of many seafaring ladies, but till now no chapter has been specially devoted to the subject. In these days of general travel ladies make, as we have often seen, long voyages to and from far distant parts. One of them, some nineteen years ago, underwent the horrors of shipwreck, and her subsequent sufferings were admirably told by her under the title of“Ten Terrible Days.”The account, which should be read in its entirety, is here, for obvious reasons, considerably condensed.One day late in the year 1861 a grain-laden vessel, a fine clipper, might have been seen slowly and gracefully sailing out of the noble bay of San Francisco. On her as passengers were two or three ladies with children, among them Mrs. William Murray, the authoress, who had been recommended to take the long voyage home in a roving clipper, in preference to taking a passage in the over-crowded steamers running to Panama and New York. Let her open the story.“The sun,”says she,“was shining as it always does in California,[pg 57]until the sea and the rocks and the vast city seemed literally glittering with sunlight. One long look back to the happy home of the last six years, to the home still of the husband and brothers obliged to remain behind, and at last I had only the sea that parted us to look at through my tears. Our friends had seen us set sail in what seemed a gallant ship. It had been chosen from all others as the one to send us home in for its show of perfectness. There were men in San Francisco who knew that the ship was unseaworthy (having been frightfully strained in her last voyage to China), and that she was in no fit condition to be trusted with the lives of helpless women and children, yet they let us sail without a word of warning.”The dreaded Horn had been easily rounded in good weather, and on the evening of January 4th, 1862, they had been eighty-six days out; in ten more they expected to be in England. The sailors had predicted a stormy night, and a terrific gale followed closely on that prophecy. The wind increased in fury, and the ship rolled till those on board were often thrown from their feet. That night a child was born on board, and the kindly lady passengers did all in their power for the poor mother.“At dawn,”says Mrs. Murray,“taking my little girl by the hand, I went on deck. The storm had in some measure abated, but the sea looked black and sullen, and the swell of the vast heavy waves seemed to mock our frailty. The sailors had been up all night, and were[pg 58]as men playing at some ferocious game: some working in desperation at the pumps, and singing at the pitch of their voices wild sea-songs to time their common efforts; others employed in throwing hundreds of bags of grain into the sea, that they might thus lighten the ship. This, I think, more than all, showed me our peril. I wandered about, too miserable to remain in any one spot, till the captain assembled us all once more in the cabin to get some food, saying that it was impossible to save the ship, and that we should have need of all our fortitude. I remembered my own vain attempt to eat some bread, but the poor little children took their breakfast and enjoyed it.“We were then each provided with a large bag made of sailcloth, and were advised by the captain to fill it with the warmest articles of clothing we possessed.“All my worldly possessions were on board, comprising many memorials of dear friends, portraits of loved ones I shall never see again, and my money loss I knew would be no trifle. In perfect bewilderment I looked round, and filled my bag with stockings and a couple of warm shawls. On the top of a box I saw a little parcel that had been entrusted to me by a lady in California to deliver to her mother in Liverpool. I put that in my bag, and she got it.... There had been no thought of removing the breakfast, and with the rolling of the ship, which was every moment becoming worse, everything had fallen on the floor, and was dashing about in all directions. Boxes, water-jugs, plates, dishes, chairs, glasses, were pitching from one end of the saloon to the other. Children screaming, sailors shouting and cursing, and loud above all there was the creaking of timbers, and the sullen sound of water fast gaining upon us in the hold of the ship, which groaned and laboured like a living thing in agony.”How the ridiculous will intrude even at such times is shown in the following. A little boy was discovered helping himself out of the medicine-chest, particularly busy with the contents of a broken calomel bottle! Lamp-oil served as an emetic in this emergency, and the youngster’s life was saved. And now the first mate, upon whose decision and firmness much depended, having lost his presence of mind, had drunk deeply of whisky. He was intoxicated, and so, too, were many of the sailors, who had followed his example. The captain, meantime, had been busily employed in ordering out food and water to supply the boats, collecting the ship’s papers, &c. The lowering of the boats he had entrusted to his officers. On hearing of the drunkenness on deck, his first thought was to get the women and children off at once, for should the sailors seize the boats, what would become of them? Two boats had already been smashed whilst lowering them into the sea, and there were only two remaining. Forty-seven people to cram into two frail boats, fifteen hundred miles from land: delicately-nurtured women, helpless children, drunken and desperate men.“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”(p. 58).By the help of the most sober of the sailors, the captain’s own boat was lowered; some small mattresses, pillows, blankets, a cask of water, sacks of biscuit, and nautical instruments, were first put in; then the passengers were let down by ropes.“It seems marvellous,”says Mrs. Murray,“when I think of it now, that in our descent we were not dashed to pieces against the ship’s side. We had to wait for each descent a favourable moment while she was leaning over. Then the word of command was given, and we were slung down like sheep. My heart stood still whilst my little one was going down, and then I followed. It was a terrible sight for a woman to see that poor creature whose baby was born the night before, looking like a corpse in a long dressing-gown of white[pg 59]flannel, with the poor little atom of mortality tightly clasped in her arms. I thought she would die before the day was over.”At last they were all in the boat: four women, five children, the second mate, and sixteen sailors. The captain stayed on the ship, providing for the safety of the drunken creatures who could not take care of themselves, and then he came off. How small the boat looked by the side of the tall ship! And they had to get quickly out of her reach, for she was rolling so heavily that the waters near her boiled up like a maelström.Away they drifted, a mere speck upon the ocean. Before night there came a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, that lasted through the darkness, and by which they were drenched through and through.“I sat up,”says the narrator,“for some twelve or fourteen hours on a narrow plank, with my child in my arms, utterly miserable, cold, and hopeless, soaked to the skin, blinded by the salt spray, my face and hands smarting intolerably with the unusual exposure.”During the storm and confusion the greater part of their biscuit had been soaked with salt water, and made useless. It was also discovered that the food collected for the captain’s boat had been thrown by mistake into the other, therefore it was necessary at once to put them on allowance: half a pint of water and half a biscuit a day to each person. Except the biscuit, there were only a few small tins of preserved strawberries and Indian corn, and these were given to the ladies.“How the poor children cried with hunger as the days dragged on!”The boat leaked from the beginning, and the sailors by turns baled the water out in little cans. Exposed to the glare of a tropical sun for hours together, nearly mad with thirst, bearing her child in her weak arms, for she was too much exhausted to stand, Mrs. Murray says that often she would sit for hours without any thought at all, vacantly gazing on the ocean.“We had,”says she,“three days of dead calm. The sun glared down upon us pitilessly, and I thought how pleasant it would be to throw myself into the sea, and sink calmly to death beneath its waves. I lost all wish to live—for life seemed horrible. I cannot describe the days as they passed separately, one by one; when I look back upon them, they all seem to have been one misery. I remember that on the third day out poor Kitty’s baby died—indeed, it had been dying from the first. It never had a chance of living, for it had no fit attention and no sustenance. The poor mother cried bitterly when at last it became cold on her bosom, but its death was a merciful release. Wrapped in a shawl of bright colours, it was thrown overboard, but was so light that it could not sink, and floated for hours on a sea so calm in the hot sun that scarce a ripple could be seen. At last it disappeared suddenly, the prey of some hungry shark, and when afterwards the horrid monsters crowded round our boat they added to our misery. Hitherto the children had been plunged into the sea every morning to preserve them in health, but we dared not continue this practice with those horrid creatures on our lee.... I must not forget one incident, trifling in itself, but which might have caused the death of one of the sailors. On the day of the wreck I had caused two or three bottles of ale and one of claret to be put in the boat, thinking it might be of great use to us. On the third or fourth night out, when we were shivering helplessly after a drenching[pg 60]shower of rain, we thought that a bottle of ale should be opened for the women and children, but not a bottle of any sort was to be found.”The rage of the captain was awful, and but for the intercession of the ladies, he swore that he would have thrown the man overboard.It was on the morning of the tenth day that the frightful thought of eating the children came into the heads of three or four desperate men, and the captain and a few trustworthy companions had made up their minds to slay the would-be murderers that very night in their sleep. The last and fatal hour of their great agony seemed to be come. On the morning of the tenth day a sail was reported, and a white towel hoisted to attract her attention. She came near enough for the captain to make out that she carried the Hamburg flag, and then“passed by on the other side.”Curses loud and deep came from the sailors’ lips. Then the women looked into each other’s faces and the children cried, and the wolfish eyes of the would-be cannibals were again fixed upon them.But Heaven was merciful, and again a sail was reported. Nearer and nearer she came, faster rowed the hungry sailors, when there rose a wild shout,“She has stopped!”and surely there she was at rest in the water, waiting to see what manner of beings they were.“Row faster, my men, and keep down the women and children,”sang out the[pg 61]captain, for he was fearful that if their number was discovered the vessel might pass them, as had that seen in the morning.“Oh, what a lovely afternoon,”says Mrs. Murray,“that was when we were saved—such a blaze of sunshine, such blue skies, such a glistening, glowing sea, as if even the treacherous ocean were rejoicing with us. At length we were close alongside of the ship, and saw crowds of human beings clustering about to look at us—dark, swarthy faces, for they were all Spaniards, but full of pity, wonderment, and horror. They took us all in, one by one, and when they saw the women and little children they wept. They could not speak our language, and looked upon us with bewilderment, but when I (who fortunately could speak Spanish), kneeling down on deck, said‘Gracias a Dios’(Thank God), their tongues were loosened, and there was a flood of questions and crowding round us, with weeping and laughing and shaking of hands. How good were those kind-hearted men! How I thank them all, every one, now as I write, from the worthy captain down to the lowest of his crew. And they brought us bread and wine and water—precious water, how good it was!”A few of Mrs. Brassey’s experiences on her husband’s yacht will be read with interest. One day, after their five o’clock dinner, she and some of her children very nearly met with a most serious accident.“We were all sitting,”writes that lady,“or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests mountains high. Each wave, as it approached, appeared as if it must overwhelm us, instead of which it rushed grandly by, rolling and shaking us from stem to stern, and sending fountains of spray on board.... A new hand was steering, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us he unfortunately allowed the vessel to broach to a little. In a second the sea came pouring over the stern, above Allnut’s head. The boy was nearly washed overboard, but he managed to catch hold of the rail, and with great presence of mind stuck his knees into the bulwarks. Kindred, our boatswain, seeing his danger, rushed forward to save him, but was knocked down by the return wave, from which he emerged gasping.“The coil of rope on which Captain Lecky and Mabelle were seated was completely floated by the sea. Providentially, however, he had taken a double turn round his wrist with a reefing point, and, throwing his other arm round Mabelle, held on like grim death; otherwise, nothing could have saved them. She was perfectly self-possessed, and only said quietly,‘Hold on, Captain Lecky, hold on!’to which he replied,‘All right.’I asked her afterwards if she thought she was going overboard, and she answered,‘I did notthinkat all, mamma, but felt sure we were gone.’Captain Lecky, being accustomed to very large ships, had not in the least realised how near we were to the water in our little vessel, and was proportionately taken by surprise. All the rest of the party were drenched, with the exception of Muriel, whom Captain Brown held high above the water in his arms, and who lost no time in remarking, in the midst of the general confusion‘I’m not at all wet, I’m not!’Happily, the children don’t know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail-boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of the fore-boom gave way.[pg 62]“Soon after this adventure we all went to bed, full of thankfulness that it had ended as well as it did; but also not, so far as I am concerned, to rest in peace. In about two hours I was awakened by a tremendous weight of water suddenly descending upon me and flooding the bed. I immediately sprang out, only to find myself in another pool on the floor. It was pitch dark, and I could not think what had happened; so I rushed on deck, and found that, the weather having moderated a little, some kind sailor, knowing my love of fresh air, had opened the skylight rather too soon, and one of the angry waves had popped on board, deluging the cabin.”TheSunbeamencountered a wreck, and the account given of its inspection will be read with interest. Mrs. Brassey says:—“When I went on deck, at half-past six, I found a grey, steamy, calm morning, promising a very hot day, without wind.“About 10.30 a.m. the cry of‘Sail on the port helm!’caused general excitement, and in a few minutes every telescope and glass in the ship had been brought to bear upon the object which attracted our attention, and which was soon pronounced to be a wreck. Orders were given to starboard the helm and to steer direct for the vessel; and many were the conjectures hazarded and the questions asked of the fortunate holders of glasses.‘What is she?’‘Is there any one on board?’‘Does she look as if she had been long abandoned?’Soon we were near enough to send a boat’s crew on board, whilst we watched their movements anxiously from the bridge. We could now read her name—theCarolina—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her stern. She was of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue with a red streak. Beneath her white bowsprit the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts had been snapped short off about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each wave washed over and through her. The roof and supports of the deck-house and the companions were still left standing, but the sides had disappeared, and the ship’s deck was burst up in such a manner as to remind one of a quail’s back.... We saw the men on board poking about, apparently very pleased with what they had found; and soon our boat returned to the yacht for some breakers, as theCarolinahad been laden with port wine and cork, and the men wished to bring some of the former on board. I changed my dress, and putting on my sea-boots, started for the wreck.“We found the men rather excited over their discovery. The wine must have been very new and very strong, for the smell from it as it slopped about all over the deck was almost enough to intoxicate anybody. One pipe had already been emptied into the breakers and barrels, and great efforts were made to get some of the casks out whole; but this was found to be impossible, without devoting more time to the operation than we chose to spare. The men managed to remove three half empty casks with their heads stove in, which they threw overboard, but the full ones would have required special appliances to raise them through the hatches. It proved exceedingly difficult to get at the wine, which was stowed underneath the cork, and there was also a quantity of cabin bulkheads and fittings floating about under the influence of the long swell of the Atlantic. It was a curious sight, standing on the roof of the deck-house, to look into the hold, full of floating bales of cork, barrels, and pieces of wood, and to watch the sea surging up in every direction through and over the deck, which was level with the water’s edge. I saw an excellent modern iron[pg 63]cooking-stove washing about from side to side; but almost every other movable article, including spars and ropes, had apparently been removed by previous boarders.”It would have delayed them too long to tow her into port, or they might have recovered some £1,500 as salvage, while to blow her up would have required more powder than they had on board. So she was left helplessly drifting about, a danger to any vessel running into her full steam or sail almost as great as a sunken rock.Later, the owner of theSunbeamwas of real service, for a fine vessel was encountered, under full sail and on fire, her cargo being smelting coal. Her red Union Jack was upside down, while her signals read the terrible announcement,“Ship on fire!”These were followed by the signal,“Come on board at once,”and a boat’s crew was at once despatched to the rescue. They were purposely well armed, and for the sufficient reason that there was little sign of fire or smoke on board, and it was thought that there might be a mutiny on board. In a few minutes the boat returned with the chief mate, a fine-looking Norwegian, who reported his vessel theMonkshaven, sixty-eight days from Swansea, and bound for Valparaiso. The fire had been discovered five days previously, and the morning following the first day the crew had got all their clothes and provisions on deck, and had thrown everything of a combustible nature—tar, oil, pitch, spare spars, and so forth—overboard. The hatches had then been battened down, but all efforts to subdue the fire were unavailing. The officers and men had been living on deck under a canvas screen, the water being a foot deep even there. When the hatches were opened for a moment, dense clouds of hot, suffocating yellow smoke immediately poured forth, driving back all who approached. In such cases it is often difficult to find the location of the fire, which may at any time burst open the deck or burn a hole through the hull. The dangerous nature of such cargoes may be inferred from the fact that of every three vessels going out to Valparaiso or Callao, one catches fire, although, of course, the flames are often got under control. They had encountered a terrific gale, and while burning had signalled a large American steamship, which had contemptuously steamed away from them. When the men had all been transferred to the yacht—for it was found impossible to save the barque—the poor fellows were almost wild with joy and excitement. Soon after the fated vessel was blazing like a tar-barrel, and the yacht steamed round her near enough for all on board to feel the heat. Fifteen extra mouths to feed was a serious addition to the passengers and crew of theSunbeam, and the water ration had to be cut down, but otherwise they had all they could wish, and a week later were transferred to the Pacific Company’s mail steamerIllimani, then homeward bound. The satisfaction which must have been felt by Mr. and Mrs. Brassey at having the ability as well as the will to save fifteen lives may well be imagined.One of woman’s noblest attributes is her readiness to help in the hour of need, and its exercise has been by no means confined to the land. Late in 1879 the British India Steam Navigation Company’s steamerEldoradohad a hairbreadth escape from destruction in the Bay of Biscay. The rascally Lascar crew abandoned their posts and gave themselves up to despair, and the passengers“passed”coal to the stoke-hole and worked hard at baling; many ladies even volunteered to assist, and two American ladies acted as stewardesses and dispensed coffee and provisions to the rest.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.How often of late years have female swimmers saved life? The case to be cited, and[pg 64]which occurred in fresh water, is only one of scores that might be recorded here. On the 5th December, 1879, two men had to cross the St. Lawrence River, from La Rue Island to a wharf on the main shore. It was an intensely cold day, and a heavy gale was blowing strongly from the north-east up the river. The men loaded their punt with a sleigh, and had managed to reach the middle of the channel, when a sudden and violent gust of wind swamped the punt and turned her over. The men clung to her while bottom upward, and tried to“tread”the water so as to get her to the shore, but in vain; the cold was so intense that their legs were benumbed above the knees, and they gave themselves up for lost. They remained in this perilous position for a considerable time, shouting loudly for help till their throats were sore. Making a final effort, they shouted again, and this time their cries were heard at the house of a Mr. Darling, who, with his family, resided close to the shore. That gentleman was ill in bed, but his wife and daughters, Maggie and Jessie, were at home, the men and boys being at work in the fields at a distance. On hearing the last painful shout of the drowning men, they quickly opened the door, to see them struggling in the great river—a stream the width and volume of which surpass anything in Europe. The first suggestion from the mother was to fetch the men from the fields, but before this could be done brave Maggie and Jessie—the latter a girl of sixteen years—had, without a word, launched the skiff, and were rowing with all their strength through the troubled waters and driving storm. They had the greatest difficulty in reaching the exhausted and helpless men, but at last their noble effort was rewarded, and in ten minutes the poor fellows were being chafed and warmed by their father’s fire. Brave Maggie and Jessie! worthy successors, indeed, to your namesake, the heroine of the Longstone Light!The story of Grace Darling must be familiar to our readers. The circumstances which called forth her courage and humanity were as follow:—TheForfarshire, a steamer of moderate size, left Hull for Dundee on the evening of September 5th, 1838, having on board a considerable amount of freight and sixty-three passengers and crew. Soon after leaving the Humber the boilers began to leak, and on Thursday morning the weather became very tempestuous, while a thick mist enveloped the vessel. The steamer managed to pass the Fern Islands, on the way north, early on Thursday evening, but had all she could do to make headway in a very heavy sea, while the alarming fact was discovered that her boilers’ leakage was increasing. As the night advanced the weather became more and more boisterous, and somewhere off Berwick it was found that the water from above was deluging the furnace fires. Off St. Abb’s Head, the engineer reported that the machinery would work no longer; the sails were accordingly set, and the vessel allowed to drive before the wind, which took her southward. Before daybreak on Friday morning the roar of breakers near at hand was heard; and the captain tried hard to avert the appalling catastrophe which seemed inevitable, and steer the vessel between the islands and the mainland, through a channel known as the Fair Way. But theForfarshirewould not answer her helm, and was driven hither and thither by a furious sea. The scene at this juncture baffles description. Utter darkness enveloped the doomed vessel, over which the sea broke in tremendous waves, and the noise of which almost drowned the agonising shrieks of the passengers. The vessel, a few minutes later, struck a rock, her bows banging and crashing upon it. At this moment[pg 65]a rush was made by eight of the crew to a boat, which they lowered successfully, one almost naked and frenzied passenger jumping into it after them. The ship was now at her last extremity.“Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,As eager to anticipate their grave;And the sea yawned around her like a hell,And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,Like one who grapples with his enemy,And strives to strangle him before he die.”A moment or two after the first shock, another great sea struck her, raising her high in the air and then bringing her down with a terrific crash on the jagged reef, and with a shock so tremendous that she literally broke in two. The whole of the upper part of the vessel, including the chief cabin, filled with passengers, was swept away, and sank almost immediately. Every soul on that part of the vessel was engulfed in an ocean grave. Good George Herbert says truly,“He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.”The fore part of the vessel remained spitted on a rocky projection; and had theForfarshiredrifted a few yards further to the south-west she would have escaped her terrible fate, as the rock there descends almost precipitously into deep water. Meantime, at the Fern Lighthouse, a mile off, nothing had been seen of the actual occurrence, but at seven o’clock the vessel was noticed lying on the rock. The weather was so bad that the lighthouse-keeper, Mr. Darling, doubted the possibility of rendering assistance. But his daughter Grace entreated her father to go off in the boat at all risks, and offered herself to take one oar. Mr. Darling, thus urged, though knowing the danger of the attempt, agreed, and mother and daughter aided him in launching the boat. After a hard pull through the boiling foam, they reached the rock, where they found nine persons shivering in the cold and wet, and trembling for their lives. As illustrative of the heroism displayed in this rescue, it may be mentioned that had it not been ebb tide the boat could not have passed between the islands; and Darling and his daughter knew that the tide would be flowing on their return, and that their united strength would have been quite insufficient to pull back to the lighthouse. But for the assistance of the survivors all would have had to remain on the fatal rock. The joy of the rescued people may well be imagined, and their surprise, and indeed amazement, at finding that one of their deliverers was a young girl. At the lighthouse food and warmth soon restored their exhausted powers. Among those rescued was a bereaved mother, who had seen her two only children perish before her eyes.Grace Darling’s name and fame are historic; she lived but a short time after the tragic event just recorded, but long enough to receive the honours due to her for an act of unparalleled heroism, even receiving the acknowledgments of the Queen and a handsome sum of money from the public.“She who amid the tempest shone,The angel of the wave,”was not, as might be supposed, a robust girl, but, on the contrary, quite delicate. Her spirit peacefully passed away a few months after the event above recorded.
Poets’ Opinions on Early Navigation—Who was the First Female Navigator?—Noah’s Voyage—A Thrilling Tale—A Strained Vessel—A Furious Gale—A Birth at Sea—The Ship Doomed—Ladies and Children in an Open Boat—Drunken Sailors—Semi-starvation, Cold, and Wet—Exposed to the Tropical Sun—Death of a Poor Baby—Sharks about—A Thievish Sailor—Proposed Cannibalism—A Sail!—The Ship passes by—Despair—Saved at Last—Experiences of a Yachtswoman—Nearly Swamped and Carried Away—An Abandoned Ship—TheSunbeamof Service—Ship on Fire!—Dangers of a Coal Cargo—The Crew Taken off—Noble Lady Passengers—Two Modern Heroines and their Deeds—The Story of Grace Darling—The Longstone Light and Wreck of theForfarshire—To the Rescue!—Death of Grace Darling.
Poets’ Opinions on Early Navigation—Who was the First Female Navigator?—Noah’s Voyage—A Thrilling Tale—A Strained Vessel—A Furious Gale—A Birth at Sea—The Ship Doomed—Ladies and Children in an Open Boat—Drunken Sailors—Semi-starvation, Cold, and Wet—Exposed to the Tropical Sun—Death of a Poor Baby—Sharks about—A Thievish Sailor—Proposed Cannibalism—A Sail!—The Ship passes by—Despair—Saved at Last—Experiences of a Yachtswoman—Nearly Swamped and Carried Away—An Abandoned Ship—TheSunbeamof Service—Ship on Fire!—Dangers of a Coal Cargo—The Crew Taken off—Noble Lady Passengers—Two Modern Heroines and their Deeds—The Story of Grace Darling—The Longstone Light and Wreck of theForfarshire—To the Rescue!—Death of Grace Darling.
“Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted firstRude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.”
“Hearts sure of brass they had who tempted first
Rude seas that spare not what themselves have nursed.”
So sings Waller, and his words are only the repetition of a sentiment much more grandly expressed by Horace, who wrote now near two thousand years ago:—“Surely oak and threefold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean.”And once more, just to show the unanimity of the poets on this point, Dr. Watts has said:—
“It was a brave attempt! advent’rous heWho in the first ship broke the unknown sea.”
“It was a brave attempt! advent’rous he
Who in the first ship broke the unknown sea.”
Now, if all this is said of man, what shall be said of the woman who first trusted herself on the great deep? Who was she? It would be most difficult to satisfactorily answer this question, but there can be no doubt that“Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons,”whose voyage and enforced residence in the ark lasted no less than twelve months and three days24are the earliest females on record who embarked in a great vessel on a boundless expanse of waters.
These pages have already presented episodes in the lives of many seafaring ladies, but till now no chapter has been specially devoted to the subject. In these days of general travel ladies make, as we have often seen, long voyages to and from far distant parts. One of them, some nineteen years ago, underwent the horrors of shipwreck, and her subsequent sufferings were admirably told by her under the title of“Ten Terrible Days.”The account, which should be read in its entirety, is here, for obvious reasons, considerably condensed.
One day late in the year 1861 a grain-laden vessel, a fine clipper, might have been seen slowly and gracefully sailing out of the noble bay of San Francisco. On her as passengers were two or three ladies with children, among them Mrs. William Murray, the authoress, who had been recommended to take the long voyage home in a roving clipper, in preference to taking a passage in the over-crowded steamers running to Panama and New York. Let her open the story.“The sun,”says she,“was shining as it always does in California,[pg 57]until the sea and the rocks and the vast city seemed literally glittering with sunlight. One long look back to the happy home of the last six years, to the home still of the husband and brothers obliged to remain behind, and at last I had only the sea that parted us to look at through my tears. Our friends had seen us set sail in what seemed a gallant ship. It had been chosen from all others as the one to send us home in for its show of perfectness. There were men in San Francisco who knew that the ship was unseaworthy (having been frightfully strained in her last voyage to China), and that she was in no fit condition to be trusted with the lives of helpless women and children, yet they let us sail without a word of warning.”
The dreaded Horn had been easily rounded in good weather, and on the evening of January 4th, 1862, they had been eighty-six days out; in ten more they expected to be in England. The sailors had predicted a stormy night, and a terrific gale followed closely on that prophecy. The wind increased in fury, and the ship rolled till those on board were often thrown from their feet. That night a child was born on board, and the kindly lady passengers did all in their power for the poor mother.
“At dawn,”says Mrs. Murray,“taking my little girl by the hand, I went on deck. The storm had in some measure abated, but the sea looked black and sullen, and the swell of the vast heavy waves seemed to mock our frailty. The sailors had been up all night, and were[pg 58]as men playing at some ferocious game: some working in desperation at the pumps, and singing at the pitch of their voices wild sea-songs to time their common efforts; others employed in throwing hundreds of bags of grain into the sea, that they might thus lighten the ship. This, I think, more than all, showed me our peril. I wandered about, too miserable to remain in any one spot, till the captain assembled us all once more in the cabin to get some food, saying that it was impossible to save the ship, and that we should have need of all our fortitude. I remembered my own vain attempt to eat some bread, but the poor little children took their breakfast and enjoyed it.
“We were then each provided with a large bag made of sailcloth, and were advised by the captain to fill it with the warmest articles of clothing we possessed.
“All my worldly possessions were on board, comprising many memorials of dear friends, portraits of loved ones I shall never see again, and my money loss I knew would be no trifle. In perfect bewilderment I looked round, and filled my bag with stockings and a couple of warm shawls. On the top of a box I saw a little parcel that had been entrusted to me by a lady in California to deliver to her mother in Liverpool. I put that in my bag, and she got it.... There had been no thought of removing the breakfast, and with the rolling of the ship, which was every moment becoming worse, everything had fallen on the floor, and was dashing about in all directions. Boxes, water-jugs, plates, dishes, chairs, glasses, were pitching from one end of the saloon to the other. Children screaming, sailors shouting and cursing, and loud above all there was the creaking of timbers, and the sullen sound of water fast gaining upon us in the hold of the ship, which groaned and laboured like a living thing in agony.”
How the ridiculous will intrude even at such times is shown in the following. A little boy was discovered helping himself out of the medicine-chest, particularly busy with the contents of a broken calomel bottle! Lamp-oil served as an emetic in this emergency, and the youngster’s life was saved. And now the first mate, upon whose decision and firmness much depended, having lost his presence of mind, had drunk deeply of whisky. He was intoxicated, and so, too, were many of the sailors, who had followed his example. The captain, meantime, had been busily employed in ordering out food and water to supply the boats, collecting the ship’s papers, &c. The lowering of the boats he had entrusted to his officers. On hearing of the drunkenness on deck, his first thought was to get the women and children off at once, for should the sailors seize the boats, what would become of them? Two boats had already been smashed whilst lowering them into the sea, and there were only two remaining. Forty-seven people to cram into two frail boats, fifteen hundred miles from land: delicately-nurtured women, helpless children, drunken and desperate men.
“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”(p. 58).
“THE PASSENGERS WERE LET DOWN BY ROPES”(p. 58).
By the help of the most sober of the sailors, the captain’s own boat was lowered; some small mattresses, pillows, blankets, a cask of water, sacks of biscuit, and nautical instruments, were first put in; then the passengers were let down by ropes.“It seems marvellous,”says Mrs. Murray,“when I think of it now, that in our descent we were not dashed to pieces against the ship’s side. We had to wait for each descent a favourable moment while she was leaning over. Then the word of command was given, and we were slung down like sheep. My heart stood still whilst my little one was going down, and then I followed. It was a terrible sight for a woman to see that poor creature whose baby was born the night before, looking like a corpse in a long dressing-gown of white[pg 59]flannel, with the poor little atom of mortality tightly clasped in her arms. I thought she would die before the day was over.”
At last they were all in the boat: four women, five children, the second mate, and sixteen sailors. The captain stayed on the ship, providing for the safety of the drunken creatures who could not take care of themselves, and then he came off. How small the boat looked by the side of the tall ship! And they had to get quickly out of her reach, for she was rolling so heavily that the waters near her boiled up like a maelström.
Away they drifted, a mere speck upon the ocean. Before night there came a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, that lasted through the darkness, and by which they were drenched through and through.“I sat up,”says the narrator,“for some twelve or fourteen hours on a narrow plank, with my child in my arms, utterly miserable, cold, and hopeless, soaked to the skin, blinded by the salt spray, my face and hands smarting intolerably with the unusual exposure.”
During the storm and confusion the greater part of their biscuit had been soaked with salt water, and made useless. It was also discovered that the food collected for the captain’s boat had been thrown by mistake into the other, therefore it was necessary at once to put them on allowance: half a pint of water and half a biscuit a day to each person. Except the biscuit, there were only a few small tins of preserved strawberries and Indian corn, and these were given to the ladies.“How the poor children cried with hunger as the days dragged on!”
The boat leaked from the beginning, and the sailors by turns baled the water out in little cans. Exposed to the glare of a tropical sun for hours together, nearly mad with thirst, bearing her child in her weak arms, for she was too much exhausted to stand, Mrs. Murray says that often she would sit for hours without any thought at all, vacantly gazing on the ocean.
“We had,”says she,“three days of dead calm. The sun glared down upon us pitilessly, and I thought how pleasant it would be to throw myself into the sea, and sink calmly to death beneath its waves. I lost all wish to live—for life seemed horrible. I cannot describe the days as they passed separately, one by one; when I look back upon them, they all seem to have been one misery. I remember that on the third day out poor Kitty’s baby died—indeed, it had been dying from the first. It never had a chance of living, for it had no fit attention and no sustenance. The poor mother cried bitterly when at last it became cold on her bosom, but its death was a merciful release. Wrapped in a shawl of bright colours, it was thrown overboard, but was so light that it could not sink, and floated for hours on a sea so calm in the hot sun that scarce a ripple could be seen. At last it disappeared suddenly, the prey of some hungry shark, and when afterwards the horrid monsters crowded round our boat they added to our misery. Hitherto the children had been plunged into the sea every morning to preserve them in health, but we dared not continue this practice with those horrid creatures on our lee.... I must not forget one incident, trifling in itself, but which might have caused the death of one of the sailors. On the day of the wreck I had caused two or three bottles of ale and one of claret to be put in the boat, thinking it might be of great use to us. On the third or fourth night out, when we were shivering helplessly after a drenching[pg 60]shower of rain, we thought that a bottle of ale should be opened for the women and children, but not a bottle of any sort was to be found.”The rage of the captain was awful, and but for the intercession of the ladies, he swore that he would have thrown the man overboard.
It was on the morning of the tenth day that the frightful thought of eating the children came into the heads of three or four desperate men, and the captain and a few trustworthy companions had made up their minds to slay the would-be murderers that very night in their sleep. The last and fatal hour of their great agony seemed to be come. On the morning of the tenth day a sail was reported, and a white towel hoisted to attract her attention. She came near enough for the captain to make out that she carried the Hamburg flag, and then“passed by on the other side.”Curses loud and deep came from the sailors’ lips. Then the women looked into each other’s faces and the children cried, and the wolfish eyes of the would-be cannibals were again fixed upon them.
But Heaven was merciful, and again a sail was reported. Nearer and nearer she came, faster rowed the hungry sailors, when there rose a wild shout,“She has stopped!”and surely there she was at rest in the water, waiting to see what manner of beings they were.“Row faster, my men, and keep down the women and children,”sang out the[pg 61]captain, for he was fearful that if their number was discovered the vessel might pass them, as had that seen in the morning.
“Oh, what a lovely afternoon,”says Mrs. Murray,“that was when we were saved—such a blaze of sunshine, such blue skies, such a glistening, glowing sea, as if even the treacherous ocean were rejoicing with us. At length we were close alongside of the ship, and saw crowds of human beings clustering about to look at us—dark, swarthy faces, for they were all Spaniards, but full of pity, wonderment, and horror. They took us all in, one by one, and when they saw the women and little children they wept. They could not speak our language, and looked upon us with bewilderment, but when I (who fortunately could speak Spanish), kneeling down on deck, said‘Gracias a Dios’(Thank God), their tongues were loosened, and there was a flood of questions and crowding round us, with weeping and laughing and shaking of hands. How good were those kind-hearted men! How I thank them all, every one, now as I write, from the worthy captain down to the lowest of his crew. And they brought us bread and wine and water—precious water, how good it was!”
A few of Mrs. Brassey’s experiences on her husband’s yacht will be read with interest. One day, after their five o’clock dinner, she and some of her children very nearly met with a most serious accident.“We were all sitting,”writes that lady,“or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests mountains high. Each wave, as it approached, appeared as if it must overwhelm us, instead of which it rushed grandly by, rolling and shaking us from stem to stern, and sending fountains of spray on board.... A new hand was steering, and just at the moment when an unusually big wave overtook us he unfortunately allowed the vessel to broach to a little. In a second the sea came pouring over the stern, above Allnut’s head. The boy was nearly washed overboard, but he managed to catch hold of the rail, and with great presence of mind stuck his knees into the bulwarks. Kindred, our boatswain, seeing his danger, rushed forward to save him, but was knocked down by the return wave, from which he emerged gasping.
“The coil of rope on which Captain Lecky and Mabelle were seated was completely floated by the sea. Providentially, however, he had taken a double turn round his wrist with a reefing point, and, throwing his other arm round Mabelle, held on like grim death; otherwise, nothing could have saved them. She was perfectly self-possessed, and only said quietly,‘Hold on, Captain Lecky, hold on!’to which he replied,‘All right.’I asked her afterwards if she thought she was going overboard, and she answered,‘I did notthinkat all, mamma, but felt sure we were gone.’Captain Lecky, being accustomed to very large ships, had not in the least realised how near we were to the water in our little vessel, and was proportionately taken by surprise. All the rest of the party were drenched, with the exception of Muriel, whom Captain Brown held high above the water in his arms, and who lost no time in remarking, in the midst of the general confusion‘I’m not at all wet, I’m not!’Happily, the children don’t know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail-boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of the fore-boom gave way.
“Soon after this adventure we all went to bed, full of thankfulness that it had ended as well as it did; but also not, so far as I am concerned, to rest in peace. In about two hours I was awakened by a tremendous weight of water suddenly descending upon me and flooding the bed. I immediately sprang out, only to find myself in another pool on the floor. It was pitch dark, and I could not think what had happened; so I rushed on deck, and found that, the weather having moderated a little, some kind sailor, knowing my love of fresh air, had opened the skylight rather too soon, and one of the angry waves had popped on board, deluging the cabin.”
TheSunbeamencountered a wreck, and the account given of its inspection will be read with interest. Mrs. Brassey says:—“When I went on deck, at half-past six, I found a grey, steamy, calm morning, promising a very hot day, without wind.
“About 10.30 a.m. the cry of‘Sail on the port helm!’caused general excitement, and in a few minutes every telescope and glass in the ship had been brought to bear upon the object which attracted our attention, and which was soon pronounced to be a wreck. Orders were given to starboard the helm and to steer direct for the vessel; and many were the conjectures hazarded and the questions asked of the fortunate holders of glasses.‘What is she?’‘Is there any one on board?’‘Does she look as if she had been long abandoned?’Soon we were near enough to send a boat’s crew on board, whilst we watched their movements anxiously from the bridge. We could now read her name—theCarolina—surmounted by a gorgeous yellow decoration on her stern. She was of between two and three hundred tons burden, and was painted a light blue with a red streak. Beneath her white bowsprit the gaudy image of a woman served as a figure-head. The two masts had been snapped short off about three feet from the deck, and the bulwarks were gone, only the covering board and stanchions remaining, so that each wave washed over and through her. The roof and supports of the deck-house and the companions were still left standing, but the sides had disappeared, and the ship’s deck was burst up in such a manner as to remind one of a quail’s back.... We saw the men on board poking about, apparently very pleased with what they had found; and soon our boat returned to the yacht for some breakers, as theCarolinahad been laden with port wine and cork, and the men wished to bring some of the former on board. I changed my dress, and putting on my sea-boots, started for the wreck.
“We found the men rather excited over their discovery. The wine must have been very new and very strong, for the smell from it as it slopped about all over the deck was almost enough to intoxicate anybody. One pipe had already been emptied into the breakers and barrels, and great efforts were made to get some of the casks out whole; but this was found to be impossible, without devoting more time to the operation than we chose to spare. The men managed to remove three half empty casks with their heads stove in, which they threw overboard, but the full ones would have required special appliances to raise them through the hatches. It proved exceedingly difficult to get at the wine, which was stowed underneath the cork, and there was also a quantity of cabin bulkheads and fittings floating about under the influence of the long swell of the Atlantic. It was a curious sight, standing on the roof of the deck-house, to look into the hold, full of floating bales of cork, barrels, and pieces of wood, and to watch the sea surging up in every direction through and over the deck, which was level with the water’s edge. I saw an excellent modern iron[pg 63]cooking-stove washing about from side to side; but almost every other movable article, including spars and ropes, had apparently been removed by previous boarders.”It would have delayed them too long to tow her into port, or they might have recovered some £1,500 as salvage, while to blow her up would have required more powder than they had on board. So she was left helplessly drifting about, a danger to any vessel running into her full steam or sail almost as great as a sunken rock.
Later, the owner of theSunbeamwas of real service, for a fine vessel was encountered, under full sail and on fire, her cargo being smelting coal. Her red Union Jack was upside down, while her signals read the terrible announcement,“Ship on fire!”These were followed by the signal,“Come on board at once,”and a boat’s crew was at once despatched to the rescue. They were purposely well armed, and for the sufficient reason that there was little sign of fire or smoke on board, and it was thought that there might be a mutiny on board. In a few minutes the boat returned with the chief mate, a fine-looking Norwegian, who reported his vessel theMonkshaven, sixty-eight days from Swansea, and bound for Valparaiso. The fire had been discovered five days previously, and the morning following the first day the crew had got all their clothes and provisions on deck, and had thrown everything of a combustible nature—tar, oil, pitch, spare spars, and so forth—overboard. The hatches had then been battened down, but all efforts to subdue the fire were unavailing. The officers and men had been living on deck under a canvas screen, the water being a foot deep even there. When the hatches were opened for a moment, dense clouds of hot, suffocating yellow smoke immediately poured forth, driving back all who approached. In such cases it is often difficult to find the location of the fire, which may at any time burst open the deck or burn a hole through the hull. The dangerous nature of such cargoes may be inferred from the fact that of every three vessels going out to Valparaiso or Callao, one catches fire, although, of course, the flames are often got under control. They had encountered a terrific gale, and while burning had signalled a large American steamship, which had contemptuously steamed away from them. When the men had all been transferred to the yacht—for it was found impossible to save the barque—the poor fellows were almost wild with joy and excitement. Soon after the fated vessel was blazing like a tar-barrel, and the yacht steamed round her near enough for all on board to feel the heat. Fifteen extra mouths to feed was a serious addition to the passengers and crew of theSunbeam, and the water ration had to be cut down, but otherwise they had all they could wish, and a week later were transferred to the Pacific Company’s mail steamerIllimani, then homeward bound. The satisfaction which must have been felt by Mr. and Mrs. Brassey at having the ability as well as the will to save fifteen lives may well be imagined.
One of woman’s noblest attributes is her readiness to help in the hour of need, and its exercise has been by no means confined to the land. Late in 1879 the British India Steam Navigation Company’s steamerEldoradohad a hairbreadth escape from destruction in the Bay of Biscay. The rascally Lascar crew abandoned their posts and gave themselves up to despair, and the passengers“passed”coal to the stoke-hole and worked hard at baling; many ladies even volunteered to assist, and two American ladies acted as stewardesses and dispensed coffee and provisions to the rest.
THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.
THE RESCUE FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.
How often of late years have female swimmers saved life? The case to be cited, and[pg 64]which occurred in fresh water, is only one of scores that might be recorded here. On the 5th December, 1879, two men had to cross the St. Lawrence River, from La Rue Island to a wharf on the main shore. It was an intensely cold day, and a heavy gale was blowing strongly from the north-east up the river. The men loaded their punt with a sleigh, and had managed to reach the middle of the channel, when a sudden and violent gust of wind swamped the punt and turned her over. The men clung to her while bottom upward, and tried to“tread”the water so as to get her to the shore, but in vain; the cold was so intense that their legs were benumbed above the knees, and they gave themselves up for lost. They remained in this perilous position for a considerable time, shouting loudly for help till their throats were sore. Making a final effort, they shouted again, and this time their cries were heard at the house of a Mr. Darling, who, with his family, resided close to the shore. That gentleman was ill in bed, but his wife and daughters, Maggie and Jessie, were at home, the men and boys being at work in the fields at a distance. On hearing the last painful shout of the drowning men, they quickly opened the door, to see them struggling in the great river—a stream the width and volume of which surpass anything in Europe. The first suggestion from the mother was to fetch the men from the fields, but before this could be done brave Maggie and Jessie—the latter a girl of sixteen years—had, without a word, launched the skiff, and were rowing with all their strength through the troubled waters and driving storm. They had the greatest difficulty in reaching the exhausted and helpless men, but at last their noble effort was rewarded, and in ten minutes the poor fellows were being chafed and warmed by their father’s fire. Brave Maggie and Jessie! worthy successors, indeed, to your namesake, the heroine of the Longstone Light!
The story of Grace Darling must be familiar to our readers. The circumstances which called forth her courage and humanity were as follow:—
TheForfarshire, a steamer of moderate size, left Hull for Dundee on the evening of September 5th, 1838, having on board a considerable amount of freight and sixty-three passengers and crew. Soon after leaving the Humber the boilers began to leak, and on Thursday morning the weather became very tempestuous, while a thick mist enveloped the vessel. The steamer managed to pass the Fern Islands, on the way north, early on Thursday evening, but had all she could do to make headway in a very heavy sea, while the alarming fact was discovered that her boilers’ leakage was increasing. As the night advanced the weather became more and more boisterous, and somewhere off Berwick it was found that the water from above was deluging the furnace fires. Off St. Abb’s Head, the engineer reported that the machinery would work no longer; the sails were accordingly set, and the vessel allowed to drive before the wind, which took her southward. Before daybreak on Friday morning the roar of breakers near at hand was heard; and the captain tried hard to avert the appalling catastrophe which seemed inevitable, and steer the vessel between the islands and the mainland, through a channel known as the Fair Way. But theForfarshirewould not answer her helm, and was driven hither and thither by a furious sea. The scene at this juncture baffles description. Utter darkness enveloped the doomed vessel, over which the sea broke in tremendous waves, and the noise of which almost drowned the agonising shrieks of the passengers. The vessel, a few minutes later, struck a rock, her bows banging and crashing upon it. At this moment[pg 65]a rush was made by eight of the crew to a boat, which they lowered successfully, one almost naked and frenzied passenger jumping into it after them. The ship was now at her last extremity.
“Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,As eager to anticipate their grave;And the sea yawned around her like a hell,And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,Like one who grapples with his enemy,And strives to strangle him before he die.”
“Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawned around her like a hell,
And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.”
A moment or two after the first shock, another great sea struck her, raising her high in the air and then bringing her down with a terrific crash on the jagged reef, and with a shock so tremendous that she literally broke in two. The whole of the upper part of the vessel, including the chief cabin, filled with passengers, was swept away, and sank almost immediately. Every soul on that part of the vessel was engulfed in an ocean grave. Good George Herbert says truly,“He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.”
The fore part of the vessel remained spitted on a rocky projection; and had theForfarshiredrifted a few yards further to the south-west she would have escaped her terrible fate, as the rock there descends almost precipitously into deep water. Meantime, at the Fern Lighthouse, a mile off, nothing had been seen of the actual occurrence, but at seven o’clock the vessel was noticed lying on the rock. The weather was so bad that the lighthouse-keeper, Mr. Darling, doubted the possibility of rendering assistance. But his daughter Grace entreated her father to go off in the boat at all risks, and offered herself to take one oar. Mr. Darling, thus urged, though knowing the danger of the attempt, agreed, and mother and daughter aided him in launching the boat. After a hard pull through the boiling foam, they reached the rock, where they found nine persons shivering in the cold and wet, and trembling for their lives. As illustrative of the heroism displayed in this rescue, it may be mentioned that had it not been ebb tide the boat could not have passed between the islands; and Darling and his daughter knew that the tide would be flowing on their return, and that their united strength would have been quite insufficient to pull back to the lighthouse. But for the assistance of the survivors all would have had to remain on the fatal rock. The joy of the rescued people may well be imagined, and their surprise, and indeed amazement, at finding that one of their deliverers was a young girl. At the lighthouse food and warmth soon restored their exhausted powers. Among those rescued was a bereaved mother, who had seen her two only children perish before her eyes.
Grace Darling’s name and fame are historic; she lived but a short time after the tragic event just recorded, but long enough to receive the honours due to her for an act of unparalleled heroism, even receiving the acknowledgments of the Queen and a handsome sum of money from the public.
“She who amid the tempest shone,The angel of the wave,”
“She who amid the tempest shone,
The angel of the wave,”
was not, as might be supposed, a robust girl, but, on the contrary, quite delicate. Her spirit peacefully passed away a few months after the event above recorded.