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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/5809-h.zip b/5809-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d5ec24c --- /dev/null +++ b/5809-h.zip diff --git a/5809-h/5809-h.htm b/5809-h/5809-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa257b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/5809-h/5809-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3034 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, Part 2</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + + +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body {background:#faebd7; margin:10%; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; text-align: center; } + blockquote {font-size: 97% } + .figleft {float: left;} + .figright {float: right;} + .toc { margin-left: 15%; margin-bottom: 0em;} + CENTER { padding: 10px;} + // --> +</style> + + + +</head> +<body> + +<h2>FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, Part 2</h2> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 2 +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Following the Equator, Part 2 + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #5809] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 2 *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<br><hr> +<br><br><br><br><br><br> + +<center> + + + <h1>FOLLOWING</h1> + <h1>THE EQUATOR</h1> + <br><br><br> + <h3>Part 2.</h3> + <br><br><br> + + <h2>A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD</h2> + <h2>BY</h2> + <h2>MARK TWAIN</h2> + <br><br><br> + <h3>SAMUEL L. CLEMENS</h3> + <h3>HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT</h3> + + +</center> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="bookcover.jpg (131K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg" height="918" width="650"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center><img alt="bookspine.jpg (70K)" src="images/bookspine.jpg" height="918" width="265"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center><img alt="booktitle.jpg (53K)" src="images/booktitle.jpg" height="1051" width="619"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center><img alt="bookfront.jpg (50K)" src="images/bookfront.jpg" height="978" width="650"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center><img alt="bookdedicate.jpg (13K)" src="images/bookdedicate.jpg" height="329" width="575"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center><img alt="bookmaxim.jpg (16K)" src="images/bookmaxim.jpg" height="367" width="627"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + + + +<br><br><br><br> + + <center><h2>CONTENTS OF VOLUME 2.</h2></center> + +<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> +<br> +<h3><a href="#ch9">CHAPTER IX.</a></h3> +<p> +Close to Australia—Porpoises at Night—Entrance to Sydney Harbor—The +Loss of the Duncan Dunbar—The Harbor—The City of Sydney—Spring-time in +Australia—The Climate—Information for Travelers—The Size of +Australia—A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h3> +<p> +The Discovery of Australia—Transportation of +Convicts—Discipline—English Laws, Ancient and Modern—Flogging Prisoners to Death—Arrival of +Settlers—New South Wales Corps—Rum Currency—Intemperance Everywhere +$100,000 for One Gallon of Rum—Development of the Country—Immense +Resources + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h3> +<p> +Hospitality of English-speaking People—Writers and their Gratitude—Mr. +Gane and the Panegyrics—Population of Sydney An English City with +American Trimming—"Squatters"—Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms—Wool and +Mutton—Australians and Americans—Costermonger Pronunciation—England is +"Home"—Table Talk—English and Colonial Audiences + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch12">CHAPTER XII.</a></h3> +<p> +Mr. X., a Missionary—Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India—A +Large Dream—Hindoo Miracles and Legends—Sampson and Hanuman—The +Sandstone Ridge—Where are the Gates? + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h3> +<p> +Public Works in Australasia—Botanical Garden of Sydney—Four Special +Socialties—The Government House—A Governor and His Functions—The +Admiralty House—The Tour of the Harbor—Shark Fishing—Cecil Rhodes' +Shark and his First Fortune—Free Board for Sharks. + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h3> +<p> +Bad Health—To Melbourne by Rail—Maps Defective—The Colony of +Victoria—A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney—Change Cars, from Wide to Narrow +Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury—Customs-fences—"My Word"—The Blue +Mountains—Rabbit Piles—Government R. R. Restaurants—Duchesses for +Waiters—"Sheep-dip"—Railroad Coffee—Things Seen and Not Seen + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch15">CHAPTER XV.</a></h3> +<p> +Wagga-Wagga—The Tichborne Claimant—A Stock Mystery—The Plan of the +Romance—The Realization—The Henry Bascom Mystery—Bascom Hall—The +Author's Death and Funeral + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h3> +<p> +Melbourne and its Attractions—The Melbourne Cup Races—Cup Day—Great +Crowds—Clothes Regardless of Cost—The Australian Larrikin—Is He Dead? +Australian Hospitality—Melbourne Wool-brokers—The Museums—The +Palaces—The Origin of Melbourne + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h3> +<p> +The British Empire—Its Exports and Imports—The Trade of Australia—To +Adelaide—Broken Hill Silver Mine—A Roundabout road—The Scrub and its +Possibilities for the Novelist—The Aboriginal Tracker—A Test Case—How +Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another? + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h3> +<p> +Gum Trees—Unsociable Trees—Gorse and Broom—A universal Defect—An +Adventurer—Wanted L200, got L20,000,000—A Vast Land Scheme—The +Smash-up—The Corpse Got Up and Danced—A Unique Business by One +Man—Buying the Kangaroo Skin—The Approach to Adelaide—Everything Comes to +Him who Waits—A Healthy Religious sphere—What is the Matter with the +Specter? + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h3> +<p> +The Botanical Gardens—Contributions from all Countries—The +Zoological Gardens of Adelaide—The Laughing Jackass—The Dingo—A +Misnamed Province—Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco—A Mania +for Holidays—The Temperature—The Death Rate—Celebration of the +Reading of the Proclamation of 1836—Some old Settlers at the +Commemoration—Their Staying Powers—The Intelligence of the +Aboriginal—The Antiquity of the Boomerang +</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> +<br><hr> +<br> + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch9"></a><br><br>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<p><i>It is your human environment that makes climate.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. + +<p>That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come +up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not +follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any +direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance +from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, +there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you +would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash +so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch +your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and +take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, +with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its +head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor +of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost +before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go +flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance +whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and +another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once +sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm +of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering +beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those +people will not see again until after they are dead. + +<p>It was porpoises—porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They +presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and +there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, +turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting +hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only +about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary +length—eight or ten feet—but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession +of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting +thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one cannot have such +a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the +sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and +play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night. +It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking. + +<p>By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of +Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those +lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a +great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword +of light. + +<p>Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like +a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break +in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed +by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which +resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in +the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable +disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the +history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing +vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular +captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was +waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to +give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great +company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life +of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and +mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all +the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and +fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase; +only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted +to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship +that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is +over. + +<p>On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning +afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not +doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day +was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter +for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of +the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and +before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that +ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the +morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing +faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to +try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads +seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight +for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find +out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the +ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and +rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of +all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale +is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to +be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old, +custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish +out of it. + +<p>There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the +disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the +precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the +top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he +would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of +discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney +that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway +the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these, +stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen +below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes +were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was +accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he +hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he +exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year. + +<p>We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in +admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful +harbor—a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the +world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that +they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked +me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged +would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful—superbly +beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen +did not seem altogether satisfied. He said: + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p113.jpg (13K)" src="images/p113.jpg" height="384" width="476"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful—the Harbor; but that isn't +all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes +both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor, +and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney." + +<p>Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. +He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful +without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney +added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely +blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country +on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides +sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these +ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses +of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster +of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of +masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other +architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and +give picturesqueness to the general effect. + +<p>The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land +everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always +exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy +people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered +700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year, +and they will double that when their works are in good going order. +October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really +spring—everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and +nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home +summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in +the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now—a person +ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm +weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he +wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward +the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get +information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the +occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest +and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out +anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and +more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody who has an old +fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will +let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is +easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in +the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with +the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they +carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home +market. + +<p>If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, +then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so +we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the +climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is +about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are +north of-it-thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the +parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they +have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in +the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at +Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over, +from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which +brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day +there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that +remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt +Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, +about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and +that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with Little +Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a +government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather +Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to +winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas +winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas +and the poor. + +<p>The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has +the climate of its capital—a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a +mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon +for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales +is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria, +because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry. +The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the +same as that of Nice—60 deg.—yet Nice is further from the equator by +460 miles than is the former. + +<p>But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of +Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good +climate nowhere but around the edges. + +<p>If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big +Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was +before we added Alaska. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p116.jpg (15K)" src="images/p116.jpg" height="211" width="623"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land +almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of +the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate +which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In +effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United +States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the +fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the +Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way +to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific +coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining +mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the +Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia. + +<p>This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, +the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One +has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the +westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind +him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he +would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering +Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of +the heat. +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., + increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering + effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of + heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take + fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and + inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to + the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular + strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves + of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower + around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of + my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that + it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close + to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine + it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to + the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance + that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot + find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense + and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is +called a "dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are +acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the +following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali +duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel" part. Still the +shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my +Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all. + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat + proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 + feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive + plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed + away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust, + and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is + lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the + midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the + unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to + seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees + in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards + her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A + drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open + during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who + has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick + on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper +duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia +are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, +so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting +contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known +to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars—a detail +here, a detail there—we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' +seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt; +we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the +phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United +States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate +around it. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p118.jpg (19K)" src="images/p118.jpg" height="362" width="371"> +</center> +<br><br> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch10"></a><br><br>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<p><i>Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not +joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the +British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New +South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; +they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they +were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the +cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their +life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.] + +<p>English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which +in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement, +men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve +terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were +transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven +years for stealing a rabbit! + +<p>When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in +force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating—25 lashes on the bare +back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible +punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that +no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself +beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty +had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but +humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many +a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore +that cruel achievement of sentimental "humanity." + +<p>Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty +for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add +fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could +endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old +manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three +hundred lashes—for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than +that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict; +sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with +all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his +mercy—for he was under watch—and yet not do his friend any good: the friend +would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of +full punishment. + +<p>The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult +to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew +straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group—this +murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by +the hand of the hangman! + +<p>The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what +convict life was like—they are but a couple of details tossed into view +out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a +pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight +the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand. + +<p>Some of the convicts—indeed, a good many of them—were very bad people, +even for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably +worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We +must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a +nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women +hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys +snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the +other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling +offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any +large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, +during more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was +still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher +grade of civilization. + +<p>If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen +who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs, +we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and +between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable +monotony of sameness. + +<p>Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers +were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be +protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It +is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they +were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much +disturbed—not as yet being in the way—it was estimated that in New +South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory. + +<p>People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want +this service—away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to +be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of +1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped +it. + +<p>This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. +The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside +of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there +would be an importation of the nobility. + +<p>In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries +of life—food, clothing, and all—were sent out from England, and kept in +great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the +settlers—sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its +opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way. +They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private +stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They +leagued themselves together and ruled the market; they boycotted the +government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and +kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, +they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to +sell to them at a price named by themselves—and it was always low +enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold +it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of the country—for +there was little or no money—and they maintained their devastating hold +and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before +they were finally conquered and routed by the government. + +<p>Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed +farm after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had +bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last +agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. +In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a +piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. +When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered +that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity +followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the +noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The +result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South +Wales. + +<p>It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, +steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries, +libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable +home of every species of culture and of every species of material +enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door, and a race-track +over the way. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p123.jpg (23K)" src="images/p123.jpg" height="439" width="401"> +</center> +<br><br> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch11"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<p><i>We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is +in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot +stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is +well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, +and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The +English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always called +lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other +English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I know by +experience that the description fits them. I will not go more +particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to +distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run +across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling. + +<p>Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute +his gratitude, and was not lucky: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The + treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted + people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with + pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and + hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the + acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the + happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful + kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, + none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and +stayed away from Dubbo——but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. +Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he +had said about Sydney had grown dim: + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p125.jpg (7K)" src="images/p125.jpg" height="347" width="208"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in + warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its + inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears + of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality + and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial + manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful + familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with + elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in + having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a + panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing + no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural + productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but + obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and kind-heartedness." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing +degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a +man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst +way—any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not +throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and +picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese +dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are +old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the +panegyrics. + +<p>Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps +ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight +or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing +that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. +Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in +evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a +photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for +a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that +the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters. +The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it +offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as +animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when +you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor +man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be +speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of +a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose +landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been perfected in +one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen +head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty +thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man +who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and +of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, +in Australia you do; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it +dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a +squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in +Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p127.jpg (27K)" src="images/p127.jpg" height="491" width="623"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some +people say twice as many), to support a sheep; and when the squatter has +half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode +Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a +quarter or a half million dollars. + +<p>He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the +large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several +hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of +riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out +there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it, +and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great +industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you +with the best that money can buy. + +<p>On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with +all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important +town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the +squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are +other squatter-owned towns in Australia. + +<p>Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton +also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships +has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment +where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for +shipment to England. + +<p>The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, +either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general +appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English +origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's +attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the +beginning—from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American. +To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English +shyness and self-consciousness left out. + +<p>Now and then—but this is rare—one hears such words as piper for paper, +lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not +expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in +Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have +been "home"—as the native reverently and lovingly calls England—know +better. It is "costermonger." All over Australasia this pronunciation +is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the +uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of +people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of +it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney +the chambermaid said, one morning: + +<p>"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll +tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast." + +<p>I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's +custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear +it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it +touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and +made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother +England's old gray head. + +<p>In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; +it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of +England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly +democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by +differences of rank. + +<p>English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. +Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is +submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the +moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of +fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and +guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is +forgotten, and falls into abeyance—and to such a degree indeed, that he +will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to—an exhibition of +daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world. + +<p>But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, +or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard +then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the +false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of +humor. + +<p>Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; +but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have +merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new +environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a +couple that were made in Australia at club suppers—one of them by an +Englishman, the other by an Australian. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p131.jpg (9K)" src="images/p131.jpg" height="270" width="411"> +</center> +<br><br> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch12"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<p><i>There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and +shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you +know ain't so."</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a +missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New +Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of +God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart +in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we +and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous +life the corpuscles. + +<p>Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are + the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that + it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly + unaccountable—the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. + Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine + revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built + on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding + priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed +by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and +intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great +hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like +this: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster + progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and + that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a + hospitable reception. Then they argue like this: since the Indian + believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must + believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will + no longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity + makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we + are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles. + +<p> "But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they + think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a + military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in + our guns, but only wads for bullets; that is to say, our miracles + are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more + extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own + religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours + must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India + I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A + correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think + at home—that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with + favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with + wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders + performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived—for so I + called him. + +<p> "At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces + of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the + great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the + sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a + surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the + fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the + indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression upon + it. + +<p> "A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said + 'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands—we accept no + other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you + Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the + fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the + mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of + knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own. + You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of + Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as + other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations + in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will + pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its + own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for + gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is + but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods—he cannot do + without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when + there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be foolish. No, + if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not + turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How + then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or + those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing + the known works of his own gods with the works of those others; + there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are + not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown + by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The + Christians have but few gods, and they are new—new, and not strong; + as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for + this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many + ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet + for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single moment. Our own + gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, + the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow + lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at + last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the + colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary + men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson + was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew + the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the + gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed—and also + awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it + could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo + congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them + with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine + strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them—as + you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god + Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to + bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies + might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired + like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials + for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, + to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty + mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. + It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people + of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth + rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy + summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as + this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its + slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping + villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in + procession through the sky. +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p135.jpg (54K)" src="images/p135.jpg" height="965" width="543"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<blockquote><blockquote> + <p>While they were looking, Hanuman + stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was + jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the + course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the + plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the + inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman + could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the + strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own + strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of + the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the + divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two + things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his + shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over + ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal + evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence, + but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, + tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have + the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall + not. Have you the gates?'" +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch13"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<p><i>The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man +strikes for double value and compromises on par.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends +money upon public works—such as legislative buildings, town halls, +hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that +where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and +on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a +thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of +hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and +architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen +hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the +villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were +drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in +any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its +streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of +London. London is still obscured by gas—gas pretty widely scattered, +too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight +nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps. + +<p>The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully +laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of +the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, +overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of +Government House—fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation +ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the +zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where +the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room +for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as +like that kind of work. + +<p>There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If +you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will +receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing +can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will +see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and +several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He +always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know +how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will +not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get +inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship +and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. +I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. +The others were at home. + +<p>The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a +war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, +but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his +hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The +country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about +it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the +Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, +while a fact, is yet mainly a name. + +<p>Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's +functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent +head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents +culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by +his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear +good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball +of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive. + +<p>He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to +lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped +for that. + +<p>Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; +which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim +boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board +the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government +House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate +of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity +of his office. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p140.jpg (52K)" src="images/p140.jpg" height="981" width="605"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a +fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, +and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day +seem short. + +<p>And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the +finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their +living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The +larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty +feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the +shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable. + +<p>The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest +steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and +roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, +ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to +tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger +arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no +one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no +employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money +wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing +to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. +But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort. +Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; +he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and +hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting +aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding +shark-fisher the man looked up and said—— + +<p>"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me." + +<p>"How do you know I won't make it worse?" + +<p>"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't change it, +no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the +better, of course. Come." + +<p>"All right, what will you give?" + +<p>"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one." + +<p>"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line." + +<p>"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't +spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if——there, pull +in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I +knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right—he's +landed." + +<p>It was an unusually large shark—"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman +said, as he laid the creature open with his knife. + +<p>"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. +There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my +luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own." + +<p>"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll +rob him." + +<p>When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his +hands in the bay, and was starting away. + +<p>"What, you are not going?" + +<p>"Yes. Good-bye." + +<p>"But what about your shark?" + +<p>"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?" + +<p>"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report +him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty? +Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?" + +<p>"Oh, well, you can collect it." + +<p>"And keep it? Is that what you mean?" + +<p>"Yes." + +<p>"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I +judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm +believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and +yet you must be rich." + +<p>"I am." + +<p>The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. +He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his +clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was +a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, +got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't +enough to buy clothes with," and went his way. + +<p>At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his +morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A +servant put his head in and said: + +<p>"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir." + +<p>"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his +business." + +<p>"He won't go, sir. I've tried." + +<p>"He won't go? That's—why, that's unusual. He's one of two things, +then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?" + +<p>"No, sir. He don't look it." + +<p>"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?" + +<p>"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important." + +<p>"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?" + +<p>"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day." + +<p>"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up." + +<p>The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not +crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing." + +<p>Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any +words; what is it you want?" + +<p>"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds." + +<p>"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No—he can't be—not +with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?" + +<p>"Nobody that you know." + +<p>"What is your name?" + +<p>"Cecil Rhodes." + +<p>"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then—just for +curiosity's sake—what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?" + +<p>"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for +myself within the next sixty days." + +<p>"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that—sit down—you +interest me. And somehow you—well, you fascinate me; I think that that +is about the word. And it isn't your proposition—no, that doesn't +fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something +that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for +curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your +desire to bor——" + +<p>"I said intention." + +<p>"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word—an +unheedful valuing of its strength, you know." + +<p>"I knew its strength." + +<p>"Well, I must say—but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind +is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any. +(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being +remarkable—well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I +believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare +not. What is your scheme?" + +<p>"To buy the wool crop—deliverable in sixty days." + +<p>"What, the whole of it?" + +<p>"The whole of it." + +<p>"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how +you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?" + +<p>"Two and a half million sterling—maybe a little more." + +<p>"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know +what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?" + +<p>"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get." + +<p>"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish +you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?" + +<p>"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days." + +<p>"You mean, of course, that you might make it if——" + +<p>"I said 'shall'." + +<p>"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I +ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! +Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got +what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, +an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an +entire colony on speculation. Bring it out—I am prepared—acclimatized, +if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you +make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you——" + +<p>"I don't think—I know." + +<p>"Definite again. How do you know?" + +<p>"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up +fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising." + +<p>"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have +just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't +stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I +have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The +fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty +days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no +war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest +commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . . +Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, +when——" + +<p>"Because I have later news." + +<p>"Later news? Oh, come—later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot +from London by the——" + +<p>"My news is only ten days old." + +<p>"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?" + +<p>"Got it out of a shark." + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p147.jpg (38K)" src="images/p147.jpg" height="889" width="587"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the +gun—raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the +single person of——" + +<p>"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? +Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a +statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin +to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity." + +<p>"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and +I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance +like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report——" + +<p>"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?" + +<p>"Andrew. What are you writing?" + +<p>"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark—and another matter. Only ten +lines. There—now it is done. Sign it." + +<p>"Many thanks—many. Let me see; it says—it says oh, come, this is +interesting! Why—why—look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put +up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings +with you, half and half. There, now—I've signed; make your promise good +if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old." + +<p>"Here it is—and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that +belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, +without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is +dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber +confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur +bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'——, as clean +native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in +consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for +home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him +before the day was done, poor fellow." + +<p>"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend +to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down +and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will +cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything +is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to +deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But +there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with +the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say +your name is?" + +<p>"Cecil Rhodes." + +<p>"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and +by, if you live. There are three kinds of people—Commonplace Men, +Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables, +and take the chances." + +<p>The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first +fortune he ever pocketed. + +<p>The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some +reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in +their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little +sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous +skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun—such as it is +with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The +young fellows scramble aboard whole—sometimes—not always. Tragedies +have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that +a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed +for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from +the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of +both. + +<p>The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the +fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news +spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the +free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful +things in the colony. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch14"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<p><i>We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but +our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of +securing that.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a +doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it +broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until +after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture +engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. +In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not +advisable. + +<p>So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital +of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne—that juvenile city of sixty years, +and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small; +but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast +country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the +map—looks like a county, in fact—yet it is about as large as England, +Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is +just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as +large as the State of Texas. + +<p>Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of +squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the +impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of +Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate +of Victoria is favorable to other great industries—among others, +wheat-growing and the making of wine. + +<p>We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was +American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the +car was clean and fine and new—nothing about it to suggest the rolling +stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra +weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. +Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be +described as continental. + +<p>The tickets were round-trip ones—to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in +South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred +more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip +wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to +buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need +them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing +than he needs. + +<p>Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the +most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the +frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers +were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the +biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break +in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that +gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some +petrified legislator's shoulders. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p152.jpg (24K)" src="images/p152.jpg" height="355" width="635"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to +Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the +owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of +things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the +colonies—the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other +one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but +another effort to explain the inexplicable. + +<p>All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of +course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed +upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted. + +<p>Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a +custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good deal of +inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here and +there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the +Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could manufacture +it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed. +But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. +The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were several rows +of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across the +American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to +be coined when it arrived. + +<p>We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that +the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the +Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say, +but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; +towering and majestic masses of blue—a softly luminous blue, a +smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the +blue of the sky—made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. +A wonderful color—just divine. + +<p>A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were +rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe +condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may +have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me +distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a +country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually +erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been +very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for +a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order. + +<p>We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and +cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The +waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The +usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies—generally +duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levee in +Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that +they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how. + +<p>All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through +thin—not thick—forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks +rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark—erysipelas convalescents, so +to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, +built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and the +doorsteps and fences were clogged with children—rugged little +simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the +Mississippi without breaking bulk. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p155.jpg (85K)" src="images/p155.jpg" height="1021" width="625"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with +showy advertisements—mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of +"sheepdip." If that is the name—and I think it is. It is a stuff like +tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of +the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip +to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It +is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed +with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad +coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and +enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip +makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get +railroad coffee? + +<p>We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not +a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of +game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to +Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no +Aboriginals—no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. +In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the +curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We +have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. +It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch15"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<p><i>Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably +familiar with it.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p><i>Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to +stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.</i> + <center>Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming +excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was +famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago—Wagga-Wagga. This +was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was +out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he +soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of +space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in +unappeasable curiosity—curiosity as to which of the two long-missing +persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir +Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English +history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the +dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and +fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played +upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a +British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial +development. + +<p>When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what +daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale, as compared +with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The +fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this +splendid Tichborne romance. + +<p>He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such +people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most +picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never +happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did +happen. + +<p>It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive +him out; and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still +believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to +convict him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes +still believed in him; and among these believers were many educated and +intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir +Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he +got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the +Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view. + +<p>He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. +This was but a few months ago—not very much short of a generation since +he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his +death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was +only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher—that and nothing +more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even +his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating +incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a +weaker article would probably disagree with them. + +<p>I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I +attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for +him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening +dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were +about twenty-five gentlemen present; educated men, men moving in good +society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of distinction, +none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and +admirers. It was "Sir Roger," always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one +withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if +it tasted good. + +<p>For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only +Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I arrived in London with my +wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by +a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but +I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of about +six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were +ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their +size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to +the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in +England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay +twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the +specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station. + +<p>These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in +Europe, three months ahead; if we were in America, six to twelve months +ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and +also for the end of the visit. + +<p>This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It +asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from London, August 6th. The +carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days +later-train specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom +Hughes." + +<p>I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said: +"Accept, and be thankful." + +<p>He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine +attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. +He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately +manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going +a long way to see—like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition; +liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort +coming and going. + +<p>We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years—the last one in 1879. +Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a +steam yacht—a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in +all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things. + +<p>The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were +at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter +of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for +my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and +opened it. It was the usual note—as to paucity of lines—and was +written on the customary strip of paper; but there was nothing usual +about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any +assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture-tour in +Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, +the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her +husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would +already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this +note; that the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and +city governments; and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had +not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the +sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry +Bascom." + +<p>My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would +have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right +ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those sorrowing +governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money. + +<p>I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture +doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been +able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their +impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a ghost? +None—and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know about that +man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait. When I should +see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he passed from life, +and I never saw him again.. My curiosity faded away. + +<p>However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And +naturally: for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing +compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on +business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of +that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm—they had never heard +of him, and didn't believe in him. + +<p>I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in +Melbourne. The government would remember; and the other mourners. At +the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about +the matter. But no—it turned out that they had never heard of it. + +<p>So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I +believed it would never be cleared up—in this life—so I dropped it out +of my mind. + +<p>But at last! just when I was least expecting it—— + +<p>However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the +matter again, in a far-distant chapter. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch16"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<p><i>There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us +that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, +and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to +enjoy it.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately +city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system +of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and +public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, +and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and +sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, +and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a +squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and +banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything +that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of +Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one +specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is +the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the +Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice—the 5th of +November, Guy Fawkes's Day—business is suspended over a stretch of land +and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from +the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of +high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other +duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight +before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until +all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet +the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging +outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred +thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the +spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to +be seen in Australasia elsewhere. + +<p>It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their +clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds +as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until +now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' +clothes; but one might know that. + +<p>And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a +delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is +vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change +hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the +fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done, +the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. +And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and +transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and +count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then +lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole +year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy +again. + +<p>The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be +difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays +and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. +Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them +gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but +not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in +each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter +of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. +Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an +enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup +Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual +day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—Supreme. I +can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose +approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and +preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but +this one does it. + +<p>In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the +whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and +Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can +arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown +Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium +and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone—if still alive. The +approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent +people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know +what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard +and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so +dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit +down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a +year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day—as a function—has become +general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is +natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard +time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their +enthusiasm. + +<p>We have a supreme day—a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a +day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; +but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it +cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup. + +<p>In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days—Christmas and the +Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy. + +<p>I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is +unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long +time. + +<p>The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; +next, the novelties; and finally the history of the places and countries +visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced +civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in +the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of +Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There +will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be +found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of +difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the +incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be +able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and +variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according +to his geographical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from +those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they, +more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At +least it seemed so to me, and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, +at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater, +but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on +my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in +considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave +me this pleasant salutation: + +<p>"Hello, Mark!" + +<p>"Here's to you, old chap! + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p166.jpg (78K)" src="images/p166.jpg" height="879" width="545"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>"Say—Mark!—is he dead?"—a reference to a passage in some book of mine, +though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I +didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the +first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy +height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry +like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. +I will remark here—if it is not an indecorum—that the welcome which an +American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which +will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his +voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; +he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each +time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no +trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, +suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to +remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have +been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances. + +<p>And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the +unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to +the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a +prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the +public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of +the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, +for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively +and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, +and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or +since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation +of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will +dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get +to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by +baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their +differences so much better and also so much more definitely. + +<p>No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of +modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from +the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just +like stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their +hands and yell in unison—no stranger can tell what—and the president +calmly says "Sold to Smith & Co., threpence farthing—next!"—when +probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know? + +<p>In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating +things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, +and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming +interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The +palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich +in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance +ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, +and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often +ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as +beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have +grounds—domains—about them which rival in charm and magnitude those +which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I was not out +in the country; I had my hands full in town. + +<p>And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of +palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and +its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost +always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is +itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes +the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like +history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, +no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and +incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all +true, they all happened. + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p169.jpg (11K)" src="images/p169.jpg" height="263" width="470"> +</center> + + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch17"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<p><i>The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they +shall inherit the earth.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, +population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe +in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's +commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British +Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except +one—Russia—is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British +Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. +Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the +British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the +middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will +represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are +about the same—400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these +figures. Even Russia is left far behind. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p171.jpg (23K)" src="images/p171.jpg" height="823" width="513"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The population of Australasia—4,000,000—sinks into nothingness, and is +lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics +indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its +share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The +value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions +of dollars,—[New South Wales Blue Book.]—and it is claimed that more +than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's +exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this, +Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to +a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade +amounting to a hundred and fifty millions. + +<p>In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of +goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents +commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually +by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000.1 Now, here are some +faith-straining figures: + +<center> +<table summary=""> + + +<tr><td>Indian production (300,000,000 population), </td><td>$500,000,000.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Australasian production (4,000,000 population), </td><td>$300,000,000.</td></tr> + + +</table> +</center> + + +<p>That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for +export some whither), is worth $1.15; that of the individual +Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another +way, the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an +annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends away $375 +worth. + +<p>There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and +others, which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product, +both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50; or, $37.50 +for the family-aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of +multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate production would be +nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once +get started. + +<p>We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province +of South Australia—a seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found +several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going out on circuit, +and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver +mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken +Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on +the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn +westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat +shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the +Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; +southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, +then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales +once more—to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to +Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant +back northeast and over the border—to Buffalo, New York. + +<p>But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver +discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world. Its +stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most +fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a +month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth and buys your house at +your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few +shares, and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor +invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship +company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of +those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center +with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once. Adelaide was +close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the +border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth +while for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast trade-profit of +Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales +furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles—mainly +through alien countries—to administer it, but Adelaide takes the +dividends and makes no moan. + +<p>We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night. +In the morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country—the kind of thing +which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile +aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to +time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then slipping back again, and +leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the +novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here +and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the +searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is +near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary +which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody +can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he +will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the +novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, +and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in +it—as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might as well walk +under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should +think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt +out people lost in the scrub. Also in the "bush"; also in the desert; +and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground +which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints. + +<p>From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became +convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a +penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of +observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so +remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an +official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government +of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint +marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but +knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or +yesterday. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p175.jpg (64K)" src="images/p175.jpg" height="867" width="619"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with +B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A. will produce +an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the tracker +see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow +a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions, and frequently +doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the time, +and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and +mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings +his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around +in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is +after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and +ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now +wherein does one cow-track differ from another? There must be a +difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a +difference minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the +late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a member of a race charged +by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human +intelligence. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch18"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<p><i>It is easier to stay out than get out.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting +in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several +varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied +and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded +one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one +peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The +foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half +of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid +and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching. +The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last +samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart. There +was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its +foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself +above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was +not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each +individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself +in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling +grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful +sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see +the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet. + +<p>On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom—importations +from England—and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit +tried to tell me which—was which; but as he didn't know, he had +difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had +never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and +more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get +interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most +of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it +is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and +the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst +out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of +sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch +his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, +a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It +is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality +usually wanting in Australian blossoms. + +<p>The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the +gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of +twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six +shillings in his pocket—an adventurer without trade, profession, or +friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head: he would stay +until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five +years for the accumulation of this fortune. + +<p>"That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet." + +<p>As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him +to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the +previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this +half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p178.jpg (67K)" src="images/p178.jpg" height="951" width="619"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he +left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just +in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out +L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded +L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the +country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could +go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about +his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South +Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land +boom a while before." There it is again; picturesque +history—Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. +In 1836 the British Parliament erected it—still a solitude—into a +Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery. +Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and +invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. +It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of +people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began +to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the +sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come, +prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was +prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A +village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and +in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on +costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots +were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways +conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been +accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the +world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own +use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor +had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were +built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious +values—on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during +four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge +amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land +company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a +rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other +lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately +had been a buzzing and populous hive of men. + +<p>Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000. +During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival +there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis +had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper +mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced. + +<p>The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed—followed so +vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this +little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay +hard prices for them—once $50 a barrel for flour—had become an exporter +of grain. + +<p>The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to +show especial regard for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in +its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that +colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, +conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and +South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks. + +<p>Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a +strong word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the +American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world there was +not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was +buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop +and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The +prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's +aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the +kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the +continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After +the tanning, the leather takes a new name—which I have forgotten—I only +remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes +the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago, +but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of +tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now +then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really +entitled to bear that high epithet—unique. And I suppose that there is +not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a +sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one +Pope, there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living +god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large +populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings +myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come +good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit." + +<p>Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and +were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to +the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it +could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, +and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect—mountains, crags, +country homes, gardens, forests—color, color, color everywhere, and the +air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the +downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway +opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away +into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and +beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city. + +<p>We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble +capital, of buts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom. +No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine +homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing +masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful. + +<p>There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence, +desiring to show especial regard for the neighboring colony on the west +called Western Australia—and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare +which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's +conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently +conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie; +and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving +thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good, and waits. + +<p>But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable +home for every alien who chooses to come; and for his religion, too. +She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and +yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of +samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can +think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. +One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this +cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census: + +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> + + + +<tr><td>Church of England, </td><td>89,271</td></tr> +<tr><td>Roman Catholic, </td><td>47,179</td></tr> +<tr><td>Wesleyan, </td><td>49,159</td></tr> +<tr><td>Lutheran, </td><td>23,328</td></tr> +<tr><td>Presbyterian, </td><td>18,206</td></tr> +<tr><td>Congregationalist, </td><td>11,882</td></tr> +<tr><td>Bible Christian, </td><td>15,762</td></tr> +<tr><td>Primitive Methodist, </td><td>11,654</td></tr> +<tr><td>Baptist, </td><td>17,547</td></tr> +<tr><td>Christian Brethren, </td><td>465</td></tr> +<tr><td>Methodist New Connexion, </td><td> 39</td></tr> +<tr><td>Unitarian, </td><td>688</td></tr> +<tr><td>Church of Christ, </td><td> 3,367</td></tr> +<tr><td>Society of Friends, </td><td> 100</td></tr> +<tr><td>Salvation Army, </td><td>4,356</td></tr> +<tr><td>New Jerusalem Church, </td><td>168</td></tr> +<tr><td>Jews, </td><td> 840</td></tr> +<tr><td>Protestants (undefined), </td><td> 6,532</td></tr> +<tr><td>Mohammedans, </td><td>299</td></tr> +<tr><td>Confucians, etc, </td><td>3,884</td></tr> +<tr><td>Other religions, </td><td>1,719</td></tr> +<tr><td>Object, </td><td>6,940</td></tr> +<tr><td>Not stated, </td><td>8,046</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Total,</td><td>320,431</td></tr> + + + +</table> +</center> + + + +<p> +The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as +returned: + +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> + +Agnostics, +Atheists, +Believers in Christ, +Buddhists, +Calvinists, +Christadelphians, +Christians, +Christ's Chapel, +Christian Israelites, +Christian Socialists, +Church of God, +Cosmopolitans, +Deists, +Evangelists, +Exclusive Brethren, +Free Church, +Free Methodists, +Freethinkers, +Followers of Christ, +Gospel Meetings, +Greek Church, +Infidels, +Maronites, +Memnonists, +Moravians, +Mormons, +Naturalists, +Orthodox, +Others (indefinite), +Pagans, +Pantheists, +Plymouth Brethren, +Rationalists, +Reformers, +Secularists, +Seventh-day Adventists, +Shaker, +Shintoists, +Spiritualists, +Theosophists, +Town (City) Mission, +Welsh Church, +Huguenot, +Hussite, +Zoroastrians, +Zwinglian, + +</td></tr> +</table> +</center> + + +<p> +About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious +atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, +Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there. +And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: +they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the +Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. +What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a +welcome toy everywhere else in the world. + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p183.jpg (24K)" src="images/p183.jpg" height="437" width="625"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch19"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<p><i>Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.</i> + <center>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that +other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these +paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under +glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would +still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the +atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat—these would all be there, in place +of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. +Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of +doors in Australia.—[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an +authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The +thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January, 1880, +the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.] + +<p>When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of +vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has everything that grows on +the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied +tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes +the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of +the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful +tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually +name a foreign country as the place of its origin—India, Africa, Japan, +China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. + +<p>In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass +that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened +his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed +with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human +laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the +laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and +beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate +the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably +survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good +reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has +any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. +he will not kill all of them. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p185.jpg (47K)" src="images/p185.jpg" height="617" width="453"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog—the dingo. He was a +beautiful creature—shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his +aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The +dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the +whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog +in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors +first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. +He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in +an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and +that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. +He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried +out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for +man—the white man. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p187.jpg (66K)" src="images/p187.jpg" height="1069" width="537"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a +southern exposure except one—Queensland. Properly speaking, South +Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center +of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000 +miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little +spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its +population; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere—as elsewhere as +they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver +and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is +plenty of room. + +<p>A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of +wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the +upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 1871-2 when +her population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there +were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but +once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried +over immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to +supply the men and cattle with water. + +<p>A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to +India, and there was telegraphic communication with England from India. +And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it meant +connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could +watch the London markets daily, now; the profit to the wool-growers of +Australia was instant and enormous. + +<p>A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 +miles—the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has +to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still, but +little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are +here tabulated.—[From "Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but +the last two.] + +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> + + + </td><td>Miles.</td></tr><tr><td> + </td></tr><tr><td> +Melbourne-Mount Gambier, </td><td>300</td></tr><tr><td> +Mount Gambier-Adelaide,</td><td>270</td></tr><tr><td> +Adelaide-Port Augusta,</td><td>200</td></tr><tr><td> +Port Augusta-Alice Springs,</td><td>1,036</td></tr><tr><td> +Alice Springs-Port Darwin,</td><td>898</td></tr><tr><td> +Port Darwin-Banjoewangie, </td><td>1,150</td></tr><tr><td> +Banjoewangie-Batavia,</td><td>480</td></tr><tr><td> +Batavia-Singapore,</td><td>553</td></tr><tr><td> +Singapore-Penang,</td><td>399</td></tr><tr><td> +Penang-Madras,</td><td>1,280</td></tr><tr><td> +Madras-Bombay,</td><td>650</td></tr><tr><td> +Bombay-Aden,</td><td>1,662</td></tr><tr><td> +Aden-Suez,</td><td>1,346</td></tr><tr><td> +Suez-Alexandria,</td><td>224</td></tr><tr><td> +Alexandria-Malta,</td><td>828</td></tr><tr><td> +Malta-Gibraltar,</td><td>1,008</td></tr><tr><td> +Gibraltar-Falmouth,</td><td>1,061</td></tr><tr><td> +Falmouth-London,</td><td>350</td></tr><tr><td> +London-New York,</td><td>2,500</td></tr><tr><td> +New York-San Francisco,</td><td>3,500 + +</td></tr> +</table> +</center> + + +<p> +I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather +in the neighboring city of Glenelg to commemorate the Reading of the +Proclamation—in 1836—which founded the Province. If I have at any time +called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it +is a Province; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named +in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the Province's +national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the pre-eminent +holiday; and that is saying much, in a country where they seem to have a +most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's +holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is +the desire of the politician—indeed, it is the very breath of the +politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the +workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a +great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. +He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am +glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be +bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but +was not able to do it. + +<p>You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so +politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet—the +Minister of Public Works-was an American, born and reared in New England. +There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other +way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. +No amount of horse-racing can damn this community. + +<p>The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in +the 1,000—about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, +and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the +average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate for +the old people. There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could +remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had all +been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They +showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward +aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to +talk; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of +it. They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The governor and +the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. +They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But +they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions +which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are +the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most +animated way; and the more the mayor gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! +Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and +reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole +house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter +old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the +laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking—jokes of the +vintage of 1836—and then the way they do go on! And finally when ushers +come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into +their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired—I could bang along a week!" +and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of +their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other +end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and +begins his carefully prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity— + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in + reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, + of wisdom, of forethought, of——" +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've +thought of another one!" and at it they go, with might and main, hearing +not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the +visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away +till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity, +too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth +over, in these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things +they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p190.jpg (52K)" src="images/p190.jpg" height="983" width="541"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was +amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic; for they had seen +so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had +built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their +commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to see the +structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised +for honorable work. + +<p>One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; +things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them +intelligent—remarkably so in some directions—and he said that along with their +unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he +considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced +their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of +their brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen +a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with +those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the +smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the +trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities which +they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, +could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some +wonderful things—some almost incredible things—which he had seen the +blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed +to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p194.jpg (37K)" src="images/p194.jpg" height="487" width="620"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>It is contended—and may be said to be conceded—that the boomerang was +known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of +this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended +that it was known to the ancient Egyptians. + +<p>One of two things is then apparent, either some one with a boomerang +arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge +of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it. +It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the +fact. But there is no hurry. + + +<br><br> +<hr> +<br><br> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 2 +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 5809-h.htm or 5809-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/0/5809/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Following the Equator, Part 2 + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #5809] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 2 *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + FOLLOWING + THE EQUATOR + A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD + BY + MARK TWAIN + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS + + Part 2 + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +It is your human environment that makes climate. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Sept. 15--Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. + +That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come +up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not +follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any +direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance +from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, +there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you +would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water--a flash +so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch +your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and +take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, +with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its +head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor +of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost +before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go +flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance +whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and +another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once +sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm +of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering +beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those +people will not see again until after they are dead. + +It was porpoises--porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They +presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and +there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, +turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting +hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only +about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length +--eight or ten feet--but every twist of their bodies sent a long +procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was +an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one +cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the +kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing +but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until +that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been +drinking. + +By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of +Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those +lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a +great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword +of light. + +Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like +a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break +in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed +by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which +resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in +the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable +disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the +history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing +vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular +captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was +waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to +give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great +company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life +of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and +mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all +the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and +fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase; +only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted +to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship +that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is +over. + +On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning +afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not +doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day +was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter +for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of +the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and +before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that +ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the +morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing +faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to +try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads +seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight +for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find +out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the +ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and +rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of +all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale +is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to +be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old, +custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish +out of it. + +There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the +disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the +precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the +top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he +would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of +discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney +that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway +the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these, +stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen +below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes +were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was +accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he +hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he +exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year. + +We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in +admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful +harbor--a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the +world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that +they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked +me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged +would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful--superbly +beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen +did not seem altogether satisfied. He said: + +"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful--the Harbor; but that isn't +all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes +both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor, +and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney." + +Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. +He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful +without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney +added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely +blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country +on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides +sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these +ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses +of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster +of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of +masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other +architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and +give picturesqueness to the general effect. + +The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land +everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always +exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy +people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered +700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year, +and they will double that when their works are in good going order. +October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring +--everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and +nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home +summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in +the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now--a person +ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm +weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he +wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward +the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get +information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the +occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest +and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out +anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and +more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody who has an old +fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will +let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is +easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in +the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with +the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they +carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home +market. + +If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, +then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so +we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the +climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is +about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are +north of-it-thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the +parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they +have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in +the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at +Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over, +from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which +brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day +there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that +remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt +Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, +about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and +that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with Little +Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a +government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather +Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to +winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas +winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas +and the poor. + +The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has +the climate of its capital--a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a +mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon +for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales +is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria, +because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry. +The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the +same as that of Nice--60 deg.--yet Nice is further from the equator by +460 miles than is the former. + +But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of +Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good +climate nowhere but around the edges. + +If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big +Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was +before we added Alaska. + +But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land +almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of +the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate +which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In +effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United +States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the +fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the +Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way +to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific +coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining +mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the +Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia. + +This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, +the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One +has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the +westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind +him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he +would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering +Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of +the heat. + + "The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., + increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering + effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of + heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take + fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and + inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to + the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular + strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves + of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower + around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of + my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that + it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close + to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine + it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to + the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance + that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot + find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense + and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed." + +That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is +called a "dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are +acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the +following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali +duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel" part. Still the +shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my +Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all. + + "As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat + proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 + feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive + plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed + away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust, + and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is + lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the + midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the + unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to + seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees + in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards + her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A + drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open + during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who + has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick + on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it." + +And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper +duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia +are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, +so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting +contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known +to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars--a detail +here, a detail there--we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' +seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt; +we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the +phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United +States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate +around it. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not +joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the +British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New +South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; +they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they +were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the +cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their +life.--[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.] + +English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which +in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement, +men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve +terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were +transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven +years for stealing a rabbit! + +When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in +force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating--25 lashes on the bare +back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible +punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that +no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself +beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty +had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but +humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many +a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore +that cruel achievement of sentimental "humanity." + +Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty +for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add +fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could +endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old +manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three +hundred lashes--for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than +that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict; +sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with +all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy +--for he was under watch--and yet not do his friend any good: the friend +would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of +full punishment. + +The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult +to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew +straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group--this +murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by +the hand of the hangman! + +The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what +convict life was like--they are but a couple of details tossed into view +out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a +pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight +the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand. + +Some of the convicts--indeed, a good many of them--were very bad people, +even for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably +worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We +must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a +nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women +hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys +snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the +other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling +offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any +large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, +during more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was +still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher +grade of civilization. + +If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen +who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs, +we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and +between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable +monotony of sameness. + +Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers +were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be +protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It +is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they +were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much +disturbed--not as yet being in the way--it was estimated that in New +South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory. + +People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want +this service--away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to +be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of +1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped +it. + +This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. +The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside +of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there +would be an importation of the nobility. + +In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries +of life--food, clothing, and all--were sent out from England, and kept in +great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the +settlers--sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its +opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way. +They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private +stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They +leagued themselves together and ruled the market; they boycotted the +government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and +kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, +they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to +sell to them at a price named by themselves--and it was always low +enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold +it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of the country--for +there was little or no money--and they maintained their devastating hold +and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before +they were finally conquered and routed by the government. + +Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed +farm after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had +bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last +agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. +In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a +piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. +When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered +that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity +followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the +noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The +result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South +Wales. + +It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, +steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries, +libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable +home of every species of culture and of every species of material +enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door, and a race-track +over the way. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is +in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot +stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is +well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, +and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The +English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always +called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other +English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I +know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more +particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to +distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run +across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling. + +Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute +his gratitude, and was not lucky: + + "The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The + treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted + people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with + pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and + hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the + acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the + happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful + kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, + none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney." + +Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and +stayed away from Dubbo----but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. +Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he +had said about Sydney had grown dim: + + "We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in + warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its + inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears + of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality + and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial + manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful + familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with + elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in + having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a + panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing + no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural + productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but + obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and + kind-heartedness." + +I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing +degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a +man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst +way--any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not +throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and +picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese +dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are +old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the +panegyrics. + +Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps +ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight +or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing +that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. +Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in +evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a +photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for +a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that +the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters. +The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it +offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as +animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when +you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor +man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be +speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of +a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose +landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been perfected in +one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen +head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty +thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man +who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and +of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, +in Australia you do; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it +dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a +squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in +Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around. + +In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some +people say twice as many), to support a sheep; and when the squatter has +half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode +Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a +quarter or a half million dollars. + +He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the +large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several +hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of +riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out +there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it, +and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great +industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you +with the best that money can buy. + +On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with +all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important +town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the +squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are +other squatter-owned towns in Australia. + +Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton +also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships +has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment +where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for +shipment to England. + +The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, +either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general +appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English +origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's +attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning +--from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American. +To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English +shyness and self-consciousness left out. + +Now and then--but this is rare--one hears such words as piper for paper, +lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not +expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in +Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have +been "home"--as the native reverently and lovingly calls England--know +better. It is "costermonger." All over Australasia this pronunciation +is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the +uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of +people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of +it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney +the chambermaid said, one morning: + +"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll +tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast." + +I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's +custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear +it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it +touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and +made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother +England's old gray head. + +In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; +it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of +England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly +democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by +differences of rank. + +English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. +Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is +submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the +moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of +fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and +guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is +forgotten, and falls into abeyance--and to such a degree indeed, that he +will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to--an exhibition of +daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world. + +But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, +or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard +then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the +false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of +humor. + +Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; +but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have +merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new +environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a +couple that were made in Australia at club suppers--one of them by an +Englishman, the other by an Australian. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and +shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you +know ain't so." + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a +missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New +Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of +God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart +in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we +and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous +life the corpuscles. + +Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said: + + "It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are + the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that + it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly + unaccountable--the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. + Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine + revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built + on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding + priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake." + +He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed +by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and +intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great +hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like +this: + + "At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster + progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and + that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a + hospitable reception. Then they argue like this: since the Indian + believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must + believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will + no longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity + makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we + are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles. + + "But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they + think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a + military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in + our guns, but only wads for bullets; that is to say, our miracles + are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more + extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own + religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours + must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India + I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A + correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think + at home--that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with + favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with + wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders + performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived--for so I + called him. + + "At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces + of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the + great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the + sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a + surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the + fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the + indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression upon + it. + + "A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said + 'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands--we accept no + other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you + Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the + fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the + mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of + knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own. + You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of + Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as + other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations + in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will + pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its + own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for + gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is + but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods--he cannot do + without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when + there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be foolish. No, + if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not + turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How + then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or + those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing + the known works of his own gods with the works of those others; + there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are + not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown + by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The + Christians have but few gods, and they are new--new, and not strong; + as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for + this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many + ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet + for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single moment. Our own + gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, + the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow + lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at + last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the + colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary + men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson + was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew + the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the + gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed--and also + awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it + could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo + congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them + with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine + strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them--as + you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god + Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to + bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies + might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired + like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials + for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, + to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty + mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. + It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people + of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth + rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy + summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as + this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its + slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping + villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in + procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman + stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was + jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the + course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the + plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the + inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman + could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the + strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own + strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of + the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the + divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two + things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his + shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over + ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal + evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence, + but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, + tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have + the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall + not. Have you the gates?'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man +strikes for double value and compromises on par. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends +money upon public works--such as legislative buildings, town halls, +hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that +where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and +on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a +thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of +hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and +architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen +hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the +villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were +drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in +any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its +streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of +London. London is still obscured by gas--gas pretty widely scattered, +too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight +nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps. + +The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully +laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of +the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, +overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of +Government House--fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation +ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the +zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where +the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room +for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as +like that kind of work. + +There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If +you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will +receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing +can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will +see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and +several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He +always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know +how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will +not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get +inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship +and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. +I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. +The others were at home. + +The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a +war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, +but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his +hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The +country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about +it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the +Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, +while a fact, is yet mainly a name. + +Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's +functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent +head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents +culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by +his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear +good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball +of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive. + +He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to +lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped +for that. + +Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; +which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim +boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board +the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government +House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate +of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity +of his office. + +Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a +fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, +and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day +seem short. + +And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the +finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their +living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The +larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty +feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the +shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable. + +The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest +steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and +roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, +ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to +tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger +arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no +one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no +employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money +wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing +to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. +But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort. +Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; +he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and +hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting +aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding +shark-fisher the man looked up and said---- + +"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me." + +"How do you know I won't make it worse?" + +"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't +change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better, +of course. Come." + +"All right, what will you give?" + +"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one." + +"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line." + +"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't +spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there, pull +in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I +knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right--he's +landed." + +It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman +said, as he laid the creature open with his knife. + +"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. +There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my +luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own." + +"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll +rob him." + +When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his +hands in the bay, and was starting away. + +"What, you are not going?" + +"Yes. Good-bye." + +"But what about your shark?" + +"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?" + +"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report +him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty? +Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?" + +"Oh, well, you can collect it." + +"And keep it? Is that what you mean?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I +judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm +believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and +yet you must be rich." + +"I am." + +The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. +He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his +clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was +a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, +got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't +enough to buy clothes with," and went his way. + +At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his +morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A +servant put his head in and said: + +"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir." + +"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his +business." + +"He won't go, sir. I've tried." + +"He won't go? That's--why, that's unusual. He's one of two things, +then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?" + +"No, sir. He don't look it." + +"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?" + +"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important." + +"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?" + +"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day." + +"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up." + +The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not +crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing." + +Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any +words; what is it you want?" + +"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds." + +"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No--he can't be--not +with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?" + +"Nobody that you know." + +"What is your name?" + +"Cecil Rhodes." + +"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then--just for +curiosity's sake--what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?" + +"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for +myself within the next sixty days." + +"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you +interest me. And somehow you--well, you fascinate me; I think that that +is about the word. And it isn't your proposition--no, that doesn't +fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something +that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for +curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your +desire to bor----" + +"I said intention." + +"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an +unheedful valuing of its strength, you know." + +"I knew its strength." + +"Well, I must say--but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind +is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any. +(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable +--well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I +believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare +not. What is your scheme?" + +"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days." + +"What, the whole of it?" + +"The whole of it." + +"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how +you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?" + +"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more." + +"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know +what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?" + +"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get." + +"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish +you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?" + +"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days." + +"You mean, of course, that you might make it if----" + +"I said 'shall'." + +"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I +ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! +Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got +what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, +an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an +entire colony on speculation. Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized, +if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you +make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you----" + +"I don't think--I know." + +"Definite again. How do you know?" + +"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up +fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising." + +"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have +just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't +stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I +have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The +fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty +days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no +war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest +commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . . +Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, +when----" + +"Because I have later news." + +"Later news? Oh, come--later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot +from London by the----" + +"My news is only ten days old." + +"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?" + +"Got it out of a shark." + +"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun +--raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the +single person of----" + +"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? +Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a +statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin +to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity." + +"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and +I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance +like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report----" + +"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?" + +"Andrew. What are you writing?" + +"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark--and another matter. Only ten +lines. There--now it is done. Sign it." + +"Many thanks--many. Let me see; it says--it says oh, come, this is +interesting! Why--why--look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put +up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings +with you, half and half. There, now--I've signed; make your promise good +if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old." + +"Here it is--and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that +belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, +without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is +dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber +confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur +bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'----, as clean +native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in +consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for +home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him +before the day was done, poor fellow." + +"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend +to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down +and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will +cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything +is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to +deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But +there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with +the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say +your name is?" + +"Cecil Rhodes." + +"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and +by, if you live. There are three kinds of people--Commonplace Men, +Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables, +and take the chances." + +The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first +fortune he ever pocketed. + +The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some +reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in +their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little +sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous +skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun--such as it is +with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The +young fellows scramble aboard whole--sometimes--not always. Tragedies +have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that +a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed +for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from +the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of +both. + +The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the +fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news +spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the +free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful +things in the colony. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but +our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of +securing that. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a +doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it +broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until +after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture +engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. +In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not +advisable. + +So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital +of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne--that juvenile city of sixty years, +and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small; +but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast +country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the +map--looks like a county, in fact--yet it is about as large as England, +Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is +just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as +large as the State of Texas. + +Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of +squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the +impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of +Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate +of Victoria is favorable to other great industries--among others, +wheat-growing and the making of wine. + +We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was +American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the +car was clean and fine and new--nothing about it to suggest the rolling +stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra +weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. +Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be +described as continental. + +The tickets were round-trip ones--to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in +South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred +more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip +wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to +buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need +them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing +than he needs. + +Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the +most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the +frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers +were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the +biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break +in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that +gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some +petrified legislator's shoulders. + +It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to +Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the +owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of +things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the +colonies--the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other +one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but +another effort to explain the inexplicable. + +All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of +course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed +upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted. + +Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a +custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good +deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it +here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire +of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could +manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron +were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama +forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were +several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron +carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be +valuable enough to be coined when it arrived. + +We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that +the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the +Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say, +but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; +towering and majestic masses of blue--a softly luminous blue, a +smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the +blue of the sky--made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. +A wonderful color--just divine. + +A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were +rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe +condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may +have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me +distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a +country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually +erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been +very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for +a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order. + +We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and +cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The +waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The +usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies--generally +duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levee in +Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that +they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how. + +All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through +thin--not thick--forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks +rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark--erysipelas convalescents, so +to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, +built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and +the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children--rugged little +simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the +banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk. + +And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with +showy advertisements--mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of +"sheepdip." If that is the name--and I think it is. It is a stuff like +tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of +the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip +to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It +is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed +with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad +coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and +enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip +makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get +railroad coffee? + +We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not +a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of +game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to +Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no +Aboriginals--no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. +In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the +curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We +have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. +It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably +familiar with it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to +stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming +excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was +famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga. This +was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was +out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he +soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of +space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in +unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as to which of the two long-missing +persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir +Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English +history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the +dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and +fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played +upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a +British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial +development. + +When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what +daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale, as compared +with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The +fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this +splendid Tichborne romance. + +He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such +people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most +picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never +happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did +happen. + +It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive +him out; and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still +believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to +convict him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes +still believed in him; and among these believers were many educated and +intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir +Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he +got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the +Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view. + +He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. +This was but a few months ago--not very much short of a generation since +he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his +death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was +only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher--that and nothing +more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even +his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating +incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a +weaker article would probably disagree with them. + +I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I +attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for +him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening +dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were +about twenty-five gentlemen present; educated men, men moving in good +society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of distinction, +none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and +admirers. It was "Sir Roger," always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one +withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if +it tasted good. + +For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only +Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I arrived in London with my +wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by +a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but +I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of about +six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were +ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their +size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to +the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in +England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay +twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the +specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station. + +These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in +Europe, three months ahead; if we were in America, six to twelve months +ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and +also for the end of the visit. + +This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It +asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from London, August 6th. The +carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days +later-train specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom +Hughes." + +I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said: +"Accept, and be thankful." + +He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine +attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. +He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately +manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going +a long way to see--like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition; +liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort +coming and going. + +We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years--the last one in 1879. +Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a +steam yacht--a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in +all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things. + +The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were +at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter +of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for +my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and +opened it. It was the usual note--as to paucity of lines--and was +written on the customary strip of paper; but there was nothing usual +about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any +assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture-tour in +Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, +the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her +husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would +already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this +note; that the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and +city governments; and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had +not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the +sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry +Bascom." + +My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would +have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right +ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those sorrowing +governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money. + +I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture +doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been +able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their +impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a +ghost? None--and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know +about that man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait. +When I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he +passed from life, and I never saw him again.. My curiosity faded away. + +However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And +naturally: for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing +compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on +business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of +that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm--they had never heard +of him, and didn't believe in him. + +I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in +Melbourne. The government would remember; and the other mourners. At +the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about +the matter. But no--it turned out that they had never heard of it. + +So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I +believed it would never be cleared up--in this life--so I dropped it out +of my mind. + +But at last! just when I was least expecting it---- + +However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the +matter again, in a far-distant chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us +that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, +and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to +enjoy it. + -Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately +city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system +of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and +public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, +and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and +sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, +and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a +squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and +banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything +that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of +Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one +specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is +the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the +Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of +November, Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land +and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from +the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of +high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other +duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight +before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until +all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet +the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging +outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred +thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the +spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to +be seen in Australasia elsewhere. + +It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their +clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds +as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until +now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' +clothes; but one might know that. + +And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a +delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is +vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change +hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the +fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done, +the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. +And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and +transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and +count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then +lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole +year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy +again. + +The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be +difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays +and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. +Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them +gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but +not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in +each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter +of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. +Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an +enthusiasm which are universal--and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup +Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual +day, in any country, which can be named by that large name--Supreme. I +can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose +approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and +preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but +this one does it. + +In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the +whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and +Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can +arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown +Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium +and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone--if still alive. The +approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent +people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know +what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard +and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so +dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit +down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a +year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become +general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is +natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard +time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their +enthusiasm. + +We have a supreme day--a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a +day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; +but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it +cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup. + +In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days--Christmas and the +Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy. + +I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is +unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long +time. + +The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; +next, the novelties; and finally the history of the places and countries +visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced +civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in +the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of +Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There +will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be +found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of +difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the +incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be +able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and +variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according +to his geographical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from +those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they, +more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At +least it seemed so to me, and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, +at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater, +but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on +my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in +considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave +me this pleasant salutation: + +"Hello, Mark!" + +"Here's to you, old chap! + +"Say--Mark!--is he dead?"--a reference to a passage in some book of mine, +though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I +didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the +first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy +height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry +like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. +I will remark here--if it is not an indecorum--that the welcome which an +American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which +will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his +voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; +he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each +time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no +trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, +suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to +remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have +been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances. + +And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the +unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to +the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a +prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the +public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of +the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, +for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively +and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, +and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or +since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation +of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will +dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get +to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by +baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their +differences so much better and also so much more definitely. + +No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of +modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from +the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just +like stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their +hands and yell in unison--no stranger can tell what--and the president +calmly says "Sold to Smith & Co., threpence farthing--next!"--when +probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know? + +In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating +things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, +and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming +interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The +palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich +in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance +ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, +and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often +ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as +beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have +grounds--domains--about them which rival in charm and magnitude those +which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I was not out +in the country; I had my hands full in town. + +And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of +palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and +its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost +always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is +itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes +the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like +history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, +no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and +incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all +true, they all happened. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they +shall inherit the earth. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, +population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe +in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's +commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British +Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one +--Russia--is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British +Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. +Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the +British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the +middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will +represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are +about the same--400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these +figures. Even Russia is left far behind. + +The population of Australasia--4,000,000--sinks into nothingness, and is +lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics +indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its +share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The +value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions +of dollars,--[New South Wales Blue Book.]--and it is claimed that more +than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's +exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this, +Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to +a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade +amounting to a hundred and fifty millions. + +In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of +goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents +commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually +by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000. Now, here are some +faith-straining figures: + +Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000. + +Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000. + +That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for +export some whither), is worth $1.15; that of the individual +Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another +way, the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an +annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends away $375 +worth. + +There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and +others, which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product, +both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50; or, $37.50 +for the family-aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of +multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate production would be +nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once +get started. + +We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province +of South Australia--a seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found +several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going out on circuit, +and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver +mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken +Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on +the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn +westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat +shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the +Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; +southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, +then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales +once more--to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to +Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant +back northeast and over the border--to Buffalo, New York. + +But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver +discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world. Its +stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most +fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a +month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth and buys your house at +your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few +shares, and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor +invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship +company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of +those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center +with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once. Adelaide was +close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the +border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth +while for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast trade-profit of +Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales +furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles--mainly +through alien countries--to administer it, but Adelaide takes the +dividends and makes no moan. + +We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night. +In the morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country--the kind of thing +which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile +aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to +time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then slipping back again, and +leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the +novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here +and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the +searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is +near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary +which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody +can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he +will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the +novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, +and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it +--as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might as well walk +under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should +think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt +out people lost in the scrub. Also in the "bush"; also in the desert; +and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground +which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints. + +From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became +convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a +penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of +observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so +remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an +official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government +of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint +marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but +knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or +yesterday. + +And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with +B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A. will produce +an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the tracker +see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow +a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions, and frequently +doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the time, +and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and +mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings +his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around +in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is +after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and +ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now +wherein does one cow-track differ from another? There must be a +difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a +difference minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the +late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a member of a race charged +by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human +intelligence. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +It is easier to stay out than get out. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting +in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several +varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied +and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded +one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one +peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The +foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half +of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid +and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching. +The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last +samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart. There +was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its +foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself +above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was +not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each +individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself +in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling +grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful +sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see +the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet. + +On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom--importations +from England--and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit +tried to tell me which--was which; but as he didn't know, he had +difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had +never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and +more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get +interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most +of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it +is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and +the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst +out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of +sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch +his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, +a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It +is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality +usually wanting in Australian blossoms. + +The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the +gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of +twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six +shillings in his pocket--an adventurer without trade, profession, or +friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head: he would stay +until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five +years for the accumulation of this fortune. + +"That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet." + +As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him +to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the +previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this +half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded. + +"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he +left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just +in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out +L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded +L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the +country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could +go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about +his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South +Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land +boom a while before." There it is again; picturesque history +--Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. +In 1836 the British Parliament erected it--still a solitude--into a +Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery. +Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and +invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. +It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of +people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began +to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the +sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come, +prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was +prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A +village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and +in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on +costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots +were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways +conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been +accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the +world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own +use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor +had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were +built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious +values--on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during +four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge +amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land +company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a +rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other +lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately +had been a buzzing and populous hive of men. + +Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000. +During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival +there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis +had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper +mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced. + +The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed--followed so +vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this +little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay +hard prices for them--once $50 a barrel for flour--had become an exporter +of grain. + +The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to +show especial regard for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in +its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that +colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, +conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and +South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks. + +Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a +strong word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the +American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world there was +not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was +buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop +and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The +prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's +aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the +kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the +continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After +the tanning, the leather takes a new name--which I have forgotten--I only +remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes +the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago, +but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of +tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now +then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really +entitled to bear that high epithet--unique. And I suppose that there is +not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a +sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one +Pope, there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living +god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large +populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings +myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come +good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit." + +Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and +were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to +the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it +could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, +and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect--mountains, crags, +country homes, gardens, forests--color, color, color everywhere, and the +air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the +downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway +opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away +into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and +beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city. + +We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble +capital, of buts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom. +No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine +homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing +masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful. + +There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence, +desiring to show especial regard for the neighboring colony on the west +called Western Australia--and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare +which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's +conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently +conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie; +and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving +thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good, and waits. + +But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable +home for every alien who chooses to come; and for his religion, too. +She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and +yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of +samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can +think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. +One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this +cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census: + +Church of England,........... 89,271 +Roman Catholic,.............. 47,179 +Wesleyan,.................... 49,159 +Lutheran,.................... 23,328 +Presbyterian,................ 18,206 +Congregationalist,........... 11,882 +Bible Christian,............. 15,762 +Primitive Methodist,......... 11,654 +Baptist,..................... 17,547 +Christian Brethren,.......... 465 +Methodist New Connexion,..... 39 +Unitarian,................... 688 +Church of Christ,............ 3,367 +Society of Friends,.......... 100 +Salvation Army,.............. 4,356 +New Jerusalem Church,........ 168 +Jews,........................ 840 +Protestants (undefined),..... 6,532 +Mohammedans,................. 299 +Confucians, etc.,............ 3,884 +Other religions,............. 1,719 +Object,...................... 6,940 +Not stated,.................. 8,046 + +Total,.......................320,431 + + +The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as +returned: + +Agnostics, +Atheists, +Believers in Christ, +Buddhists, +Calvinists, +Christadelphians, +Christians, +Christ's Chapel, +Christian Israelites, +Christian Socialists, +Church of God, +Cosmopolitans, +Deists, +Evangelists, +Exclusive Brethren, +Free Church, +Free Methodists, +Freethinkers, +Followers of Christ, +Gospel Meetings, +Greek Church, +Infidels, +Maronites, +Memnonists, +Moravians, +Mormons, +Naturalists, +Orthodox, +Others (indefinite), +Pagans, +Pantheists, +Plymouth Brethren, +Rationalists, +Reformers, +Secularists, +Seventh-day Adventists, +Shaker, +Shintoists, +Spiritualists, +Theosophists, +Town (City) Mission, +Welsh Church, +Huguenot, +Hussite, +Zoroastrians, +Zwinglian, + + +About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious +atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, +Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there. +And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: +they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the +Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. +What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a +welcome toy everywhere else in the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that +other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these +paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under +glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would +still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the +atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat--these would all be there, in place +of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. +Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of +doors in Australia.--[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an +authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The +thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January, 1880, +the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.] + +When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of +vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has everything that grows on +the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied +tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes +the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of +the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful +tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually +name a foreign country as the place of its origin--India, Africa, Japan, +China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. + +In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass +that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened +his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed +with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human +laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the +laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and +beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate +the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably +survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good +reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has +any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. +he will not kill all of them. + +In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog--the dingo. He was a +beautiful creature--shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his +aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The +dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the +whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog +in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors +first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. +He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in +an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and +that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. +He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried +out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for +man--the white man. + +South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a +southern exposure except one--Queensland. Properly speaking, South +Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center +of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000 +miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little +spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its +population; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere--as elsewhere as +they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver +and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is +plenty of room. + +A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of +wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the +upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 1871-2 when +her population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there +were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but +once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried +over immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to +supply the men and cattle with water. + +A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to +India, and there was telegraphic communication with England from India. +And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it meant +connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could +watch the London markets daily, now; the profit to the wool-growers of +Australia was instant and enormous. + +A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 +miles--the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has +to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still, but +little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are +here tabulated.--[From "Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but +the last two.] + + Miles. + +Melbourne-Mount Gambier,.......300 +Mount Gambier-Adelaide,........270 +Adelaide-Port Augusta,.........200 +Port Augusta-Alice Springs...1,036 +Alice Springs-Port Darwin,.....898 +Port Darwin-Banjoewangie,... 1,150 +Banjoewangie-Batavia,..........480 +Batavia-Singapore,.............553 +Singapore-Penang,..............399 +Penang-Madras,...............1,280 +Madras-Bombay,.................650 +Bombay-Aden,.................1,662 +Aden-Suez,...................1,346 +Suez-Alexandria,...............224 +Alexandria-Malta,..............828 +Malta-Gibraltar,.............1,008 +Gibraltar-Falmouth,..........1,061 +Falmouth-London,...............350 +London-New York,.............2,500 +New York-San Francisco,......3,500 + + +I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather +in the neighboring city of Glenelg to commemorate the Reading of the +Proclamation--in 1836--which founded the Province. If I have at any time +called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it +is a Province; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named +in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the Province's +national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the pre-eminent +holiday; and that is saying much, in a country where they seem to have a +most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's +holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is +the desire of the politician--indeed, it is the very breath of the +politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the +workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a +great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. +He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am +glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be +bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but +was not able to do it. + +You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so +politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet--the +Minister of Public Works-was an American, born and reared in New England. +There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other +way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. +No amount of horse-racing can damn this community. + +The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in +the 1,000--about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, +and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the +average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate for +the old people. There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could +remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had all +been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They +showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward +aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to +talk; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of +it. They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The governor and +the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. +They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But +they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions +which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are +the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most +animated way; and the more the mayor gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! +Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and +reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole +house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter +old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the +laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking--jokes of the +vintage of 1836--and then the way they do go on! And finally when ushers +come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into +their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired--I could bang along a week!" +and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of +their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other +end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and +begins his carefully prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity-- + + "When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in + reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, + of wisdom, of forethought, of----" + +Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've +thought of another one!" and at it they go, with might and main, hearing +not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the +visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away +till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity, +too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth +over, in these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things +they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing. + +It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was +amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic; for they had seen +so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had +built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their +commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to see the +structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised +for honorable work. + +One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; +things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent +--remarkably so in some directions--and he said that along with their +unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he +considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced +their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of +their brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen +a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with +those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the +smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the +trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities which +they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, +could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some +wonderful things--some almost incredible things--which he had seen the +blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed +to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books. + +It is contended--and may be said to be conceded--that the boomerang was +known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of +this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended +that it was known to the ancient Egyptians. + +One of two things is then apparent, either some one with a boomerang +arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge +of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it. +It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the +fact. But there is no hurry. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 2 +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 5809.txt or 5809.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/0/5809/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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