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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:26:13 -0700 |
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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/5810-h.zip b/5810-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6bfd7dd --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h.zip diff --git a/5810-h/5810-h.htm b/5810-h/5810-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a04400 --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h/5810-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3209 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, Part 3</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 3</h2> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 3 +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 3 + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #5810] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 3 *** + + + + +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 3.</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> + + + + <center><h2>CONTENTS OF VOLUME 3.</h2></center> + + +<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> +<h3><a href="#ch20">CHAPTER XX.</a></h3> +<p> +A Caller--A Talk about Old Times--The Fox Hunt--An Accurate Judgment of +an Idiot--How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch21">CHAPTER XXI</a>.</h3> +<p> +The "Weet-Weet"--Keeping down the Population--Victoria--Killing the +Aboriginals--Pioneer Days in Queensland--Material for a Drama--The +Bush--Pudding with Arsenic Revenge--A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method--Death of +Donga Billy + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h3> +<p> +Continued Description of Aboriginals--Manly Qualities--Dodging +Balls--Feats of Spring--Jumping--Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art 'Well +Digging--Endurance--Surgery--Artistic Abilities--Fennimore Cooper's Last +Chance--Australian Slang + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h3> +<p> +To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)--Description of Horsham--At the +Hotel--Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils--High +Temperature--Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.--The Bird with a Forgettable +Name--The Magpie and the Lady--Fruit Trees--Soils--Sheep Shearing--To +Stawell--Gold Mining Country--$75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep +House--Fine Grapes and Wine--The Dryest Community on Earth--The Three +Sisters--Gum Trees and Water + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h3> +<p> +Road to Ballarat--The City--Great Gold Strike, 1851--Rush for +Australia--"Great Nuggets"--Taxation--Revolt and Victory--Peter Lalor and the +Eureka Stockade--"Pencil Mark"--Fine Statuary at +Ballarat--Population--Ballarat English + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h3> +<p> +Bound for Bendigo--The Priest at Castlemaine--Time Saved by +Walking--Description of Bendigo--A Valuable Nugget--Perseverence and +Success--Mr. Blank and His Influence--Conveyance of an Idea--I Had to Like the +Irishman--Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club--My Bascom Mystery +Solved + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h3> +<p> +Where New Zealand Is--But Few Know--Things People Think They Know--The +Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z. + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h3> +<p> +The South Pole Swell--Tasmania--Extermination of the Natives--The Picture +Proclamation--The Conciliator--The Formidable Sixteen + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h3> +<p> +When the Moment Comes the Man Appears--Why Ed. Jackson called on +Commodore Vanderbilt--Their Interview--Welcome to the Child of His +Friend--A Big Time but under Inspection--Sent on Important Business--A Visit to +the Boys on the Boat + +<br><br><br> +<h3><a href="#ch29">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></h3> +<p> +Tasmania, Early Days--Description of the Town of Hobart--An Englishman's +Love of Home Surroundings--Neatest City on Earth--The Museum--A Parrot +with an Acquired Taste--Glass Arrow Beads--Refuge for the Indigent too +healthy + +</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><hr><br> +<br><br><br> +<br> +<br><br> +<h2><a name="ch20"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<p><i>It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three +unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, +and the prudence never to practice either of them.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>From diary: + +<p>Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years +ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the +people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said: + +<p>"Do you remember my introducing you to an earl--the Earl of C.?" + +<p>"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, +just starting--belated--for the train. I remember it." + +<p>"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was +not looking for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and +interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours, +and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some +particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that +day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but the +thing that surprised me was this: when I induced you, you said, 'I am +glad to meet your lordship gain.' The I again' was the surprise. He is +a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you +hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, +'Why, what do you know about him?' and I understood you to say, 'Oh, +nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of----' Then we were gone, +and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a +quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still +wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess +it out. He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good +judge of those--no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because +you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it must be +that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of +course you hadn't had you?" + +<p>"Yes, I had." + +<p>"Is that so? Where?" + +<p>"At a fox-hunt, in England." + +<p>"How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had +you any conversation with him?" + +<p>"Some--yes." + +<p>"Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk +about?" + +<p>"About the fox. I think that was all." + +<p>"Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression. +What did he talk about?" + +<p>"The fox." + +<p>It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an +impression upon you?" + +<p>"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of--however, I will tell +you all about it, then you will understand. It was a quarter of a +century ago 1873 or '74. I had an American friend in London named F., +who was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to +come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the +morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my +mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter +before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. +I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the +common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that +went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go +with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and +there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by. + +<p>"When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a +low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with +heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart +fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. +I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited, +dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility +which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the +forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating; then all of a +sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by +and disappeared in the forest on the right; there was a pause, and then +a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the +left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, +a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he +came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to +see him ride; he was a master horseman. He came like, a storm till he +was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall, then he +stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails, and shouted +like a demon: + +<p>"'Which way'd the fox go?' + +<p>"I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited, +you know. But I was calm; so I said softly, and without acrimony: + +<p>"'Which fox?' + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p198.jpg (51K)" src="images/p198.jpg" height="505" width="650"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>"It seemed to anger him. I don't know why; and he thundered out: + +<p>"'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?' + +<p>"I said, with great gentleness--even argumentatively: + +<p>"'If you could be a little more definite--a little less vague--because I +am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you will know even better +than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify, +and----' + +<p>"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand +years!' and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would +snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man. + +<p>"I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too--oh, all alive. She +said: + +<p>"'He spoke to you!--didn't he?' + +<p>"'Yes, it is what happened.' + +<p>"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew be spoke to you! Do +you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds! +Tell me--what do you think of him?' + +<p>"'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and +accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.' + +<p>"It pleased her. I thought it would." + +<p>G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the +quarantine-bars on the frontiers; and so did we, for we left the next +day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian +custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but for the +thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to +the Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a +letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending +me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian +Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In addition +to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were +filled exclusively with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in +Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going +to ship these through by express; but at the last moment an order went +throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless +the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these +things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them +in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of +terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian +frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I +was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed. + +<p>We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and +the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to +have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering +at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to +give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the +language; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a tall handsome +man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the +station-master--and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put it into +his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his eye caught +the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap and made a +beautiful bow to me, and said in English: + +<p>"Which is your baggage? Please show it to me." + +<p>I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it; nobody was +interested in it; all the family's attempts to get attention to it had +failed--except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable +goods. It was just being opened. My officer said: + +<p>"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. +Now please come and show the hand-baggage." + +<p>He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he +gave orders again, in his emphatic military way: + +<p>"Chalk these. Chalk all of them." + +<p>Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his +way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre +of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were +present getting their baggage chalked; and as we passed down in review on +our way to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy +which gave me deep satisfaction. + +<p>But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with +German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a +porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and +gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, +moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco +tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered +it up in his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead +of him past that long wall of passengers again--he chattering and +exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look +as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to +shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at +heart I was cruelly humbled. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p203.jpg (54K)" src="images/p203.jpg" height="421" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p203.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of +it was at the worst, the stately station-master stepped out from +somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him; +and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying +to him the whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very +angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he +began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off +his hat and made that beautiful bow and said: + +<p>"Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here---" He turned +to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian +lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were +moving in procession again--he in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with +my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and +I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p205.jpg (17K)" src="images/p205.jpg" height="331" width="573"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch21"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<p><i>Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to +get himself envied.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all. +I met but few men who had seen it thrown--at least I met but few who +mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden +cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is +only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This +feather--so to call it--is not thrown through the air, but is flung with +an underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front +of the thrower; then it glances and makes a long skip; glances again, +skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends +skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good +chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards; +but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, +and earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured +distance of two hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even +further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and +they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards; and so weightless +a toy--a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect; and not sailing +through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff +at every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the +feat and did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about +aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government. + +<p>What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical +strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance. +It must be art. But no one explains what the art of it is; nor how it +gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any +two-ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or bumping along the +ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says: + +<p>"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is +truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of +Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width +of Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp +and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground +being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it +looks just like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its +movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a +kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it." + +<p>The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in +the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary +an instrument as the boomerang. + +<p>There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked +skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable +trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been +race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual +reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's +estimate of them. + +<p>They were lazy--always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a +killing defect. Surely they could have invented and built a competent +house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the +agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and +lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just plain +savages, for all their smartness. + +<p>With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and +with no epidemic diseases among them till the white man came with those +and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there +was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race +in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept population down by +infanticide--largely; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not +need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. +The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth +several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population +80 percent. in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as +that before. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p208.jpg (42K)" src="images/p208.jpg" height="580" width="624"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria--a +country eighty times as large as Rhode Island, as I have already said. +By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the +whites came along in the middle of the 'Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived +in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode +Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities; +indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The +Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily: from 173 persons it faded +to 34 in twenty years; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered +one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 +when the white man came; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven years +later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes +scattered about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of +full blood are very scarce now. It is said that the aboriginals continue +in some force in the huge territory called Queensland. + +<p>The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the +primary law of savage life: that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe +is responsible--each individual of it--and you may take your change out +of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. +When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law, and +killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a +monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such +creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly +killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of +civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very +precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a child, in the +early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we get informing +pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each +other. + +<p>Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. +Praed says: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that + they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave + little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters + increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or + three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps + lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the + Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual + event. + +<p> "The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in + words. Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where + perhaps foot of white man has never trod--interminable vistas where + the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their + lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic + pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which + the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level untimbered plains + alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken + by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast + and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where + the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a + belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle. + +<p> "The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, + birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which + in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd + of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the + grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of + locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the + screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled + lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the + dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the + curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of + tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other +details, you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how +loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that +profound wilderness miles and miles apart--at each station half a dozen +persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always +ill-nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had not +bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in +authority, nobody competent to sell and convey; and the tribes themselves +had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The +ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion +was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for a tragedy +could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, + having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying + wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept + stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he + slept." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was +up. It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was +determined--and permanently: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites + when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in + a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my + childish sense of justice. + +<p> "They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some + cases were destroyed like vermin. + +<p> "Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by + Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an + attack, parleyed with them from his house-door. He told them it was + Christmas-time--a time at which all men, black or white, feasted; + that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the + store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had + never dreamed of--a great pudding of which all might eat and be + filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was made + and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it + had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!" +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p211.jpg (85K)" src="images/p211.jpg" height="1083" width="645"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit +was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the +savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was +merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, +and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter, +and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been +sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, +it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and +attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes +hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of +exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our +civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no +such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and +innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him +to death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to +it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. In many +countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care +for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is +loving-kindness to it. In more than one country we have hunted the savage and +his little children and their mother with dogs and guns through the woods +and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the region with happy +laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild +supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind, because custom +has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to +it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land from him, and made +him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken his pride, and made +death his only friend, and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks; +and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a +quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. In the Matabeleland +today--why, there we are confining ourselves to sanctified custom, we +Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes in London; and nobody +cares, because we are used to the old holy customs, and all we ask is +that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon the attention of +our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the poisoner, "That +squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the contempt of +posterity." + +<p>I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and +severely, but I stop there. I blame him for, the indiscretion of +introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our +civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it +is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in every way he can; +and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The +squatter's judgment was bad--that is plain; but his heart was right. He +is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history +who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and +tried to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings +with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves to +be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence. + +<p>This paragraph is from a London journal: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of + civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage + to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that + penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the + Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a + derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council + General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross + the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, + cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost + the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few + five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow +murder, through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle +friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish +friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift +release of his poisoned pudding. + +<p>There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's +notion that he is less savage than the other savages.--[See Chapter on +Tasmania, post.] + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch22"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<p><i>Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.</i> + + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before +you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is +fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the +country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both +in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, +Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous +literature, and one which must endure. Materials--there is no end to +them! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by +himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties--varieties +not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any +picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and +they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In +his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is +everything--everything that a human creature can be. He covers the +entire ground. He is a coward--there are a thousand fact to prove it. +He is brave--there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is +treacherous--oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true--the white man's +records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, +worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger +who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors, +and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on +him only yesterday--there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride +by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a +long life--it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the +same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by +lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm--it is of +record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, +and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough +without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white +man's food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and +rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, +yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law +goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that +menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not +acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little +constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means +of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a +correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can +track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot +discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot +master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without +the model--if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the +searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; +and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white +man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within +certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest +known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able +to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel +that he could boil water in. He is the prize-curiosity of all the races. +To all intents and purposes he is dead--in the body; but he has features +that will live in literature. + +<p>Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed +to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals +which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert +here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their +judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite +extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and +muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen +an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force +ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge +them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of +those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; "Yet he depended, +with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his +agility." + +<p>The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a +protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is +about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but +slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow. The difficulty about +a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it +suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes +straight for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one +side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for +half-an-hour, or less. + +<p>Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119 +yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen +yards. + +<p>We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board +and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr. +Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had +sometimes done it over fourteen. But what is that to this: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he + dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an + inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting + upright on horseback--both man and horse being of the average size. + The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly + on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision + with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the + hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete +run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a +side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could not +have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know this, +because I tried it myself. + +<p>One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art. + +<p>Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen +or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore--dug them in +the sand--wells that were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the +work beautifully executed." + +<p>Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from +such a depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet +of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in +on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming +impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be. + +<p>Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert +intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the +kangaroo, and other game: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and + noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or + fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the + tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; + in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, + in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal + or warn him of danger. A little examination of the trunk of a tree + which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending + and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the + night before without coming down again or not." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p218.jpg (48K)" src="images/p218.jpg" height="629" width="618"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these +people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest +Mohawk he ever invented. + +<p>All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not +close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian +aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, +carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures +of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of +the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, +both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil +it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people. + +<p>His place in art--as to drawing, not color-work--is well up, all things +considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but +on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of +civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and +De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but +better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping +and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of +the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms, with +clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the +"corrobboree" further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. +And well enough as to intention, but--my word! + +<p>The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that. + +<p>All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The +Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do +not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. +They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had +been a surgeon before he became a clergyman: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> 1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King + George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on + foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a + water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I + observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, + collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place + his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly + withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn + guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he + repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange + conduct, he only said, 'Me carpenter-make 'em' ('I am mending my + foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which + had been torn off by a tea-tree stump, in which it had been caught + during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical + composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of + cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had +happened"--and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a +surgeon and then do his own surgery. + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> 2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as + a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a + fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his + chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated the viscera to a + considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb + behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action + gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I could feel a + hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I made a + deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which + was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from + half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly + digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which it had been + exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound + made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small + cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without + flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his + good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not + materially annoy him. He was perfectly well in a few days." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that +the patient enjoyed--whatever it was: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> 3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me + with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. + He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for + this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just + below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while + about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through + the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw; and having made as + presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of + the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few + days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the + native told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had + struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it + was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous + operation, which it appears is not uncommon among these people in + their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth + only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow + the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground. + He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal, which + was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The + cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he + was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid + of a long stout stick, although he was more than a week on the + road." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p220.jpg (64K)" src="images/p220.jpg" height="859" width="621"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made +for him by the doctor, because "it had no feeling in it." It must have +had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think. + +<p>So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. +They are marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century, +now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in +comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in +every way. If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have +seen some of those people--but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to +see a stuffed one. + +<p>Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast +cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the +strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would +naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but +at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases. +They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have +created eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the "Never-never +Country." Also this felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never +Country"--that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without +merit: "heifer-paddock"--young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick +up" equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a +train. "New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"--new arrival. + +<p>And then there is the immortal "My word!" "We must import it." "M-y word!" +In cold print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat Caesar!" but spoken +with the proper Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it +for grace and charm and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive; +it is not suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but "M-y +word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to +say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it +struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the +dead corpse of the thing, the soul was not there--the tones were +lacking--the informing spirit--the deep feeling--the eloquence. But the +first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p222.jpg (13K)" src="images/p222.jpg" height="329" width="489"> +</center> + + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch23"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> + +<p><i>Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of +Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. +Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor--one of those famous +dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, +melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a +horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country +town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden +plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers. + +<p>"Horsham, October 17. +At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of the +London Bank of Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in +opulent leaf, and every leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing +spring is upon it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank +and a little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring +fountain-sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and mottled +with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like +flash-lights through an opal--a most beautiful tree, and a striking contrast to +the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly defined--it +is a kodak for faithful, hard, unsentimental detail; the other an +impressionist picture, delicious to look upon, full of a subtle and +exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft +loveliness." + +<p>It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree--an importation from +China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long +red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a +distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new +charm. + +<p>There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were +driven out to it by its chief. The conveyance was an open wagon; the +time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine +brilliant--and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In some countries an indolent +unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have +been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was nothing of +that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense +of heat; indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and +exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not +have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired. Of course, +the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere. In that +plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is +88 or 90 deg. in New York. + +<p>The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to +be a hundred yards wide between the fences. I was not given the width in +yards, but only in chains and perches--and furlongs, I think. I would +have given a good deal to know what the width was, but I did not pursue +the matter. I think it is best to put up with information the way you +get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for +it, and say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could +tell you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but +that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are +shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows +what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you +which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift +the subject. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p224.jpg (9K)" src="images/p224.jpg" height="481" width="260"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and +cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long distances--immense +journeys--from worn-out places to new ones where were water and fresh +pasturage; and this wide space had to be left in grass and unfenced, or +the stock would have starved to death in the transit. + +<p>On the way we saw the usual birds--the beautiful little green parrots, +the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest +plumage and the eternally-forgettable name--the bird that is the smartest +among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him +to death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it begins with M. +I wish it began with G. or something that a person can remember. + +<p>The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He +is a handsome large creature, with snowy white decorations, and is a +singer; he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely. He was once modest, +even diffident; but he lost all that when he found out that he was +Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and +impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet--never +coming when he is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying +disobedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs all +over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I think he learns +to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his friends say that he +knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame magpie +in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed +he owned it. The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the +lady. He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his own way, +always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making the cat's life a slow +sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in +perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time that silence was +wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked to +sing he would go out and take a walk. + +<p>It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and +waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has +dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were producing oranges, +apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of apples--in +fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not seem to +miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition. + +<p>Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best +in them and what climates are best for them. A man who is ignorantly +trying to produce upon his farm things not suited to its soil and its +other conditions can make a journey to the college from anywhere in +Australia, and go back with a change of scheme which will make his farm +productive and profitable. + +<p>There were forty pupils there--a few of them farmers, relearning their +trade, the rest young men mainly from the cities--novices. It seemed a +strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction for +city-bred youths, but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too; they +are above the agricultural average of intelligence, and they come without +any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long +descent. + +<p>The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the +shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the business--three +days in a week. On the other three they study and hear lectures. They +are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculture--like +chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing +shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the machine. The +sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there; and the +students took off his coat with great celerity and adroitness. Sometimes +they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary with +shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as the +sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right ahead. + +<p>The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep +looked like the fat woman in the circus; after it he looked like a bench. +He was clipped to the skin; and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes +from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket. + +<p>The college was flying the Australian flag--the gridiron of England +smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red field that had the +random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it. + +<p>From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of +Victoria. Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was +half a peck of surface-gold--gold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact, +and pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be pleasanter if it +would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to +handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz +mine; a lady owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month +from it, and is able to keep house. + +<p>The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great +vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these +vineyards--the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving--is regarded as a +model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne +and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three years +ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in +the rock, to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term +required to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of +champagne. The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000, and +those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year. +The dryest community on the earth. The government has lately reduced the +duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. +A man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy +enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws; then the law is changed, and +the man is robbed by his own government. + +<p>On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders +called the Three Sisters--a curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high +ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from +whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early +ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size and +smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p228.jpg (23K)" src="images/p228.jpg" height="389" width="615"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and +sorrowful. The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth, apparently. +Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of +oxen. Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was +told, and were running a successful opposition to the railway! The +railways are owned and run by the government. + +<p>Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience +and resignation. It is a tree that can get along without water; still it +is fond of it--ravenously so. It is a very intelligent tree and will +detect the presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet, and send +out slender long root-fibres to prospect it. They will find it; and will +also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a +cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began to gradually reduce its +output, and finally ceased altogether to deliver water. Upon examining +into the matter it was found stopped up, wadded compactly with a mass of +root-fibres, delicate and hair-like. How this stuff had gotten into the +pipe was a puzzle for some little time; finally it was found that it had +crept in through a crack that was almost invisible to the eye. A gum +tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drinking the water. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch24"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<p><i>There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone +into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the +shares!</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort. +We had this kind of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat. +Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey. At one time a +great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged +flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size, and +equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between. +The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across +the skies. By and by these flakes fused themselves together in +interminable lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long +satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated movement, and +enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea. Later, +the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into +innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size, and ranged these +across the firmament, in receding and fading perspective, in the +similitude of a stupendous colonnade--a mirage without a doubt flung from +the far Gates of the Hereafter. + +<p>The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green +expanses of rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye contenting hedges of +commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse--and a lovely lake. One must put +in the pause, there, to fetch the reader up with a slight jolt, and keep +him from gliding by without noticing the lake. One must notice it; for a +lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of Australia as +are the dry places. Ninety-two in the shade again, but balmy and +comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect climate. + +<p>Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a +sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely. Nobody had ever heard of +it. On the 25th of August, 1851, the first great gold-strike made in +Australia was made here. The wandering prospectors who made it scraped +up two pounds and a half of gold the first day-worth $600. A few days +later the place was a hive--a town. The news of the strike spread +everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way--spread like a flash to the +very ends of the earth. A celebrity so prompt and so universal has +hardly been paralleled in history, perhaps. It was as if the name +BALLARAT had suddenly been written on the sky, where all the world could +read it at once. + +<p>The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three +months before had already started emigrants toward Australia; they had +been coming as a stream, but they came as a flood, now. A hundred +thousand people poured into Melbourne from England and other countries in +a single month, and flocked away to the mines. The crews of the ships +that brought them flocked with them; the clerks in the government offices +followed; so did the cooks, the maids, the coachmen, the butlers, and the +other domestic servants; so did the carpenters, the smiths, the plumbers, +the painters, the reporters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients, the +barkeepers, the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the +grocers, the butchers, the bakers, the doctors, the druggists, the +nurses; so did the police; even officials of high and hitherto envied +place threw up their positions and joined the procession. This roaring +avalanche swept out of Melbourne and left it desolate, Sunday-like, +paralyzed, everything at a stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, +all signs of life departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the +cloud-shadows as they scraped across the vacant streets. + +<p>That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and +lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the feverish search for its hidden +riches. There is nothing like surface-mining to snatch the graces and +beauties and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and +repulsive spectacle of it. + +<p>What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and +reloaded--and went back home for good in the same cabin they had come out +in! Not all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, +forty-five years later--what were left of them by time and death and the +disposition to rove. They were young and gay, then; they are patriarchal +and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more. They talk of the +Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, a retrospection. + +<p>Ballarat was a great region for "nuggets." No such nuggets were found in +California as Ballarat produced. In fact, the Ballarat region has +yielded the largest ones known to history. Two of them weighed about 180 +pounds each, and together were worth $90,000. They were offered to any +poor person who would shoulder them and carry them away. Gold was so +plentiful that it made people liberal like that. + +<p>Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days. Everybody was +happy, for a time, and apparently prosperous. Then came trouble. The +government swooped down with a mining tax. And in its worst form, too; +for it was not a tax upon what the miner had taken out, but upon what he +was going to take out--if he could find it. It was a license-tax license +to work his claim--and it had to be paid before he could begin digging. + +<p>Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surface-mining. +Your claim may be good, and it may be worthless. It may make you well +off in a month; and then again you may have to dig and slave for half a +year, at heavy expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not +there in cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your hard work have +been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance the miner a monthly +sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him +monthly in advance instead--why, such a thing was never dreamed of in +America. There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever +rich or poor, were taxed. + +<p>The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained--it was of no use; +the government held its ground, and went on collecting the tax. And not +by pleasant methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to +free people. The rumblings of a coming storm began to be audible. + +<p>By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest +thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution--small in size; but +great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a +principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It was the Barons +and John, over again; it was Hampden and Ship-Money; it was Concord and +Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in +political results, all of them epoch-making. It is another instance of a +victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the +people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the +men who fell at the Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument. + +<p>The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the miners +ripped and tore and trenched and harried and disembowled, and made it +yield up its immense treasure. Then they went down into the earth with +deep shafts, seeking the gravelly beds of ancient rivers and brooks--and +found them. They followed the courses of these streams, and gutted them, +sending the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and washing out of +it its enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of the two monster +nuggets mentioned above came from an old river-channel 180 feet under +ground. + +<p>Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-man's mining. +Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and staying-power, and +patience. Big companies were formed, and for several decades, now, the +lodes have been successfully worked, and have yielded great wealth. +Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines--taking the three +kinds of mining together--have contributed to the world's pocket +something over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that +this nearly invisible little spot on the earth's surface has yielded +about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years as all California has +yielded in forty-seven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, +inclusive, as reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint, is +$1,265,215,217. + +<p>A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With all my +experience of mining I had never heard of anything of the sort before. +The main gold reef runs about north and south--of course for that is the +custom of a rich gold reef. At Ballarat its course is between walls of +slate. Now the citizen told me that throughout a stretch of twelve miles +along the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black +streak of a carbonaceous nature--a streak in the slate; a streak no +thicker than a pencil--and that wherever it crosses the reef you will +certainly find gold at the junction. It is called the Indicator. Thirty +feet on each side of the Indicator (and down in the slate, of course) is +a still finer streak--a streak as fine as a pencil mark; and indeed, that +is its name Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that +thirty feet from it is the Indicator; you measure the distance, excavate, +find the Indicator, trace it straight to the reef, and sink your shaft; +your fortune is made, for certain. If that is true, it is curious. And +it is curious anyway. + +<p>Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population; and yet, since it is in +Australia, it has every essential of an advanced and enlightened big +city. This is pure matter of course. I must stop dwelling upon these +things. It is hard to keep from dwelling upon them, though; for it is +difficult to get away from the surprise of it. I will let the other +details go, this time, but I must allow myself to mention that this +little town has a park of 326 acres; a flower garden of 83 acres, with an +elaborate and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine +statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres, equipped with a +fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and little steam yachts. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p236.jpg (55K)" src="images/p236.jpg" height="1045" width="609"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was +tempted to add. I do not strike them out because they were not true or +not well said, but because I find them better said by another man--and a +man more competent to testify, too, because he belongs on the ground, and +knows. I clip them from a chatty speech delivered some years ago by Mr. +William Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of + Australasia, is mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, + vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is + pure enough to suit a Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by + climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness + unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well ordered; and + our maidens, 'not stepping over the bounds of modesty,' are as fair + as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but +that is apparent only, not real. November is summer-time there. + +<p>His compliment to the local purity of the language is warranted. It is +quite free from impurities; this is acknowledged far and wide. As in the +German Empire all cultivated people claim to speak Hanovarian German, so +in Australasia all cultivated people claim to speak Ballarat English. +Even in England this cult has made considerable progress, and now that it +is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far away when +Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of +Great Britain at large. Its great merit is, that it is shorter than +ordinary English--that is, it is more compressed. At first you have some +difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator +whom I have quoted speaks it. An illustration will show what I mean. +When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said: + +<p>"Q." + +<p>Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and +I said: + +<p>"Thank you," and he said: + +<p>"Km." + +<p>Then I saw. 'Q' is the end of the phrase "I thank you" 'Km' is the end +of the phrase "You are welcome." Mr. Little puts no emphasis upon either +of them, but delivers them so reduced that they hardly have a sound. All +Ballarat English is like that, and the effect is very soft and pleasant; +it takes all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and gives to it +a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the +faint rustling of the forest leaves. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch25"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXV.</h2> + +<p><i>"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>On the rail again--bound for Bendigo. From diary: + +<p>October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of +the rich gold-fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; +left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic +priest who was better than I was, but didn't seem to know it--a man full +of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a lovable man. He will +rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a +Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when +I say, "Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when +you were nothing but Father C., and I was nothing to what I am now?" +It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We +could have saved seven by walking. However, there was no hurry. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p240.jpg (52K)" src="images/p240.jpg" height="955" width="593"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a +great quartz-mining business, now--that business which, more than any +other that I know of, teaches patience, and requires grit and a steady +nerve. The town is full of towering chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, +and looks like a petroleum-city. Speaking of patience; for example, one +of the local companies went steadily on with its deep borings and +searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward for eleven +years--then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The eleven years' work had +cost $55,000, and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's +head. It is kept under locks and bars, as a precious thing, and is +reverently shown to the visitor, "hats off." When I saw it I had not +heard its history. + +<p>"It is gold. Examine it--take the glass. Now how much should you say it +is worth?" + +<p>I said: + +<p>"I should say about two cents; or in your English dialect, four +farthings." + +<p>"Well, it cost L11,000." + +<p>"Oh, come!" + +<p>"Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental +nuggets of the world, and this one is the monumentalest one of the three. +The other two represent 19,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand +more. It is small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to (its) +name--Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children run up +into the millions." + +<p>Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was worked, under heavy +expenses, during 17 years before pay was struck, and still another one +compelled a wait of 21 years before pay was struck; then, in both +instances, the outlay was all back in a year or two, with compound +interest. + +<p>Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together +have produced $650,000,000 worth--which is half as much as California has +produced. + +<p>It was through Mr. Blank--not to go into particulars about his name--it +was mainly through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably +pleasant and interesting. He explained this to me himself. He told me +that it was through his influence that the city government invited me to +the town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it +was through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive +through the city and shown its notable features; that it was through his +influence that I was invited to visit the great mines; that it was +through his influence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see +the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely +hut eight weeks before by robbers, and stabbed forty-six times and +scalped besides; that it was through his influence that when I arrived +this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting +up in his cot letting on to read one of my books; that it was through his +influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic Archbishop of +Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that +efforts had been made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to +supper; that it was through his influence that the dean of the editorial +fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown +me, from the summit of Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest +expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all +Australia. And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo +and I answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had +adorned the streets with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was +through his influence that it had been done. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p243.jpg (20K)" src="images/p243.jpg" height="447" width="617"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was +through his influence that all these things had happened--for that would +have been coarse; be merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly +that I only caught it fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of +perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer; conveyed it without +offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation--but conveyed +it, nevertheless. + +<p>He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and +courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old, +apparently. He called upon me at the hotel, and it was there that we had +this talk. He made me like him, and did it without trouble. This was +partly through his winning and gentle ways, but mainly through the +amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed. He was +down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his +life he could hardly have been better posted as to their contents than he +was. He made me better satisfied with myself than I had ever been +before. It was plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never +laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact, humor could not win to outward +expression on his face at all. No, he was always grave--tenderly, +pensively grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very +trying--and very pleasant at the same time--for it was at quotations from +my own books. + +<p>When he was going, he turned and said: + +<p>"You don't remember me?" + +<p>"I? Why, no. Have we met before?" + +<p>"No, it was a matter of correspondence." + +<p>"Correspondence?" + +<p>"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of +course you----" A musing pause. Then he said: + +<p>"Do you remember Corrigan Castle?" + +<p>"N-no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name." + +<p>He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his hand, then +started out; but turned back and said that I had once been interested in +Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I would go with him to his quarters in +the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over. I was a teetotaler +and liked relaxation, so I said I would. + +<p>We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten. He had a +most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on +the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and +there, and books everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud. The light +was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for +brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then he passed +a sheet of note-paper to me and said-- + +<p>"Do you remember that?" + +<p>"Oh, yes, indeed!" + +<p>The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and +interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in +the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat +gothic capitals was this--printed in blue: + +<p> THE MARK TWAIN CLUB + CORRIGAN CASTLE + ............187.. + +<p>"My!" said I, "how did you come by this?" + +<p>"I was President of it." + +<p>"No!--you don't mean it." + +<p>"It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as +long as its meetings were held in my castle--Corrigan--which was five +years." + +<p>Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it. +Five of them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the +list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before. + +<p>"You sent us the first five; the rest were bought." + +<p>This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked--subject, the +Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland. + +<p>My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I +should say. It came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on +the note-paper which I have described, and signed "By order of the +President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club +had been created in my honor, and added the hope that this token of +appreciation of my work would meet with my approval. + +<p>I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification +from over-exposure. + +<p>It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by +order of the President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two +in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in +pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues +were in their proper place; also, schedule of meetings--monthly--for +essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for +business and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches +also, there was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President, +Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was pleasant +reading, for it told me about the strong interest which the membership +took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me for a +photograph--a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent it--with a letter, +of course. + +<p>Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was; +and very artistic. It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of +grass-sprays and rushes, and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had +a gold pin back of it. After I had petted it, and played with it, and +caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of hours, the light happened to fall +upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the +light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and +rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram--mine! You can see that that jewel +was a work of art. And when you come to consider the intrinsic value of +it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that could afford +a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in the opinion of Messrs. +Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not duplicate it for +that and make a profit. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p247.jpg (6K)" src="images/p247.jpg" height="230" width="184"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>By this time the Club was well under way; and +from that time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well supplied with +business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books with laborious +fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability. As a, rule, he +synopsized; but when a speech was especially brilliant, he short-handed +it and gave me the best passages from it, written out. There were five +speakers whom he particularly favored in that way: Palmer, Forbes, +Naylor, Norris, and Calder. Palmer and Forbes could never get through a +speech without attacking each other, and each in his own way was +formidably effective--Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse, Forbes in +courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell which of +them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a polished +style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style was wholly +without ornament, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong. But after +all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke +continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest +speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of good things, but so +incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow +him. They were not intended to be funny, but they were,--funny for the +very gravity which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of +incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know the styles of +the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own +club at home. + +<p>These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words +to the page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report--a good +15,000 words, I should say,--a solid week's work. The reports were +absorbingly entertaining, long as they were; but, unfortunately for me, +they did not come alone. They were always accompanied by a lot of +questions about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club wanted +answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's +report, and the Auditor's report, and the Committee's report, and the +President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also +suggestions for the good of the Club, if any occurred to me. + +<p>By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and +grew; grew until I got to anticipating them with a cold horror. For I +was an indolent man, and not fond of letter-writing, and whenever these +things came I had to put everything by and sit down--for my own peace of +mind--and dig and dig until I got something out of my head which would +answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but for the +succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my +curse, my nightmare, the grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so +sick of sitting for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying +to satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in revolt. +I could endure my oppressions no longer. I pulled my fortitude together +and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and happy. From that +day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and +by and by they ceased to come. + +<p>Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this +all out in full confession. Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank +way, and with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the +Mark Twain Club, and the only member it had ever had! + +<p>Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never +had to work for a living, and that by the time he was thirty life had +become a bore and a weariness to him. He had no interests left; they had +paled and perished, one by one, and left him desolate. He had begun to +think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of +starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with +enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to +do. It elaborated itself on his hands;--it became twenty times more +complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it. Every new +addition to his original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a +fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the Club badge himself, +and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and +nights; then sent to London and had it made. It was the only one that +was made. It was made for me; the "rest of the Club" went without. + +<p>He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He invented the five +favorite speakers and their five separate styles. He invented their +speeches, and reported them himself. He would have kept that Club going +until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He said he worked like a slave +over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight's +work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be +alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died. + +<p>Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too. + +<p>It was wonderful--the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and +laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard +of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a +hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he +said-- + +<p>"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, +telling about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial +in Melbourne?--a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper +Holywell Hants." + +<p>"Yes." + +<p>"I wrote it." + +<p>"M-y-word!" + +<p>"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried +it out without stopping to think. It was wrong. It could have done +harm. I was always sorry about it afterward. You must forgive me. I +was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He +often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his +home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his +hand, and wrote the letter." + +<p>So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years. + + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p251.jpg (21K)" src="images/p251.jpg" height="320" width="639"> +</center> + +<br><br> +<h2><a name="ch26"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> + +<p><i>There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep +from telling their happinesses to the unhappy.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently +took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing +off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he +thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how +to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing +himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none +of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who +possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it. They +travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical +societies, and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these +people do not know these things. Since all people think they know them, +they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were an easy +prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court +decided that this kind of gambling is illegal, "because it traverses +Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which +forbids betting on a sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full +Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the court +by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges +was able to answer any of the four questions. + +<p>All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or +somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It +is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is +nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide. +It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the +distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen +hundred miles, and that there is no bridge. I learned this from +Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the great +lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the Pacific. I +asked him about New Zealand, in order to make conversation. I supposed +he would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then turn +the subject to something he was acquainted with, and my object would then +be attained; the ice would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and +get acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he was +not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to welcome it, and to +take a distinct interest in it. He began to talk--fluently, confidently, +comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for as the +subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New +Zealand was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its +history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geology, +products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done, I was lost in +wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he knows everything; in the +domain of human knowledge he is king. + +<p>I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of +hearing him answer, I asked him about Hertzegovina, and pariah, and +unique. But he began to generalize then, and show distress. I saw that +with New Zealand gone, he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as +other men. This was a curious and interesting mystery, and I was frank +with him, and asked him to explain it. + +<p>He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all, +the matter was not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret. +In substance, this is his story: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p>"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up--the +card of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which showed that +this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington +University, New Zealand. I was troubled--troubled, I mean, by the +shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once +invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty--invited to dine on that +day--not, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to +do. College etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the +dinner-talk shall begin with complimentary references to his country, its +great men, its services to civilization, its seats of learning, and +things like that; and of course the host is responsible, and must either +begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was +in great difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my +trouble grew. I found that I knew nothing about New Zealand. I thought +I knew where it was, and that was all. I had an impression that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one went over to it +on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect; and even if correct, +it would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I +should expose my College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a +member of the Faculty of the first University in America, was wholly +ignorant of his country, and he would go away and tell this, and laugh at +it. The thought of it made my face burn. + +<p>"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her +help, and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if +I had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the +visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes; and she would +talk, and keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and +make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything, and +could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the +University. +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p253.jpg (34K)" src="images/p253.jpg" height="521" width="401"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p>I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know +anything about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection +went it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you go over to +it on a bridge; but that was all he knew. It was too bad. Lawson was a +perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of our +need, it turned out that he did not know any useful thing. + +<p>"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very +real peril, and he walked the floor in anxiety, talking, and trying to +think out some way to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we +must try the rest of the Faculty--some of them might know about New +Zealand. So we went to the telephone and called up the professor of +astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on---- + +<p>"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that +all he knew was that it was close to Aus----. +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tr> +<td> +<img alt="p254a.jpg (6K)" src="images/p254a.jpg" height="384" width="153"> + + +</td> + +<td><img alt="p254b.jpg (5K)" src="images/p254b.jpg" height="380" width="135"> +</td> + +</tr> +</table> +</center> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p>"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we +could think up some other scheme. We shortly hit upon one which promised +well, and this one we adopted, and set its machinery going at once. It +was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The Faculty must be notified by +telephone to prepare. We must all get to work diligently, and at the end +of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted with New +Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before +this native. To seem properly intelligent we should have to know about +New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of government, and +commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient history, and modern +history, and varieties of religion, and nature of the laws, and their +codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of +collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, and--well, +a lot of things like that; we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry. +And while we posted up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over, +one after the other, in a studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the +New Zealander quiet, and not let him get out and come interfering with +our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped business, +stopped it entirely. + +<p>"It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by +future generations--the account of the Great Blank Day--the memorable +Blank Day--the day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday +silence prevailed all about, and the whole University stood still while +the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at meat, without shame, +in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from New +Zealand: + +<p>"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn--but we +were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a +pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just +beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of +unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and +trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and fluency +of it! + +<p>"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking +dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course. +Then that man came out with a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made +the Faculty blush. He said he was not worthy to sit in the company of +men like these; that he had been silent from admiration; that he had been +silent from another cause also--silent from shame--silent from ignorance! +'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have +served five in a professorship, and ought to know much about that +country, perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about it. I say it +with shame, that I have learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more +about New Zealand in these two hours at this table than I ever knew +before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent because I +could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws, +and revenue, and products, and history, and all that multitude of things, +was but general, and ordinary, and vague-unscientific, in a word--and it +would have been insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your +amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters, +gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent--as becomes me. But do not +change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if +you change to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty +erudition, I shall be as one lost. If you know all this about a remote +little inconsequent patch like New Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know +about any other Subject!'" +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p255.jpg (18K)" src="images/p255.jpg" height="517" width="343"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch27"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> + +<p><i>Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p><i>The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what +there is of it.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>FROM DIARY: + +<p>November 1--noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold +in the shade--an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long +swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing +in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read +somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers--Cook? or +Tasman?--accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial +evidence that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not +waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his course +and went searching elsewhere. + +<p>Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and +neighboring islands--islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages +used to gaze at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken hearts. +How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly +so. The work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of +Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination was +complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of +years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other, ambushed each other, +butchered each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary, +alert, cunning, and they knew their country well. They lasted a long +time, few as they were, and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites. + +<p>The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if +possible. One of its schemes was to capture them and coop them up, on a +neighboring island, under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for the +hunt, for the pay was good--L5 for each Black captured and delivered, but +the success achieved was not very satisfactory. The Black was naked, and +his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that would hold. +The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of +natives, and did make captures; but it was suspected that in these +surprises half a dozen natives were killed to one caught--and that was +not what the Government desired. + +<p>Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and +fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country; but +the natives managed to slip through, constantly, and continue their +murders and arsons. + +<p>The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that +they must stay in the desolate region officially appointed for them! The +proclamation was a dead letter; the savages could not read it. Afterward +a picture-proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and +these were nailed to trees in the forest. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p258.jpg (53K)" src="images/p258.jpg" height="997" width="561"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Herewith is a photographic +reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it means: + +<p>1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other; + +<p>2. He loves his black subjects; + +<p>3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged; + +<p>4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged. + +<p>Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the +labors and ingenuities of several thousand Whites for a long time with +failure as a result. Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the +beginning of the troubles between the two races, the right man was found. +No, he found himself. This was George Augustus Robinson, called in +history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not conspicuous in +any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must have +been an amazing personality; a man worth traveling far to see. It may be +his counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look for +it. + +<p>He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the +jungle, and the mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages +were hidden, and appear among them unarmed, speak the language of love +and of kindness to them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the +wild free life that was so dear to them, and go with him and surrender to +the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward, and upon their +charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a +madman. + +<p>In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the +sugar plum speculation. If the scheme was striking, and new to the +world's experience, the situation was not less so. It was this. The +White population numbered 40,000 in 1831; the Black population numbered +three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but 300 men, women, and children. The +Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and spears. The +Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried +every thinkable way to capture, kill, or subdue them; and could not do +it. If white men of any race could have done it, these would have +accomplished it. But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the +matchless 300 were unconquered, and manifestly unconquerable. They would +not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight to the bitter +end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of +their magnificent patriotism. + +<p>At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting, the surviving 300 +naked patriots were still defiant, still persistent, still efficacious +with their rude weapons, and the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which +way to turn, nor what to do. + +<p>Then the Bricklayer--that wonderful man--proposed to go out into the +wilderness, with no weapon but his tongue, and no protection but his +honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to +their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. +Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In +fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and +intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project +were right--from their standpoint--for they believed the natives to be +mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpoint--for he +believed the natives to be human beings. The truth did really lie +between the two. The event proved that Robinson's judgment was soundest; +but about once a month for four years the event came near to giving the +verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely +escaped falling under the native spears. + +<p>But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild +sentimentalist. For instance, he wanted the war parties (called) in +before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace. He wanted the best +chance of success--not a half-chance. And he was very willing to have +help; and so, high rewards were advertised, for any who would go unarmed +with him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson persuaded some tamed +natives of both sexes to go with him--a strong evidence of his persuasive +powers, for those natives well knew that their destruction would be +almost certain. As it turned out, they had to face death over and over +again. + +<p>Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their +hands. They could not ride off, horseback, comfortably into the woods +and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a talk and a treaty the +following day; for the wild men were not in a body; they were scattered, +immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the birds +could not make a living with the chances offered--scattered in groups of +twenty, a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission +must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible +regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest +and choicest human devils the world has seen--the convicts set apart to +people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"--were never able, but +once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and +struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p>"Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No one +ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of +the traveling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the +Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey +to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered terribly. One man who assisted to +carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of +its miseries. Several were disabled for life. No wonder that but one +party, escaping from Macquarrie Harbor convict settlement, arrived at the +civilized region in safety. Men perished in the scrub, were lost in +snow, or were devoured by their companions. This was the territory +traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides. All honor to his +intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity! When they had, in the depth +of winter, to cross deep and rapid rivers, pass among mountains six +thousand feet high, pierce dangerous thickets, and find food in a country +forsaken even by birds, we can realize their hardships. + +<p>"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau +of Middlesex Plains, the travelers experienced unwonted misery, and the +circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band. +Mr. Robinson wrote afterwards to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of +this passage of horrors. In that letter, of Oct 2, 1834, he states that +his Natives were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain passes; +that 'for seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid +body of snow;' that 'the snows were of incredible depth;' that 'the +Natives were frequently up to their middle in snow.' But still the +ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, and way-worn men and women were sustained by the +cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and responded most nobly to +his call." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe +remember, it was a whole tribe--"was by far the grandest feature of the +war, and the crowning glory of his efforts." The word "war" was not well +chosen, and is misleading. There was war still, but only the Blacks were +conducting it--the Whites were holding off until Robinson could give his +scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to understand that the friendly +capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing, the highest in +value, that happened during the whole thirty years of truceless +hostilities; that it was a decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the +surrender of the native Napoleon and his dreaded forces, the happy ending +of the long strife. For "that tribe was the terror of the colony," its +chief "the Black Douglas of Bush households." + +<p>Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere, in +some remote corner of the hideous regions just described, and he and his +unarmed little party started on a tedious and perilous hunt for them. At +last, "there, under the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone +rose five thousand feet in the uninhabited westward interior," they were +found. It was a serious moment. Robinson himself believed, for once, +that his mission, successful until now, was to end here in failure, and +that his own death-hour had struck. + +<p>The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteen-foot +spear poised; his warriors stood massed at his back, armed for battle, +their faces eloquent with their long-cherished loathing for white men. +"They rattled their spears and shouted their war-cry." Their women were +back of them, laden with supplies of weapons, and keeping their 150 eager +dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal to fall on. + +<p>"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of +Robinson's little party. + +<p>"I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began +his persuasions--in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased +the chief. Presently there was an interruption by the chief: + +<p>"Who are you?" + +<p>"We are gentlemen." + +<p>"Where are your guns?" + +<p>"We have none." + +<p>The warrior was astonished. + +<p>"Where your little guns?" (pistols). + +<p>"We have none." + +<p>A few minutes passed--in by-play--suspense--discussion among the +tribesmen--Robinson's tamed squaws ventured to cross the line and begin +persuasions upon the wild squaws. Then the chief stepped back "to confer +with the old women--the real arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bonwick +continues: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life + or death from the president of the amphitheatre, so waited our + friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued. In a + few minutes, before a word was uttered, the women of the tribe threw + up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! + Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and + upward glance of gratitude, came the friends of peace. The + impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in + the other's rank a loved one of the past. + +<p> "It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears + flowed at the recital of woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter + closed the eventful day." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood, Robinson brought +them all in, willing captives, and delivered them to the white governor, +and ended the war which powder and bullets, and thousands of men to use +them, had prosecuted without result since 1804. + +<p>Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music--that is fable; but the +miracle wrought by Robinson is fact. It is history--and authentic; and +surely, there is nothing greater, nothing more reverence-compelling in +the history of any country, ancient or modern. + +<p>And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will +develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the +Conciliator in--no, it is to another man, I forget his name. + +<p>However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it +honored themselves. The Government gave him a money-reward and a +thousand acres of land; and the people held mass-meetings and praised him +and emphasized their praise with a large subscription of money. + +<p>A good dramatic situation; but the curtain fell on another: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> "When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much + surprise to find that the L30,000 of a little earlier day had been + spent, and the whole population of the colony placed under arms, in + contention with an opposing force of sixteen men with wooden spears! + Yet such was the fact. The celebrated Big River tribe, that had + been raised by European fears to a host, consisted of sixteen men, + nine women, and one child. With a knowledge of the mischief done by + these few, their wonderful marches and their widespread aggressions, + their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of courage and + military tact. A Wallace might harass a large army with a small and + determined band; but the contending parties were at least equal in + arms and civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the + Maories in New Zealand, the Arabs in the Soudan, were far better + provided with weapons, more advanced in the science of war, and + considerably more numerous, than the naked Tasmanians. Governor + Arthur rightly termed them a noble race." +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to have +been wasted. They should have been crossed with the Whites. It would +have improved the Whites and done the Natives no harm. + +<p>But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were +gathered together in little settlements on neighboring islands, and +paternally cared for by the Government, and instructed in religion, and +deprived of tobacco, because the superintendent of the Sunday-school was +not a smoker, and so considered smoking immoral. + +<p>The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and +church, and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and the other misplaced +persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost home and +their wild free life. Too late they repented that they had traded that +heaven for this hell. They sat homesick on their alien crags, and day by +day gazed out through their tears over the sea with unappeasable longing +toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been their +paradise; one by one their hearts broke and they died. + +<p>In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive. A +handful lingered along into age. In 1864 the last man died, in 1876 the +last woman died, and the Spartans of Australasia were extinct. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p266.jpg (40K)" src="images/p266.jpg" height="1015" width="583"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean +and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken +coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to +prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the +situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning +savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his +books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and +snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no +bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to +eat but snakes and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if +he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to +the savage--but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it +he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his +civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw +those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, +vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter +with them. One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they +were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane; and well-meaning. + +<p><i>They</i> didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their +honest best to reason it out. And one man, in a like case in New South +Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution: + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p> <i>"It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against + cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."</i> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>That settles it. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch28"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> + +<p><i>Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not +succeed.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man +will appear." But the man musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil +everything. In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a +quarter of a century--and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly +laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed, the Moment had +arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward. +Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds +me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were +crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago. +He thought it had been in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in +substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind. + +<p>A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that +Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise +could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of +course. There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of +freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all +loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore. A +number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day, +they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle. They were +boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals +of idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by +contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other. + +<p>The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none +himself, and was easy game for other people's--for he always believed +whatever was told him. + +<p>One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going +fishing or hunting this time--no, he had thought out a better plan. Out +of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical +way, and he was going to have a look at New York. + +<p>It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel immense travel--in +those days it meant seeing the world; it was the equivalent of a voyage +around it in ours. At first the other youths thought his mind was +affected, but when they found that he was in earnest, the next thing to +be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for +a practical joke. + +<p>The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation +and made a plan. The idea was, that one of the conspirators should offer +Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into +delivering it. It would be easy to do this. But what would Ed do when +he got back to Memphis? That was a serious matter. He was good-hearted, +and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes which +did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be +a cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire; for with +all his good nature, Ed was a Southerner--and the English of that was, +that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he +could before falling himself. However, the chances must be taken--it +wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that. + +<p>So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was +signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit. +It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and +was of good parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to +be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake. It went on to say, +"You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will +easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how +we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night; and how, while he was +chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back +and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and +the time that we----" and so forth and so on, bringing in names of +imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of +course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting +them into lively and telling shape. + +<p>With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to +Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the +question would astonish Ed, and it did. + +<p>"What? Do you know that extraordinary man?" + +<p>"No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you +like, I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you +for my sake." + +<p>Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. +The three days passed, and the letter was put into his bands. He started +on his trip, still pouring out his thanks while he shook good-bye all +around. And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter +in a storm of happy satisfaction--and then quieted down, and were less +happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this +deception began to intrude again. + +<p>Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business +quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people +were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the +millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and +got the letter instead. Ed was sent for a moment later, and found Mr. +Vanderbilt alone, with the letter--open--in his hand. + +<p>"Pray sit down, Mr. --er--" + +<p>"Jackson." + +<p>" Ah--sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a +letter from an old friend. Allow me--I will run my eye through it. He +says he says--why, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the +signature. "Alfred Fairchild--hm--Fairchild--I don't recall the name. +But that is nothing--a thousand names have gone from me. He says--he +says-hm-hmoh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare! I don't quite +remember it, but I seem to it'll all come back to me presently. He +says--he says--hm--hm-oh, but that was a game! Oh, spl-endid! How it +carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long time ago--and the +names--some of the names are wavery and indistinct--but sho', I know it +happened--I can feel it! and lord, how it warms my heart, and brings +back my lost youth! Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this +work-a-day world now--business presses and people are waiting--I'll keep +the rest for bed to-night, and live my youth over again. And you'll +thank Fairchild for me when you see him--I used to call him Alf, I +think--and you'll give him my gratitude for--what this letter has done for the +tired spirit of a hard-worked man; and tell him there isn't anything that +I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you, +my lad, you are my guest; you can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit. +where you are a little while, till I get through with these people, then +we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boy--make yourself easy as to +that." + +<p>Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time--and never suspected that the +Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and that he was daily being weighed +and measured and analyzed and tried and tested. + +<p>Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to +tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he +proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No--wait; leave it to +me; I'll tell you when to go." + +<p>In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of +his--consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious +systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in +effective centers--and among other things his farseeing eye had detected +the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of, toward +Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it his +own. + +<p>The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said: + +<p>"Now you can start home. But first we will have some more talk about +that tobacco matter. I know you now. I know your abilities as well as +you know them yourself--perhaps better. You understand that tobacco +matter; you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you +also understand the plans which I have matured for doing it. What I want +is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in Memphis, +and be in supreme command of that important business--and I appoint you." + +<p>"Me!" + +<p>"Yes. Your salary will be high--of course-for you are representing me. +Later you will earn increases of it, and will get them. You will need a +small army of assistants; choose them yourself--and carefully. Take no +man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man you +know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger." After some +further talk under this head, the Commodore said: + +<p>"Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me." + +<p>When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell +his great news and thank the boys over and over again for thinking to +give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those +idle times. Blazing hot noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf. But +as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white linen +figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning, +and said to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, +he said, "It's Charley--it's Fairchild good"; and the next moment laid an +affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, +took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the +sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for +the wharf-boat like the wind! + +<p>Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning +of this? He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned +the corner of a freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys. +They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter; they heard his +step, and glanced up just as he discovered them; the laugh died abruptly; +and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels and +bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was paralyzed. Had the boys all gone +mad? What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And +so, dreaming along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard nothing +but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner +to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent-- + +<p>"O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard. + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p274.jpg (62K)" src="images/p274.jpg" height="1063" width="631"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out-- + +<p>"Go 'way from here! You let me alone. I didn't do it, I swear I +didn't!" + +<p>"Didn't do what?" + +<p>"Give you the----" + +<p>"Never mind what you didn't do--come out of that! What makes you all act +so? What have I done?" + +<p>"You? Why you haven't done anything. But----" + +<p>"Well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so +for?" + +<p>"I--er--but haven't you got anything against us?" + +<p>"Of course not. What put such a thing into your head?" + +<p>"Honor bright--you haven't? + +<p>"Honor bright." + +<p>"Swear it!" + +<p>"I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway." + +<p>"And you'll shake hands with me?" + +<p>"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands +with somebody!" + +<p>The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the +letter!--but it's all right, I'm not going to fetch up the subject." And +he crawled out and came dripping and draining to shake hands. First one +and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously--armed to the +teeth--took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily forward and +joined the love-feast. + +<p>And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been +acting, they answered evasively, and pretended that they had put it up as +a joke, to see what he would do. It was the best explanation they could +invent at such short notice. And each said to himself, "He never +delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if he only knew it or we +were dull enough to come out and tell." + +<p>Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said-- + +<p>"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks it's my treat. +I'm going to tell you all about it. And to-night it's my treat +again--and we'll have oysters and a time!" + +<p>When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said: + +<p>"Well, when, I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt----" + +<p>"Great Scott!" + +<p>"Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter?" + +<p>"Oh--er--nothing. Nothing--it was a tack in the chair-seat," said one. + +<p>"But you all said it. However, no matter. When I delivered the +letter----" + +<p>"Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who +thought that maybe they were dreaming. + +<p>Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels +grew, the amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took +their breath. They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat +like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale +was ended, and Ed said-- + +<p>"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me +ungrateful--bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have +places; I want every one of you. I know you--I know you 'by the back,' +as the gamblers say. You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling, +with the hallmark on. And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my first +assistant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and +because you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it +for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it would! And here's to +that great man--drink hearty!" + +<p>Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears--even if he is a thousand +miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke. + +<br><br><br><br> +<h2><a name="ch29"></a><br><br>CHAPTER XXVIX.</h2> + +<p><i>When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in +his private heart no man much respects himself.</i> + <center>--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</center> + +<p>Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of +any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, +are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old times; +this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator, where +reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win to +permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates +of Hell." In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, +of both sexes and all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot +there was a settlement of juvenile convicts--children--who had been sent +thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe +to expiate their "crimes." + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><img alt="p278.jpg (64K)" src="images/p278.jpg" height="1053" width="611"> +</center> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose +head stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The Derwent's shores +furnish scenery of an interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose +book, "The Story of Australasia," is just out, invoices its features with +considerable truth and intemperance: "The marvelous picturesqueness of +every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the +transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply +impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, +defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken +into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with +evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, +she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful +'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and +smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air to the +height of 230 feet or more." + +<p>It looked so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of +pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting +Cape Pillar, with its cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to +a height of 900 feet, the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy +cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains of +foam." + +<p>That is well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet +high. Still they were a very fine show. They stood boldly out by +themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle. But there was +nothing about their appearance to suggest the heads of a hydra. They +looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends tapered to the +shape of a carving-knife point; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of +their great height, might have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of +piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular. + +<p>The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with scrub, or brush, +or both. It is joined to the main by a low neck. At this junction was +formerly a convict station called Port Arthur--a place hard to escape +from. Behind it was the wilderness of scrub, in which a fugitive would +soon starve; in front was the narrow neck, with a cordon of chained dogs +across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards, armed. +We saw the place as we swept by--that is, we had a glimpse of what we +were told was the entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth +something, as a remembrancer, but that was all. + +<p>The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of +fairy visions, in its entire length elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over +the deep blue sea studded with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's +edge, one is at a loss which scene to choose for contemplation and to +admire most. When the Huon and Bruni have been passed, there seems no +possible chance of a rival; but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive and +noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded +on either hand by Mounts Nelson and Rumney; presently we arrive at +Sullivan's Cove--Hobart! + +<p>It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the +harbor--a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still +surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and +luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in +woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, +a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole region, +for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and +variety of color, and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the, +promontories; and then, the splendor of the sunlight, the dim rich +distances, the charm of the water-glimpses! And it was in this paradise +that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed, and the Corps-bandits +quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black +innocents consummated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time. +It was all out of keeping with the place, a sort of bringing of heaven +and hell together. + +<p>The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we +struck the head of the procession of Junior Englands. We were to +encounter other sections of it in New Zealand, presently, and others +later in Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman can find in his new home +resemblances to his old one, he is touched to the marrow of his being; +the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied +forces transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the +revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling which works this +enchantment, and it compels one's homage; compels it, and also compels +one's assent--compels it always--even when, as happens sometimes, one +does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is +pointing them out. + +<p>The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly +approximate the originals--but after all, in the matter of certain +physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have +sampled the globe, I am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, +and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the +earth; there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand +and Alaska; there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten +thousand islands of the Southern seas; there is a beauty of the prairie +and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of +these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of +its beauty; but that beauty which is England is alone--it has no +duplicate. + +<p>It is made up of very simple details--just grass, and trees, and shrubs, +and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, +and castles, and here and there a ruin--and over it all a mellow +dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its own. + +<p>Hobart has a peculiarity--it is the neatest town that the sun shines on; +and I incline to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may +be, its supremacy in neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be +another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors; no rickety gates +and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and unsightly +sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered with +tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no +clutter on the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes +and tin-patched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a +comfort to the eye; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and +has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its comely cat +asleep on the window ledge. + +<p>We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who +is curator of it. It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of +marsupials--[A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is +its pocket. In some countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. +The first American marsupials were Stephen Girard, Mr. Aston and the +opossum; the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. +Rhodes, and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest marsupial. Also, I +might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all. But there is +nothing in that.]--one, the "Tasmanian devil;" that is, I think he was +one of them. And there was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up +it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills +sheep. On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a +whole year. He doesn't want the whole sheep, but only the kidney-fat. +This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird to support. To get the +fat he drives his beak in and rips it out; the wound is mortal. This +parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about by changed +conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently brought +famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always +thitherto been the parrot's diet. The miseries of hunger made the bird +willing to eat raw flesh, since it could get no other food, and it began +to pick remnants of meat from sheep skins hung out on the fences to dry. +It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any other food, and by and by it +came to prefer the kidney-fat to any other detail of the sheep. The +parrot's bill was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Nature +fixed that matter; she altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can +dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or +anybody else, for that matter--even an Admiral. + +<p>And there was another curiosity--quite a stunning one, I thought: +Arrow-heads and knives just like those which Primeval Man made out of flint, +and thought he had done such a wonderful thing--yes, and has been humored +and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring scientists until +there is probably no living with him in the other world by now. Yet here +is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our day; and by +people who have never heard of him or his works: by aborigines who lived +in the islands of these seas, within our time. And they not only +duplicated those works of art but did it in the brittlest and most +treacherous of substances--glass: made them out of old brandy bottles +flung out of the British camps; millions of tons of them. It is time for +Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had his day. He +is not what he used to be. We had a drive through a bloomy and odorous +fairy-land, to the Refuge for the Indigent--a spacious and comfortable +home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes. There was a crowd in there, +of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being suddenly set +down in a new world--a weird world where Youth has never been, a world +sacred to Age, and bowed forms, and wrinkles. Out of the 359 persons +present, 223, were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring tales, no +doubt, if they had been minded to talk; 42 of the 359 were past 80, and +several were close upon 90; the average age at death there is 76 years. +As for me, I have no use for that place; it is too healthy. Seventy is +old enough--after that, there is too much risk. Youth and gaiety might +vanish, any day--and then, what is left? Death in life; death without +its privileges, death without its benefits. There were 185 women in that +Refuge, and 81 of them were ex-convicts. + +<p>The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, +as usual, she made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and +then moved on. + + + +<br><br> +<hr> +<br><br> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 3 +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 3 *** + +***** This file should be named 5810-h.htm or 5810-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/1/5810/ + +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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diff --git a/5810-h/images/p258.jpg b/5810-h/images/p258.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae7d460 --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h/images/p258.jpg diff --git a/5810-h/images/p266.jpg b/5810-h/images/p266.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d232295 --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h/images/p266.jpg diff --git a/5810-h/images/p274.jpg b/5810-h/images/p274.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..988fc94 --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h/images/p274.jpg diff --git a/5810-h/images/p278.jpg b/5810-h/images/p278.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..410e16f --- /dev/null +++ b/5810-h/images/p278.jpg diff --git a/5810.txt b/5810.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40a1822 --- /dev/null +++ b/5810.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2885 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 3 +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 3 + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #5810] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 3 *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + FOLLOWING + THE EQUATOR + A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD + BY + MARK TWAIN + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS + + Part 3 + + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three +unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, +and the prudence never to practice either of them. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +From diary: + +Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years +ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the +people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said: + +"Do you remember my introducing you to an earl--the Earl of C.?" + +"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, +just starting--belated--for the train. I remember it." + +"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was +not looking for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and +interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours, +and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some +particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that +day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but the +thing that surprised me was this: when I induced you, you said, 'I am +glad to meet your lordship gain.' The I again' was the surprise. He is +a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you +hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, +'Why, what do you know about him?' and I understood you to say, 'Oh, +nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of----' Then we were gone, +and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a +quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still +wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess +it out. He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good +judge of those--no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because +you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it must be +that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of +course you hadn't had you?" + +"Yes, I had." + +"Is that so? Where?" + +"At a fox-hunt, in England." + +"How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had +you any conversation with him?" + +"Some--yes." + +"Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk +about?" + +"About the fox. I think that was all." + +"Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression. +What did he talk about?" + +"The fox." + +It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an +impression upon you?" + +"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of--however, I will tell +you all about it, then you will understand. It was a quarter of a +century ago 1873 or '74. I had an American friend in London named F., +who was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to +come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the +morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my +mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter +before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. +I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the +common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that +went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go +with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and +there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by. + +"When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a +low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with +heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart +fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. +I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited, +dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility +which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the +forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating; then all of a +sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by +and disappeared in the forest on the right; there was a pause, and then +a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the +left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, +a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he +came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to +see him ride; he was a master horseman. He came like, a storm till he +was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall, then he +stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails, and shouted +like a demon: + +"'Which way'd the fox go?' + +"I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited, +you know. But I was calm; so I said softly, and without acrimony: + +"'Which fox?' + +"It seemed to anger him. I don't know why; and he thundered out: + +"'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?' + +"I said, with great gentleness--even argumentatively: + +"'If you could be a little more definite--a little less vague--because I +am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you will know even better +than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify, +and----' + +"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand +years!' and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would +snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man. + +"I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too--oh, all alive. She +said: + +"'He spoke to you!--didn't he?' + +"'Yes, it is what happened.' + +"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew be spoke to you! Do +you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds! +Tell me--what do you think of him?' + +"'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and +accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.' + +"It pleased her. I thought it would." + +G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the +quarantine-bars on the frontiers; and so did we, for we left the next +day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian +custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but for the +thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to +the Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a +letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending +me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian +Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In addition +to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were +filled exclusively with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in +Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going +to ship these through by express; but at the last moment an order went +throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless +the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these +things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them +in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of +terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian +frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I +was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed. + +We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and +the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to +have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering +at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to +give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the +language; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a tall handsome +man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the +station-master--and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put +it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his +eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap +and made a beautiful bow to me, and said in English: + +"Which is your baggage? Please show it to me." + +I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it; nobody was +interested in it; all the family's attempts to get attention to it had +failed--except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable +goods. It was just being opened. My officer said: + +"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. +Now please come and show the hand-baggage." + +He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he +gave orders again, in his emphatic military way: + +"Chalk these. Chalk all of them." + +Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his +way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre +of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were +present getting their baggage chalked; and as we passed down in review on +our way to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy +which gave me deep satisfaction. + +But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with +German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a +porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and +gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, +moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco +tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered +it up in his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead +of him past that long wall of passengers again--he chattering and +exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look +as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to +shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at +heart I was cruelly humbled. + +When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of +it was at the worst, the stately station-master stepped out from +somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him; +and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying +to him the whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very +angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he +began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off +his hat and made that beautiful bow and said: + +"Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here---" He turned +to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian +lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were +moving in procession again--he in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with +my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and +I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to +get himself envied. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all. +I met but few men who had seen it thrown--at least I met but few who +mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden +cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is +only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This +feather--so to call it--is not thrown through the air, but is flung with +an underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front +of the thrower; then it glances and makes a long skip; glances again, +skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends +skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good +chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards; +but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, +and earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured +distance of two hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even +further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and +they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards; and so weightless +a toy--a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect; and not sailing +through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff +at every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the +feat and did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about +aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government. + +What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical +strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance. +It must be art. But no one explains what the art of it is; nor how it +gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any +two-ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or bumping along the +ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says: + +"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is +truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of +Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width +of Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp +and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground +being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it +looks just like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its +movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a +kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it." + +The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in +the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary +an instrument as the boomerang. + +There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked +skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable +trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been +race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual +reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's +estimate of them. + +They were lazy--always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a +killing defect. Surely they could have invented and built a competent +house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the +agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and +lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just plain +savages, for all their smartness. + +With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and +with no epidemic diseases among them till the white man came with those +and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there +was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race +in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept population down by +infanticide--largely; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not +need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. +The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth +several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population +80 percent. in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as +that before. + +For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria--a +country eighty times as large as Rhode Island, as I have already said. +By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the +whites came along in the middle of the 'Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived +in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode +Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities; +indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The +Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily: from 173 persons it faded +to 34 in twenty years; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered +one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 +when the white man came; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven years +later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes +scattered about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of +full blood are very scarce now. It is said that the aboriginals continue +in some force in the huge territory called Queensland. + +The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the +primary law of savage life: that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe +is responsible--each individual of it--and you may take your change out +of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. +When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law, and +killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a +monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such +creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly +killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of +civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very +precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a child, in the +early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we get informing +pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each +other. + +Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. +Praed says: + + "At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that + they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave + little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters + increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or + three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps + lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the + Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual + event. + + "The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in + words. Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where + perhaps foot of white man has never trod--interminable vistas where + the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their + lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic + pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which + the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level untimbered plains + alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken + by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast + and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where + the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a + belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle. + + "The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, + birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which + in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd + of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the + grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of + locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the + screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled + lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the + dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the + curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of + tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher." + +That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other +details, you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how +loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that +profound wilderness miles and miles apart--at each station half a dozen +persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always +ill-nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had not +bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in +authority, nobody competent to sell and convey; and the tribes themselves +had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The +ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion +was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for a tragedy +could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak: + + "At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, + having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying + wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept + stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he + slept." + +One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was +up. It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was +determined--and permanently: + + "There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites + when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in + a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my + childish sense of justice. + + "They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some + cases were destroyed like vermin. + + "Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by + Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an + attack, parleyed with them from his house-door. He told them it was + Christmas-time--a time at which all men, black or white, feasted; + that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the + store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had + never dreamed of--a great pudding of which all might eat and be + filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was made + and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it + had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!" + +The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit +was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the +savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was +merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, +and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter, +and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been +sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, +it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and +attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes +hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of +exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our +civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no +such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and +innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him +to death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to +it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. In many +countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care +for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is +loving-kindness to it. In more than one country we have hunted the +savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns +through the woods and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the +region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and +their wild supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind, +because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is +loving-kindness to it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land +from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken +his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he +dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has +inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. +In the Matabeleland today--why, there we are confining ourselves to +sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes +in London; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old holy customs, +and all we ask is that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon +the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the +poisoner, "That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the +contempt of posterity." + +I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and +severely, but I stop there. I blame him for, the indiscretion of +introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our +civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it +is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in every way he can; +and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The +squatter's judgment was bad--that is plain; but his heart was right. He +is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history +who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and +tried to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings +with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves to +be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence. + +This paragraph is from a London journal: + + "To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of + civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage + to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that + penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the + Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a + derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council + General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross + the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, + cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost + the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few + five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea." + +You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow +murder, through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle +friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish +friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift +release of his poisoned pudding. + +There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's +notion that he is less savage than the other savages.--[See Chapter on +Tasmania, post.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch. + + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before +you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is +fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the +country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both +in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, +Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous +literature, and one which must endure. Materials--there is no end to +them! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by +himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties--varieties +not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any +picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and +they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In +his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is +everything--everything that a human creature can be. He covers the +entire ground. He is a coward--there are a thousand fact to prove it. +He is brave--there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous +--oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true--the white man's +records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, +worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger +who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors, +and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on +him only yesterday--there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride +by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a +long life--it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the +same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by +lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm--it is of +record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, +and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough +without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white +man's food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and +rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, +yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law +goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that +menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not +acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little +constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means +of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a +correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can +track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot +discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot +master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without +the model--if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the +searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; +and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white +man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within +certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest +known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able +to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel +that he could boil water in. He is the prize-curiosity of all the races. +To all intents and purposes he is dead--in the body; but he has features +that will live in literature. + +Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed +to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals +which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert +here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their +judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite +extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and +muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen +an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force +ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge +them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of +those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; "Yet he depended, +with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his +agility." + +The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a +protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is +about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but +slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow. The difficulty about +a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it +suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes +straight for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one +side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for +half-an-hour, or less. + +Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119 +yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen +yards. + +We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board +and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr. +Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had +sometimes done it over fourteen. But what is that to this: + + "I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he + dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an + inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting + upright on horseback--both man and horse being of the average size. + The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly + on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision + with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the + hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld." + +I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete +run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a +side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could +not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know +this, because I tried it myself. + +One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art. + +Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen +or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore--dug them in +the sand--wells that were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the +work beautifully executed." + +Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from +such a depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet +of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in +on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming +impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be. + +Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert +intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the +kangaroo, and other game: + + "As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and + noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or + fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the + tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; + in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, + in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal + or warn him of danger. A little examination of the trunk of a tree + which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending + and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the + night before without coming down again or not." + +Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these +people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest +Mohawk he ever invented. + +All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not +close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian +aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, +carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures +of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of +the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, +both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil +it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people. + +His place in art--as to drawing, not color-work--is well up, all things +considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but +on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of +civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and +De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but +better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping +and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of +the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms, with +clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the +"corrobboree" further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. +And well enough as to intention, but--my word! + +The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that. + +All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The +Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do +not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. +They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had +been a surgeon before he became a clergyman: + + 1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King + George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on + foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a + water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I + observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, + collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place + his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly + withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn + guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he + repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange + conduct, he only said, 'Me carpenter-make 'em' ('I am mending my + foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which + had been torn off by a tea-tree stump, in which it had been caught + during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical + composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of + cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described." + +And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had +happened"--and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a +surgeon and then do his own surgery. + + 2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as + a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a + fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his + chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated the viscera to a + considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb + behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action + gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I could feel a + hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I made a + deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which + was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from + half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly + digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which it had been + exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound + made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small + cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without + flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his + good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not + materially annoy him. He was perfectly well in a few days." + +But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that +the patient enjoyed--whatever it was: + + 3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me + with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. + He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for + this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just + below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while + about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through + the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw; and having made as + presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of + the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few + days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the + native told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had + struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it + was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous + operation, which it appears is not uncommon among these people in + their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth + only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow + the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground. + He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal, which + was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The + cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he + was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid + of a long stout stick, although he was more than a week on the + road." + +But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made +for him by the doctor, because "it had no feeling in it." It must have +had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think. + +So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. +They are marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century, +now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in +comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in +every way. If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have +seen some of those people--but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to +see a stuffed one. + +Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast +cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the +strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would +naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but +at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases. +They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have +created eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the "Never-never +Country." Also this felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never +Country"--that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without +merit: "heifer-paddock"--young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick +up" equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a +train. "New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"--new arrival. + +And then there is the immortal "My word!" "We must import it." +"M-y word!" + +"In cold print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat Caesar!" but spoken +with the proper Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it +for grace and charm and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive; +it is not suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but "M-y +word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to +say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it +struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the +dead corpse of the thing, the 'soul was not there--the tones were +lacking--the informing spirit--the deep feeling--the eloquence. But the +first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of +Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. +Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor--one of those famous +dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, +melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a +horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country +town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden +plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers. + +"Horsham, October 17. +At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of the +London Bank of Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in +opulent leaf, and every leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing +spring is upon it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank +and a little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring +fountain-sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and +mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like +flash-lights through an opal--a most beautiful tree, and a striking +contrast to the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly +defined--it is a kodak for faithful, hard, unsentimental detail; the +other an impressionist picture, delicious to look upon, full of a subtle +and exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft +loveliness." + +It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree--an importation from +China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long +red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a +distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new +charm. + +There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were +driven out to it by its chief. The conveyance was an open wagon; the +time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant +--and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In some countries an indolent +unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have +been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was nothing of +that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense +of heat; indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and +exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not +have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired. Of course, +the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere. In that +plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is +88 or 90 deg. in New York. + +The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to +be a hundred yards wide between the fences. I was not given the width in +yards, but only in chains and perches--and furlongs, I think. I would +have given a good deal to know what the width was, but I did not pursue +the matter. I think it is best to put up with information the way you +get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for +it, and say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could +tell you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but +that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are +shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows +what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you +which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift +the subject. + +They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and +cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long distances +--immense journeys--from worn-out places to new ones where were water +and fresh pasturage; and this wide space had to be left in grass and +unfenced, or the stock would have starved to death in the transit. + +On the way we saw the usual birds--the beautiful little green parrots, +the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest +plumage and the eternally-forgettable name--the bird that is the smartest +among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him +to death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it begins with M. +I wish it began with G. or something that a person can remember. + +The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He +is a handsome large creature, with snowy white decorations, and is a +singer; he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely. He was once modest, +even diffident; but he lost all that when he found out that he was +Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and +impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet--never +coming when he is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying +disobedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs all +over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I think he learns +to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his friends say that he +knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame magpie +in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed +he owned it. The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the +lady. He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his own way, +always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making the cat's life a slow +sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in +perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time that silence was +wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked to +sing he would go out and take a walk. + +It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and +waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has +dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were producing oranges, +apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of apples--in +fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not seem to +miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition. + +Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best +in them and what climates are best for them. A man who is ignorantly +trying to produce upon his farm things not suited to its soil and its +other conditions can make a journey to the college from anywhere in +Australia, and go back with a change of scheme which will make his farm +productive and profitable. + +There were forty pupils there--a few of them farmers, relearning their +trade, the rest young men mainly from the cities--novices. It seemed a +strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction for +city-bred youths, but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too; they +are above the agricultural average of intelligence, and they come without +any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long +descent. + +The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the +shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the +business--three days in a week. On the other three they study and hear +lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon +agriculture--like chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in +sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the +machine. The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there; +and the students took off his coat with great celerity and adroitness. +Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary +with shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as +the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right +ahead. + +The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep +looked like the fat woman in the circus; after it he looked like a bench. +He was clipped to the skin; and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes +from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket. + +The college was flying the Australian flag--the gridiron of England +smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red field that had the +random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it. + +From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of +Victoria. Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was +half a peck of surface-gold--gold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact, +and pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be pleasanter if it +would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to +handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz +mine; a lady owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month +from it, and is able to keep house. + +The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great +vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these +vineyards--the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving--is regarded as a +model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne +and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three years +ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in +the rock, to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term +required to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of +champagne. The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000, and +those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year. +The dryest community on the earth. The government has lately reduced the +duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. +A man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy +enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws; then the law is changed, and +the man is robbed by his own government. + +On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders +called the Three Sisters--a curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high +ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from +whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early +ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size +and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern. + +The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and +sorrowful. The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth, apparently. +Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of +oxen. Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was +told, and were running a successful opposition to the railway! The +railways are owned and run by the government. + +Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience +and resignation. It is a tree that can get along without water; still it +is fond of it--ravenously so. It is a very intelligent tree and will +detect the presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet, and send +out slender long root-fibres to prospect it. They will find it; and will +also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a +cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began to gradually reduce its +output, and finally ceased altogether to deliver water. Upon examining +into the matter it was found stopped up, wadded compactly with a mass of +root-fibres, delicate and hair-like. How this stuff had gotten into the +pipe was a puzzle for some little time; finally it was found that it had +crept in through a crack that was almost invisible to the eye. A gum +tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drinking the water. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone +into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the +shares! + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort. +We had this kind of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat. +Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey. At one time a +great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged +flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size, and +equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between. +The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across +the skies. By and by these flakes fused themselves together in +interminable lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long +satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated movement, and +enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea. Later, +the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into +innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size, and ranged these +across the firmament, in receding and fading perspective, in the +similitude of a stupendous colonnade--a mirage without a doubt flung from +the far Gates of the Hereafter. + +The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green +expanses of rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye contenting hedges of +commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse--and a lovely lake. One must put +in the pause, there, to fetch the reader up with a slight jolt, and keep +him from gliding by without noticing the lake. One must notice it; for a +lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of Australia as +are the dry places. Ninety-two in the shade again, but balmy and +comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect climate. + +Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a +sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely. Nobody had ever heard of +it. On the 25th of August, 1851, the first great gold-strike made in +Australia was made here. The wandering prospectors who made it scraped +up two pounds and a half of gold the first day-worth $600. A few days +later the place was a hive--a town. The news of the strike spread +everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way--spread like a flash to the +very ends of the earth. A celebrity so prompt and so universal has +hardly been paralleled in history, perhaps. It was as if the name +BALLARAT had suddenly been written on the sky, where all the world could +read it at once. + +The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three +months before had already started emigrants toward Australia; they had +been coming as a stream, but they came as a flood, now. A hundred +thousand people poured into Melbourne from England and other countries in +a single month, and flocked away to the mines. The crews of the ships +that brought them flocked with them; the clerks in the government offices +followed; so did the cooks, the maids, the coachmen, the butlers, and the +other domestic servants; so did the carpenters, the smiths, the plumbers, +the painters, the reporters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients, the +barkeepers, the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the +grocers, the butchers, the bakers, the doctors, the druggists, the +nurses; so did the police; even officials of high and hitherto envied +place threw up their positions and joined the procession. This roaring +avalanche swept out of Melbourne and left it desolate, Sunday-like, +paralyzed, everything at a stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, +all signs of life departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the +cloud-shadows as they scraped across the vacant streets. + +That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and +lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the feverish search for its hidden +riches. There is nothing like surface-mining to snatch the graces and +beauties and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and +repulsive spectacle of it. + +What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and +reloaded--and went back home for good in the same cabin they had come out +in! Not all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, +forty-five years later--what were left of them by time and death and the +disposition to rove. They were young and gay, then; they are patriarchal +and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more. They talk of the +Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, a retrospection. + +Ballarat was a great region for "nuggets." No such nuggets were found in +California as Ballarat produced. In fact, the Ballarat region has +yielded the largest ones known to history. Two of them weighed about 180 +pounds each, and together were worth $90,000. They were offered to any +poor person who would shoulder them and carry them away. Gold was so +plentiful that it made people liberal like that. + +Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days. Everybody was +happy, for a time, and apparently prosperous. Then came trouble. The +government swooped down with a mining tax. And in its worst form, too; +for it was not a tax upon what the miner had taken out, but upon what he +was going to take out--if he could find it. It was a license-tax license +to work his claim--and it had to be paid before he could begin digging. + +Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surface-mining. +Your claim may be good, and it may be worthless. It may make you well +off in a month; and then again you may have to dig and slave for half a +year, at heavy expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not +there in cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your hard work have +been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance the miner a monthly +sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him +monthly in advance instead--why, such a thing was never dreamed of in +America. There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever +rich or poor, were taxed. + +The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained--it was of no use; +the government held its ground, and went on collecting the tax. And not +by pleasant methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to +free people. The rumblings of a coming storm began to be audible. + +By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest +thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution--small in size; but +great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a +principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It was the Barons +and John, over again; it was Hampden and Ship-Money; it was Concord and +Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in +political results, all of them epoch-making. It is another instance of a +victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the +people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the +men who fell at the Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument. + +The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the miners +ripped and tore and trenched and harried and disembowled, and made it +yield up its immense treasure. Then they went down into the earth with +deep shafts, seeking the gravelly beds of ancient rivers and brooks--and +found them. They followed the courses of these streams, and gutted them, +sending the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and washing out of +it its enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of the two monster +nuggets mentioned above came from an old river-channel 180 feet under +ground. + +Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-man's mining. +Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and staying-power, and +patience. Big companies were formed, and for several decades, now, the +lodes have been successfully worked, and have yielded great wealth. +Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines--taking the three +kinds of mining together--have contributed to the world's pocket +something over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that +this nearly invisible little spot on the earth's surface has yielded +about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years as all California has +yielded in forty-seven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, +inclusive, as reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint, is +$1,265,215,217. + +A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With all my +experience of mining I had never heard of anything of the sort before. +The main gold reef runs about north and south--of course for that is the +custom of a rich gold reef. At Ballarat its course is between walls of +slate. Now the citizen told me that throughout a stretch of twelve miles +along the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black +streak of a carbonaceous nature--a streak in the slate; a streak no +thicker than a pencil--and that wherever it crosses the reef you will +certainly find gold at the junction. It is called the Indicator. Thirty +feet on each side of the Indicator (and down in the slate, of course) is +a still finer streak--a streak as fine as a pencil mark; and indeed, that +is its name Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that +thirty feet from it is the Indicator; you measure the distance, excavate, +find the Indicator, trace it straight to the reef, and sink your shaft; +your fortune is made, for certain. If that is true, it is curious. And +it is curious anyway. + +Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population; and yet, since it is in +Australia, it has every essential of an advanced and enlightened big +city. This is pure matter of course. I must stop dwelling upon these +things. It is hard to keep from dwelling upon them, though; for it is +difficult to get away from the surprise of it. I will let the other +details go, this time, but I must allow myself to mention that this +little town has a park of 326 acres; a flower garden of 83 acres, with an +elaborate and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine +statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres, equipped with a +fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and little steam yachts. + +At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was +tempted to add. I do not strike them out because they were not true or +not well said, but because I find them better said by another man--and a +man more competent to testify, too, because he belongs on the ground, and +knows. I clip them from a chatty speech delivered some years ago by Mr. +William Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat: + + "The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of + Australasia, is mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, + vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is + pure enough to suit a Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by + climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness + unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well ordered; and + our maidens, 'not stepping over the bounds of modesty,' are as fair + as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers." + +The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but +that is apparent only, not real. November is summer-time there. + +His compliment to the local purity of the language is warranted. It is +quite free from impurities; this is acknowledged far and wide. As in the +German Empire all cultivated people claim to speak Hanovarian German, so +in Australasia all cultivated people claim to speak Ballarat English. +Even in England this cult has made considerable progress, and now that it +is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far away when +Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of +Great Britain at large. Its great merit is, that it is shorter than +ordinary English--that is, it is more compressed. At first you have some +difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator +whom I have quoted speaks it. An illustration will show what I mean. +When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said: + +"Q." + +Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and +I said: + +"Thank you," and he said: + +"Km." + +Then I saw. 'Q' is the end of the phrase "I thank you" 'Km' is the end +of the phrase "You are welcome." Mr. Little puts no emphasis upon either +of them, but delivers them so reduced that they hardly have a sound. All +Ballarat English is like that, and the effect is very soft and pleasant; +it takes all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and gives to it +a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the +faint rustling of the forest leaves. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +On the rail again--bound for Bendigo. From diary: + +October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of +the rich gold-fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; +left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic +priest who was better than I was, but didn't seem to know it--a man full +of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a lovable man. He will +rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a +Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when +I say, "Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when +you were nothing but Father C., and I was nothing to what I am now?" +It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We +could have saved seven by walking. However, there was no hurry. + +Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a +great quartz-mining business, now--that business which, more than any +other that I know of, teaches patience, and requires grit and a steady +nerve. The town is full of towering chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, +and looks like a petroleum-city. Speaking of patience; for example, one +of the local companies went steadily on with its deep borings and +searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward for eleven years +--then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The eleven years' work had +cost $55,000, and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's +head. It is kept under locks and bars, as a precious thing, and is +reverently shown to the visitor, "hats off." When I saw it I had not +heard its history. + +"It is gold. Examine it--take the glass. Now how much should you say it +is worth?" + +I said: + +"I should say about two cents; or in your English dialect, four +farthings." + +"Well, it cost L11,000." + +"Oh, come!" + +"Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental +nuggets of the world, and this one is the monumentalest one of the three. +The other two represent 19,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand +more. It is small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to (its) +name--Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children run up +into the millions." + +Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was worked, under heavy +expenses, during 17 years before pay was struck, and still another one +compelled a wait of 21 years before pay was struck; then, in both +instances, the outlay was all back in a year or two, with compound +interest. + +Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together +have produced $650,000,000 worth--which is half as much as California has +produced. + +It was through Mr. Blank--not to go into particulars about his name--it +was mainly through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably +pleasant and interesting. He explained this to me himself. He told me +that it was through his influence that the city government invited me to +the town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it +was through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive +through the city and shown its notable features; that it was through his +influence that I was invited to visit the great mines; that it was +through his influence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see +the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely +hut eight weeks before by robbers, and stabbed forty-six times and +scalped besides; that it was through his influence that when I arrived +this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting +up in his cot letting on to read one of my books; that it was through his +influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic Archbishop of +Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that +efforts had been made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to +supper; that it was through his influence that the dean of the editorial +fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown +me, from the summit of Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest +expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all +Australia. And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo +and I answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had +adorned the streets with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was +through his influence that it had been done. + +But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was +through his influence that all these things had happened--for that would +have been coarse; be merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly +that I only caught it fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of +perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer; conveyed it without +offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation--but conveyed +it, nevertheless. + +He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and +courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old, +apparently. He called upon me at the hotel, and it was there that we had +this talk. He made me like him, and did it without trouble. This was +partly through his winning and gentle ways, but mainly through the +amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed. He was +down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his +life he could hardly have been better posted as to their contents than he +was. He made me better satisfied with myself than I had ever been +before. It was plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never +laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact, humor could not win to outward +expression on his face at all. No, he was always grave--tenderly, +pensively grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very +trying--and very pleasant at the same time--for it was at quotations from +my own books. + +When he was going, he turned and said: + +"You don't remember me?" + +"I? Why, no. Have we met before?" + +"No, it was a matter of correspondence." + +"Correspondence?" + +"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of +course you----" A musing pause. Then he said: + +"Do you remember Corrigan Castle?" + +"N-no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name." + +He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his hand, then +started out; but turned back and said that I had once been interested in +Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I would go with him to his quarters in +the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over. I was a teetotaler +and liked relaxation, so I said I would. + +We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten. He had a +most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on +the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and +there, and books everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud. The light +was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for +brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then he passed +a sheet of note-paper to me and said-- + +"Do you remember that?" + +"Oh, yes, indeed!" + +The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and +interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in +the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat +gothic capitals was this--printed in blue: + + THE MARK TWAIN CLUB + CORRIGAN CASTLE + ............187.. + +"My!" said I, "how did you come by this?" + +"I was President of it." + +"No!--you don't mean it." + +"It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as +long as its meetings were held in my castle--Corrigan--which was five +years." + +Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it. +Five of them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the +list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before. + +"You sent us the first five; the rest were bought." + +This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked--subject, the +Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland. + +My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I +should say. It came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on +the note-paper which I have described, and signed "By order of the +President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club +had been created in my honor, and added the hope that this token of +appreciation of my work would meet with my approval. + +I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification +from over-exposure. + +It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by +order of the President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two +in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in +pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues +were in their proper place; also, schedule of meetings--monthly--for +essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for +business and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches +also, there was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President, +Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was pleasant +reading, for it told me about the strong interest which the membership +took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me for a photograph +--a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent it--with a letter, +of course. + +Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was; +and very artistic. It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of +grass-sprays and rushes, and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had +a gold pin back of it. After I had petted it, and played with it, and +caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of hours, the light happened to fall +upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the +light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and +rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram--mine! You can see that that +jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider the intrinsic +value of it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that +could afford a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in the opinion +of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not +duplicate it for that and make a profit. By this time the Club was well +under way; and from that time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well +supplied with business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books +with laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability. +As a, rule, he synopsized; but when a speech was especially brilliant, he +short-handed it and gave me the best passages from it, written out. +There were five speakers whom he particularly favored in that way: +Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder. Palmer and Forbes could +never get through a speech without attacking each other, and each in his +own way was formidably effective--Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse, +Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell +which of them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a +polished style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style +was wholly without ornament, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong. +But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke +continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest +speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of good things, but so +incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow +him. They were not intended to be funny, but they were,--funny for the +very gravity which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of +incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know the styles of +the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own +club at home. + +These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words +to the page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report--a good +15,000 words, I should say,--a solid week's work. The reports were +absorbingly entertaining, long as they were; but, unfortunately for me, +they did not come alone. They were always accompanied by a lot of +questions about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club wanted +answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's +report, and the Auditor's report, and the Committee's report, and the +President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also +suggestions for the good of the Club, if any occurred to me. + +By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and +grew; grew until I got to anticipating them with a cold horror. For I +was an indolent man, and not fond of letter-writing, and whenever these +things came I had to put everything by and sit down--for my own peace of +mind--and dig and dig until I got something out of my head which would +answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but for the +succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my +curse, my nightmare, the grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so +sick of sitting for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying +to satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in revolt. +I could endure my oppressions no longer. I pulled my fortitude together +and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and happy. From that +day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and +by and by they ceased to come. + +Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this +all out in full confession. Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank +way, and with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the +Mark Twain Club, and the only member it had ever had! + +Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never +had to work for a living, and that by the time he was thirty life had +become a bore and a weariness to him. He had no interests left; they had +paled and perished, one by one, and left him desolate. He had begun to +think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of +starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with +enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to +do. It elaborated itself on his hands;--it became twenty times more +complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it. Every new +addition to his original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a +fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the Club badge himself, +and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and +nights; then sent to London and had it made. It was the only one that +was made. It was made for me; the "rest of the Club" went without. + +He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He invented the five +favorite speakers and their five separate styles. He invented their +speeches, and reported them himself. He would have kept that Club going +until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He said he worked like a slave +over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight's +work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be +alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died. + +Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too. + +It was wonderful--the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and +laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard +of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a +hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he +said-- + +"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, +telling about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial +in Melbourne?--a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper +Holywell Hants." + +"Yes." + +"I wrote it." + +"M-y-word!" + +"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried +it out without stopping to think. It was wrong. It could have done +harm. I was always sorry about it afterward. You must forgive me. I +was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He +often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his +home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his +hand, and wrote the letter." + +So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep +from telling their happinesses to the unhappy. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently +took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing +off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he +thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how +to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing +himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none +of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who +possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it. They +travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical +societies, and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these +people do not know these things. Since all people think they know them, +they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were an easy +prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court +decided that this kind of gambling is illegal, "because it traverses +Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which +forbids betting on a sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full +Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the court +by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges +was able to answer any of the four questions. + +All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or +somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It +is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is +nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide. +It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the +distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen +hundred miles, and that there is no bridge. I learned this from +Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the great +lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the Pacific. I +asked him about New Zealand, in order to make conversation. I supposed +he would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then turn +the subject to something he was acquainted with, and my object would then +be attained; the ice would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and +get acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he was +not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to welcome it, and to +take a distinct interest in it. He began to talk--fluently, confidently, +comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for as the +subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New +Zealand was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its +history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geology, +products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done, I was lost in +wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he knows everything; in the +domain of human knowledge he is king. + +I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of +hearing him answer, I asked him about Hertzegovina, and pariah, and +unique. But he began to generalize then, and show distress. I saw that +with New Zealand gone, he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as +other men. This was a curious and interesting mystery, and I was frank +with him, and asked him to explain it. + +He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all, +the matter was not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret. +In substance, this is his story: + +"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up--the +card of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which showed that +this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington +University, New Zealand. I was troubled--troubled, I mean, by the +shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once +invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty--invited to dine on that +day--not, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to +do. College etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the +dinner-talk shall begin with complimentary references to his country, its +great men, its services to civilization, its seats of learning, and +things like that; and of course the host is responsible, and must either +begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was +in great difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my +trouble grew. I found that I knew nothing about New Zealand. I thought +I knew where it was, and that was all. I had an impression that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one went over to it +on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect; and even if correct, +it would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I +should expose my College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a +member of the Faculty of the first University in America, was wholly +ignorant of his country, and he would go away and tell this, and laugh at +it. The thought of it made my face burn. + +"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her +help, and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if +I had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the +visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes; and she would +talk, and keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and +make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything, and +could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the +University. I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know +anything about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection +went it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you go over to +it on a bridge; but that was all he knew. It was too bad. Lawson was a +perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of our +need, it turned out that he did not know any useful thing. + +"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very +real peril, and he walked the floor in anxiety, talking, and trying to +think out some way to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we +must try the rest of the Faculty--some of them might know about New +Zealand. So we went to the telephone and called up the professor of +astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on---- + +"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that +all he knew was that it was close to Aus----. + +"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we +could think up some other scheme. We shortly hit upon one which promised +well, and this one we adopted, and set its machinery going at once. It +was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The Faculty must be notified by +telephone to prepare. We must all get to work diligently, and at the end +of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted with New +Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before +this native. To seem properly intelligent we should have to know about +New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of government, and +commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient history, and modern +history, and varieties of religion, and nature of the laws, and their +codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of +collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, and--well, +a lot of things like that; we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry. +And while we posted up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over, +one after the other, in a studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the +New Zealander quiet, and not let him get out and come interfering with +our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped business, +stopped it entirely. + +"It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by +future generations--the account of the Great Blank Day--the memorable +Blank Day--the day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday +silence prevailed all about, and the whole University stood still while +the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at meat, without shame, +in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from New +Zealand: + +"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn--but we +were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a +pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just +beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of +unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and +trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and fluency +of it! + +"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking +dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course. +Then that man came out with a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made +the Faculty blush. He said he was not worthy to sit in the company of +men like these; that he had been silent from admiration; that he had been +silent from another cause also--silent from shame--silent from ignorance! +'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have +served five in a professorship, and ought to know much about that +country, perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about it. I say it +with shame, that I have learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more +about New Zealand in these two hours at this table than I ever knew +before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent because I +could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws, +and revenue, and products, and history, and all that multitude of things, +was but general, and ordinary, and vague-unscientific, in a word--and it +would have been insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your +amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters, +gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent--as becomes me. But do not +change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if +you change to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty +erudition, I shall be as one lost. If you know all this about a remote +little inconsequent patch like New Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know +about any other Subject!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIL + +Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what +there is of it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +FROM DIARY: + +November 1--noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold +in the shade--an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long +swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing +in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read +somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers--Cook? or +Tasman?--accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial +evidence that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not +waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his course +and went searching elsewhere. + +Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and +neighboring islands--islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages +used to gaze at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken hearts. +How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly +so. The work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of +Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination was +complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of +years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other, ambushed each other, +butchered each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary, +alert, cunning, and they knew their country well. They lasted a long +time, few as they were, and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites. + +The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if +possible. One of its schemes was to capture them and coop them up, on a +neighboring island, under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for the +hunt, for the pay was good--L5 for each Black captured and delivered, but +the success achieved was not very satisfactory. The Black was naked, and +his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that would hold. +The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of +natives, and did make captures; but it was suspected that in these +surprises half a dozen natives were killed to one caught--and that was +not what the Government desired. + +Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and +fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country; but +the natives managed to slip through, constantly, and continue their +murders and arsons. + +The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that +they must stay in the desolate region officially appointed for them! The +proclamation was a dead letter; the savages could not read it. Afterward +a picture-proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and +these were nailed to trees in the forest. Herewith is a photographic +reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it means: + +1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other; + +2. He loves his black subjects; + +3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged; + +4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged. + +Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the +labors and ingenuities of several thousand Whites for a long time with +failure as a result. Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the +beginning of the troubles between the two races, the right man was found. +No, he found himself. This was George Augustus Robinson, called in +history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not conspicuous in +any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must have +been an amazing personality; a man worth traveling far to see. It may be +his counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look for +it. + +He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the +jungle, and the mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages +were hidden, and appear among them unarmed, speak the language of love +and of kindness to them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the +wild free life that was so dear to them, and go with him and surrender to +the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward, and upon their +charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a +madman. + +In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the +sugar plum speculation. If the scheme was striking, and new to the +world's experience, the situation was not less so. It was this. The +White population numbered 40,000 in 1831; the Black population numbered +three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but 300 men, women, and children. The +Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and spears. The +Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried +every thinkable way to capture, kill, or subdue them; and could not do +it. If white men of any race could have done it, these would have +accomplished it. But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the +matchless 300 were unconquered, and manifestly unconquerable. They would +not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight to the bitter +end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of +their magnificent patriotism. + +At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting, the surviving 300 +naked patriots were still defiant, still persistent, still efficacious +with their rude weapons, and the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which +way to turn, nor what to do. + +Then the Bricklayer--that wonderful man--proposed to go out into the +wilderness, with no weapon but his tongue, and no protection but his +honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to +their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. +Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In +fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and +intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project +were right--from their standpoint--for they believed the natives to be +mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpoint--for he +believed the natives to be human beings. The truth did really lie +between the two. The event proved that Robinson's judgment was soundest; +but about once a month for four years the event came near to giving the +verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely +escaped falling under the native spears. + +But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild +sentimentalist. For instance, he wanted the war parties (called) in +before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace. He wanted the best +chance of success--not a half-chance. And he was very willing to have +help; and so, high rewards were advertised, for any who would go unarmed +with him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson persuaded some tamed +natives of both sexes to go with him--a strong evidence of his persuasive +powers, for those natives well knew that their destruction would be +almost certain. As it turned out, they had to face death over and over +again. + +Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their +hands. They could not ride off, horseback, comfortably into the woods +and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a talk and a treaty the +following day; for the wild men were not in a body; they were scattered, +immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the birds +could not make a living with the chances offered--scattered in groups of +twenty, a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission +must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible +regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest +and choicest human devils the world has seen--the convicts set apart to +people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"--were never able, but +once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and +struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died: + +"Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No one +ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of +the traveling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the +Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey +to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered terribly. One man who assisted to +carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of +its miseries. Several were disabled for life. No wonder that but one +party, escaping from Macquarrie Harbor convict settlement, arrived at the +civilized region in safety. Men perished in the scrub, were lost in +snow, or were devoured by their companions. This was the territory +traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides. All honor to his +intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity! When they had, in the depth +of winter, to cross deep and rapid rivers, pass among mountains six +thousand feet high, pierce dangerous thickets, and find food in a country +forsaken even by birds, we can realize their hardships. + +"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau +of Middlesex Plains, the travelers experienced unwonted misery, and the +circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band. +Mr. Robinson wrote afterwards to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of +this passage of horrors. In that letter, of Oct 2, 1834, he states that +his Natives were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain passes; +that 'for seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid +body of snow;' that 'the snows were of incredible depth;' that 'the +Natives were frequently up to their middle in snow.' But still the +ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, and way-worn men and women were sustained by +the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and responded most +nobly to his call." + +Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe +remember, it was a whole tribe--"was by far the grandest feature of the +war, and the crowning glory of his efforts." The word "war" was not well +chosen, and is misleading. There was war still, but only the Blacks were +conducting it--the Whites were holding off until Robinson could give his +scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to understand that the friendly +capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing, the highest in +value, that happened during the whole thirty years of truceless +hostilities; that it was a decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the +surrender of the native Napoleon and his dreaded forces, the happy ending +of the long strife. For "that tribe was the terror of the colony," its +chief "the Black Douglas of Bush households." + +Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere, in +some remote corner of the hideous regions just described, and he and his +unarmed little party started on a tedious and perilous hunt for them. At +last, "there, under the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone +rose five thousand feet in the uninhabited westward interior," they were +found. It was a serious moment. Robinson himself believed, for once, +that his mission, successful until now, was to end here in failure, and +that his own death-hour had struck. + +The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteen-foot +spear poised; his warriors stood massed at his back, armed for battle, +their faces eloquent with their long-cherished loathing for white men. +"They rattled their spears and shouted their war-cry." Their women were +back of them, laden with supplies of weapons, and keeping their 150 eager +dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal to fall on. + +"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of +Robinson's little party. + +"I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began +his persuasions--in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased +the chief. Presently there was an interruption by the chief: + +"Who are you?" + +"We are gentlemen." + +"Where are your guns?" + +"We have none." + +The warrior was astonished. + +"Where your little guns?" (pistols). + +"We have none." + +A few minutes passed--in by-play--suspense--discussion among the +tribesmen--Robinson's tamed squaws ventured to cross the line and begin +persuasions upon the wild squaws. Then the chief stepped back "to confer +with the old women--the real arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bonwick +continues: + + "As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life + or death from the president of the amphitheatre, so waited our + friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued. In a + few minutes, before a word was uttered, the women of the tribe threw + up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! + Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and + upward glance of gratitude, came the friends of peace. The + impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in + the other's rank a loved one of the past. + + "It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears + flowed at the recital of woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter + closed the eventful day." + +In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood, Robinson brought +them all in, willing captives, and delivered them to the white governor, +and ended the war which powder and bullets, and thousands of men to use +them, had prosecuted without result since 1804. + +Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music--that is fable; but the +miracle wrought by Robinson is fact. It is history--and authentic; and +surely, there is nothing greater, nothing more reverence-compelling in +the history of any country, ancient or modern. + +And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will +develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the +Conciliator in--no, it is to another man, I forget his name. + +However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it +honored themselves. The Government gave him a money-reward and a +thousand acres of land; and the people held mass-meetings and praised him +and emphasized their praise with a large subscription of money. + +A good dramatic situation; but the curtain fell on another: + + "When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much + surprise to find that the L30,000 of a little earlier day had been + spent, and the whole population of the colony placed under arms, in + contention with an opposing force of sixteen men with wooden spears! + Yet such was the fact. The celebrated Big River tribe, that had + been raised by European fears to a host, consisted of sixteen men, + nine women, and one child. With a knowledge of the mischief done by + these few, their wonderful marches and their widespread aggressions, + their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of courage and + military tact. A Wallace might harass a large army with a small and + determined band; but the contending parties were at least equal in + arms and civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the + Maories in New Zealand, the Arabs in the Soudan, were far better + provided with weapons, more advanced in the science of war, and + considerably more numerous, than the naked Tasmanians. Governor + Arthur rightly termed them a noble race." + +These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to have +been wasted. They should have been crossed with the Whites. It would +have improved the Whites and done the Natives no harm. + +But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were +gathered together in little settlements on neighboring islands, and +paternally cared for by the Government, and instructed in religion, and +deprived of tobacco, because the superintendent of the Sunday-school was +not a smoker, and so considered smoking immoral. + +The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and +church, and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and the other misplaced +persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost home and +their wild free life. Too late they repented that they had traded that +heaven for this hell. They sat homesick on their alien crags, and day by +day gazed out through their tears over the sea with unappeasable longing +toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been their +paradise; one by one their hearts broke and they died. + +In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive. A +handful lingered along into age. In 1864 the last man died, in 1876 the +last woman died, and the Spartans of Australasia were extinct. + +The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean +and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken +coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to +prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the +situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning +savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his +books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and +snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no +bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to +eat but snakes and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if +he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to +the savage--but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it +he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his +civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw +those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, +vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter +with them. One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they +were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane; and well-meaning. + +They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their +honest best to reason it out. And one man, in a like case in New South +Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution: + + "It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against + cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." + +That settles it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not +succeed. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man +will appear." But the man musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil +everything. In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a +quarter of a century--and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly +laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed, the Moment had +arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward. +Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds +me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were +crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago. +He thought it had been in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in +substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind. + +A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that +Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise +could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of +course. There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of +freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all +loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore. A +number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day, +they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle. They were +boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals +of idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by +contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other. + +The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none +himself, and was easy game for other people's--for he always believed +whatever was told him. + +One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going +fishing or hunting this time--no, he had thought out a better plan. Out +of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical +way, and he was going to have a look at New York. + +It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel immense travel--in +those days it meant seeing the world; it was the equivalent of a voyage +around it in ours. At first the other youths thought his mind was +affected, but when they found that he was in earnest, the next thing to +be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for +a practical joke. + +The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation +and made a plan. The idea was, that one of the conspirators should offer +Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into +delivering it. It would be easy to do this. But what would Ed do when +he got back to Memphis? That was a serious matter. He was good-hearted, +and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes which +did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be +a cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire; for with +all his good nature, Ed was a Southerner--and the English of that was, +that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he +could before falling himself. However, the chances must be taken--it +wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that. + +So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was +signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit. +It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and +was of good parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to +be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake. It went on to say, +"You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will +easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how +we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night; and how, while he was +chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back +and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and +the time that we----" and so forth and so on, bringing in names of +imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of +course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting +them into lively and telling shape. + +With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to +Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the +question would astonish Ed, and it did. + +"What? Do you know that extraordinary man?" + +"No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you +like, I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you +for my sake." + +Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. +The three days passed, and the letter was put into his bands. He started +on his trip, still pouring out his thanks while he shook good-bye all +around. And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter +in a storm of happy satisfaction--and then quieted down, and were less +happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this +deception began to intrude again. + +Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business +quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people +were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the +millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and +got the letter instead. Ed was sent for a moment later, and found Mr. +Vanderbilt alone, with the letter--open--in his hand. + +"Pray sit down, Mr. --er--" + +"Jackson." + +" Ah--sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a +letter from an old friend. Allow me--I will run my eye through it. He +says he says--why, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the +signature. "Alfred Fairchild--hm--Fairchild--I don't recall the name. +But that is nothing--a thousand names have gone from me. He says--he +says-hm-hmoh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare! I don't quite +remember it, but I seem to it'll all come back to me presently. He says +--he says--hm--hm-oh, but that was a game! Oh, spl-endid! How it +carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long time ago--and the +names--some of the names are wavery and indistinct--but sho', I know it +happened--I can feel it! and lord, how it warms my heart, and brings +back my lost youth! Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this +work-a-day world now--business presses and people are waiting--I'll keep +the rest for bed to-night, and live my youth over again. And you'll +thank Fairchild for me when you see him--I used to call him Alf, I think +--and you'll give him my gratitude for--what this letter has done for the +tired spirit of a hard-worked man; and tell him there isn't anything that +I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you, +my lad, you are my guest; you can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit. +where you are a little while, till I get through with these people, then +we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boy--make yourself easy as to +that." + +Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time--and never suspected that the +Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and that he was daily being weighed +and measured and analyzed and tried and tested. + +Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to +tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he +proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No--wait; leave it to +me; I'll tell you when to go." + +In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of +his--consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious +systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in +effective centers--and among other things his farseeing eye had detected +the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of, toward +Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it his +own. + +The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said: + +"Now you can start home. But first we will have some more talk about +that tobacco matter. I know you now. I know your abilities as well as +you know them yourself--perhaps better. You understand that tobacco +matter; you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you +also understand the plans which I have matured for doing it. What I want +is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in Memphis, +and be in supreme command of that important business--and I appoint you." + +"Me!" + +"Yes. Your salary will be high--of course-for you are representing me. +Later you will earn increases of it, and will get them. You will need a +small army of assistants; choose them yourself--and carefully. Take no +man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man you +know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger." After some +further talk under this head, the Commodore said: + +"Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me." + +When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell +his great news and thank the boys over and over again for thinking to +give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those +idle times. Blazing hot noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf. But +as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white linen +figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning, +and said to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, +he said, "It's Charley--it's Fairchild good"; and the next moment laid an +affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, +took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the +sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for +the wharf-boat like the wind! + +Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning +of this? He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned +the corner of a freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys. +They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter; they heard his +step, and glanced up just as he discovered them; the laugh died abruptly; +and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels and +bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was paralyzed. Had the boys all gone +mad? What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And +so, dreaming along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard nothing +but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner +to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent-- + +"O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard. + +The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out-- + +"Go 'way from here! You let me alone. I didn't do it, I swear I +didn't!" + +"Didn't do what?" + +"Give you the----" + +"Never mind what you didn't do--come out of that! What makes you all act +so? What have I done?" + +"You? Why you haven't done anything. But----" + +"Well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so +for?" + +"I--er--but haven't you got anything against us?" + +"Of course not. What put such a thing into your head?" + +"Honor bright--you haven't? + +"Honor bright." + +"Swear it!" + +"I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway." + +"And you'll shake hands with me?" + +"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands +with somebody!" + +The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the +letter!--but it's all right, I'm not going to fetch up the subject." And +he crawled out and came dripping and draining to shake hands. First one +and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously--armed to the +teeth--took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily forward and +joined the love-feast. + +And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been +acting, they answered evasively, and pretended that they had put it up as +a joke, to see what he would do. It was the best explanation they could +invent at such short notice. And each said to himself, "He never +delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if he only knew it or we +were dull enough to come out and tell." + +Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said-- + +"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks it's my treat. +I'm going to tell you all about it. And to-night it's my treat again +--and we'll have oysters and a time!" + +When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said: + +"Well, when, I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt----" + +"Great Scott!" + +"Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter?" + +"Oh--er--nothing. Nothing--it was a tack in the chair-seat," said one. + +"But you all said it. However, no matter. When I delivered the +letter----" + +"Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who +thought that maybe they were dreaming. + +Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels +grew, the amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took +their breath. They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat +like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale +was ended, and Ed said-- + +"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful +--bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have +places; I want every one of you. I know you--I know you 'by the back,' +as the gamblers say. You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling, +with the hallmark on. And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my first +assistant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and +because you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it +for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it would! And here's to +that great man--drink hearty!" + +Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears--even if he is a thousand +miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in +his private heart no man much respects himself. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of +any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, +are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old times; +this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator, where +reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win to +permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates +of Hell." In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, +of both sexes and all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot +there was a settlement of juvenile convicts--children--who had been sent +thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe +to expiate their "crimes." + +In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose +head stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The Derwent's shores +furnish scenery of an interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose +book, "The Story of Australasia," is just out, invoices its features with +considerable truth and intemperance: "The marvelous picturesqueness of +every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the +transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply +impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, +defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken +into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with +evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, +she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful +'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, +clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air +to the height of 230 feet or more." + +It looked so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of +pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting +Cape Pillar, with its cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to +a height of 900 feet, the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy +cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains of +foam." + +That is well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet +high. Still they were a very fine show. They stood boldly out by +themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle. But there was +nothing about their appearance to suggest the heads of a hydra. They +looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends tapered to the +shape of a carving-knife point; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of +their great height, might have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of +piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular. + +The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with scrub, or brush, +or both. It is joined to the main by a low neck. At this junction was +formerly a convict station called Port Arthur--a place hard to escape +from. Behind it was the wilderness of scrub, in which a fugitive would +soon starve; in front was the narrow neck, with a cordon of chained dogs +across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards, armed. +We saw the place as we swept by--that is, we had a glimpse of what we +were told was the entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth +something, as a remembrancer, but that was all. + +The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of +fairy visions, in its entire length elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over +the deep blue sea studded with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's +edge, one is at a loss which scene to choose for contemplation and to +admire most. When the Huon and Bruni have been passed, there seems no +possible chance of a rival; but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive and +noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded +on either hand by Mounts Nelson and Rumney; presently we arrive at +Sullivan's Cove--Hobart! + +It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor +--a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still +surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and +luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in +woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, +a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole region, +for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and +variety of color, and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the, +promontories; and then, the splendor of the sunlight, the dim rich +distances, the charm of the water-glimpses! And it was in this paradise +that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed, and the Corps-bandits +quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black +innocents consummated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time. +It was all out of keeping with the place, a sort of bringing of heaven +and hell together. + +The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we +struck the head of the procession of Junior Englands. We were to +encounter other sections of it in New Zealand, presently, and others +later in Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman can find in his new home +resemblances to his old one, he is touched to the marrow of his being; +the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied +forces transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the +revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling which works this +enchantment, and it compels one's homage; compels it, and also compels +one's assent--compels it always--even when, as happens sometimes, one +does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is +pointing them out. + +The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly +approximate the originals--but after all, in the matter of certain +physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have +sampled the globe, I am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, +and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the +earth; there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand +and Alaska; there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten +thousand islands of the Southern seas; there is a beauty of the prairie +and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of +these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of +its beauty; but that beauty which is England is alone--it has no +duplicate. + +It is made up of very simple details--just grass, and trees, and shrubs, +and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, +and castles, and here and there a ruin--and over it all a mellow +dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its own. + +Hobart has a peculiarity--it is the neatest town that the sun shines on; +and I incline to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may +be, its supremacy in neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be +another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors; no rickety gates +and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and unsightly +sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered with +tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no +clutter on the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes +and tin-patched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a +comfort to the eye; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and +has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its comely cat +asleep on the window ledge. + +We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who +is curator of it. It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of +marsupials--[A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is +its pocket. In some countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. +The first American marsupials were Stephen Girard, Mr. Aston and the +opossum; the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. +Rhodes, and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest marsupial. Also, I +might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all. But there is +nothing in that.]--one, the "Tasmanian devil;" that is, I think he was +one of them. And there was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up +it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills +sheep. On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a +whole year. He doesn't want the whole sheep, but only the kidney-fat. +This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird to support. To get the +fat he drives his beak in and rips it out; the wound is mortal. This +parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about by changed +conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently brought +famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always +thitherto been the parrot's diet. The miseries of hunger made the bird +willing to eat raw flesh, since it could get no other food, and it began +to pick remnants of meat from sheep skins hung out on the fences to dry. +It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any other food, and by and by it +came to prefer the kidney-fat to any other detail of the sheep. The +parrot's bill was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Nature +fixed that matter; she altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can +dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or +anybody else, for that matter--even an Admiral. + +And there was another curiosity--quite a stunning one, I thought: +Arrow-heads and knives just like those which Primeval Man made out of +flint, and thought he had done such a wonderful thing--yes, and has been +humored and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring +scientists until there is probably no living with him in the other world +by now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our +day; and by people who have never heard of him or his works: by +aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas, within our time. And +they not only duplicated those works of art but did it in the brittlest +and most treacherous of substances--glass: made them out of old brandy +bottles flung out of the British camps; millions of tons of them. It is +time for Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had his +day. He is not what he used to be. We had a drive through a bloomy and +odorous fairy-land, to the Refuge for the Indigent--a spacious and +comfortable home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes. There was a +crowd in there, of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being +suddenly set down in a new world--a weird world where Youth has never +been, a world sacred to Age, and bowed forms, and wrinkles. Out of the +359 persons present, 223, were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring +tales, no doubt, if they had been minded to talk; 42 of the 359 were past +80, and several were close upon 90; the average age at death there is 76 +years. As for me, I have no use for that place; it is too healthy. +Seventy is old enough--after that, there is too much risk. Youth and +gaiety might vanish, any day--and then, what is left? Death in life; +death without its privileges, death without its benefits. There were 185 +women in that Refuge, and 81 of them were ex-convicts. + +The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, +as usual, she made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and +then moved on. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 3 +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 3 *** + +***** This file should be named 5810.txt or 5810.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/1/5810/ + +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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