The Bushman - Life in a New Country Part 12

They always speak of him as So-and-so's brother, or father. If the deceased be the father of a family, it is the duty of his eldest son, or nearest relation, to avenge his death by killing one of the next, or any other tribe; and this often leads to furious battles or cold-blooded murders; for they are by no means particular whether it be man, woman, or child who is the victim; and it is generally the poor women who suffer on these occasions; the men being too cowardly, unless under the influence of very strong pa.s.sion, to attack those of equal strength with themselves. The women do all the work, such as building huts, carrying water, digging up roots, and procuring grubs out of the wattle and gra.s.s-trees. I have seen a poor unfortunate woman marching twenty miles a-day, with (at least) a hundred pounds'-weight on her back, including the child and all their effects; whilst the husband has been too lazy to carry even his cloak. A hunting excursion with a large party of natives is capital sport. They choose, if possible, a valley, at one end of which they station ten or twenty of the most expert spearmen; with whom, if you want any fun, you must station yourself, taking care to remain concealed. All the juveniles of the party then start off, and make a circuit of many miles in extent, shouting and hallooing the whole time. They form a semicircle, and drive all the kangaroos before them down the valley, to the spot where the old hunters are placed.

Then comes the tug of war, the cras.h.i.+ng of bushes, the flying of spears, and the thump, thump of the kangaroos, as they come tearing along, sometimes in hundreds, from the old grey grandfather of six feet high, to the little picanniny of twelve inches, who has tumbled out of his mother's pouch; and numbers fall victims to the ruthless arms of the hunters. The evening terminates with a grand feast and a corrobery."

[etching opposite p. 214 "Spearing Kangaroos"]

Each tribe has its doctor, or wise man, who is supposed to have supernatural powers of healing wounds, and is the oracle of the tribe. One of these fellows described to me the mode of his initiation. He said his father, himself a wise man, took him one night to the edge of a steep hill, where he left him lying wrapped in his kangaroo-skin cloak. He was very much frightened, but durst not stir. During the night Chingi came and tried to throw him down the hill, and to strangle him, but did not succeed. Chingi was like something very black. He afterwards came again, and told him a great many secrets; and thus is was that my informant became a doctor and a wise man. I think I have heard of people obtaining the power of second sight in the Isle of Skye by lying on a rock all night, wrapped in a bull's hide, and receiving a visit from the devil. The similarity between these initiatory processes struck me forcibly.

CHAPTER 18.

THE MODEL-KINGDOM.

A well-governed colony is the Model of a great kingdom. As in the case of other models, every part of the machinery by which it is moved is placed at once before the eye of the spectator. In a great empire, the springs of action are concealed; the public behold only the results, and can scarcely guess how those results were brought about. In a colony, every one stands so close to the little machine of Government, that he can readily discern how it is made to work, and therefore takes a more lively interest in the working of it. The model has its representative of a sovereign; its Ministers, who comprise the Executive Council with the Colonial Secretary as Premier; its Parliament, the Legislative a.s.sembly; its Bishop of London, who is represented by the Colonial Chaplain, the dignitary of the Church in those parts. In the Legislative a.s.sembly there are the Government party, consisting of the Colonial Secretary and the Attorney General, who prove their loyalty and devotion by adhering to His Excellency the Governor on every division, and (according to general belief) would rather vote against their own measures than against the representative of their Queen. Then there is the popular party, consisting of the popular member, who speaks at random on either side of the debate, but invariably votes against the Government, in order to maintain inviolate the integrity of his principles. We have also the Judge, or Lord chancellor, the great Law officer of the Crown, who sits silently watching the progress of a Bill, as it steals gently forward towards the close of the second reading; and then suddenly pounces upon it, to the consternation of his Excellency, and the delight of the popular member, and tears it in pieces with his sharp legal teeth, whilst he shows that it is in its scope and tendency contrary to the Law of England in that case provided, and is besides impossible to be carried out in the present circ.u.mstances of the Colony. The Model Nation has its national debt of one thousand pounds, due to the Commissariat chest; and this burthen of the State costs his Excellency many a sleepless night, spent in vain conjectures as to the best mode of relieving the financial embarra.s.sments.

It is pleasant to learn from the model, how Government patronage is disposed of in the Parent country. Kindly motives, however, which never appear in the arrangements of the latter, are always conspicuous in a colony. A public work is sometimes created for the sole purpose of saving an unfortunate mechanic from the horrors of idleness; and a debt due to the State is occasionally discharged by three months' was.h.i.+ng of a Privy Councillor's s.h.i.+rts.

Then we have the exact fac-simile of a Royal Court, with its levees and drawing-rooms, where his Excellency displays the utmost extent of his affability, and his lady of her queenly airs. There may be seen, in all its original freshness and vigour, the smiling hatred of rival ladies, followed by their respective trains of admirers; whilst the full-blown dames of Members of Council elbow their way, with all the charming confidence of rank, towards the vicinity of her who is the cynosure of all eyes. The early levees of the first Governor of Western Australia were held in a dry swamp, near the centre of the present town of Perth. His Excellency, graciously bowing beneath the shade of a banksia tree, received with affability those who were introduced to him, as they stumbled into his presence over tangled brushwood, and with difficulty avoided the only humiliation that is scorned by English courtiers -- that of the person.

Ladies, in struggling through the th.o.r.n.y brake, had sometimes to labour under the double embarra.s.sment of a ragged reputation and dress. To appear before the Presence, under such circ.u.mstances, with a smiling countenance, proved the triumph of feminine art, and of course excited general admiration. But this was in the early days of the settlement. We have now a handsome Government-house, where ladies who attend drawing-rooms incur no danger of any kind.

From the financial difficulties of a small colony you may form some idea of the troubles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at home. And yet there is less financial talent required to raise five hundred thousand pounds in England than five hundred in an impoverished colony. In the former country only a few voices, comparatively, are raised in expostulation; and no one cares about them, if Mr. Hume could be gagged, and the other patriots in the Commons. But in a colony! threaten to raise the price of sugar by the imposition of another half-penny per pound, and the whole land will be heaved as though by an earthquake. Not only will the newspapers pour forth a terrific storm of denunciations against a treacherous Government, but every individual of the public will take up the matter as a personal injury, and roar out his protest against so monstrous a political crime. Those who called most loudly for the erection of a necessary bridge, will be most indignant when asked next year to contribute towards its cost.

The Governor of a colony should not only be a good financier, but if he would avoid the bitter pangs of repentance, must possess great firmness in resisting the innumerable calls upon the Government purse.

His Excellency may lay his account to being daily vituperated for not consenting to the construction of this or that national work, but he will be still more taken to task when the melancholy duty of paying for it becomes imperative, and is found to be unavoidable.

It is the general belief, that in a colony we are altogether out of the world; but it has always appeared to me, that within the narrow confines of one of those epitomes of a kingdom we may see more of the world than when standing on the outer edge of society in England.

A man thinks himself in the midst of the world in Great Britain, because he reads the newspapers and knows what is pa.s.sing and being enacted around him. But the same newspapers are read with equal diligence in a colony, and the same knowledge is acquired there, though some three months later. To read the newspapers, and to hang, close as a burr, upon the skirts of society, is not to be in the world. The world is, in truth, the heart of Man; and he knows most of the World who knows most of his species. And where, alas! may this knowledge, so painful and so humiliating, be better acquired than in a colony? There we have the human heart laid open before us without veil or disguise: there we see it in all its coa.r.s.eness, its selfishness, its brutality.

How many fine natures, cultivated, delicate, and generous, have gone forth from their native land, full of high resolves, only to perish in the mephitic atmosphere of a colony!

There we find whatever there is of good and bad in human nature brought immediately before our eyes. It is a school of moral anatomy, in which we study subjects whose outer covering has been removed, and where the inner machinery (fearful to see!) is left exposed.

A knowledge of the world! if we gain it not in a colony, it must ever remain a sealed book to us.

We shall leave but a bad impression on the mind of the reader in concluding this short chapter with these sombre observations; but we would not leave him without hope. Time will remedy all this. Some moral evils correct themselves; as the water of the Nile becomes pure again after it has gone putrid.

CHAPTER 19.

TRIALS OF A GOVERNOR.

Except the waiter at a commercial inn, no man has so much upon his hands, or so many faults to answer for, as the Governor of a colony.

If public affairs go wrong, every voice is raised, requiring him immediately to rectify them; and as every one has a particular plan of his own, the Governor is expected instantly to adopt them all.

Nor has he public calamities only to answer for; the private misfortunes of individuals are, without hesitation, laid at his door.

He is expected to do something, and not a little, for all who are in trouble; he has to devise expedients for those whose own wits are at fault: it is among his duties to console, to cheer, to advise, to redress, to remedy; and, above all, to enrich.

As men set up a block of wood in a field to become a rubbing-post for a.s.ses; as bachelors take to themselves wives, and elderly spinsters individuals of the feline race, in order to have something on which to vent their occasional ill-humours, so is a Governor set up in a colony, that the settlers may have a proper object or mark set apart, on which they may satisfactorily discharge their wrongs, sorrows, wants, troubles, distractions, follies, and unreasonable expectations. A Governor is the safety-valve of a colony; withdraw this legitimate object of abuse, and the whole community would be at loggerheads. A state of anarchy would be the immediate consequence, and broil and blood-shed would prevail throughout the land.

Sometimes a Governor forgets the purpose for which he was sent out from home, and placed on high in a colony, as a rubbing-post; he sometimes lapses into the error of fancying himself a colonial Solon, and strives to distinguish his reign by the enactment of laws, which only increase the natural irritability of the settlers, and cause him to be more rubbed against than ever. On these occasions he is not always ent.i.tled to much sympathy; but when private parties come crowding round him to have the consequence of their follies averted, or merely in a state of discontented irritation, to have their backs scratched, his poor Excellency is much to be compa.s.sionated.

Almost every morning a long-eared crowd a.s.sembles around the Government-offices, where the rubbing-post is set up, and one after another they are admitted to find what relief they may from this cheap luxury. It is pleasant to observe that they almost all come out again with smiling countenances. For a moment, the sense of pain or discontent has been alleviated by the gentle application.

Sometimes an honest farmer has ridden fifty miles in order to have the pleasure of complaining to his Excellency of the mal-administration of the post-office department, evidenced by the non-delivery of a letter, which, after a vast deal of investigation and inquiry, turns out never to have been posted. Sometimes a man comes for advice as to the propriety of going to law with his neighbour about a bull which had taken the liberty to eat some of his turnips. One man wishes to have his Excellency's opinion upon a disease which has lately broken out among his pigs; another has mysteriously carried a piece of iron-stone in his pocket for a hundred miles, and claims the reward for the discovery of a coal-mine; a third has a plan to propose for fertilizing the sand-plains around Perth, by manuring them with sperm oil. Some are desirous that their sons should be made Government clerks, and insist upon their right to all vacant appointments on the plea of being "old settlers." Others have suggestions to make the neglect of which would prove ruinous to the colony: general misery is only to be averted by the repeal of the duty on tobacco: no more s.h.i.+ps need be expected (this is after a gale and wreck,) unless a break-water be constructed, which may be done for ninety-five thousand pounds, and there was a surplus revenue last year over the expenditure of thirteen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, the local government being also indebted to the Commissariat chest in the sum of nine hundred pounds odd. Some complain of roads and bridges being in a defective state, and wonder why two thousand pounds extra per annum are not laid out upon them; these are succeeded by a deputation from the inhabitants of Rockingham, requesting, as a matter of right, that half that sum may be applied in ornamenting their princ.i.p.al square with a botanical garden. Then the Governor has to attend to complaints against public officers. The Commissioner of the Civil Court has proved himself to be an unjust judge by deciding for the defendant contrary to the truth, as proved by the plaintiff; or the Commissioner of the Court of Requests has received a bribe of three-and-fourpence, and refused to listen to the complainant's story. The magistrates have granted a spirit license to a notorious character, and denied one to the applicant, an unimpeachable householder. The Post-Master General has embezzled a letter, or the Colonial Secretary has neglected to reply to one.

All these things, and a thousand others, the Governor is expected to listen to, inquire about, remedy, or profit by.

One day, I remember, I went myself to complain of the absurdity of an Act of Council which I thought might be advantageously amended by the aid of a little light which had lately dawned upon me.

Among those who haunted the ante-room, waiting for admittance to the rubbing-post was a tall Irish woman, who had seen better days, but was now reduced to much distress, and was besides not altogether right in her intellects.

She was in the frequent habit of attending there, for the purpose of complaining against the Advocate General, who never paid her proper attention when she went to lay her grievances before him. This woman was the terror of the Government officers. She never allowed her victim to escape when once she had begun her story; -- in vain might he try to edge away towards the door -- if he were not to be retained by the fascination of her voice, she would seize him by the coat with a grasp of iron, and a fly might as well try to escape from a pot-bellied spider. Whenever she appeared, no public officer was ever to be found. A general epidemic seemed to have fallen upon the offices, and exterminated all the inhabitants. The Colonial Secretary would rush out to luncheon, deaf as an adder to the cries of female distress that rang in the troubled air behind him. The Advocate General, hearing the well-known voice inquiring for him in no friendly key, would hurry away through an opposite door, and dive into the woods adjoining Government-house, and there gnaw his nails, in perturbation of spirit until he thought the evil was overpast.

His Excellency himself would sooner have seen the Asiatic cholera walk into the room than Miss Maria Martin, and invariably turned paler then his writing-paper, and shuddered with a sudden ague. She had so many wrongs to complain of, which no human power could redress, and she required so much to be done for her, and insisted upon having reiterated promises to that effect, that no wonder she excited the utmost terror in the minds of all whom she approached.

She was, moreover, a huge, brawny, fierce-looking creature, and though upwards of fifty years of age, had the strength of an Irish porter. She was reported on one occasion to have taken a gentleman of high reputation, and unimpeachable morals, by the collar of his coat, and pinned him up against the wall, until he had promised to speak for her to the Governor; and when he subsequently accused her of this violence, she retorted by saying that it was in self-defence, as he had attempted improper liberties. The fear of such an unscrupulous and cruel accusation made Government officers, especially the married ones, extremely shy of granting a tete-a-tete conversation to Miss Martin; and as no one was, of course, more correct in his conduct than his Excellency the Governor, no wonder that he should feel extremely nervous whenever he was surprised into an interview with this interesting spinster.

When I found her in the ante-room I naturally recoiled, and tried to back out again, smiling blandly all the time, as one does when a violent-looking dog comes up, and begins sniffing about your legs.

Miss Martin, however, was used to these manoeuvres, and suddenly getting between me and the door, intercepted my retreat, and insisted on telling me, for the twentieth time, how villanously the Advocate General had deceived her. Escape was impossible; I groaned and sweated with anguish, but listen I must, and had to suffer martyrdom for an hour, when the Governor's door opened, and he himself looked out. On seeing the Gorgon he tried to withdraw, but she pounded like a tigress through the door-way, and slamming the door after her, secured an audience with his Excellency, which she took care should not be a short one. I could remain no longer, and therefore owe the rest of the story to public report. After an hour's tete-a-tete, his Excellency's voice grew more imperative. The clerks, highly interested, conceived that he was insisting upon her withdrawing. It is supposed that he could not possibly escape himself, as she of course cut off all communication with either the door or the bell-rope. The lady's voice also waxed higher; at length it rose into a storm. Nothing more was heard of the poor Governor beyond a faint, moaning sound; whether he was deprecating the tempest, or being actually strangled, became a matter of grave speculation. Some a.s.serted that they heard his kicks upon the floor, others could only hear convulsive sobs; then all fancied they could distinguish the sounds of a struggle. The officials debated whether it would be proper or indelicate to look in upon the interview; but it became so evident that a scuffle was going on, that the private secretary's anxiety overcame all other considerations. The door was opened just as his Excellency, escaping from the grasp of the mad woman, had made a vault at the railing which ran across the farther end of the Council Room (to keep back the public on certain days), in hopes of effecting his escape by the door beyond. Nothing could have been better conceived than this design; but unhappily the lady had caught hold of his coat-tail to arrest his flight, and therefore instead of vaulting clear over the rails, as he had antic.i.p.ated, his Excellency was drawn back in his leap, and found himself seated astride upon the barrier, with a desperate woman tugging at his tail, and trying to pull him back into the arena. Nothing, we believe, has ever exceeded the ludicrous misery displayed in his Excellency's visage on finding himself in this perilous situation. But seeing the private secretary and a mob of clerks, with their pens in their hands, hastening to his rescue, he made a desperate effort, and cast himself off on the other side; and finally succeeded in rus.h.i.+ng out of the room, having only one tail hanging to his coat, with which he escaped into an adjoining apartment, and was received into the arms of the Surveyor General in a state of extreme exhaustion.

Such are some of the troubles and afflictions incident to the unenviable office of Governor of a colony. Those innocent country gentlemen who have expended the better part of their property on contested elections, and now weary heaven and Her Majesty's Princ.i.p.al Secretaries of State for colonial appointments, little know what they invoke upon themselves. In my opinion Sancho Panza had a sinecure, compared with theirs, in his Governors.h.i.+p of the island of Barrataria.*

[footnote] *Our love of the ludicrous frequently makes us delighted to find even the most estimable characters in a ridiculous position.

The above anecdote is perhaps exaggerated, but it is here recorded as a moral warning to those who yearn like Sancho Panza for a government, and not from a desire to cast ridicule upon one who was universally respected and esteemed, for the quiet decorum of his life, his high principles, his strict impartiality, and the conscientious discharge of all the duties of his office.

CHAPTER 20.

MR. SAILS, MY GROOM. -- OVER THE HILLS. -- A SHEEP STATION.

Soon after I was settled in my residence at Perth I purchased a couple of young mares unbroke, recently imported from the Cape of Good Hope. They were the offspring of an Arab horse and Cape mare, and one of them, a chestnut, was almost the handsomest creature I ever beheld. They cost me thirty guineas each; but since that period the value of horses is greatly diminished.

I was very much pleased with this purchase, which recalled the memories of boyhood and a long-tailed pony, whenever I found myself feeding or grooming my stud -- which I often thought proper to do, as my establishment, though at that time numerous, did not comprise a well-educated groom.

Besides my own man, I had two runaway sailors from the s.h.i.+p in which we had come out, quartered upon me. They expressed so flattering a regard for me, as the only person whom they knew in this part of the world, and were so ready to dig the garden and plant potatoes, or do any other little matter to make themselves useful, that I had not the heart to refuse them a nook in the kitchen, or a share of our daily meals. I now called their services into activity by making them a.s.sist at the breaking in of my mares; and whilst I held the lunging-rein, Mr. Sails would exert himself till he became as black as a sweep with dust and perspiration, by running round and round in the rear of the animal, urging her forward with loud cries and objurgations, accompanied with furious crackings of his whip. These sailors never did anything quietly. If told to give the horses some hay, they would both start up from their stools by the kitchen fire, as if in a state of frantic excitement; thrust their pipes into the leathern belt which held up their trousers, and jostling each other through the doorway like a brace of young dogs, tear round the house to the stable, or rather shed, as though possessed by a legion of devils. Then, unable to use a fork, they would seize as much hay as they could clasp in their arms, and littering it all about the premises, rush to the stalls, where they suddenly grew exceedingly cautious; for in fact, they felt much greater dread of these horses than they would have done of a ground shark. Then it was all, "Soh!

my little feller! Soh! my pretty little la.s.s! -- Avast there -- (in a low tone) you lubber, or I'll rope's end you -- none of that!"

This was whenever the mare, pleased at the sight of the hay, looked round and whinnied. Unless I superintended the operation myself, the hay would be thrown under the horse's feet, whilst the men took to their heels at the same moment, and then turned round to see whether the animals could reach their fodder. If they could, these worthy grooms would come cheerfully to me and tell me that the horses were eating their allowance; but if not, they filled their pipes, and took a turn out of the way, trusting the hay would all be trampled into the litter before I happened to see it. Whenever I was present, I made them get upon the manger and put the hay into the rack, (I never could teach them to use a fork,) but it was with fear and trembling that they did this. One day, Sails was standing on the manger, with the hay in his arms, when the mare, trying to get a mouthful, happened to rub her nose against the hinder portion of his person.

Sails roared aloud, and let the hay fall upon the mare's head and neck.

"What's the matter, man?" said I.

"By Gad, sir," cried Sails, looking round with a face of terror, and scrambling down, "he's tuk a bite out of my starn!"

After the horses had been well lunged it became necessary to mount them. In vain, however, I tried to persuade Sails or his comrade d.i.c.k to get upon their backs. I therefore mounted first myself, and after a deal of plunging and knocking about was dismounted again, with the mare, who had thrown herself down, actually kneeling upon my body. All this time, Sails stood helplessly looking on open-mouthed, holding the lunging-rein in his hands; and I had to call to him to "pull her off" before he made any attempt to give a.s.sistance. This accident effectually prevented my gallant grooms from trusting themselves on horseback; but they proved more useful in breaking in the animals to draw the light cart. One would ride whilst the other drove, and their nautical phrases, and seaman-like style of steering the craft, as they called it, excited the admiration of the neighbourhood. But they never could bring themselves to like the employment of tending horses; and finding that I insisted upon their making themselves useful in this way, they at last gave me up, and volunteered as part of the crew of a vessel about to sail for Sincapore.

Long after this period I drove the dog-cart over the hills to York races. My brother had come down to Perth, and we went together, taking with us our friend the amiable and talented editor of one of the Perth journals. Attaching another horse to an outrigger, we drove unicorn, or a team of three.