Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara Volume Iii Part 3

As to the intimate connection between crime and ignorance, most striking confirmation is obtained from investigations made in England and Wales in 1842-44, in the case of 69,616 criminals, of whom 21,799 or 31.3 per cent.

could neither read nor write, 41,620 or 59.8 per cent. could read and write imperfectly, 5909 or 8.5 per cent. could read and write well, and only 308 or 0.4 per cent. had received a good education.

The present population of New South Wales, despite all their burdens and difficulties, furnish an instructive and cheering example of what may be made of even hordes of fallen man under certain conditions, if they can be afforded the opportunity of working and showing their powers.

Confined in gloomy cells between high walls, chained hand and foot with heavy iron fetters, condemned in their wretched state to life-long inaction, the convicts sent out to Botany Bay during fifty years would have cost the State directly, and society indirectly, an enormous sum; while their existence would have pa.s.sed in silent brooding over their fate, and speculations as to the means of avenging themselves on mankind.

Placed on a remote, healthy, fertile sh.o.r.e, with the cheering prospect of inaugurating for themselves a new era of existence by labour and industry, and thus being enabled to attain competency and respectability, these very same men raise themselves, at but little cost, to the position of valuable subjects to the state and to society, by causing to smile, under the gold crop of agriculture, lands. .h.i.therto all but unknown, and thus becoming the founders of a community, which bears within itself the germ of such a marvellous development in the future, that political seers even now designate it as "THE GREAT BRITAIN OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE."

A system which, despite the many serious deficiencies caused by individual selfish short-sightedness, has produced such results, cannot be considered by any unprejudiced inquirer as altogether objectionable or aimless;--on the contrary, it seems to us it has proved its utility in founding new oversea colonies in portions of the earth as yet little visited, the first colonization of which is attended with local difficulties. We have but to avail ourselves of the experience acquired at Botany Bay, avoiding the canker under which the system has. .h.i.therto been worked in the British colonies (with the exception perhaps of that pattern convict settlement at Singapore, which we have already described), and draw up such regulations, keeping in view the sole object of transportation, viz. PUNISHMENT BY EXILE, AND REFORMATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL THROUGH LABOUR, as shall facilitate its being carried out in an efficient manner, and suffer ourselves neither to be diverted from our course by the selfish warnings of interested administrators, nor by the objections of ill-advised philanthropists.

With respect to the carrying out of a system of transportation, such as formerly existed in the British colonies, especially Australia and Van Diemen's Land, the following modifications seem to be advisable:--

1. The abandonment of the convict to the employer, i. e. the "a.s.signment system," must be entirely given up, as the prisoner by such an arrangement degenerates into an article for speculation, out of which it must be the task-master's interest to get as much as he can, so as to be able to return him upon the hands of the State so soon as his capacity for labour begins to fail. The convicts who were thus "a.s.signed" in New South Wales, stood to their employers in the same position as negro slaves in the Southern States of North America, or the island of Cuba. They were fed like beasts of burden, without the slightest remuneration for the heaviest work. The State had, it is true, a right to punish the criminal, but it seems to us unjust in the extreme to make him the slave of his fellow-man.

Accordingly this practice was the source of unutterable mischief, and was followed by most deplorable results as regards the moral development of the colony.

2. The case is very different when the labour of the criminal, instead of being devoted to the aggrandizement of a private individual, finds its expansion in forwarding parochial or national public works, in clearing and cultivating tracts of land, and preparing them for the future labour of free colonists, in the laying out of roads, in the erection of churches, schools, hospitals, and barracks, in the construction of docks, quays, &c. &c. So soon as private interest disappears,--so soon as the energies of the criminal are no longer made available to put money in the pockets of private speculators, but are utilized for the general good, by far the greater number of those minor drawbacks will disappear, which press with all the more force on the compulsory labourer, in proportion as he feels conscious that he is regarded by him who has purchased his labour not as a FELLOW-MAN, but as a CHATTEL, to be employed while he is of any value, and then to be cast aside, as one might throw a dried twig into the fire. What may be accomplished in this direction, even in colonies of comparatively recent foundation, is evidenced by the splendid roads of Cape Colony, traversing mountain pa.s.ses 6000 to 8000 feet high, the numerous public buildings in Singapore, Hong-kong, Sydney, &c. Edifices, which in consequence of the high price of free labour, might not have been erected under the lapse of many years, actually at present rear their imposing forms like so many ornamental memorials, now of the wors.h.i.+p of the loving Saviour, now of our charitable duties to the sick and afflicted, but all serving to instruct and civilize the rising generation!

3. As to the subsistence of the criminals, we do not believe that the principle of giving them the same descriptions of rations, no matter whether they worked much or little, would be found conducive to the attainment of the great object of making them feel an interest in their labour. We would rather see the present system departed from in this particular, and a marked difference made in the food provided for the industrious, as compared with their more indolent companions.

4. Of great importance in penal colonies, as tending to produce a lasting and decided improvement of the individual, is the FAMILY TIE. What is independence or even affluence to the exile, if he has no one to care for, or think of, but himself? His slow and laborious earnings would greatly tend to plunge him once more into excesses, till he quickly sank back into his former state of war with civilization.

5. It seems to us imperatively necessary in the interests of this great design of a penal colony, that provision should be made for a certain proportion of female population, which might consist partly of female criminals, and partly of the wives of such of the male criminals as should, after a sufficient probation, be permitted to have their wives and children conveyed at the cost of Government to their place of exile.

Lastly, the nucleus of a female population thus already formed might be added to from time to time, by sending out such discharged female criminals as had no visible means of making an honest livelihood in the mother country. It were a n.o.ble object for Christian activity and religious harmony to provide the means for sending these wretched outcasts to the new home that was thus being formed.

6. The importation of spirituous liquors, that fruitful cause of so much crime, must be confined within the narrowest limits. One cannot believe that even in unhealthy places, where the water frequently is very impure and unhealthy, owing to vegetable matters held in solution, the use of strong spirituous liquors must needs be unavoidable. Tea and coffee will in such places, as I experienced myself during several years' residence in unhealthy climates, be found excellent subst.i.tutes.

7. No official of the colony, civil or military, should be permitted to trade in any article except the natural products of the soil. On the other hand, it would be advisable that each _employe_ should have a.s.signed him by Government, a tract of land for cultivation corresponding to his rank.

There can be little doubt, and it may well be advanced as an argument on the other side, when the rapid progress made by the Australian colonies under the influence of this transportation system is adduced as an example in point, that nowhere probably on the earth would external circ.u.mstances, position of the country, and development of the colony to such a pitch of prosperity, combine so wonderfully to produce such a result, as was the case with New South Wales. But even the clumsy method of carrying out this form of punishment, and the immense use made of it for selfish ends by men who had every opportunity for studying close at hand the influence it might have been made to exercise upon the development of the Australian colonies, could not weaken the conviction that, under more judicious management, it would have answered every antic.i.p.ation that could reasonably be formed of any mode of punishment, and that it is better calculated than any other to prove conducive to the amelioration of the criminal himself. We might, while upon this subject, specially refer to the valuable and comprehensive work of Dr. Holtzendorf upon transportation as a means of punishment,[26] which embraces all that can be said on either side of the question, all put together in an attractive and exhaustive manner, and who, contemplating the great example presented to the world by Australia, has arrived at a similar conclusion, "that the working power of the criminal may, under proper management, be made to produce results, able to accelerate the progress of a generation, while furnis.h.i.+ng at the same time a lever by which to effect a moral reformation in the disposition of criminals." He foresees the time "when the colonists of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land need no longer feel ashamed at the historic recollection of their original convict a.s.sociations, but might rather, viewing the prosperity of their country, and the tone and extent of their civilization, feel grateful to the criminals who landed in 1788 to become the pioneers of the country, and do them the justice of believing that the good which they were compelled to do to the soil still existed, while the evil they might have done was left undone of their own accord, or was gradually a.s.similated under substantial progress."

The greatest obstacle to be encountered by the transportation system will be found in the difficulty of hitting upon suitable localities. When we consider the many conditions which must be satisfied, some referring to the general objects aimed at in all punishment, some to considerations of humanity and utility, when selecting a site for a penal colony, such as climate, soil, distance, importance of the country as a market for the products of the mother country, &c., it will be found that the number of unclaimed or unbespoken territories, in which a scheme of compulsory colonization could be carried out on a large scale, is exceedingly limited.

For Germany, however, at least under her present political composition, the foundation of penal colonies oversea seems all but entirely impracticable. She must, in the first place, have her maritime power more developed. On this subject the agreement is of importance which was entered into in 1836 between Mr. James Colquhon, Consul-General for the city of Hamburg, and the agents of the Australian Agricultural Society on the other, as, although nothing resulted from it, it nevertheless indicates how States that have no colonies can set about the system of transportation. The gist of that scheme was the subscription of a sum for the pa.s.sage of such convicts as voluntarily accepted the offer, on their engaging to remain for a certain period at compulsory labour in Australia on the same terms as those of English convicts.[27]

Once the wish and the necessity shall arise in Germany, owing to the expansion of her population, for possessions beyond sea, and her navy shall increase on a scale adapted to their protection and defence, then, although the choice of locality may be limited, the idea will no longer remain impracticable. In the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific there are numbers of island groups, which, by their hypsometric conditions, geographical position, and fertility of soil, are admirably suited for settlement by white labour. The prejudice against the climatic adaptability of the majority of these falls to the ground, when we recollect what entirely altered conditions in that respect have been brought about by the industry and energy of the colonists of Singapore and Pulo-Penang, on islands which, from being in the worst possible repute for their deadly climate and dreaded forest malaria, are now favourite invalid resorts of the wealthy white residents of the islands of Eastern Asia. But German statesmen must no longer hesitate, or continue to sacrifice the future to the exigencies, even the most pressing in political eyes, of the present, for England noiselessly but systematically is possessing herself one after the other of all the islands that are as yet untenanted by the white man, as, for instance, quite lately of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, or, as in the case of the Feejee Islands,[28] accept a suspicious protectorate got up by an influential missionary; while the Emperor of the French, with his irresistible inclination for annexation, is incessantly occupied in seizing on points important either by geographical position or for trade purposes, of which New Caledonia furnishes the latest example. Too long delay and expectation may have for the contemplative German results similar to those which in Schiller's beautiful poem, punished the dallying of the son of the Muses, whose fate, as compared with the actual political circ.u.mstances of Germany, suggests but too many painful a.n.a.logies!

On 6th December the frigate was made ready for prosecuting her voyage, and the same evening all was ataunto. The following morning we were to be towed out of the many-coved port, till quite clear of "the Heads." The steamer, however, sustained an accident to her machinery, and we had her services little more than half a day. Early on the 7th, a breeze had sprung up from S.W. by S., accompanied by squalls and rain, which gradually freshened into squally weather from the S., and determined the Commodore to make all sail at once. Already, even while we were still in the port, the weather began to be stormy; we had to take in a reef in the mainsail, and by 9 A.M. found ourselves outside of "North Head." By the afternoon the low flat coast of Australia had sunk below the horizon, and the south wind had now become a gale. It seemed as though winds and waves had conspired to put to the severest test the operations of the caulkers, carpenters, and sail-makers of Sydney. But although the frigate rolled tremendously, and the frequent squalls propelled the sea against her hull with frightful violence, she did not s.h.i.+p a drop of water below. The repairs in dock had been most effectually performed. After a couple of days both wind and sea fell, the sun shone out with the mildness of early spring, and we bowled along in the most delicious weather and with every st.i.tch of canvas set, swiftly careering towards our next goal, New Zealand.

On the 9th at 5 P.M. we buried the corpse of one of the gunners, who had died the same morning of dysentery, the remains being committed to the deep with the customary ceremonies and marks of respect.

On the morning of the 19th we sighted Barrier Island off Cape b.u.t.t, distant 35 miles. The more we neared the land, the more balmy did the atmosphere become. Innumerable Albatrosses and _Procellariae_ swarmed around us, and the result of half an hour's shooting from a small boat dropped over the side for the purpose, resulted in our securing eleven different species of storm-birds. A whale about 50 feet in length also came close under our quarter, and only retreated after he had been repeatedly fired upon and had received a number of b.a.l.l.s in his carcase.

We steered for the South Point of Barrier Island, the outline of which is very beautiful, relieved as it is by two hills, of which that to the south is about 2000 feet in height, running up into a sharp peak, while the more northerly rises gradually, being only precipitous on the northern face.

The broken conical rocks which ascend out of the sea near the northern point of the island unmistakeably indicate their volcanic origin.

Our arrival off New Zealand was signalized by most unusual calms, which indeed materially delayed our entrance into Huraka Gulf, a sort of lateral bay, entering from the harbour of Auckland. A bark, which had sailed from Sydney three days before us, had, as we were informed by our pilot, been one day in harbour. We now had to tack slowly up under faint puffs of wind towards the anchorage, which we reached finally at 5.30 P.M. of the 22nd December, 1858.

The country round Auckland has none of those majestic features which are presented by New Zealand further south. The enormous volcanic peaks, such as Mount Egmont, 8000 feet high, have dwindled down in this region to numerous but small extinct cones, rarely rising above 800 feet. Instead of the hills covered with perpetual snow of the central island, one sees here only low chains of hills, about 2000 feet high, and a rolling country, which dips into the sea in steep cliffs of sandstone. In the various bays and channels of the wide gulf might be seen numbers of natives in their elegant canoes engaged in fis.h.i.+ng. We found but five s.h.i.+ps in harbour, and here also the _Novara_ was the largest man-of-war that had ever entered the port. The population of Auckland turned out on the beach as we approached, and began to exchange the usual salutes with the little fort.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A National System of Political Economy. Stuttgart, 1840. (J. C.

Cotta.)

[2] In an old map of the year 1542, the Australian continent is named New Java.

[3] The mean of thermometrical readings on the north coast is 80.6 Fahr.;--at Port McQuarrie, in S.E. Australia (31 S.), 68 Fahr.; at Port Jackson (34 S.) 66.5 Fahr.; at Port Philip on the south coast (33 S.), 61.3 Fahr.; at Perth on the west coast (32 S.) 62.6 to 64.4 Fahr. The annual rain-fall in New South Wales is 45 inches.

[4] The total superficial area of the somewhat oval-shaped continent lying between 10 and 45 S. and 112 and 154 E., is about 2,100,000 geographical square miles in extent, the coast outline of which is about 7000 miles, so that for each mile of coast there are about 300 square miles of surface, or rather more than double the proportion in Europe. The united English population of the different colonies founded in Australia (exclusive of Tasmania or Van Diemen's Land) and New Zealand amounts to about 1,400,000 souls. Within twenty years the population has increased six-fold, and the value of the exports twenty-fold.

[5] The fundamental principle of the University is, "The a.s.sociation of students without respect of religious creed, in the cultivation of secular knowledge." (See Sydney University Calendar for 1858, p. 15.)

[6] The fixed salary of the teacher varies from 120 to 140 per annum.

[7] At the period of our visit to the colony, the post of secretary was filled by Mr. G. French Angus, distinguished as an artist, and widely known for his valuable ethnological studies upon the Caffers, New Zealanders, and South Australian aborigines. Unfortunately his health gave way, owing to his exertions, and he now lives in retirement at Collingwood, in South Australia, where however he is still animated by the most intense zeal for science.

[8] The expedition discovered on the 21st April, 1858, in 24 35' S. and 146 6' W., an ash tree, two feet in diameter, on whose huge trunk the letter L had been deeply cut. Close by there were everywhere traces of a regular encampment, and an impression pretty universally prevailed that Leichhardt and his companions had camped here, and had cut this mark to indicate it. One of the oldest missionaries of Western Australia, the venerable Mr. C. Threlkeld, objected, however, to this view that the letter L, of which so much was spoken, had in all probability been made by one of the youthful natives, who when learning to read and write are in the habit of cutting the letters on the trees. We present here the precise pa.s.sage of the text of a letter of Dr. Threlkeld's to us:--"I send you a spelling-book, that Billy Blue, one of the black boys, used to have, when he was learning to read and write. He and others used to go into the bush, and cut the letters of the alphabet on the barks of the trees, and Brown, an aboriginal lad, who _went with the unfortunate Leichhardt_, used to do the same. _I suspect that he cut the celebrated L on the tree about which there is so much talk at the present time._"

[9] One of the most appalling of these was that undertaken in April, 1848, by surveyor E. B. Kennedy, along the strip of land between Cape York and Rockingham Bay in Northern Australia, whose melancholy fate is described by one of the survivors, Mr. Carron, a botanist, in a not less simple than affecting manner. "When we first started everything went on well, and the most brilliant antic.i.p.ations were indulged, although there were numerous obstacles to be overcome, and the few natives we encountered were invariably hostile. Gradually, however, provisions began to fail; sickness and loss of strength succeeded, while the prospect of reaching our goal grew less and less. The further north we got, as the hot season was now setting in, the more frequently did we find the forest rivulets dried up, so that we had for days to bear up against an almost maddening thirst. The horses which accompanied the expedition gradually sank from exhaustion."

Almost every day Carron's journal mentions one or the other horse giving in of fatigue, when they were compelled for want of further provision to eat its flesh during the next two days. That of the last was conveyed along by the travellers in sacks, made from the skin of the animal itself.

Whenever they encountered natives, these proved hostile, and a.s.sailed the little caravan with spears. Some of them indeed were more friendly, and traded with the travellers, but less out of sincere hospitality than with the hope of taking them in, and getting them unawares into their power.

Thus, on one occasion a number of tall, well-made, powerful men and women made their appearance, and offered them some fish, which they themselves refused to eat owing to its putrified state. Hardly had the travellers approached it, unsuspicious of evil, when a cloud of spears cleft the air with a whistling noise, and the scene, hitherto so friendly and peaceable, became at once a scene of blood and confusion. However, the spear-men seemed to have no great dexterity; they usually missed their mark, whereas the flints and double-barrels of the whites did deadly execution. One however proved more fatal than the rest, and killed Mr. Kennedy, the chief of the party. They were now only a few days distant from Cape York, the goal of their labours, whence a Government s.h.i.+p was to convey the leader and his party back to Sydney. But the survivors were also all but exhausted with the terrible fatigues of their journey. Only three out of the fourteen survived, and these were reduced almost to skeletons.

Carron's elbow-bone of the right arm, and also the bone of the right hip, were through the skin! (Narrative of an Expedition undertaken under the direction of the late Mr. a.s.sistant Surveyor, E. B. Kennedy, for the Exploration of the Country lying between Rockingham Bay and Cape York; by W. Carron, one of the survivors of the Expedition. Sydney, 1849.)

Still more lamentable was the fate of the last and most important of these expeditions, which in 1861 succeeded in crossing the Australian continent from the north frontier of South Australia to Carpentaria, and back to Cooper's Creek, in which, unfortunately, the travellers missed the depot troop that had been sent to their a.s.sistance, and the entire party, including Messrs. Burke, Wills, and Gray, lost their lives, only one of their number, King, escaping to tell their sad fate. (Vide Appendix.)

[10] Government has bethought itself of a plan for facilitating discoveries in the interior, and rendering them more profitable by importing from Egypt into Australia camels and dromedaries, chiefly of the breed known as El Hura, as these animals can easily get over 60 to 80 miles per diem, and can moreover dispense with water for weeks together.

[11] During a visit which our naturalists paid to Dr. Bennett they were shown a young pair of the Morok (_Casuarius Bennetti_), discovered not long since at New Britain, which he intended to present to the Zoological Society of London for exhibition at the Regent's Park. What is very remarkable in this singular bird is the shape of the bill, which is curved in the male, but almost straight in the female.

[12] This distinguished gentleman, conspicuous alike as a theologian and a politician, who plays a by no means insignificant part in the legislative a.s.semblies of the colonies, presented an address to the Parliament of Frankfort in 1848, in which he set forth the advantage of founding a German colony in the Pacific. Owing to the ignorance prevalent on the subject this _brochure_ pa.s.sed unnoticed, and New Caledonia, the island which the worthy Doctor had designed for a German colony, was taken possession of by the French. He has since published a most interesting and valuable work on Queensland, in which he gives some very curious details about the native practice of skinning their dead, when the true skin being of a white colour, the corpse has a most ghastly appearance. He says this is the reason some of the tribes so highly reverence the _white_ man, whom they regard as their own ancestors restored to life, but in an improved nature!!

[13] The depopulation of the natives is advancing so rapidly that one of our Sydney friends writes, "An expedition similar to your own, which shall visit us some years hence, will find little more than a scant remnant of the aborigines. That of the _Novara_ is probably the last of a scientific nature, which will have been successful in seeing living specimens of the once numerous blacks of Australia."

[14] _Wullurah_ in the native language signifies "the place of deliberation," because in former times this place had, on account of its commanding position, been selected by the aborigines for a.s.sembling the various tribes by means of watch-fires, or blasts of a horn, to decide upon peace or war.

[15] On the Clarence river there has been for several years past, in full activity, a stearine candle-factory, which pays well, owing to the demand at the "diggings" for these candles. In 1856 the value of those manufactured was 600,000.

[16] According to English writers this instrument, the peculiar properties of which are so well known that we need not enlarge upon them here, has also been found in the Sarcophagi of Upper Egypt. In some of the frescos now in the British Museum, which ill.u.s.trate the manners and habits of the Ancient Egyptians, a figure is represented in the act of launching the Boomerang against a covey of ducks, which are flying out of a thicket.

[17] In Prussia, the annual consumption of spirits would fill a basin one mile long, 33 feet wide, and 10 feet deep. In England, the annual quant.i.ty of _wine_ drunk per head is 0.267 gallon; in France it is 19 gallons! The British nation pays annually 70-74,000,000 taxes, and 74,000,000 for spirits!!

[18] The rise and fall of the tide at Port Jackson is very small, not above four or five feet.

[19] Viz. 1400 men, and 200 women.

[20] This is the nickname given to the violent S. or S.W. wind, fortunately of short duration, which so frequently springs up towards evening from the "Brickfields," because it brings with it such volumes of sand and dust from the eminence known as the Brickfield lying S. and S.W.

from Sydney, enveloping the entire city in murky clouds of dust. The "Brickfielder" is a pretty safe guide as to the weather, as soon as it blows the whole sky becomes suddenly covered with clouds, and cool rainy weather follows upon the previous heat.