Following The Equator, Part 2 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

FOLLOWING
FOLLOWING 1
THE EQUATOR
Part 2.
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
BY
MARK TWAIN
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
THE EQUATOR 2
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, Part 2
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 3
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 2.
CHAPTER IX.
Close to Australia—Porpoises at
Night—Entrance to Sydney Harbor—The
Loss of the Duncan Dunbar—The
Harbor—The City of Sydney—Spring-time
in Australia—The Climate—Information for
Travelers—The Size of Australia—A
Dust-Storm and Hot Wind
CHAPTER X.
The Discovery of Australia—Transportation

of Convicts—Discipline—English Laws,
Ancient and Modern—Flogging Prisoners to
Death—Arrival of Settlers—New South
Wales Corps—Rum
Currency—Intemperance Everywhere
$100,000 for One Gallon of
Rum—Development of the
Country—Immense Resources
CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality of English-speaking
People—Writers and their Gratitude—Mr.
Gane and the Panegyrics—Population of
Sydney An English City with American
Trimming—"Squatters"—Palaces and Sheep
Kingdoms—Wool and Mutton—Australians
and Americans—Costermonger
Pronunciation—England is "Home"—Table
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 2. 11
Talk—English and Colonial Audiences
CHAPTER XII.
Mr. X., a Missionary—Why Christianity

Makes Slow Progress in India—A
Large Dream—Hindoo Miracles and
Legends—Sampson and
Hanuman—The Sandstone
Ridge—Where are the Gates?
CHAPTER XIII.
Public Works in
Australasia—Botanical Garden of
Sydney—Four Special
Socialties—The Government
House—A Governor and His
Functions—The Admiralty
House—The Tour of the
Harbor—Shark Fishing—Cecil
Rhodes' Shark and his First
Fortune—Free Board for Sharks.
CHAPTER XIV.
Bad Health—To Melbourne by

Rail—Maps Defective—The
Colony of Victoria—A Round-trip
Ticket from Sydney—Change Cars,
from Wide to Narrow Gauge, a Peculiarity at
Albury—Customs-fences—"My
Word"—The Blue
Mountains—Rabbit
Piles—Government R. R.
Restaurants—Duchesses for
Waiters—"Sheep-dip"—Railroad
Coffee—Things Seen and Not Seen
CHAPTER XI. 12
CHAPTER XV.
Wagga-Wagga—The Tichborne
Claimant—A Stock
Mystery—The Plan of the
Romance—The
Realization—The Henry Bascom
Mystery—Bascom Hall—The
Author's Death and Funeral
CHAPTER XVI.
Melbourne and its Attractions—The

Melbourne Cup Races—Cup
Day—Great Crowds—Clothes
Regardless of Cost—The Australian
Larrikin—Is He Dead? Australian
Hospitality—Melbourne
Wool-brokers—The
Museums—The Palaces—The
Origin of Melbourne
CHAPTER XVII.
The British Empire—Its Exports and

Imports—The Trade of
Australia—To
Adelaide—Broken Hill Silver
Mine—A Roundabout
road—The Scrub and its Possibilities
for the Novelist—The Aboriginal
Tracker—A Test Case—How
Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Gum Trees—Unsociable
Trees—Gorse and Broom—A
universal Defect—An
Adventurer—Wanted L200, got
L20,000,000—A Vast Land
Scheme—The Smash-up—The
Corpse Got Up and Danced—A
Unique Business by One
CHAPTER XV. 13
Man—Buying the Kangaroo

Skin—The Approach to
Adelaide—Everything Comes to Him
who Waits—A Healthy Religious
sphere—What is the Matter with the
Specter?
CHAPTER XIX.
The Botanical
Gardens—Contributions from all
Countries—The Zoological Gardens
of Adelaide—The Laughing
Jackass—The Dingo—A
Misnamed Province—Telegraphing
from Melbourne to San Francisco—A
Mania for Holidays—The
Temperature—The Death
Rate—Celebration of the Reading of
the Proclamation of 1836—Some old
Settlers at the
Commemoration—Their Staying
Powers—The Intelligence of the
Aboriginal—The Antiquity of the
Boomerang
CHAPTER IX.
It is your human environment that makes climate.
—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.
That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It
was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction
it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the
CHAPTER XVIII. 14
darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a
blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that
it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the
corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break"
spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living fire.
And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet
long, would go flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence he came
you would see another flash; and another and another and another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the
instant; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm of wiggling
curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the
most of those people will not see again until after they are dead.
It was porpoises—porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently collected in a wild and
magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying
on, turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a miscalculation,
though the stem missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary
length—eight or ten feet—but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of united and
glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the
performance; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea; he
never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his
winsomest until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.
By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric
light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great
sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.
Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the
ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it
without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for
the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable disaster to the
Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was
a sailing vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular captain of high reputation. She
was due from England, and Sydney was waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making
ready to give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of mothers and
daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at
school, and mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all the world only India and
Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of
that phrase; only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted to the fickle winds, not
steam, and what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long
dread is over.
On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon, the happy home-comers
made busy preparation, for it was not doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day
was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter for the meeting, their richest and
their loveliest, these poor brides of the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and
before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that ordinarily the captain would have made a
safe offing and waited for the morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing faces,
faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to try the dangerous passage in the dark. He
had entered the Heads seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight for the false
opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was
no saving the ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the rock tushes at
CHAPTER IX. 15
the base of the precipice. Not one of all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale is
told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to be told to all that come, for generations; but
it will never grow old, custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it.
There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea
flung him up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the top
and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he would have lain there for the rest of his life,
without chance of discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that the Duncan
Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway the walls of the Heads were black with mourners;
and one of these, stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen below, discovered
this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing
the man was accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a hall in Sydney and
exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.
We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks
and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor—a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder
of the world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent
words. A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged would
be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful—superbly beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave
God the praise. The citizen did not seem altogether satisfied. He said:
CHAPTER IX. 16
"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful—the Harbor; but that isn't all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's
the other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor, and that's
all right; but Satan made Sydney."
Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half
of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added. It
is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water
running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides sloped
like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and
one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster of hills
and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring
towers and spires and other architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and give
picturesqueness to the general effect.
The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding themselves
in it, and pleasure-launches are always exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy
people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage. But there
are liars everywhere this year, and they will double that when their works are in good going order. October
was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring—everybody said so; but you could have sold it
for summer in Canada, and nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home
summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in the wood or by the sea. But these
people said it was cool, now—a person ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know
what warm weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot
weather is. They said that away up there toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go
to get information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the occupation of Unbiased Traveler
Seeking Information is the pleasantest and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out
anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and more. Everybody helps him, nobody
hinders him. Anybody who has an old fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let
him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is easily and quickly made. They cost almost
nothing and they bring par in the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with the
same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they carry them back and always work them off
without any trouble in the home market.
If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by
its position on the map; and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate
of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator
that those other towns are north of-it-thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the parallels of latitude. In
Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in
the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at Memphis, but a little way above, the
Mississippi has been frozen over, from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which
brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day there, in the month of July, the
mercury went down to 36 deg., and that remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No
doubt Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, about New Year's Day, the
mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally
with Little Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a government report, and are
trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it
comes to winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas winter into a hundred Sydney
winters and have enough left for Arkansas and the poor.
The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has the climate of its capital—a
mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be
CHAPTER IX. 17
improved upon for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales is harder to bear than
112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria, because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the
latter dry. The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the same as that of
Nice—60 deg.—yet Nice is further from the equator by 460 miles than is the former.
But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of Australia than usual. Apparently this
vast continent has a really good climate nowhere but around the edges.
If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as
the United States was before we added Alaska.
But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land almost everywhere in the United States, it
seems settled that inside of the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which
nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you
take a map of the United States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the fringe of
Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the
Mississippi half-way to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific coast: then take a
brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic
States and the Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.
This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, the rest is desert; it is not liberally
watered; it has no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the
westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind him, and found a new one of a quite
different character. In fact, he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of
India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of the heat.
"The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., increased
to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering effect. I sought shelter
behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered
the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both
CHAPTER IX. 18
animate and inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs
to the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular strength to
raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees under which
we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us. At noon I took a
thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of my box, and observed that the
mercury was up to 125. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I put it
in the fork of a tree close to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I
went to examine it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had
risen to the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance that I
believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot find language to
convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense and oppressive nature of
the heat that prevailed."
That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is called a "dust-storm." It is said that
most Australian towns are acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the following
description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel"
part. Still the shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my Nevada storm is but a poor
thing, after all.
"As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat proportionately
greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 feet above sea-level. It is a
pretty town, built on an extensive plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of
rain have passed away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer
of dust, and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is lifted
bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the midst of such a
storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the unlucky person who
happens to be out at the time is compelled to seek the nearest retreat at hand.
When the thrifty housewife sees in the distance the dark column advancing in
a steady whirl towards her house, she closes the doors and windows with all
expedition. A drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left
open during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who has
resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick on the carpet
that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it."
And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects
and character of Australia are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, so weird, so
new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting contrast to the other sections of the planet, the
sections that are known to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars—a detail here, a detail
there—we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' seacoast; we have had the Australian heat
as furnished by Captain Sturt; we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the
phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt of
civilization, population, and good climate around it.
CHAPTER IX. 19
CHAPTER X.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in
heaven.
Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport
convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains;
they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight
infractions of the rules; "the cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their
life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]
English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a
small fine or a few days' confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve
terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were transported for life. Children were sent to
the penal colonies for seven years for stealing a rabbit!
When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and
CHAPTER X. 20
wife-beating—25 lashes on the bare back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible
punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that no man had been found with grit
enough to keep his emotions to himself beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty
had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but humane modern London could not
endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore
that cruel achievement of sentimental "humanity."
Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense; and
sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could
endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old manuscript official record, of a case where
a convict was given three hundred lashes—for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than
that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict; sometimes it was the culprit's dearest
comrade; and he had to lay on with all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his
mercy—for he was under watch—and yet not do his friend any good: the friend would be
attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of full punishment.
The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult to accomplish that once or twice
despairing men got together and drew straws to determine which of them should kill another of the
group—this murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by the hand of the
hangman!
The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what convict life was like—they are
but a couple of details tossed into view out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a
pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight the burning city which stretches
away from their bases on every hand.
Some of the convicts—indeed, a good many of them—were very bad people, even for that day;
but the most of them were probably not noticeably worse than the average of the people they left behind them
at home. We must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a nation that could look on,
unmoved, and see starving or freezing women hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags,
and boys snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the other side of the world for
long terms of years for similar trifling offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any
large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, during more than forty years, what
was happening to those exiles and was still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a
higher grade of civilization.
If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen who had charge of the convicts and
attended to their backs and stomachs, we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and
between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable monotony of sameness.
Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers were beginning to arrive. These
two classes of colonists had to be protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It is
proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they were so scarce. At a time when they had
not as yet begun to be much disturbed—not as yet being in the way—it was estimated that in
New South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory.
People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want this service—away off there
where neither honor nor distinction was to be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia
force of 1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped it.
CHAPTER X. 21
This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. The Corps was an object-lesson of the
moral condition of England outside of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there would be
an importation of the nobility.
In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries of life—food, clothing, and
all—were sent out from England, and kept in great government store-houses, and given to the convicts
and sold to the settlers—sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its opportunity. Its officers
went into commerce, and in a most lawless way. They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in
private stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They leagued themselves together and
ruled the market; they boycotted the government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and
kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, they allowed nobody to buy but
themselves, and they forced the owner to sell to them at a price named by themselves—and it was
always low enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold it at an average of ten.
They made rum the currency of the country—for there was little or no money—and they
maintained their devastating hold and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before they
were finally conquered and routed by the government.
Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed farm after farm out of the
settlers hands for rum, and thus had bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last
agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. In one instance they sold a man a
gallon of rum worth two dollars for a piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. When
the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered that the land was specially fitted for the
wool-culture. Prosperity followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the noble metals
were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The result is the great and wealthy and enlightened
commonwealth of New South Wales.
It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, steamship lines, schools, newspapers,
botanical gardens, art galleries, libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable home of
every species of culture and of every species of material enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door,
and a race-track over the way.
CHAPTER X. 22
CHAPTER XI.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we
be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and
that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, and New South Wales and its capital
are like the rest in this. The English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always called lavishly
hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other English-speaking colonies throughout the world from
Canada all around, I know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more particularly into this
matter, for I find that when writers try to distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run
across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.
CHAPTER XI. 23
Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute his gratitude, and was not lucky:
"The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The treatment
which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted people will help
more than anything else to make us recollect with pleasure our stay amongst
them. In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel. The 'new chum'
needs only the acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at
once the happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and
thoughtful kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit,
none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney."
Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and stayed away from
Dubbo——but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. Pulled it when he was away along in his
book, and his memory of what he had said about Sydney had grown dim:
"We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in warm
praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its inhabitants. Sydney,
though well deserving the character it bears of its kindly treatment of
strangers, possesses a little formality and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary,
though the same congenial manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of
respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met
with elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having
been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however
CHAPTER XI. 24
unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing no picturesque natural
surroundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of
citizens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for
benevolence and kind-heartedness."
I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of
respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst
way—any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at
people's architectural productions and picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a
Dubbonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are old, old symptoms; and
when they appear we know that the man has got the panegyrics.
Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps ashore there, the first thing that
strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing that
strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the
American trimmings still more in evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a
photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for a picture of the finest street in a large
American city. I was told that the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters. The name
seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it offered a new instance of the curious changes
which words, as well as animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when you speak of
a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor man, but in Australia when you speak of a
squatter you are supposed to be speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of a
few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose landfront is as long as a railroad, and
whose title has been perfected in one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen
head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty thousand up to half a million head; in
America the word indicates a man who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and
of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, in Australia you do; in America if
your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a squatter
nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in Australia you may sup with kings if there are any
around.
CHAPTER XI. 25
In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some people say twice as many), to support a
sheep; and when the squatter has half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode Island, to
speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a quarter or a half million dollars.
He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities, and make occasional trips to
his sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of riders and
shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out there, and if he approve of you he will invite
you to spend a week in it, and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great industry in all
its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you with the best that money can buy.
On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with all the various businesses and
occupations that go to make an important town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of
the squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are other squatter-owned towns in
Australia.
Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton also. The modern invention of cold
storage and its application in ships has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment where
they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for shipment to England.
CHAPTER XI. 26
The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways,
pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English
origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's attention. The people have easy and
cordial manners from the beginning—from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is
American. To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English shyness and self-consciousness
left out.
Now and then—but this is rare—one hears such words as piper for paper, lydy for lady, and
tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations to come. There is a
superstition prevalent in Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have been
"home"—as the native reverently and lovingly calls England—know better. It is "costermonger."
All over Australasia this pronunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the
uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking
when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney the
chambermaid said, one morning:
"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast."
I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's custom of speaking of England as
"home." It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it
touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia
as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head.
In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; it is without stiffness or restraint. This
does not remind one of England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly democratic, and
reserves and restraints are things that are bred by differences of rank.
English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. Where masses of people are gathered
together in England, caste is submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the moment, and
every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of
watching himself and guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is forgotten, and falls
into abeyance—and to such a degree indeed, that he will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants
to—an exhibition of daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.
But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, or when the company present is
small and new to him. He is on his guard then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the
false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of humor.
Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; but both the American and his
humor had their origin in England, and have merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions
and a new environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a couple that were made in
Australia at club suppers—one of them by an Englishman, the other by an Australian.
CHAPTER XI. 27
CHAPTER XII.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who
said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a missionary from India who was on his
way to visit some relatives in New Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of God;
that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields of space are the blood
corpuscles in His veins; and that we and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous
life the corpuscles.
Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said:
"It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are the metes
and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that it almost accounts
for a thing which is otherwise nearly unaccountable—the origin of the
sacred legends of the Hindoos. Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly
believe them to be divine revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends
are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding
priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake."
He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed by all classes of Hindoos, including
CHAPTER XII. 28
those of high social position and intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great hindrance to
the missionary in his work. Then he said something like this:
"At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster progress in
India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and that they have a natural
trust in miracles and give them a hospitable reception. Then they argue like
this: since the Indian believes easily, place Christianity before them and they
must believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will no
longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity makes but
indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we are not fortunate in
presenting the doctrines and the miracles.
"But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they think. We
have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a military figure, we are sent
against the enemy with good powder in our guns, but only wads for bullets;
that is to say, our miracles are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for
them; they have more extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their
own religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours must
be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India I greatly
underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A correction was not
long in coming. I thought as our friends think at home—that to prepare
my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with favor to my grave message I only
needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With full
confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson, the strongest man that
had ever lived—for so I called him.
"At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces of my
people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the great story, I
was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the sympathy of my audience.
I could not understand it. It was a surprise to me, and a disappointment.
Before I was through, the fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence
to the end the indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression
upon it.
"A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said 'We
Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands—we accept no
other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you Christians. And we
know when a man has his power from a god by the fact that he does things
which he could not do, as a man, with the mere powers of a man. Plainly, this
is the Christian's way also, of knowing when a man is working by a god's
power and not by his own. You saw that there was a supernatural property in
the hair of Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as
other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations in the world,
and each group of nations has its own gods, and will pay no worship to the
gods of the others. Each group believes its own gods to be strongest, and it
will not exchange them except for gods that shall be proven to be their
superiors in power. Man is but a weak creature, and needs the help of
gods—he cannot do without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of
weak gods when there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be
foolish. No, if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not
turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How then shall he
CHAPTER XII. 29
determine which gods are the stronger, his own or those that preside over the
concerns of other nations? By comparing the known works of his own gods
with the works of those others; there is no other way. Now, when we make
this comparison, we are not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our
gods are shown by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The
Christians have but few gods, and they are new—new, and not strong;
as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for this has
happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many ages and decades of
ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet for beings to whom a
thousand years is but a single moment. Our own gods have been born
millions of years apart. The process is slow, the gathering of strength and
power is similarly slow. In the slow lapse of the ages the steadily
accumulating power of our gods has at last become prodigious. We have a
thousand proofs of this in the colossal character of their personal acts and the
acts of ordinary men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your
Samson was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and
slew the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gate's of
the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed—and also awed, for you
recognized the divine source of his strength. But it could not profit to place
these things before your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder; for
they would compare them with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods
infused their divine strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent
to them—as you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by,
when our god Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama
bethought him to bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his
armies might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired
like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials for the
bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, to the Himalayas,
and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred
miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. It was in the night; and, as he
passed along the plain, the people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his
tread and felt the earth rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their
snowy summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as
this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they
discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping villages, and it was as if
the constellations were filing in procession through the sky.
CHAPTER XII. 30
CHAPTER XII. 31
While they were looking, Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red
sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has
wasted away in the course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in
the plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of
our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman could not have carried
those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods. You know that
it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that it was done by
the strength of the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by
the divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two things:
First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did
not establish the superiority of his gods over ours; secondly, That his feat is
not supported by any but verbal evidence, while Hanuman's is not only
supported by verbal evidence, but this evidence is confirmed, established,
proven, by visible, tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony.
We have the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall
not. Have you the gates?'"
CHAPTER XIII.
The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises
on par.
One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public
works—such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I
should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks
and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the
matter of hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and architecturally handsome hospital in an
Australian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and
the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be
hard to match this in any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its streets with the
electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of London. London is still obscured by gas—gas pretty
widely scattered, too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difficult
to find the gas lamps.
CHAPTER XIII. 32
The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the
lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the
great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House—fifty-six acres; and at hand
also, is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the
race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the international matches are played. Therefore there is
plenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.
There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor's
Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can
be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add
a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He always is.
The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying
archipelago; but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get
inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home. And so the
Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one
Governor. The others were at home.
The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that
to call for his reserve-energies, but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his hands. And so
there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so
strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at
home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.
Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's functions with us. And therefore
more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents culture,
refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread
and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his
countenance makes the horse-race thrive.
He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English
lord is generally well equipped for that.
Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; which is nobly situated on high
ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board
the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a
station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity
of his office.
CHAPTER XIII. 33
CHAPTER XIII. 34
Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer
friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem
short.
And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks
in the world. Some people make their living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them.
The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the
bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.
The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And
he is a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately,
in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a
young stranger arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no one, and brought no
recommendations, and the result was that he got no employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and
his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest
capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any
sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; he walked them all night,
thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town
and drifting aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher the man looked up
and said——
"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me."
"How do you know I won't make it worse?"
"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't change it, no harm's done; if you do change
it, it's for the better, of course. Come."
"All right, what will you give?"
"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."
"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."
"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't spoil yours; for many and many a time
I've noticed that if——there, pull in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be.
Why, I knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right—he's landed."
It was an unusually large shark—"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman said, as he laid the creature
open with his knife.
"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There's generally something in
them worth going for. You've changed my luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your
own."
"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll rob him."
CHAPTER XIII. 35
When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay, and was starting
away.
"What, you are not going?"
"Yes. Good-bye."
"But what about your shark?"
"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"
"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report him to Government, and you'll get a
clean solid eighty shillings bounty? Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?"
"Oh, well, you can collect it."
"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a
man by his clothes, and I'm believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and yet you
must be rich."
"I am."
The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of
the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was
a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver,
muttered to himself, "There isn't enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.
At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room at home, settling his
breakfast with the morning paper. A servant put his head in and said:
"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."
"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his business."
"He won't go, sir. I've tried."
"He won't go? That's—why, that's unusual. He's one of two things, then: he's a remarkable person, or
he's crazy. Is he crazy?"
"No, sir. He don't look it."
"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"
"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."
"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"
CHAPTER XIII. 36
"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."
"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."
The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not crazy; that is easy to see; so he must
be the other thing."
Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any words; what is it you want?"
"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."
"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No—he can't be—not with that eye.) Why, you take my
breath away. Come, who are you?"
"Nobody that you know."
"What is your name?"
"Cecil Rhodes."
"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then—just for curiosity's sake—what has
sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?"
"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty
days."
"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that—sit down—you interest me. And
somehow you—well, you fascinate me; I think that that is about the word. And it isn't your
proposition—no, that doesn't fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something
that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I
understand it, it is your desire to bor——"
"I said intention."
"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word—an unheedful valuing of its
strength, you know."
"I knew its strength."
"Well, I must say—but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind is getting into a sort of whirl,
though you don't seem disturbed any. (Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being
remarkable—well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I believe I am beyond the
reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare not. What is your scheme?"
"To buy the wool crop—deliverable in sixty days."
"What, the whole of it?"
"The whole of it."
CHAPTER XIII. 37
"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how you talk! Do you know what our crop is
going to foot up?"
"Two and a half million sterling—maybe a little more."
"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to
buy it at sixty days?"
"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."
"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish you had the money. And if you had
it, what would you do with it?"
"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."
"You mean, of course, that you might make it if——"
"I said 'shall'."
"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language.
Dear, dear, dear, look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got what
you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of
buying the wool crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it out—I am
prepared—acclimatized, if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you make
that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you——"
"I don't think—I know."
"Definite again. How do you know?"
"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up fourteen per cent. in London and is
still rising."
"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me
jump out of my chair, but it didn't stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I have read
the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock
last night, fifty days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no war-clouds anywhere; and as
for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . .
Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, when——"
"Because I have later news."
"Later news? Oh, come—later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot from London by
the——"
"My news is only ten days old."
"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"
"Got it out of a shark."
CHAPTER XIII. 38
CHAPTER XIII. 39
CHAPTER XIII. 40
"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun—raise the town! All the asylums in
Christendom have broken loose in the single person of——"
"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get
excited about. When I make a statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin to offer
hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."
"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for thinking
that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market
report——"
"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?"
"Andrew. What are you writing?"
"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark—and another matter. Only ten lines. There—now it is
done. Sign it."
"Many thanks—many. Let me see; it says—it says oh, come, this is interesting!
Why—why—look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put up the money, and double as
much, if necessary, and divide the winnings with you, half and half. There, now—I've signed; make
your promise good if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old."
"Here it is—and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to the man the shark
swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book
is dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife
ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen
mag'——, as clean native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in
consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for home to-day, to fight. And he did leave,
too, but the shark had him before the day was done, poor fellow."
"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend to this case further on; other matters are
pressing, now. I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will cheer
the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence,
when they are called to deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But there is a time
for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor.
What did you say your name is?"
"Cecil Rhodes."
"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and by, if you live. There are three kinds
of people—Commonplace Men, Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables,
and take the chances."
The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed.
CHAPTER XIII. 41
The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be. On
Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little sails.
A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their
boat for fun—such as it is with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young
fellows scramble aboard whole—sometimes—not always. Tragedies have happened more than
once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river
and screamed for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling
sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of both.
The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with
agreeable mutton; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board.
In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.
CHAPTER XIV.
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and
no way has been found out of securing that.
My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a
succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had
had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing
Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.
So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria,
Melbourne—that juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance
looked small; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia. The colony
of Victoria itself looks small on the map—looks like a county, in fact—yet it is about as large as
England, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just 80 times as large as the
state of Rhode Island, and one-third as large as the State of Texas.
Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a
sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is
by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favorable to other great
industries—among others, wheat-growing and the making of wine.
We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most
rational sleeping car; also the car was clean and fine and new—nothing about it to suggest the rolling
stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for. That was
continental. Continental and troublesome. Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably
be described as continental.
CHAPTER XIV. 42
The tickets were round-trip ones—to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all
the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round
trip wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could
afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good
thing than he needs.
Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel
that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers
were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting-cold of a high altitude to
change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect
that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders.
It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were
the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things.
One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies—the two most important colonies
of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but another
effort to explain the inexplicable.
All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it; unnecessary expense,
delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted.
Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a custom-house. Personally, I have no
CHAPTER XIV. 43
objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here
and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of
iron machinery, and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were
removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast
is the same as if there were several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across
the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived.
We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun
exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say,
but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; towering and majestic masses of
blue—a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the
blue of the sky—made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful
color—just divine.
A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were rabbit-piles. And explained that long
exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have
been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis information furnished by
unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous, and
often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one
mountain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order.
We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and cheap. The Government establishes the
prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is
to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies—generally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at
any royal levee in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that they could not afford
it, perhaps, but they would not know how.
All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through thin—not
thick—forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking
bark—erysipelas convalescents, so to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins,
built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and the doorsteps and fences were clogged
with children—rugged little simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks
of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.
CHAPTER XIV. 44
CHAPTER XIV. 45
And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy advertisements—mainly of
almost too self-righteous brands of "sheepdip." If that is the name—and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar,
and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has
healing properties, and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good
to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee.
Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad
coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get
railroad coffee?
We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the
land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to
Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals—no "blackfellows." And to
this day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of
chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not
an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.
CHAPTER XV.
Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming excursion. In the course of it we
came to a town whose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century
ago—Wagga-Wagga. This was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was
out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety
and hung there in the wastes of space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable
curiosity—curiosity as to which of the two long-missing persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid
roustabout of Wapping, or Sir Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English history.
We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the dozen kept the mystery to themselves and
allowed the most intricate and fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played upon the
world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a British court by the long and laborious processes of
judicial development.
CHAPTER XV. 46
When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what daring chances truth may freely take
in constructing a tale, as compared with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The fiction-artist
could achieve no success with the materials of this splendid Tichborne romance.
He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such people are impossible. He would
have to drop out a number of the most picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never
happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did happen.
It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive him out; and even after the exposure
multitudes of Englishmen still believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to convict
him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him; and among these
believers were many educated and intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir
Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he got out of prison he went to New
York and kept a whisky saloon in the Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view.
He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. This was but a few months
ago—not very much short of a generation since he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his
estates. On his death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of
Wapping, able seaman and butcher—that and nothing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there
are people whom even his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating incredibilities
must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a weaker article would probably disagree with them.
I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I attended one of his showy evenings in the
sumptuous quarters provided for him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening
dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were about twenty-five gentlemen present;
educated men, men moving in good society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of
distinction, none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and admirers. It was "Sir Roger,"
always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if
it tasted good.
For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In
1873 I arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by
a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but I will call it Henry Bascom for
convenience's sake. This note, of about six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were
ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the same.
Their contents were usually to the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in
England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve days and depart by such and such a
train at the end of the specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station.
These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in Europe, three months ahead; if we were in
America, six to twelve months ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and also
for the end of the visit.
This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from
London, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days later-train
specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom Hughes."
I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said: "Accept, and be thankful."
He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a
rare and beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately manorial
CHAPTER XV. 47
mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going a long way to see—like Knowle; that
Mr. B. was of a social disposition; liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort
coming and going.
We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years—the last one in 1879. Soon after that Mr. Bascom
started on a voyage around the world in a steam yacht—a long and leisurely trip, for he was making
collections, in all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things.
The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long
Island Sound; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for
my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and opened it. It was the usual
note—as to paucity of lines—and was written on the customary strip of paper; but there was
nothing usual about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any assuagement of her grief
to know that her husband's lecture-tour in Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end,
he, the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her husband's untimely death had been mourned
by all classes, as she would already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this note; that
the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and city governments; and that while he, the writer,
her friend and mine, had not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the sad privilege
of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry Bascom."
My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would have seen that the corpse was an
imposter, and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those
sorrowing governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money.
I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture doubles of mine a couple of times in
America, and the law had not been able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their
impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a ghost? None—and so I did not
disturb it. I had a curiosity to know about that man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait. When
I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he passed from life, and I never saw him again..
My curiosity faded away.
However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And naturally: for if the people should say
that I was a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on business.
Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor! I pressed them, but they were
firm—they had never heard of him, and didn't believe in him.
I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in Melbourne. The government would
remember; and the other mourners. At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the
matter. But no—it turned out that they had never heard of it.
So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I believed it would never be cleared
up—in this life—so I dropped it out of my mind.
But at last! just when I was least expecting it——
However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the matter again, in a far-distant chapter.
CHAPTER XV. 48
CHAPTER XVI.
There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to
perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how
to enjoy it.
Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city architecturally as well as in
magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and
public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and
centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs,
and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many
churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the
modern great city. It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one
specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan of the
Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of
sacrifice—the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day—business is suspended over a stretch of
land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf
of Mexico; and every man and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their
other duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm
thicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the
demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within.
They come a hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and
grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.
It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at
unlimited cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until
now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' clothes; but one might know that.
And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The
champagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change
hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept at white
heat; and when each day is done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. And
at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock away to
their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then lie down and
sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or other before they
can be wholly happy again.
The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It
overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.
Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's;
each of them evokes interest, but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in
each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it
is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an
enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival.
I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large
name—Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the
CHAPTER XVI. 49
whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save
this one; but this one does it.
In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad. We have
the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them
can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the
coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone—if still
alive. The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a
cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of
hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so
disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.
The observance of Thanksgiving Day—as a function—has become general of late years. The
Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard
time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
We have a supreme day—a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an
absolute universality of interest and excitement; but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore
it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.
In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days—Christmas and the Queen's birthday. But they
are equally popular; there is no supremacy.
I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely
to hold that high place a long time.
The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; next, the novelties; and finally the
history of the places and countries visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced
civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the world he is in
effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There will be
new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be found to be less new than their names.
There may be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the incompetent eye of the
passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be able to discover a new species, but only an old one met
elsewhere, and variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according to his geographical
distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger
than they, more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At least it seemed so to me, and
I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater,
but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on my way home at ten, or a quarter past,
I found the larrikin grouped in considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave me this
pleasant salutation:
"Hello, Mark!"
"Here's to you, old chap!
CHAPTER XVI. 50
CHAPTER XVI. 51
"Say—Mark!—is he dead?"—a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did

not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on
the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the
gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't
know what it means. I will remark here—if it is not an indecorum—that the welcome which an
American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps,
and veil his sight and break his voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; he
will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each time. The war-cloud hanging black over
England and America made no trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on
the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right
metal, and would have been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances.
And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed
to relegate the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a prospective war
between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest.
The attitude of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had access to
those only. They treated the subject argumentatively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a
new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or since. I heard many
public speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking
race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get to fighting each other. It
would be a pity to spoil that prospect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their
differences so much better and also so much more definitely.
No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in
Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just like
stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in unison—no stranger
can tell what—and the president calmly says "Sold to Smith & Co., threpence
farthing—next!"—when probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know?
In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things; but all museums are
fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their
consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich, in
Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the
resemblance ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, and not often beautiful,
but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together
make them as beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have
grounds—domains—about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the
country mansion of an English lord; but I was not out in the country; I had my hands full in town.
And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats?
Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always
picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer,
and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most
beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and
incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.
CHAPTER XVI. 52
CHAPTER XVII.
The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern
exercise of faith to believe in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's
commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British Empire, the landed estate dominated
by any other Power except one—Russia—is not very impressive for size. My authorities make
the British Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly proportioned, if you
will allow your entire hand to represent the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the
middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by
Great Britain and China are about the same—400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these
figures. Even Russia is left far behind.
CHAPTER XVII. 53
CHAPTER XVII. 54
The population of Australasia—4,000,000—sinks into nothingness, and is lost from sight in that
British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously
when its share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The value of England's annual
exports and imports is stated at three billions of dollars,—[New South Wales Blue Book.]—and
it is claimed that more than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports to England
and imports from England. In addition to this, Australasia does a trade with countries other than England,
amounting to a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade amounting to a hundred and
fifty millions.
In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of goods a year. It is claimed that
about half of this represents commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually by India
are worth a trifle over $500,000,000.1 Now, here are some faith-straining figures:
Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000.
Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000.
That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for export some whither), is worth $1.15; that of
the individual Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another way, the Indian family of
man and wife and three children sends away an annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends
away $375 worth.
There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and others, which show that the individual
Indian's whole annual product, both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50; or, $37.50 for the
family-aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate
production would be nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once get started.
We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province of South Australia—a
seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going
out on circuit, and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver mine is. It seemed a
curious road to take to get to that region. Broken Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and
Sydney is on the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn westward from Sydney, would
strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the
Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; southwest from Sydney down to
Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New
South Wales once more—to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to Richmond,
Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over the border—to
Buffalo, New York.
But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly
upon an unexpectant world. Its stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful
figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth and
buys your house at your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few shares, and
next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out
the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of those excitements
which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at
once. Adelaide was close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the border before
Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth while for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast
trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales furnishes for Broken Hill
and sends her Judges 2,000 miles—mainly through alien countries—to administer it, but
CHAPTER XVII. 55
Adelaide takes the dividends and makes no moan.
We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night. In the morning we had a stretch of
"scrub" country—the kind of thing which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile
aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the
settler; then slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the novelist's
heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and
unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by
some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left
behind. Nobody can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he will not lend himself
to the scheme if it will interfere with the novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions,
and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it—as seamless as a blanket, to all
appearance. One might as well walk under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should think.
Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt out people lost in the scrub. Also in the "bush";
also in the desert; and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground which had to all
appearance been washed clear of footprints.
From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's
performances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of observation
in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or
colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of Victoria, one reads
that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing
opossum, but knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or yesterday.
CHAPTER XVII. 56
CHAPTER XVII. 57
And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually
as he can, and A. will produce an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the tracker see the
cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow a few miles over a course which drifts in all
directions, and frequently doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the time, and once or
twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs.
He finally brings his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around in a great circle,
examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic
course, and ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now wherein does one cow-track
differ from another? There must be a difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a difference
minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a
member of a race charged by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human
intelligence.
CHAPTER XVIII.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting in and out through lovely little green
valleys. There were several varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied and
barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in
Japanese pictures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The
foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold
color, the upper half a most vivid and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching.
The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last samples of it seen by us were not more than
half an hour apart. There was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its foliage was as
fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty
smoke. It was not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each individual stood far away
from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling
grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree
itself you could also see the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet.
On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom—importations from
England—and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me
which—was which; but as he didn't know, he had difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance,
but that he had never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and more that he had
spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get interested in the matter. But there was no need to be
ashamed. The most of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take
an interest in familiar things. The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there
they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of sober or sombre color, with a
so startling effect as to make a body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the
CHAPTER XVIII. 58
wattle, a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with the
Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality usually wanting in Australian blossoms.
The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the gorse and the broom told me that
he came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six
shillings in his pocket—an adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearly-defined
purpose in his head: he would stay until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five
years for the accumulation of this fortune.
"That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet."
As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a
talk and a smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this half
century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded.
CHAPTER XVIII. 59
CHAPTER XVIII. 60
"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he left out some of the particulars. The lad
reached South Australia just in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out L700,000
in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had
been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could go now and buy a city,
I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to
save South Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land boom a while before." There it
is again; picturesque history—Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. In
1836 the British Parliament erected it—still a solitude—into a Province, and gave it a governor
and other governmental machinery. Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and
invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. It was well worked in London; and
bishops, statesmen, and all ports of people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began
to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by
the sea. The crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was
prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet iron huts and clapboard
sheds sprang up in the sand, and in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on
costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots were abundant, and this fine society
drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been
accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world. The provincial government put up
expensive buildings for its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor had a
guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind,
on inflated and fictitious values—on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during
four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn the governor upon the
Treasury were dishonored, the land company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a
rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good
imitation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.
Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000. During two years or more the
death-trance continued. Prospect of revival there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the
paralysis had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper mines were discovered,
and the corpse got up and danced.
The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed—followed so vigorously, too, that four or
five years after the copper discovery, this little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and
pay hard prices for them—once $50 a barrel for flour—had become an exporter of grain.
The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to show especial regard for New South
Wales and exhibit loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that
colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, conferred upon it that treasury of
inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.
Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a strong word, but I use it
justifiably if I did not misconceive what the American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world
there was not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was buying the kangaroo-skin
crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in
New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's aggregate of skins would cost
him L30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the
CHAPTER XVIII. 61
continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After the tanning, the leather takes a new
name—which I have forgotten—I only remember that the new name does not indicate that the
kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago, but that has
ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from
the business. Now then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really entitled to bear that high
epithet—unique. And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the
hands of a sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one Pope, there is more than one
Emperor, there is even more than one living god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by
large populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings myself in India, and I have the
autograph of one of them. It can come good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit."
Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and were driven in an open carriage
over the hills and along their slopes to the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it
could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, and offered all varieties of scenery
and prospect—mountains, crags, country homes, gardens, forests—color, color, color
everywhere, and the air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the downpour of the
brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and
stretching away into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and beautiful. On its near edge
reposed the city.
We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble capital, of buts and sheds of the
long-vanished day of the land-boom. No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine
homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of public buildings nobly
grouped and architecturally beautiful.
There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence, desiring to show especial regard for
the neighboring colony on the west called Western Australia—and exhibit a loving interest in its
welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and
distinguished well-deserving, had recently conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches,
Coolgardie; and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving thanks. Everything
comes to him who is patient and good, and waits.
But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable home for every alien who chooses to
come; and for his religion, too. She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and yet her
varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly every
part of the globe you can think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One would
have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published
census:
Church of England, 89,271

Roman Catholic, 47,179
Wesleyan, 49,159
Lutheran, 23,328
Presbyterian, 18,206
Congregationalist, 11,882
Bible Christian, 15,762
Primitive Methodist, 11,654
Baptist, 17,547
CHAPTER XVIII. 62
Christian Brethren, 465
Methodist New Connexion, 39
Unitarian, 688
Church of Christ, 3,367
Society of Friends, 100
Salvation Army, 4,356
New Jerusalem Church, 168
Jews, 840
Protestants (undefined), 6,532
Mohammedans, 299
Confucians, etc, 3,884
Other religions, 1,719
Object, 6,940
Not stated, 8,046
Total, 320,431
The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as returned:
Agnostics, Atheists, Believers in Christ, Buddhists, Calvinists, Christadelphians, Christians, Christ's Chapel,
Christian Israelites, Christian Socialists, Church of God, Cosmopolitans, Deists, Evangelists, Exclusive
Brethren, Free Church, Free Methodists, Freethinkers, Followers of Christ, Gospel Meetings, Greek Church,
Infidels, Maronites, Memnonists, Moravians, Mormons, Naturalists, Orthodox, Others (indefinite), Pagans,
Pantheists, Plymouth Brethren, Rationalists, Reformers, Secularists, Seventh-day Adventists, Shaker,
Shintoists, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Town (City) Mission, Welsh Church, Huguenot, Hussite, Zoroastrians,
Zwinglian,
About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it.
Agnostics, Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there. And all the big
sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the
Spiritualists and the Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter
with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world.
CHAPTER XVIII. 63
CHAPTER XIX.
Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.
The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty, the
Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage
under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great: the confined
sense, the sense of suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat—these would all be there, in
place of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under glass with
us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.—[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an
authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in
the shade. In January, 1880, the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.]
When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of vegetation, as the desert of Sahara;
now it has everything that grows on the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute
CHAPTER XIX. 64
upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes the results appear, in gardens private and
public, in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful tree or
bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually name a foreign country as the place of its
origin—India, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so
on.
In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be
courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was
consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out
of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and
beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of
Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good
reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has any. In this case the bird is spared
because he kills snakes. If L. J. he will not kill all of them.
CHAPTER XIX. 65
In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog—the dingo. He was a beautiful
creature—shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most friendly eye and
sociable disposition. The dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the whites first came
to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his
ancestors first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. He is the most precious dog in
the world, for he does not bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and
that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination,
and the sentence will be carried out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for
man—the white man.
CHAPTER XIX. 66
CHAPTER XIX. 67
CHAPTER XIX. 68
South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a southern exposure except
one—Queensland. Properly speaking, South Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up
through the center of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000 miles high, from south to
north, and about a third as wide. A wee little spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths
of its population; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere—as elsewhere as they could be in the
United States with all the country between Denver and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter
over. There is plenty of room.
A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide to
Port Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 1871-2 when her
population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the
route had been traversed but once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried over
immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to supply the men and cattle with water.
A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to India, and there was telegraphic
communication with England from India. And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it
meant connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could watch the London markets
daily, now; the profit to the wool-growers of Australia was instant and enormous.
A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 miles—the equivalent of
five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still,
but little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are here tabulated.—[From "Round
the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but the last two.]
Miles.
Melbourne-Mount Gambier, 300

Mount Gambier-Adelaide, 270
Adelaide-Port Augusta, 200
Port Augusta-Alice Springs, 1,036
Alice Springs-Port Darwin, 898
Port Darwin-Banjoewangie, 1,150
Banjoewangie-Batavia, 480
Batavia-Singapore, 553
Singapore-Penang, 399
Penang-Madras, 1,280
Madras-Bombay, 650
Bombay-Aden, 1,662
Aden-Suez, 1,346
Suez-Alexandria, 224
Alexandria-Malta, 828
Malta-Gibraltar, 1,008
CHAPTER XIX. 69
Gibraltar-Falmouth, 1,061
Falmouth-London, 350
London-New York, 2,500
New York-San Francisco, 3,500
I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg
to commemorate the Reading of the Proclamation—in 1836—which founded the Province. If I
have at any time called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it is a Province; and
officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the
Province's national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the pre-eminent holiday; and that is saying
much, in a country where they seem to have a most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are
workingmen's holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is the desire of the
politician—indeed, it is the very breath of the politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will
of the workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a great power everywhere in
Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise.
I am glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be bewildering to the stranger. I tried to
get the hang of the system, but was not able to do it.
You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so politically, also. One of the speakers at the
Commemoration banquet—the Minister of Public Works-was an American, born and reared in New
England. There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other way that I know of.
Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. No amount of horse-racing can damn this community.
The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in the 1,000—about half what it
is in the city of New York, I should think, and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the
average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate for the old people. There were people at
the Commemoration banquet who could remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had
all been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They showed signs of the blightings and
blastings of time, in their outward aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to talk;
ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of it. They were down for six speeches, and they
made 42. The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. They
have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But they do not hear well, and when they see the
mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the
one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most animated way; and the more the mayor
gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and
reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole house laughing and crying, three of
them think it is about the bitter old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the laughter is
caused by the jokes they have been uncorking—jokes of the vintage of 1836—and then the way
they do go on! And finally when ushers come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down
into their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired—I could bang along a week!" and they sit there looking
simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the
other end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully prepared
speech, impressively and with solemnity—
"When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in
reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, of
wisdom, of forethought, of——"
Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've thought of another one!" and at it they go,
with might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the visible
CHAPTER XIX. 70
violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away till the imploring ushers pray them into their
seats again. And a pity, too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over, in these days
of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the
hearing.
CHAPTER XIX. 71
CHAPTER XIX. 72
It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time
deeply pathetic; for they had seen so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had built
so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and
had lived to see the structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised for honorable work.
One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; things about the aboriginals, mainly. He
thought them intelligent—remarkably so in some directions—and he said that along with their
unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he considered it a great pity that the race had
died out. He instanced their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of their brightness;
and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do
the miracles with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been
obliged to confess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities
which they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, could not make it obey him; but
the aboriginal could. He told me some wonderful things—some almost incredible things—which
he had seen the blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed to me since by
other early settlers and by trustworthy books.
CHAPTER XIX. 73
It is contended—and may be said to be conceded—that the boomerang was known to certain

savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is
also contended that it was known to the ancient Egyptians.
One of two things either some one with is then apparent: a boomerang arrived in Australia in the days of
antiquity before European knowledge of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it. It
will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the fact. But there is no hurry.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 2
CHAPTER XIX. 74
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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CHAPTER XIX. 82

Following The Equator, Part 2 by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

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FOLLOWING

A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD

The Discovery of Australia—Transportation

Talk—English and Colonial Audiences

Mr. X., a Missionary—Why Christianity

Bad Health&mdash;To Melbourne by

Melbourne and its Attractions&mdash;The

The British Empire&mdash;Its Exports and

Man&mdash;Buying the Kangaroo

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sept. 15&mdash;Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"How do you know I won't make it worse?"

"All right, what will you give?"

"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."

"What, you are not going?"

"But what about your shark?"

"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"

"Oh, well, you can collect it."

"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"

"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."

"He won't go, sir. I've tried."

"No, sir. He don't look it."

"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"

"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."

"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"

"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."

"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."

"Nobody that you know."

"What is your name?"

"I said intention."

"I knew its strength."

"To buy the wool crop&mdash;deliverable in sixty days."

"What, the whole of it?"

"The whole of it."

"Two and a half million sterling&mdash;maybe a little more."

"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."

"You mean, of course, that you might make it if&mdash;&mdash;"

"I said 'shall'."

"I don't think&mdash;I know."

"Definite again. How do you know?"

"Because I have later news."

"My news is only ten days old."

"Got it out of a shark."

"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?"

"Andrew. What are you writing?"

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

But at last! just when I was least expecting it&mdash;&mdash;

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"Here's to you, old chap!

"Say&mdash;Mark!&mdash;is he dead?"&mdash;a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did

&mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000.

Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000.

Bad Health—To Melbourne by

Melbourne and its Attractions—The

The British Empire—Its Exports and

Man—Buying the Kangaroo

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"To buy the wool crop—deliverable in sixty days."

"Two and a half million sterling—maybe a little more."

"You mean, of course, that you might make it if——"

"I don't think—I know."

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

But at last! just when I was least expecting it——

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

"Say—Mark!—is he dead?"—a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It is contended—and may be said to be conceded—that the boomerang was known to certain

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