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THE COUI^TPJES OF THE WOULD.
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HAWAIIAN'S UF THE I'llESKNT DAY (A COUUT GARDEN PARTY).
31
THE
COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD:
A POPULAE DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS CONTINENTS, ISLANDS, RIVERS,
SEAS, AND PEOPLES OF THE GLOBE.
Robert Brown, m.a.,
PH.D., P.L.S., F.K.G.S.,
Author of " The Baces of ManJtind," etc. etc.
* * * «
Cassell, Fetter, Galpin & Co.
LONDON, PARIS l- NEW YORK.
[All Rights Keserved.]
CONTENTS.
Oceania : —
General Characteristics ...
The Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, and
Revilla Gigedos
The Coral Islands ...
Plants and Animals
The S.4NDWICH Islands : — ■
History ...
Popul.\tiox and Present Condition-
Foreign Society, and its Influence
Education, Crime, and Dec.iy of the
Hawaiuns ...
Lepro.sy and the Lepee Settlement
Language
Sugar, Sheep, and Volc.vnoes
Hawaiian Towns
Easter Island
The Mariana, or Ladrone Islands
Anson and Magellan Archipelagoes
The C.\roline, Pelew, and Ellice Islands
The Marshall and Kingsmill Groups ...
The Solomon Isles, New Britain, New
Irel.wd, New Hanover, and the Admi-
ralty Isles
OcE.\N AND Pleasant Isles...
The New Hebrides and the Queen Char-
lotte Islands
New Caledonia, The Isle of Pines, and
the Loyalty Isles
The Colony of Fiji
Tonga, or Friendly Islands
NiuE, OR Savage Island
The S.\moan Islands ....
Society, or Leeward Islands
Georgian, Windward, or Tahitian Islands
The H.\rvey-, or Cook's Isles
Low Archipelago
PiTCAIRN IsLANlJ
Marquesas, Gambier, and Scattered Groups
Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, and
the Kermedec Group
New Zealand : —
General Characteristics ...
General Geography and Features
The Provinces
History, Prospects, etc. ...
Plants and Animals
Tasmania : —
General Characteristics ...
Resources; Animals; Climate
Towns and Men ... ... •
The " Strait.smen " ... ...
Prospects
11
22
24
30
3-t
37
38
39
41
42
4G
4fi
47
50
.50
50
53
5G
69
64
66
66
67
68
71
72
73
79
81
87
89
100
123
126
128
132
136
147
150
TAGE
Australia : —
General Characteristics ... 151
Physical Features ... ... ... ... 155
Climate ... ... ... ... ... 158
Plant and Animal Life ... 162
The Colony of New South Wales ... 168
Divisions of the Country 172
Trade and Industry ... ... ... 172
Mines, etc. ... ... ... ... 175
Towns 179
The Colony of Victoria ... 182
Physical Features and Population 183
Towns 187
South Australia : —
History- ... ... ... 194
Trade and Wealth ... 195
Mines 198
Agricultural AYealth... ... ... 200
The Northern Territort ... ... 203
Towns 205
Exports and Imports ... ... ... 207
Western Australia:^
History ... 207
General Condition of the Colony... 211
Queensland : —
Products and Industries ... ... 215
Towns 218
Some Austr.-ilian Institutions ... ... 222
The Malay Archipelago : —
Gener.il Geography ... 228
Physical Aspects 228
Zoological Aspects ... ... 231
Political Aspects ... ... ... ... 235
Austro-Malaysia ... ... 236
New Guinea ... ... ... 238
The Moluccan Group 243
Celebes 250
The Timor Group 252
Indo-Malaysia ... ... ... ... 255
Borneo 258
Java 267
Sumatra ... ... ... ... ... 275
The Straits Settlements 278
The Philippine Group of Islands ... 284
The Soldo Isl.inds 285
The Spanish Philippines ... ... 287
Formosa ... 295
The Japanese Empire ... ... ... ... 301
The Loochoos and other Outlying Islands 302
The J.vpanese Isl.\nds ... ... ... 304
Statistics, etc. ... ... ... ... 30G
Some Japanese Towns and Traits ... 311
The Aino Country ... ... ... ... 314
2024S19
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Hawaiians of the rrescnt Day (a Court Garden
Party) ... ... ... ... ... Frontispiece
View in King Charles Island, one of the Galapagos
Group ... ... ... ... ... ... 4
Map of Oceania ... ... ... ... ... 5
View of Whitsunday Island, near the Coast of
Austi-aUa (Atoll) 8
View of Borabora, one of the Coral Islands (show-
ing Flinging Reefs) ... ... ... ... 9
A Coral Grove 12
Cocoa-nut Trees {Cocos nncifcra) of Tahiti ... 13
The Fruit of the Fragrant Screw Pine {Pandanus
odoratissiimis) ... ... ... ... ... 16
An Avenue of Banana Bushes in the Island of
Tahiti 17
The Kagu (Ehinochctus jiibutus) of New Caledonia 20
The Land-Crah of the Fijis (J?ic(?os foiro) 21
View of the Valley of Waipio, in Hawaii, Sand-
wich Islands ... 2-5
Hawaiians eating " Poi," the National Dish ... 28
Eruption of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Sandwich Islands 29
Kalakaua, King of the Sandwich Islands 32
Plain of Eonororaka, Easter Island To face page 33
Monument to Captain Cook... ... ... ... 33
View of Lahaina in JIaui, Sandwich Islands ... 30
The Village of Waikiki (a Favourite Summer
Haunt of the Citizens of Honolulu) ... 37
The Hale Mau-mau, Kilauea, Hawaii 40
View of Easter Island (from the Sea) 41
Platform in the Vicinity of Otu-iti (" The Little
HiU"), Easter Island 44
Images at Eonororaka, Easter Island ... ... 44
The Crater of Otu-iti, Easter Island 45
War Costume of the Natives of the Caroline
Islands ... ... ... ... ... ... 48
Tattooing of the Natives of Ponape, Caroline Islands 4 9
Native Canoe of the Solomon Islands ... ... 62
Natives of New Ireland ... ... 52
Officers of H.M.S. Challenger bartering with the
Natives of the Admiralty Islands ... ... 53
Scene in the Isle of Tanna, New Hebrides ... 56
A New Caledonian Native Hut ... 57
A Fishing Village, in a Grove of Cocoa-nut Trees,
New Caledonia ... ... 60
PAGE
Natives of Fiji 61
A Fijian Dance 64
Natives and Idol of the Marquesas To face page 65
Captain Cook treating with the Natives of the
Samoan Islands .. . ... ... ... ... 65
View of Matavai Bay, Tahiti 68
Young Men of Tahiti 69
View of Mount Diadem, Tahiti 72
View of the Rocks in the Paumotus Archipelago 73
View of John Adams' House, Pitcaii-n Island (1825) 76
View of Pitcairn Island ... 77
Young Wanior, Old Man, and Woman of the
Marquesas Islands ... ... ... ... 80
" In the Cor,al Sea " ... ... ... ... ... 81
Poli|Tiesian Fishhooks ... ... ... ... 85
Map of New Zealand ... ... ... ... 88
View in Dunedin in 1870 ... ... ... ... 89
View of Port Mocraki 92
View of the Waiamakarua Viaduct of the Otago,
G.N. Railway 93
View of Part of New Plymouth, with Marsland
HiU and Mount Egmont, Taranaki 96
View of the Hot Lake of Rotom.ahana, Auckland,
New Zealand To face page 97
A Maori Carved Club 97
View of the Arrow River Gold Fields, Otago ... 101
The Tui, or Parson Bird (I'rosthemadera Nova
Zealai)tli<r) of New Zealand ... ... ... 104
Carved Monument in New Zealand ... ... 105
A Maori Chief (untattooed) 109
New Zealand Bat (C'lialiucloliiis tuierctilatus) ... 112
View of Lake Taupo, Auckland ... 113
View of the Hot Springs of Lake Hope, Auckland 117
The "Sentinel" Rock, White Island, Auckland
(dedicated to the Memory of Captain Cook) 120
The Boulder Beach, White Island, Auckland ... 121
View on the Waiau-au Eiver, New Zealand ... 125
View of Ben Lomond, Tasmania ... ... ... 128
Hauling Timber in Australia ... To face page 129
View of Hobart Town, Tasmania 129
A Scene in the Tasmanian Bush (Kangaroos, Emu,
and " Tiger Wolves ") 133
The Black Swan of Australia and Tasmania
[Cggnus atratus).., ... ... ... ... 137
VUl
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
View of Mount Wellington, Tasmania
The Tasmanian " Devil" {Dasyurus ursinut)
View of the City of Melbourne, A'ictoria
\'iew of Sydney Harbour, New South Wales
The Bunya-bunya Tree {Araucaria Bidwillii) of
Queensland
Map of Australia
Australian Aborigines
View of Geelong, Port Phillip.Victoria.' To/ace joa^e
The Duck-billed Platypus of Australia {Omithor-
hi/nchus anatiniis)
The Spotted Bower Bird of Australia {Chlamtjdodera
macuiata)
The Giant Gum-tree of Victoria {Eacalyptm amyg-
dal'tna)
View of Jlount Wikon, in the Blue Mountains,
New South Wales
View of Lake George, New South Wales
View of Cunningham's Gap, Mount Mitchell,
New South Wales
The Metros'uleros speciosa of Australia
View on the Murray River, Victoria
Bouike Street, Melbourne, Victoria
View of Fem-tree Cave, Gipps Land, Victoria ...
View of the Lal-IaE Falls, ne;ir BaUarat, Victoria
View of Ballarat, Victoria
View on the Ovens River, Victoria To face page
Government House, Melbourne, Victoria ...
Parliament House, Adelaide
Post-Office and Town Hall, Adelaide
The Lyre Bird of Australia [Mentira superba) and
Cockatoos
The Kapunda Copper Mines, near Adelaide
View of Collingrove, near Adelaide
View on the Swan River, Western Australia
(Grass Trees, Black Swans, and Kangaroos)
Hunting Kangaroos in Australia
The A'alley of the River Brisbane, Queensland ...
View of Brisbane, Queensland
View in the Botanic Gardens, Adelaide ...
View in the Forestj of Saobaba, New Guinea
To face page
A Bush Store in Queensland
JIalay Children
The Iron-wood Tree {Eusideroxylon Zuageri) of
New Guinea
\'iew on the Dodinga River, New Guinea
PAGE
141
145
143
1.52
1.53
157
160
161
161
164
165
169
173
176
177
181
184
185
189
192
193
193
196
197
201
204
205
209
213
217
221
224
225
225
229
233
237
View of the Mission Station, Port Moresby, New
Guinea 240
View of Eloara Island, New Guinea 241
View of the Roadstead and Village of Warus-
Warus, Ceram ... ... ... ... ... 244
Dutch House in the Lsland of Temate ... ... 245
Male and Female Argus Pheasant {Fhasianui Argtis) 249
View in the Town of Macassar, Celebes 253
A Family of Orang-utans {Simla satyrm) of Borneo 562
The Mosque of Soei'abaija, Batavia, Java
To face page 257
Map of the Malay Archipelago, i-c. 257
Bornean Blacksmiths 260
View in a Village in Borneo ... .. ... 261
Bornean Weapons, &c 264
Antelope Hunting in Borneo ... 265
RafflesM Arnoldi, the gigantic Parasitic Plant uf
Java and Sumatra ... ... ... ... 268
The Upas Tree [Aiitiaris toxicaria) of Java ... 269
Javanese Carts ... ... ... 272
View in the Environs of Boghor, Java 273
A Forest View in Java 276
A Basket Merchant of Batavia 277
A Javanese Palanquin 280
Javanese Musicians ... ... ... ... ... 281
View of the Roadstead, Singapore ... 284
View on the Perak River, Malay Peninsula ... 285
A Japanese Ferry Boat of the aiicieii rigime
To face page 289
View of Mindanao Island, one of the Philippine
Group 289
Bird's-eye View of JIunilla, Luzon, Philippine
Islands 293
(iroup of Bamboos (.Ba»iiH«a/on«osff) ... ... 296
View of Mount Morrison, Fomiosa ... ... 297
A Native Hut in Formosa 300
View of Ta-kau-kan, on the Western Coast of
Formosa 301
View from Shimonoseki, Japan ... ... ... 304
View of Deshima, Japan 305
Fan-making in Japan 308
Japanese making Calling Cards 308
Japanese Artificial Flower-maker 309
Rope-making in Japan ... ... ... ... 309
View from the Bridge of Nippon, Tokio 313
A Street in Tokio (showing E.\terior of Palace, or
Yashgi) 317
THE COUNTEIES OF THE AVOELD.
CHAPTER I.
Oceania : Gexekal Characteristics.
..^^^^FTER our travels through the bleak wastes of the frozen lands, and along' the
Wi ''i^^r banks, and among the prairies, forests, and pampas of the two Americas,
we once more leave the land, and sail westward into that world of waters
known as the Pacific. We have already made the acquaintance of Balboa,
who, on the 29tli September, 1513, first sighted it, albeit nnnours of a great
sea on the other side of the land had I'eached the willing ears of Columbus
when, at Hispaniola, he was dreaming of Cathay and the Indies. But the bankrupt of
Domingo (Vol. III., p. 1) had no liking for sea voyages: he wearied only for gold,
and accordingly the honours of having first sailed across it fell to ^lagellan (^ nl. III.,
p. 2(30) eight years afterwards. But it is only within comparatively modern times that
we have gained anything like accurate ideas regarding its extent, nature, or, above all,
with the all but innumerable — and certainly unnumbered — islands which dot its bosom.
Among those who have thus contributed to our knowledge, the name of Captain Cook stands
pre-eminent before all others. But Anson, La Perouse, the Bougainvillos, D'Entrecasteaux,
Cartaret, A^ancouver, Kruzenstern, Kotzebue, Belcher, and among the later of those whose
researches have added to our scientific knowledge, the scientific staff of the Clndlenger ought
not to be omitted. It is not at all likely that any new groups of islands, or even any single
island of large size, will be discovered. But it is not improbable that there yet remain
in that eight million square miles of water some isolated specks of land, which the white
man has not yet sighted, and where live the dusky lotos eaters, unconscious of the still
more wicked world which lies outside their, possibly, not very moral microcosm. All
of the larger groups have been visited : many of them have been settled upon by missionaries,
and few of them are now wholly in a condition of barbarism. Some, like the Sandwich
Islands, are christianised and civilised : others, like the Fijis, are European colonies ; one
or two, like Pitcairn, Norfolk, and Lord Howe's Islands, are inhabited by white colonists
or their descendants ; while a fourth class are either in a state of pristine savagedom, or,
like New Guinea and the Samoan groups, are just beginning to feel the effects of the
121
2 THE COCXTEIES OF THE WORLD.
white man's greed. All of lliem are beautilul : most of them are rieli, and, with a few
exceptions, the climate of these Oceanic Islands scattered over the great Pacific — the Slille Meer
of the Germans, the Mar del Zitr of the Sjwniards — is fluiltless. In these "summer isles
of Eden, in dark purple spheres of the sea" — all, "save the spirit of the man, is divine,"
and it must he allowed that his sjiirit would bear improvement. The islands comprised
in what has been conveniently called " Oceania," have been divided into three groups —
these divisions being chiefly founded on the prevailing ethnological characteristics. For
our purposes this classification is not very important. Still, as the names have now got
naturalised in the language of geographj-, we may, without binding ourselves to any strict
adherence to this order in the sequence after which we may visit them, adopt these desig-
nations. Accordingly, under the name of (1) Polj/nexia, or Eastern Oceania, we may include
the small island groups of the Western and Central Pacific; (2) under South-western
Oceania, or Anstniltisia, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, and (-"S) under Mahiymi, or
Xorth-western Oceania, the Malay Islands. The last-named, however, properly belong to
Asia, and, therefore, we shall defer any description of them until we again commence
our travels on dry land, while Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand are, strictly speaking,
a fifth division of the world. Accordingly, in the chapters which immediately follow,
we shall consider chiefly the Polynesian Islands inhabited by the fairer skinned, and
straight-haired races, of which the Sandwich Islanders are the type; and those South Sea
Inlands which, like the Fijis, are inhabited by a darker curly-haired people of the Papuan
family. In other words, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia will be the theme of our
travel talk. The islands are so numerous that it is impossible to visit them all, and as,
in another place, we have fully discussed the people which inhabit them, a brief but
comprehensive sketch may suffice for our purpose.
The Galapagos, Juak Feenandez, and Revilla Gic.edos.
First, however, we must say a few words about these islands. They lie nearest
the American continent of all the Oceanic islands, and though rarely associated with
Poh'nesia, and never appearing to have been inhabited by any aboriginal races, are, in many
respects, remarkable and interesting. The small islands lying off the continent^like the
Queen Charlotte's in the North Pacific, the Farallunes off California, and the Chinchas olT
Pern — are, to all intents and juupjses, onlj- detached bits of the adjoining shores. But
in the case of the Galapagos, at least, this is different.
The Galapagos, or " Tortoise Isles," as the word signifies in Spanish [galapago, a
tortoise), are thirteen in number, the largest — Albemarle — measuring sixty miles by fifteen,
with an elevation of 1,700 feet. The ten largest are Albemarle, Indefatigable, Chatham, King
Charles (p. 1), James, Narborough, Ilood, Barrington, Bindloes, and Abingdon, but, though
thus named mostly after British magnates, they are included in the Republic of Ecuador, from
which they are but 500 and 600 miles distant. They can hardly be said to be peopled,
the few inhabitants on them being a rude semi-civilised set of fishers, who assemble
here at certain seasons for the purpose of catching the enormous tortoises with which they
THE GALAPAGOS; JUAN FERNANDEZ. 3
aljouud. They are volcanic^, but tliougli ;2,0OU extinct craters have been counted on
them, there is only one active volcano — that on the isle of Narboroug-h — and the
cold Chilian current prevents growth of coral on the shore, swept Ijy its comparatively
chilly waters. Their distinguishing feature is the great number of reptiles — snakes,
lizards, and tortoises — with which they abound. The tortoise {Te-sfiiiJo JtuVi.cn) some-
times attains the weight of 500 lbs. or GOO lbs. — and is said to be often ridden about
by the festive seafaring man — and one lizard found there is the only known marine
species. It is three feet in length, has webbed feet and a compressed tail, and is believed
to h.ave been allied to the great marine reptiles — the Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus —
which distinguished certain of the geological periods. It basks on the beach, and feeds on
seaweed. The Galapagos are true pelagic islands, and are often cited as illustrating
the peculiar relation of such islands to continents. Mr. Darwin has, for instance, adduced
them as an illustration of the fact that such islands are inhabited by plants and animals
closely allied to those of the nearest mainland, without being actually the same. In the
Galapagos, for example, every product of the land and of the water bears the unmistakable
American stamp, yet few of the beings which have their homes there are the same as
those found on the nearest mainland. There are twenty-six land-birds, but of these twenty-
one are usually ranked as distinct species, though all possessing near relatives on the
continent 000 miles away ; but of the eleven marine birds which permanently live on the
cliffs, and feed in the sea around, onlv two are peculiar. This is what might have been
expected, for it is obvious that sea-birds could more easily reach these islands than their
land-birds. Again, on studying the plants, Sir Joseph Hooker finds that the majority
— 100 out of ISO — are different from those of America, but are, at the same time, so
closely allied, that in looking at the vegetation around him, he felt that he was standing
on the American continent. On a small scale, we see the same facts true of every separate
island in the Galapagos group. Each is tenanted by many distinct species, but these
species are more closely related to each other than they are to the species on the American
continent from which they seem to have been colonised. Yet there is nothing in the
soil, height, climate, or other physical conditions of the islands to cause this deviation of
one island from another as to its plants and animals. They are, however, separated from
each other by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider than the British Channel, and swept
by swift currents. Gales of wind are also rare, so that mode of diffusion of species cannot
rarely be put into practice. Yet, in the Galapagos, we find neighbouring islands inhabited by
distinct species of birds, which are well fitted to fly from one to the other. For instance,
there are three closely-allied .species of mocking-thrush, each confined to its own island.
The reason given for this is curious, but to discuss it would lead us far away from our
subject, and on to ice, in the opinion of many worthy people too thin for prudent holiday
travellers to skate on.
Jiiaii Fcrnandc:, S/. Amhrose, St. Felix, and other small basaltic isles, without coral
on their shores, lie about 400 miles from the Chilian coast. Juan Fernandez— or Mas-a-
tierra — is the largest and most famous of these, from the notion that it was the scene
of Robinson Crusoe's adventures, as related by Defoe. In reality, though Alexander Selkirk
passed four years in solitude on this isle, there is no proof whatever, contrary to the
4 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
usual belief, that his adventures suggested, far less supplied, the famous romancist with the
particulars, which he afterwards so skilfully worked uj) into the adventures of the wayward
mariner of York. Indeed, a glance at Robinson Crusoe's autobiography will show that they
are located on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco, and a very slight acquaintance
with Defoe's works will convince the reader that a man capable of writing the "Voyage
Round the World," and the "Adventures of Colonel Jack," required no prompting from
VIEW IN KING CHARLES ISLAND, ONE OF THE GALAPAGOS GKOl I'.
the rather dull buccaneering coxswain of the " Cinque Ports " galley to give his novel
that verisimilitude which has gained for it immortality and a popularity only limited
by the range of the printing press. The island itself is ten or twelve miles long, and
about four broad, and is for the most part wild and mountainous, the highest peak, that
of the Yunques, or Anvil, being about 3,000 feet above the sea level. The valleys are,
however, well wooded and fertile, and yield oats, turnips, apjtles, cherries, strawberries,
melons, peaches, grapes, figs, sandal wood, myrtle, the chuta (a species of palm) — bearing
a rich fruit — the cork tree, and other varieties of timber. There are few wild animals,
but numbers of goats, the offspring of tame ones which had been landed there, now
<
6 THE COUNTRIES 0¥ THE WOKLD.
waucler quite wild among the cliffs. The lirst iijipearance which the voyager gets of Juan
Fernandez is very striking. Its precipitous cliffs^ and great mountains torn and broken into
fantastic shapes, with the wild torrents rushing through the wooded gullies, gave a most
picturesque aspect to this isle of romance. The cherries and peaches were, with many of
the other fruits, kc, now found on it, planted by the early visitors. Indeed, the i)eaehes
are said to have been the gift of Lord Anson to wayfarers : he planted the trees in 1741
when on his famous voyage round the world. Several attemjits have at various times Ijeen
made to colonise the island, since it was discovered in 15C3. In early days the buccaneers
made it a base of operations against the Spaniards; and during one of their visits in
1681, a West Indian negro being accidentally left behind, robbed the Largo seaman of
more than half his distinction, by remaining on it in solitude for neaidy three years, until
he was rescued by the next visitors. Twenty years afterwards, the solitary individual of
whom we know most passed his enforced four jears here, but it has been ascertained that
several other eccentric or unfortunate adventurers have at different times bad much the
same experience as Selkirk. In 1717 the Spanish Government established a colony on it,
but the whole of their buildings were soon after wrecked by one of the earthquakes to
which these islands, in common with the mainland, are often subject. The crumbling
Fort Sau Juan Bautista, and the traces of walled fields at the base of the wooded
Anvil Mountain, but now rapidly getting overgrown with forest, are the reminders of the
days when Spain in her incipient decadence, instead of consolidating and developing
what she had, grasped at more land than she could govern. In 1819 the Chilians formed
a penal settlement here, and at one time had as many as 5U(I prisoners on the island.
But the deportees rebelled, and for a time mastered the troops, and were lords of all they
surveyed. So, in 18-35, Juan Fernandez being found very expensive and unsafe, was
abandoned as a Chilian Botany Bay, and for forty years remained undistui-bed. In 1868
the newspapers contained a rumour of its cession to a Society of Germans, who proiwsed
colonising it. But the scheme did not come to maturity, while the American speculator,
who made it a station for Tahitian whale-fishers, found that his practice was not equal
to his theory. At present the island is leased to a Chilian merchant, who employs the
forty or fifty settlers in cutting wood, tending cattle, &c., and in drying fish for the
Valj)araiso market. During the season there and at !Masafuera, ninety miles distant,
they usually capture about ~,OIM) fur seals, and as their skins are at present worth over
£3 each, this portion of their toil is perhaps rather more lucrative than the supplying
of passing ships with fresh provisions. The climate is said to be mild and healthy,
though changeable. It is just possible that in time the island maj- gain some imjjortanee
as a victualling station, and under a power more energetic than Chili, may be made
something of. Cumberland Bay is a good liarbour, and here, in iMiS^ the officers of
H.M.S. To2Uize placed an iron tablet, commemorating about the only event which is likely
to cause the world to rememljcr Juan Fernandez, viz. : — the solitary exile ou it of
Alexander Selkirk.
Till- Tleri/fd Cif/eilo Ish'm — off the coast of ^lexico, rlfiO miles south of Cape San
Lucas — consist of Socorro and several otiiers. They are volcanic, and like the preceding
ones, without coral, owing to the fiict of a strong current from the north sweeping
EEVILLA GIGEDO; THE CORAL ISLANDS. 7
their shoves. They arc iiniuhahitecl, rocky, and Ijarren, but in some jilaces rendered
impenetrable by thickets of the Cactus Opantla ; and it may be added, though no coral
grows on their shores, yet it is found inside the current as far north as the entrance
of the Gulf of California. The name of Revilla Gigedo has also been applied to an
island off the shores of Alaska.
The Coral Islands.
Coming to the isles which are more directly entitled to the name of Pnlvnesia, we
find them in almost every case either volcanic or made up of coral — the old volcano or
lava frequently forming the base on which the coral polype — not "insect/' as it is some-
times absurdly called — builds in the manner we shall presently describe. These islands,
according to their physical appearance, have sometimes been divided into High, Median,
and Low Polynesia. The Sandwich Islands, Marquesas, and Tahiti are types of the first
class. They are all volcanic, and are composed of basalt. Their valleys are extremely
fertile, and their highest peaks in many cases capped with snow; the wild dells, and the
rich tropical vegetation, contrasted with Alpine scenery, giving such islands a most
pietures(jue aspect (p. 1-3 ). The Median Polynesian Islands are of lower elevation, and though
mostly composed of the remnants of coral in the form of carbonate of lime, crystallised
by volcanic action, they are extremely fertile, and are covered with luxurious forests,
abounding in trees bearing the most delicious fruits. Low Polynesia is the name ajijilied
to those coral islands raised only a few feet above the surface, and which, indeed, are at
present in process of formation. At a distance it requires a practised eye to detect the
ring-like sea-wall of coral encircling the low cocoa-nut fringed patch of bread-fruit,
Hibiscus, and other dwarf shrubs, which are about the only trees which grow well on the
poor soil formed by the decay of vegetation, mingled w-ith the droppings of sea birds,
which covers with a thin layer these coral islands. Their scenery is not grand, but though
they may lack the wild peaks and awful gorges of the volcanic islands, yet there
is something in them indescribably calm and peaceful, beyond the dreams of those
whose life has been cast amid the turmoil of the worrying, wearying, money-making
world, which lies far away from these lovely spots among the world of waters in the
Pacific. The way in which these coral islands have been formed has been so well
described by INIr. Darwin, that though the description which he has given of their
formation is mainly theoretical, yet it is founded on so many well-observed facts, that we
may accept it as the most probable and only generally accepted explanation which has
yet been given. The coral polype maj' be said to be a sea anemone, living in a hard
limy dwelling instead of a soft one, and in a colony of many millions, all united into one
more or less solid mass, instead of remaining isolated, as do their familiar relatives of our
shores. They extract the lime from the sea to build up their dwellings, and this aids in
the formation of coral islands. They cannot live in any sea which has a lower mean
temperature than (KJ*^, and are therefore practically limited to an area of about 1,800 miles
on each side of the equator. However, as we have seen — owing to the influence of cold
currents — no coral reefs are found on the western shores of America, or of Africa, though
this region lies within the area mentioned. They are found ow the east coast of Africa,
8
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
the shores of Madag-ascar, the Red Sea aud Persian Gulf, throughout the Indian Ocean,
around the West Indian Islands, and the coast of Florida. But it is in Polynesia that
the head-quarters of the reef-building- corals are fuund. There they are found often
several hundreds of miles in length, and two feet or more in thickness. They also go-
under different names, according to their character and mode of formation. Thus there-
are fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls. The first are usually of small size, and
may either surround islands, or run along their coasts (p. !)). Between them and the
shore there is usually no great depth of water, while soundings prove that on their seaward
side the land gradually shelves away. The barrier reefs are of much the same character
as the ones just described, but they differ from them in so far that they occur usually
at greater distances from land, and have between them and the shore a deeper channel.
VIEW OF 1VHITSVXDAY I:
.LAK THE COAST OF AV>TKALIA (aTOLL).
while on their seaward side the sounding line immediately sinks to great depths — this, for
example, is the case with the great barrier reef which for more than a thousand miles runs
along the north-east coast of Australia — in some places to 1,800 feet. If such a reef
surrounds an island, it is called an " encircling barrier reef," and in the island in the
centre is known as a " lagoon island." The atolls are, however, the most remarkable of all
the coral islands. These are of a nearly circular or oval shape, and with the exceptiou
of a few breaks, completely surround a salt lake in the centre, though in one or two
cases {e.g., in figure) they form an unbroken ring. They only differ from encircling
barrier reefs by the pond-like lagoon in the centre not containing an island. This
lagoon is a perfect harbour. It is quiet and unruffled, while outside a tremendous surf
IS breaking on the reef, throwing up a line of dead coral on its surface, so that the
island is made up of living polypes and their limy habitations, and the broken
debris tossed up by the breakers. New, how are such islands formed? To understand
the theory which is usually accepted, it is necessary to explain first the salient facts
THE CORAL ISLAXDS-UOW FORMED.
9
which have bjen ascertained regarding the conditions under which the coral animal lives.
The coral animals cannot live even for short periods exposed to the sun ; accordingly they
never raise their dwellings above the surface, or are found higher up than low-water mark.
It is therefore clear that the coral islands could not have been raised above the level of the
sea by the efforts of their builders. The agency which accomplishes this consists of the waves.
They tear off great fragments of living coral from the reefs below water, toss them up
on its surface until the mass is raised abov-e the surface, aud the detached fragments
united by the percolation amongst them of water charged with carbonate of lime. It is,
VIEW 01' JiOBABOKA, ONE OF THE COKAL ISLANDS (SHOWING FRIXGINO EEEFS).
however, evident that the same force which has piled up the island in this manner could
also destroy it by again attacking and tossing the torn off fragments to the bottom.
But another agency comes in force : this is the vital activity of the living corals
which are alwa\"s building upwards towards the surface from the seaward margin of the
reef, and this prevents the sea from destroying the debris reared island which it has
formed. This is, however, another peculiarity about the reef-building coral animals, which
must be explained before the nature of the islands, which are formed of the hard portions
of their bodies, can be understood. They must live under the water, but at the same time
they are creatures of shoals, and cannot exist at greater depths than some 15 to 30
fathoms. " It follows from this that no coral reef can be commenced upon a sea bottom
deeper than about -30 fathoms. The question now arises— In what way have reefs been
produced, which, as we have seen, rise out of depths of 300 fathoms or more? The
122
10 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
question has been answered by Darwin, who showed that the production of Ijarrier reefs
and atolls was really to be ascribed to a gradual subsidence of the foundations on which
they rest. Thus, if a fringing reef wliich .surnnnuls an island is supposed gradually to
sink beneath the sea, the upward growth of the corals will neutralise the downward
movement of the land, so far, at any rate, that the reef will apjjcar to be stationary,
whilst it is really growing upwards. The island, however, as subsidence goes on, will
o-radually diminish in size, and a channel will be formed between it and tl'.e reef. If the
depression should still be continued, the island will be reduced to a mere peak, in the
centre of a lagoon; and the reef, from a 'fringing reef (p. H), will have become converted
into an 'encircling barrier reef.' As the growth of the reef is chieHy vertical, the con-
tinual depression will, of course, have produced deep water all around the reef. If the
subsidence be continued still further, the central peak will disappear altogether, and the
reef will become a more or less complete ring, surrounding a central expanse of water,
thus becoming converted into an 'atoll.' The jn'oJuefion, therefore, of encircling barrier
reefs and atolls is thus seen to be due to a process of subsidence of the sea bottom. The
existence, consequently, of fringing reefs, is only possible where the land is either slowly
rising, or is stationary; and as a matter of fact, fringing reefs are often found to bs
conjoined with upraised strata of post tertiary age. Atolls and encircling barrier reefs, on
the other hand, are not found in the vicinity of active volcanoes — regions where geology
teaches us that the land is either stationary, or is undergoing slow upheaval." These
areas of subsidence and elevation on the Pacific are now tolerably well known. The first
comprises an area 1,000 miles broad and C,UOO miles long, and stretches from Pitcairu
Island, which is high, and just outside the area, to the Pelew Isles, the Samoan, Tahitian,
Fiji, and Caroline groups, being comprehended within the area ; it also embraces part of
the Sandwich Isles towards the west. The area of greatest depression is marked by a
line passing south-east from of the Lov.^ Archipelago to Japan, and must, taking a very
moderate estimate, have amounted to several thousand feet. The Tonga Isles are, however,
a group which has never been elevated. . The New Hebrides, Solomon Isles, and New
Ireland are, on the other hand, lofty, and apparently unaffected by any movement, but
beyond them, in the region to the east, embracing New Caledonia, is another region of
subsidence. It may also be added in connection with this, that the whole coast of
Chili and Peru shows marks of recent elevation. But the white coral soil is, as yet,
unfitted for the growth of plants. Gradually, however, a thin surface of mould is formed
upon it. The masses of seaweeds tossed up decay, and leave some residue behind
them. The sea birds discover that here is rest for them, and their droppings fertilise the
thin mould of sea plants, and add to it also. These land birds in their flight from
island to island, or from continents far away, alight on the ever-increasing coral strand, and
deposit the seeds of plants on it. A hundred may fall into the crevices of the coral
block and perish, but one may sjjring up and flourish under the hot tropical sun. In time,
it dies, and forms a mould, but not before it has seeded, and thus given birth to a
numerous progeny, which add to the soil, and the gradually spreading veneer of vegetation,
which is covering it. The currents bring to the island trees, washed, it may be, from the
shores of America and of Asia, which soon decay, but in their rottenness contribute to
THE COKAL ISL.VXDS— HOW FORJIED. 11
the thickening mould. In the roots of the trees are stones which, by-and-by, will be
valued by the men who, as yet, have not arrived, and it may be the eggs of insects
and other animals, which now begin to add life to the island. Lizards cling to the
branches of others which arrive from nearer coasts, tossed into the sea by rivers, or by
landslips, to disembark where the waters and winds may jslease to deliver them. The coral
is now covered with verdure, and this verdure yearly rewards the island for the space it
has occupied by contributing, in its fallen leaves and mouldering stems, to the support of
tne increasing life, native to the sea-born reef, or ever and anon arriving from other
islands or continental shores. Among the first of these arrivals are the cocoa-nut and the
bread-fruit. The former (p. 13) grows best near the sea, and in land so formed it
naturally follows that no portion is far removed from it, so that the seeds, often encased
in thick husks, drop into the waters, and are wafted hither and thither, until they are
tossed uf) on some such islet as that of which we are attempting to picture the genesis.
The island is now fitted for occupation by man, and in due time he arrives. Some
canoemen are driven out of their course by the adverse winds or currents — and numerous
such cases are on record — or are impelled by some of those many mysterious causes
which have forced nations and tribes to desert their old homes for new ones, war —
the oppression of conquerors — or that eager restlessness which is akin to the impulse
which animates some of the lower animals to take sudden migrations from old to
new quarters. They sight the green isle with its fringe of cucoa-nuts, which to
their experienced eye tell of the quiet lagoon beyond, and the sliady flat with the
bread-fruit and the yam. They land, and find enough for their simple wants
on land and in the sea around the land; or if they wish to vary their vegetative and
ichthyic diet, the neighbouring isles which they have left, or which they may discover in
their future roamings, supply a horrid banquet from the only mammal of any size,,
■vvhich, until the white man reached these islands, was known to them. The stones found
on the island, or which may be wafted by the waves, entangled in the roots of trees,
form a valuable material for tools. Indeed, on one island, as narrated elsewhere, the
civil list of the king consisted of such stones : they were delivered to him as his royal
perquisite, and sold by the shrewd monarch at a great price. By-and-by comes the
trader— in search of turtle-shell and sandal-wood— or the explorer seeking knowledge and
new lands. Then follows what is facetiously called "civilisation," but the concomitants
of this are not so improving that the reader need, for the present at least, be asked to
follow it.
These coral islands, inside and out, are lovely beyond the power of words to describe.
Outside, the wild breakers dash with a violence unknown in our latitudes, and send their
spray high over the reef, and, as it falls, forms for the moment many-hued ralnbo^^•s.
The whole coast-line is white with dazzling foam, and the incessant roar of the surf is
the one sound from which the ear is never free. Inside all is calm. Here, in the still
lagoon, the delicate and beautifully branched corals spread out undisturbed, and shelter
the mvriads of fishes and other animals which nestle among the ever-forming thicket.
"It is' a pleasant thing," writes ^Ir. Farmer, "to float in a canoe over the shallow parts
of these verv clear waters on a fine day. Keeping your oars still, you may watch the
12
TJIE Ctn'XTRIES OF THE AVOin-D.
busy and beauteous life below; you may see fish of brii>:ht hues playing' in and out of
the coral stems and branches, seeming to be glad of a refuge from their enemies in the
open sea ; while the gentle rijiple of tiie waves, touched by the light of a brilliant sun,
heightens the charm oi' the scene." A sheltered nook in one of these lagoons is a perfect
aquarium — only on a scale grander than anything which has yet been attempted to be
made in imitation of it. The late Professor Eeete Jukes, when naturalist of H.M.S.
A COKAL GKOVE.
Fly, saw such a scene, and with his graphic description I may conclude this sketch of
the Coral Reefs. " Round masses of meandima (brain coral) and atilrcea were contrasted
with delicate leaf-like and cup-shaped expansions of e.rpJannnii, and with an infinite variety
of branching madrejwne and serialojiorai j some with mere finger-shaped projections, others
with large branching stems, and others again exhibiting an elegant assemblage of inter-
lacings of the most excellent workmanship. Their colours were unrivalled, vivid greens
contrasting with more sober browns and yellows, mingled with rich shades of purple,
from pale pink to deep blue. Bright red, yellow, and peach-coloured niill'iporoB clothed
these masses that were dead, mingled with beautifully pearly flakes of eschara and ret'n)ora :
THE COKAL EEEFS— HOAV FOK>rED.
13
COCOA-NlT TREES (CocOS lUlcjliM) OF TAHITI.
the latter looking like lace-work in ivory. In among the branches of the corals, like
birds among trees, floated many beantiful fish, radiant with metallic greens and cnmsons,
or fantastically branded with black and yellow stripes. Patches of clear white sand were
14 TIIK COrXTRIES OF THE W(JI;L1).
seen here and tliere for tlie lloor, with dark hollows and recesses beneath overhanging-
masses and ledges." *
As there is no distinct division hetwecn a coral and a volcanic island — it hcing a
mere accident when the two are not comhined — we may defer any notice of the great
volcanoes and hot springs of these i)arts of the world until we reach the islands in which
these are found. IMeantime, a few words may be appropriately introduced in tliis i)lace
regarding the plants and animals characteristic of these islands, and which are thrciughout
them so verj^ much alike.
Plaxts and Animals.
The general climate, rich volcanic soil of many of them, and the abundant supply
of moisture with which most of them are favoured, causes the Pacific Islands to be covered
v.-Ith luxuriant evergreen vegetation composed of many beautiful plants. Dr. Bennett's
impression of Tahiti maj- be allowed to stand as conveying a good general view of the
botanical asjiect of many of these Polynesian islands. " The waving cocoa-palms — the-
verdant mountains in the background — the bright green of the orange-groves — the drooi)ing
fronds of the jiandanus tree almost dipjiing into the rolling surges on the beach — and
a pretty islet, studded with cocoa-palms, situated in the centre of the bay — all combined
to form a delightful landscajje. Rambling a short distance inland, no plantations were-
seen, but the whole island may be termed a garden ; for cocoa-palms, bread-fruit trees,,
plantains, and bananas, the vi, or Brazilian plum, and the ohia, or jambo, were growing
spontaneously, and bearing fruit. To these, at another season, may be added oranges,,
pine-ap])les, shaddocks, and other introduced fruits, which thrive as well as the indigenous
plants. Advancing further towards the mountains, the elegant South Sea chestnut tree
adorned the banks of the streams, together with a luxuriant vegetation of ferns and other
plants : whilst the brows of the hills were covered by thickets of waving bamboos, or dense
masses of the mountain plantain tree, conspicuous from its dark green and broad foliage,
and huge clusters of orange-coloured fruit ; and the upland slopes, leadiug to a succession
of naked crags, were feathered by tall, graceful shrubs, loaded with odoriferous blossoms."
But it is not fruit-trees alone which form the mass of these Polynesian woods. The Dammara
pines are found in the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and the Fijis, sometimes in the form
of extensive forests, covering the hills. The Norfolk Island jiine — a species of Aiinmiriii
— is even a grander tree. It attains a height of 200 feet, and makes excellent masts. The-
tamanu {Cii/ojj//_//l/inii iiwp/tj///nw) of Tahiti is covered with clusters of scented white Howere.
At one time it was considered sacred, death being the penalty for any one destroying a
branch of it, and to this da}' the resin, used by the Tahitian women as a perfume, is-
an article of commerce. Another magnitieent feature in the Polynesian landscape is the
coral tree {7'Jn// ///•///!/ cordlhidi'iKlrini), with its great masses of scarlet blossoms, which gain
for it its popular name. The apape [RIihh "/'"J"-')' t''^-' mara {Oi'iilhiiithnu niani), and the-
faifai [Acacia uij/riaih-mi) — all of which attain to a height of from forty to seventy feet — are
* See also— Darwin : '■ On the IStructuro and Distribution of Coral Kccfs " (2nil EJition, 1S7-1) ; Dana ; " Coral
and Coral Island" (1872); AUcync Nicholson: "Manual of Zoology" (1878); and '•Corals" in " Eucydoincdia
Britanniea," yth Edition (1877), ice.
POLYXESIAX PLANTS. 15
nmong the other Tahitiaii timher, wliicli may be mentioned as producing a fine quality
of wood. The red sap of the hlood-wood tree {Baloyhia lucida) was used for markin"-
the bags and clothing of the convicts when Norfolk Island was a penal settlement. The
South Sea chestnut {Inocarpm edulk), and the splendid Baninrjtonia sj)eciom — with its
magnificent pink Hower but worthless fruit, only used for poisoning fish in llotuma,
Friendly Islands, and Tahiti — and the great banian tree, ought also to be noted. But of
all the woods which are found in the Polynesian Islands, the famous sandal-wood [Sautalum
Freycitietiannm) is the most valuable. At one time it grew abundantly in the Sandwich
Islands, but owing to reckless hewing it has long ago got scarce there, though it is
found in the New Hebrides and other portions of western Polynesia. Formerly a great many
small vessels were engaged in the traflio, in order to sell it to the Chinese to burn as incense
in their joss-houses. But at present the number of traders — nearly all from the Australian
colonies — is much fewer. Tiiey chiefly frequent the New Hebrides, and use, or used,
in the traffic a species of shell [Ocnliim uiKjuLoHnni) only obtained, and that not in great
abundance, at the Friendly Islands. The New Hebrideans valued it so highly as a personal
ornament that they have frequently been known to give a ton of sandal-wood for
a single " nampoori." The bread-fruit {.LrctucoQJUs iiici-w) is the great staple bread-
stuff of the islands. Indeed, without it the Poljniesian could scarcely exist, so extensively
's it used, and for such a variety of purposes. Next to this invaluable fruit come
::iome thirt}' cultivated varieties of the plantain and banana, the yam and taro, which
latter is the main comijonent of "poi," the national dish (p. 28). The first is the
root of Diascorea ulata, and the other of the Arum esculentnm. From the roots (if
Tacca piiinatijida, the " South Sea arrowroot ■" is extracted. As a contrast to these
useful plants may be cited the " Kau-karo," or itchwood tree of Fiji {Oiiocarjjus Fi//i-ii-sh),
a drop of the gum of which, coming in contact with the skin, causes a pain as
.severe as that produced by a red-hot poker. In the same group is found a nettle tree
(Liqjurfea), forty or fifty feet in height, which, when touched, stings so severely that,
like that of the JJau/ut Setai/, of Java, the burning sensation is felt for many weeks. The
smoke of the burning wood of the " seuee " {E.rcwcaria ayalCoc/ia) causes excruciating pain.
Yet the Fijians submit to this fumigation iu the hope of caring leprosy. The torture is
:so great that they generally faint after noisily enduring the agony of the smoke for a
few hours, though it is very doubtful whether there is any authenticated case of cure on
record. Some such have been recorded, but as scientific investigation has shown leprosy to
be a disease beyond medical aid, they may lie set down as imaginary. The oily nuts of the
•candle tree [AJeuretes (rildlja), strung on a rush, were, before the day of sperm, oxteusively
iised as lights by the Polynesians. The toa, or drooping casuarnia (C eqiiiseifoli(i), subserves
in the Polynesian burial places much the same purpose as the cypress docs m our own,
and before the introduction of Christianity were often planted about the "morais," or
places where human sacrifices, with all their disgusting concomitants, were offered up to
the Pagan deities. The paper mulberry (Bro/isi-oiu'fi" pupijr'iferd), the bark of which is
beaten out into fine muslin-like cloth, is another remarkable Polynesian tree. The leaves of
ihe Pandaiius, or screw pine (p. 16), are plaited into fine floor-mats, and of its odoriferous
nuts are made necklaces, still greatly in demand on festive occasions. In addition to the
16
THK COUNTKUOS OF Till:; WuULD.
indigenous vegotable products, nearly all the trees and jjlants of other warm climates
grow well on the islands ; some of these, like the shaddock, orange, custard apple, guava,
mango, tobacco, tamarind, cotton, coffee, indigo, and sugar-cane, are now perfectly
naturalised. The islanders are essentially vegetarians, and owing to the number of the
native fruits and other vegetables, and their skill in preparing them, a great variety of
dishes and even sweatmeats are in use among a people who might be expected to be
content with what would satisfy the stomach rather than pamper the palate. I nliappilv
also they have devised the art of j^reparing the highly intoxicating spirituous drink called
"kava," or "ava,"* from the roots and stem of Piper methyisla-viii, or " te " — a sjiecies
of pepper. The inhabitants of the Louisade, New Guinea, the Admirnlty, and Solomon
THE FRVIT OF THE FRAGRAXT SCHEW FINE (Paiidaims odoratissimiis).
Islands, &c., cliew the betel nut, the fruit of Arcca cuteclii', in fine powder mixed with
lime. Hence their teeth are hideously discoloured, and their saliva is blood-red. In New
Guinea and neighbouring islands pitcher plants are found, and in the New Hebrides
wild species of convolvulus, and Ihiija viridljlora, with many other plants, climb over the
bushes, and aid in forming dense, almost impenetrable, thickets. The flowers of the
IhhisciiH form the common garland with which the native women, in the Sandwich Islands
and Tahiti, deck their heads. The " lois " is, however, also made of the blossoms of the
Sida and other j^lants, which afford the orange, or yellow-coloured flowers, in favour fur
this purpose.
The mammals of the Oceanian Islands are few in number, the pig, dog, goat, horse,
* " Eaces of Mankind," Vol. II., p. 22. Jlr. Angas says Ihat the plant is Bracirna term'xnnVis, and that
the " kava " made from the jicpper roots and stems on some of the islands is very much inferior to the other.
THE POLYXESI.VX AXIIIALS.
17
ox, ass, sheep, and domestic cat, which are found in most of them, and sometimes in
great abundance, having been introduced by Europeans within a comparatively recent period.
In New Guinea is found a native species of pig, the Siis Pajjiie/nis, of a brown colour.
It lives in the woods, but may be often seen swimming from one bay to another amono-
the islands along the coast, and in the same island there are i^robably several other
indigenous quadrupeds of the Australian type, to which its zoology approximates — among
others a small kangaroo, an opossum, various bats and rats, &c. In the Louisade and the
Samoan, or Navigator Islands, there is a species of wild dog, which does not bark, but,
according to Macgillivray, "has the long, melancholy howl of the dingo, or wild dog of
Australia." In most of the Polynesian Islands rats appear to be namerous, and are eaten by
6^ *m
AX AVENUE OF BAXAXA BtSHES IN THE ISI.iXD OF TAHITI.
the natives. Among the mangrove forests of Fiji ilits a huge bat {Xofojjieris Macdonaldi),
measuring a yard between the extreme points of the wings, and in the Samoan group
is a closely allied species, which is a great pet with the natives, who domesticate it
about their dwellings. In Savage Island the vampire bats are esteemed delicate eating.
Lastly, in the seas around nearly all the islands are found various species of whale, and
chief among these the spermaceti, which is still pursued to a considerable extent, though
nothing like what it was thirty or forty years ago.* None of the Polynesian islands
proper can claim any bird so strange and gigantic as the "Moa," or Linornls and Palapteryx,
which, report has it, yet exists in the more secluded parts of New Zealand, and which, at
all events, became extinct only within comparatively recent times, and long after the
* Beale : "The Natural History of the Sperm AVhaln " (1S39), where may also he found a curious accoimt
of the South Sea and Sandwich Islands at that date, when theii- condition was so very diiferent from what it
is in our day/
123
18 TIIi; COrXTRIES OF THE -WORLD.
arrival of the present aborij^-iiies on the islanJ,. nor of their smaller relation the aj)(eri/.r.
But in New Guinea and Kew Britain there are species of cassowary, the largest biixls
inhabiting the group. Owls abound at the Navigator islands, but are unknown in the
Society and other groups to the eastward. Two species of goat-sucker (Podaiyiis) and several
parrots are found in New Guinea, and among the Admiralty and Solomon islands fruit
pigeons and beautiful pink-headed doves are found, though some species of the genus
{Ptilinojtiis) are widely distributed over the islands. The nutmeg pigeon (Cvqiopharni
oceanicd) inhabits the groves of the Louisade, and in the Navigators are tamed by
the natives. In the latter group is also found the all but extinct tooth-billed pigeon
[Bidnnculiis striglroslris), which "combines the character of a rapacious bird with that
of the harmless jMgeon." It may, therefore, if we adopt the opinion of Dr. Bennett, be
considered as " the nearest living ally of the now extinct dodo " of Bourbon and
Mauritius. The wonderfully beautiful birds of paradise found in New Guinea are so familiar
that we need only allude to them. The kingfishers, crowshrikes, and hornbills are also
represented in these islands. The kagu {Rliiuoclu'fus jitlatttti) of New Caledonia (ji. 20) is
another remarkable bird, and in New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and Lord Howe^s Island, are
three species of blackbird, each island having one peculiar to itself. These are only a few
out of hundreds of land birds which are found in the Oceanic Islands, and the sea-fowl is
equall}' numerous. The various species of albatross, petrel, boobies, tropic birds, and frigate
birds, are numerous, especially in the vicinity of the land, and on the shores of the lagoons
the blue heron may be seen sitting motionless for hours on the coral rock, and out among
the foam of the breakers the reef-bird {Slcnia puliocen-a) , searching for the fish that are
dashed on the rocks, is one of the objects with which those acquainted with these islands
must be most familiar. In New Guinea and adjacent islands a large crocodile is found,
but it does not extend as far east as Fiji. Large lizards are among the reptilian inhabitants
of the mountains of some of the Samoan islands: one, probably the Moiiitor Gouhlli, five
feet in length, has been seen in the Louisade islands. Chameleons and small but beautiful
lizards are found in the Fijis and other islands, and in the former a large frog, which
genus is also represented by smaller species in other islands. The turtle — once held sacred
in the Society islands — is common over the whole grouj) ; l)ut these hapjay islands are generally
free from deadly rejitiles, but few snakes having been found on them. Large sea-snakes, of
a pre-eminently poisonous character, are, however, often found among the coral reefs and in
the lagoons. Among fishes, several kinds of sharks are j)re-eminent, but there arc numerous
others highly valued for food, besides crabs and lobsters, salt and fresh-water prawns and
shrimps, and in the Fijis a large kind of laud crab (p. 21), which when pursued throws earth
and stones in the face of its pursuer. It climbs the cocoa-nut trees, and breaks the nuts,
after removing the husk, in order to get at the contents. The natives capture it by tying
a handful of grass round the stem of the tree. "When "ugavule" sets foot on this, it
fancies that it has reached the ground, and then quitting hold of the tree, falls to the
ground, and is so severely stunned that it can be easily seized. In the Samoans, JNIr. Hood
describes the " hermit crab," leaving the water and walking up the trees and along the
branches, their bodies encased in shells of all colours and species. If the tree is approached,
the wary robbers immediately tumble down like a shower of crab-a])ples, and make for the
POLYNESIAX AXniAL.S. 10
"water with the utmost speed their scuttling span would admit of. The Patilic Islands
and their shores ahound in such varied and beautiful shells that thev constitute the
conchologist's paradise. The species mostly belong to the region stretching across the
Paeitic and Indian Oceans, from the east coast of .\frica to the west coast of America, but
New Zealand has a " molluscan province " to itself. Among their almost endless forms,
"we can only mention the chambered or pearly nautilus {X. pouijjUhis, X. uhihilicatiiK and
X. macromplialnii), VaQ orange cowry (Ciipraa auranihi) — the " morning dawn " of collectors
which is so scarce, even in the Fijis, that the possession of one of the shells used to o'ive
the wearer the dignity of a chief — the Triton carii'ijafii.^, or conch shell, used as a trumpet,
many volutes, harps, mitres, murices, cones, enormous " clam " shells, which sometimes
■weigh two or three hundredweight, and numerous beautiful species of land-shells. The
-^reat clam {Tri.ih(rna gnjaH) is the largest and heaviest shell known, one pair nf valves
having been known to weigh 500 lbs. The hijH-'iiix, or cable, by which it anchors itself
to locks, is so thick that before the animal and shell can be removed it has to be cut with
an axe. In Roman Catholic churches they are frequently used as benitiera, or receptacles
for holy water, and in secular life as fountain-basins in gardens. The valves, when of
small size, are made into salt-cellars, candlestick-holders, and pin-cushions. Cameos have been
carved out of them, but INIr. Simmonds considers them unsuitable for the jiurjiose, as their
dead white hue wants the relief of colour. The Hill Dyaks of Borneo wear broad armlets
of this shell, which, when jrolished by use, resemble ivory, but have this advantage over
the more expensive material, that they never get the yellowish tinge so characteristic of
old ivory. Two of these bracelets on each arm are the favourite ornaments of the women.
When the tide rises upon the coral reefs these giant clam-shells open their great valves,
and instances have been known in which people, in search of beche-de-mer, &c., have
incautiously stepped into them, and been held as in a vice, until they were drowned by
the overflowing tide. Oysters of various kinds, but usually of very indifferent flavour,
are found throughout the Pacific, an<l in Fiji the natives make soup of a fresh-water
species of Ci/rcmi. Among land shells, the Sandwich Islands alone shelter nearly 300 species
of the prettily jjainted genus Achatiuella, a little mollusc inhabiting trees and ravines.
But none of these are of particular interest, either commercially or ethnologieally. In
the Solomon Islands, however, a large white ornlinn — or " cggcowry," is, according to
Z\Ir. Angas, a well-known malaeologist, much used in the decoration of eauoes, as is
also "mother-of-pearl," the inside nacre of various shells. In Fiji not only the canoes,
but the houses, temples, and chapels of the natives — Pagan and Christian — are frequently
ornamented with the white shells of the Onilnui or//w, which they call "buliqnqna." Some
tine pearls have Ijcen found, especially in the Low Archipelago, but as yet the fishery
is unsystematically worked, though among the industries which our annexation of the
Fij's is considered as likely to foster, this is included.
Insect life is abundant. The late Dr. Berthold Seemann, speaking of Fiji, remarks
that ''mosquitoes are very troublesijme in some parts; and equally irritating are the
flies, which keep one's hands constantly employed, and in order to have a meal in peace,
a boy must be kept continually employed in driving them away. Cockroaches are
swarming in most houses, canoes, and vessels, and often disturb one during the night, not
■20 THE COUXTRIES OF THE WORLD.
alone by running over one's body, but attacking it in right earnest. Some fine butterflies
and beetles are met with ; and at dark the woods begin to swarm with myriads of fire-Hies.
The leaf and stick insects can scarcely be distinguished from real leaves. Some large kinds
of spiders, amongst them a stinging one, have to be noticed. Centipedes nearly a foot
long were frequently encountered by us in the woods; and scorpions are more abundant
than one could wish." Among sea-worms, the curious " palolo," which makes its annual
appearance in the New Hebrides usually about the 25th of November, in such quantities
that the sea looks like one solid mass of annelids, is another peculiar product of the Pacific.
THE KAGV (EhinocJidus juhatiis) OF NEW C.VLEDO.NH.
It is eagerly eaten by the natives of the Fijis, Samoa, Tonga, and the New Hebrides.*
Last of all, and with it this brief sketch will close, the beche-de-mer, or sea-slug, a
species of Holut/inria, is extensively collected among the Pacific islands as an article of
commerce. In external appearance, even when fresh, it is not pretty, but when split and
dried for the Chinese market it is about as unappetising an article from which to make
soups as could well be imagined. In Fiji, they are procured from the reefs at low water,
or are obtained by diving in from two to three fathoms, especially in a locality on the
north side of Yanua Levu, to which to this day many vessels from America and the Australian
colonies resort, in order to buy this unsightly delicacy from the Fijian fishers. In the
* "Races of JIankind," Vol. II., pp. 26, 27.
ruLVXKSIAX ANIMALS.
21
preceding- page;? we have said nothing aLout New Zealand natural history, having for the
reasons mentioned thought it unadvisable to include that colony under the Polynesian
Islands ; for beyond the accident of having been originally peopled by wanderino'
^^tj/^^
THE LA>D-CUAB OF THE I'lJIS (Birgos latrO).
Polynesians (the Maori), it has little or nothing in common with the coral or volcanic
isles of Oceania.*
* Angas : " Polj-nesia," pp. 27-S5 ; Seemaim: " Flora Viticnsis," and " Viti : An Account of a Government
Mission to the Fijian Islands" (1860-Gl) ; Smythe's Account of the same Mission: Bennett: "Gatherings of an
Australasian Naturalist;" St. Julien : "Official Report on Central Polj-nesia " (18.57) ; Macgilli\Tay: "Narrative
of the Voyage of H.M.S. Sattlesiinie" (18o2) ; Hood: "Notes of a Cruise in H.M.S. Fau-n" (1863); Meineke:
"Die Inseln der Stillen Oceans, eine geographische monographie " (187C) : &c.
23
CHAPTER II.
The Saxdwicii Islands : Their History and Present Condition.
To the ungeogi-aphical mind the group of Oceanic Islands to which, in 1778, the name
o£ the then First Lord of the Admiralty was applied, is associated with savagedom, man-
eating, and that cannibal king, so celebrated in song and story. Old ideas die hard.
Whatever the Sandwich Isles might have been once, they are very different now from
the popular idea regarding them.
History.
It is about a century since His INIajesty's ships Resolnlion and Advetihtre — Captains
Cook and Clerke — turned back from Behring Strait after an unsuccessful attempt to
discover the North-West Passage. But the adventurers were destined to light upon
fairer lands than those which they had failed to find. On the 18th of January, 1778,
whilst sailing through the Paeifie the look-out man reported land ahead, and in the
evening they anchored on the shores of that lovely gi'oup of twelve islands, which they
named in honour of the then First Lord of the Admiralty — Lord Sandwich — better known
to the satirists of his day as " Jemmy Tickler," one of the greatest of statesmen and
most abandoned of men. The natives received the strangers gladly; but on the 14th cjC
February, 1779, in an altorcation consequent on the theft of a boat, Captain Cook was
killed in Kealakeakua or Karakakoa Bay, in the Island of Hawaii, or Owhyhee, from which
the official name of the country — the kingdom of Hawaii — takes its name. His death was
an event in the history of geography. The story of how the circumnavigator fell has
been told a thousand times. Everybody knows about it. Every seaman is familiar
with it, and the oft-told tale will be told often again, for in 1877 a monument was
erected to his memory on the spot where he died. Captain Cook is the hero of the
seaman, and among the modern Sandwich Islanders there hangs around his memory a
vague god-like nimbus. A cocoa-nut stump which was originally cut down by a cannon-
ball from his consort's ship — Captain Clerke's — was long used as the recojjtacle of the
records of the visits of seamen to the spot, and the memorial erected in 1877 is a j^lain
concrete obelisk, with a suitable inscription, and surrounded by a fence of twelve old
33-pounders.
About Captain Cook and his connection with the Sandwich Islands not a little
ignorance is abroad in the community. We misrepresent the general public in no great
degree if we state our belief that the majority of them to this day are under the
impression that Captain Conk \\as cruelly and unprovokedly massacred by a few savages,
that he was afterwards roasted and eaten, and thai the "King of the Cannibal Islands"
THE SAXD-\VICH ISLANDS: THEIK HISTORY. 23
is fitly represented by the monarch who at present rules the Hawaiian group, and who
has been so long in diplomatic relations with us. In reality none of these popular beliefs
are correct.
Captain Cook was an accomplished navigator, but his manners had to tlie end of his life
a strong flavour of the ^Yhitby collier's cabin-bo\'. Like the seamen of his age^ he had
little sj'mpathy with or respect for the natives of the countries he came in contact with.
They were simply " blacks," to be treated as such, without much regard for honour on
the part of the mariner, or delicacy of feeling on the side of the natives. Accordingly,
when Cook came to the Sandwich Islands, he returned the kindness of the simple natives
with harshness, and often injustice. He found that they believed him the long-lost god
Rouo or Lono, whom tradition fabled would some day return.* On this superstition he
worked, but it was his death-warrant. In the course of the dispute at Kealakeakua Buy
he was accidentally struck, and was heard to groau. Instantly the news spread among
the childlike natives, and on their excited minds acted like a wet blanket. "He can be
no god," they cried, and in the revulsion of feeling which followed he was fallen upon
and stabbed to death. lie was not, however, eaten. The Sandwich Islanders never were
— at least, habitually — cannibals, and even an occasional addiction to the use of human
flesh among them is indignantly denied by all their historians. Cook's body was carried
to a place still shown, bej'oud the range of the cannon of his ships, the flesh stripped
off his bones, and burned on an altar still standing, and his bones buried with all the
rites attending the obsequies of their own chiefs. Nor was anything but honour intended
in all this. To burn his flesh was the greatest respect which, in their eyes, could be paid
to him. No portion of his body was eaten except his heart. Two children found it
hanging u^) in a hut, and, thinking it was a dog's heart, devoured it unwittingly. One
of them not long since died in Honolulu, a very old man. The death of Cook is to this
day looked upon by the natives as a sad stain on their history. Kapina Kuke, as they
call him, is, among the lower-class Hawaiiaus, considered in the light of a sacred personage,
and no greater insult can be heajjcd upon them than to hint at the killing and eating
of that mythical being. All feeling against the English has long ago vanished. The
kindness with which they were treated twenty years afterwards by Vancouver effaced all
recollections of the wrongs they had suffered at the early navigator's hands, and since
then our connection with the islanders has only been one of friendship and mutual regard.
Indeed, in 1810, Kamehameha the Great, the concpieror and first king of the whole group,
made over the islands to George III. as his suzerain, and to this day they are under
the English protection — a little fact which at times seems to be forgotten by our American
friends, who, on a recent change of dynasty, cast a lingering earth-hungering eye after
them. The death of Cook was perhaps the salvation of the isles. It attracted attention
tc them. Seamen touched at them, and after the seamen came missionaries, who found
a virgin soil to work on, for they visited a people who were literally without a religion. In
1820 the islanders had voluntarily abandoned Paganism, and when the first missionaries had
an-ived they were without a faith. They gladly accepted Christianity, and though now and
then in extremities, they will pray to the Great Shark God and their other old deities, yet
* " Eaces of Mankind," Vol. II., p. "3.
24 THE COrXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
for more than fifty years the religion of the civilised world has been theirs also. In i^lace
of rude barbarism the^' have an established Government, good laws, well administered
by upright native and white judges, and a polished ruler in the person of a king of
their own royal line. Altogether the " Cannibal Islands " of the song will compare
favourably with many Governments nearer home.
Population and Present Coxditiox.
The iiopulation is, however, decaying. Cook estimated it at 400,000. At the present
time the census gives 5(5,897 natives, including some 4,000 or 5,000 whites, and 1,938
Chinese. The census of 1809 showed a decrease of 9,000 in five j-ears out of a population
of 60,000, and all the historians, native and foreign, agree that fewer children are now
born than formerl}'. The islands are, however, otherwise moderately jirosperous. Once
they depended altogether on whalers and other ships which called ; now they have developed
a commerce of their own. In 1878 nearly '27,000,000 lbs. of sugar were exported, showing
an increase of more than 23,000,000 lbs. in fifteen years. Their imports average about
1,900,000 dollars, and their exports, in the form of hides, sugar, coffee, pulse, cattle, sheep,
wool, and rice, are of rather a higher value. They are now annually visited by about lllS,(lOO
tons of shipping. The revenue is about £200,000, and the expenditure about the same. They
have even the luxury of a national debt, to the extent of £100,000, which unfortunately is
increasing while the revenue is decreasing. At first the Government was despotic, but
in 1840 the king granted a constitution of very democratic type, which was afterwards
modified in various particulars, until now it is of rather an aristocratic character. The
king holds levees, and the queen drawing-rooms like other sovereigns, and we are assured
by a humorist who visited the islands that on these occasions the display of uniforms is so
gorgeous that when all the high dignitaries of the islands stand in a groupi, common people
with weak eyes require to look at the blaze of gold lace and stars through smoked glass !
There is no State Church, but an episcopal hierarchy of a pronounced type, presided over
by an English bishop, though, originally, Congregationalist or Presbyterian missionaries
introduced Christianity into the islands, and these yet exercise most religious control
over it. There is, in addition to a house of twenty " Nobles " nominated by the king, one
of from twentv-four to forty representatives* for election, to which all citizens are eligible
— be they white or brown — and the President was until recently a ver}' dignified and polished
old gentleman, who originally came to the island of Oahu, on which Honolulu, the capital,
is built, as a naked warrior in the train of his father-in-law, Kamebameha the Great.
Most of the natives can read and write : indeed, the percentage who can do so is greater
than in demure educated New England. Schools are abundant, and books in the native
language, as well as newspapers, plentiful. There is even an order of knighthood. In fifty-
nine years there have been seven kings, the present one, David Kalakaua (p. 32), the
successor of Lunalilo, having been elected in 1874, in opposition to the intrigues of those
who wished to establish a Rej)ublic, and a second party, who were in favour of Queen
* The two Chambers sit as one Lody. In ease of disputes tlie king can appeal to the people by a
Plebiscite. The discussions are in Hawaiian or English.
THE SANDWICH ISL.\^'DSi THEIR PRESEN'T CONDITION.
25
Emma, the widow of the fourth Kamehameha, aud who is said to be a daughter of Dr. Rooke
an Irish settler, by a Hawaiian mother of the Koyal Hne. The Sandwich islanders are anion <>■
the kindliest and most hospitable of races. But that is about all that can be said about them.
Morality of a certain kind is almost unknown ; but they do not steal, promote companies,
break into houses, or commit murder. Nowhere is there more absolute security for life
VIEW OF THE VALLEY OP WAIPIO, IN HAWAn, SAXDWICH ISLANDS.
and limb than in the Sandwich Islands, or where lethal weapons are of less use. Nobody
need fear being eaten nowadaj's, and the people have advanced from a period when a
missionary was simply " long pig," to be regarded with culinary designs — -^J^ce IMessieurs
Jarves, Ellis, Hopkins, Fornauder, and Nordhoff — to an era in which they not onlj-
attend church more regularly than most Englishmen do, but contribute liberally to
foreign missions. " Their idols only exist in museums," and the people are clothed, and,
in spite of their garments, are very good-looking aud most picturesque, though withal
languid, laughing, and not at all industrious, children of Nature (Plate XXXI., and
p. '28). Their monarchs are excellent kings, and if they have a weakness, it is the
124
■ZG THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOPvLD.
amiable one of not being too ascetic, "When a sovereign is bailocl by the upper enist
of his subjects with the query of " King, do you feel like branily-and-water tliis
THorning?" and he has no one else to associate with, it would be strange if he rejected
such vinous hospitality. Tiie Sandwich Islands are, however, delightful places of
residence, and wonderfully different now from what they were when the incident com-
memorated in the monument erected in 1S77 happened. The climate is luxurious, almost
an unvarving English summer, without the occasional extreme heat and the rainy days
which characterise that season in our latitudes. Of the twelve islands composing the
grouji, only eight are inhabited, and these vaiy in size from Hawaii, which is -ijOOO
square miles in extent, and eighty-eight long by seventy-three broad, to Kahoolawe, which
is eleven miles long and eight broad. Their entire area is about G,100 miles. They
are frequently bounded by coral reefs, but there are no good harbours in them. " Their
formation is altogetiier volcanic, and they possess the greatest perpetually active volcano
and the largest extinct crater in the world. They are very mountainous, and two mountain
summits on Hawaii are nearly 14,000 feet in height. Their climate for salubrity and
general equability is reputed the finest on earth. It is almost absolutely equable, and
a man may take his choice between broiling all the year round on the sea-level, on the
leeward side of the islands, at a temperature of SC^, and enjoying the charms of a fireside
at an altitude where there is frost every night in the year. There is no sickly season,
and there are no diseases of locality. The trade-winds blow for nine months of the year,
and on the windward coasts there is an abundance of rain, and a perennial luxuriance of
vegetation.^' * One of the finest of the many lovely Hawaiian valleys is that of Waijjio
(p. 25). It lies quite isolated from the little world of which it forms a jxart, "open at
one end to the sea, and walled in on all sides by pali-s and precipices, from 1,000 to
2,000 feet in height, over the easiest of which, after trailing over the countrj^ for sixty
difficult miles, connected "Waipio with Hilo." The blunt snow-patched peak of jNIauua
Kea rises from a "girdle of forest," and the whole valley is cool with waterfalls, some
very fine. One bounds in its first leap 200 feet, and in its second 1,600 feet, though
much of its volume is fritted away in spray and foam. The valley has many pleasant
i-ii/o, coffee, fig, and castor-oil plant plantations, and large artificial fish-ponds in which
hundreds of goldfish gleam. The river, full of the shrimps which the natives love to eat
raw, flo'ns through the valley, and is used as a highway by the natives, who glide along
it in their canoes. Yet at times this happy valley is visited with gusts of wind so wild
that I forbear drawing on the credulity of my readers by relating the tales of their force.
The Sandwich Islands are in the torrid zone, yet the immense mass of water by which they
are laved makes their climate a temperate one, and their almost equidistance from California,
Mexico, China, and Japan, give them great natural advantages for commerce. Their
government is, however, too abject a copy of a European one, and the endless expensive
«ourt functionaries, with their showy uniforms and titles, are expensive luxuries for the
little Hawaiian kingdom. A standing army, modelled on that of Gerolstein, and a navy
* Miss Bird's "Six Months in the Sandwich Islands" (187.5), p. 3. At Hilo thirteen to sixteen feet of
rain fall in a year. It is a proverb among seamen that " if you follow a Pacific shower it will bring you to
Hilo." Yet Hilo is a charming out-of-the-world retreat — the moisture notwithstanding.
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS: THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 27
about the size of that of ^Monaco, are useless expenses which the late king had intended
to prune. But vested rights are in Hawaii as great a nuisance as elsewhere, and it will
only be national bankruptcy which will bring these absurd gewgaws of court-marshals,
and so forth, to an end.
The country owes everything to "the teachers," as the people still affectionately call
the early missionaries. They instructed the Hawaiians in the arts of peace, translated the Bible
and other books into their language, taught them to read and write, educated the princes
and king to a level quite eipial to that of many European sovereigns, and the nobles
rather better than the peers of some countries in this quarter of the world, framed a
constitution which became the law of the land, persuaded the king and chiefs to renounce
their feudal rights, and obtained for the little Polynesian kingdom recognition as a member
of the community of nations. Yet the system of government they devised was too democratic
for even Kamehameha the Fifth's tastes, and accordingly it has of late run into the opposite
extreme, the present constitution dating from 18G4.
Yet the changes which have taken place in sixty years are wonderful. Less than half a
century ago Honolulu, the capital, was a village of a few grass huts, frequented solely by
whalers or sandal-wood traders. To-day it is a well-built seaport, with all the conveniences
and many of the luxuries of an advanced civilisation. Herr Gerstacker expresses very
clearly the surprise which visitors not prepared for the revolution which has taken place
within the lifetime of one generation experiences when they first see the chief Hawaiian
town. "Coming to the Sandwich Islands, and expecting to find here nearly a wild Suuth
Sea Island — to roam through thick groves of cocoa-nuts and other forest trees, with the
half-tamed inhabitants, beautiful and interesting in their natural life — what did I find
on the very spot where I had fancied a luxurious tropical vegetation ? Bowling-alleys,
billiard-tables, livery-stables, tap-rooms, and faces as sober and dull as any I could have
wished for in a large European or American city. Then came a theatre, and soon afterwards
an. American circus was ojiened, where the native ladies spent much of their money, formerly
devoted to dress, on the horse-riders." Yet in Hilo or Lahaina — little towns though they
are — the seeker after primitive quiet without savagedom, may be gratified to his heart's
content, and on the shores of that very bay where Captain Cook was slain the sensuous
peace which wearied men dream of may be enjoyed to a degree which even dreams do not
picture.
Indeed, the love of the islands so steals upon the visitor that the longer he stays
among them the less desire he has to return. The climate is pleasant, but unstimulating;
the teeming soil produces everything that natural man desires in such cheap exuberance
that he has all he needs for existence, while certain drawbacks as to markets and so forth
save him the anxiety of buying and selling and trying to make money. Wanderers drift
to these islands of the blessed, and are content to fall " asleep in a half-dream," and " return
no more" to the land they left. In Kealakeakua Bay, jNIiss Bird describes in captivating
language the abundance of oranges, coffee, pine-apples, " and silence." A flaming palm-
fringed shore, with a rich strip of table-land 1,-500 feet above it; a den^ timber belt eight
miles in breadth, and a volcano smoking somewhere lietween that and the hea\ens, and
glaring through the trees at night, are, according to that pleasantest of; travelling ladies.
28
THE COUXTEIES OF THE WORLD.
the salient points of Kona, if anytliiuLr about it be salient. " It is a region/' she writes,
" where falla not —
' . . . . HaE or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly.'
Wind is, indeed, a thing unknown. The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the
trees morning and evening, rain-drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges
far below, alone break the stillness. No ripple ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean,
wliich gleams through the still, dark trees. Hose in the sweet cool morning, gold in the
sweet cool evening, but always dreamy; and white sails come and go, no larger than a
HAW.UI.\X3 EATING " PCI," THE K.^TIOX.iL DISK.
butterfly's wing on the horizon, of ships drifting in ocean currents — dreaming too ! No
heat, cold, or wind, nothing emphasised or italicised, it is truly a region of endless afternoons,
'a land where all things always seem the same.' Life is dead, and existence is a
languid swoon." Many of the houses here, almost smothered by trailers and trees, are
inhabited by white men, who have found their way hither, and have fallen under the spell
of the voluptuous life of these enchanted isles. They have taken to them "some savage
woman" to rear their "dusky brood," who speak not one word of their father's tongue,
but grow up Hawaiians in language, habits, and mode of thought. Some of these master-
less men have been whalers; others were travellers who came in search of health, but
the glamour was thrown over them, their senses drank in the scent-laden air, and for ever
to them was the land of their birth a strange country. Henceforward they were not
of the world. European events disturb them not, and Hawaiian politics are of the
ennnyeuse type, which the proverb declares brings happiness to a nation. Local
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS- THEIR PRESENT CONDITION.
29
g-ossip — not malicious scandal, but the innocent, languid tittle-tattle, which is familiar to people
hereabouts as nuhon, the evisceration of a stranger's ways, the discussion of his jmrse, his
expenditure, his debts, his clothes, his goings in and his comings ovit, his sales, his Ijorrowings
his lending-s — in a word, his whole outward life, which is as well known to everybody as
to his own family, are about the only features which break the languid stillness of Hawaiian
country life. To a new arrival this nuhon is amusing, but when he finds himself enjtyino'
it, and, above all, taking part in it, it is time he was taking ship for other lauds, for the
EEUPTION OF MAUNA LOA, HAWAII, S.VNDWICH ISL.\NDS.
drowsy drug has been acting upon him. He has tasted of the product of that "enchanted
stem, laden with flower and fruit," which makes him consider his "island liome'' an
"alien shore," and when he begins to enjoy dining off "two-fingered poi," without seeing
anything novel or grotesque in it, he is as hopeless as the "Western men who take to
buckskin and mocassins as regular articles of wearing apparel. There is only one other
stage in the evolution of the barbarian : he will take to himself the maker of the " \)o\" and
the sewer of buckskin. A little longer, and he will forget the world, and become, not exactly
a savage, but a man whose life is eating and drinking — a very little — sleeping more, and
dreaming the rest. If he has anything more to do in a " working-day world," let him say
a kindly — a longing, it may be — alolia to Hawaii, and seek a world where the love of
gain has not lost even the power of stimulating to exertion. Otherwise, he will soon be
30 THE COUNTKIES OF TliK WCiKLD.
one of the lotos-eaters Miss Bird describes, who are content to live a life free from toil,
and sink down to the level of native feeling and habits —
'■ They Kit them dowu upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore,
And sweet it was to di-eam of Father-laua,
* ; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, woary the oar,
Weary the wandei-ing fields of barren foam;
Then some one said, ' We will return no more.' '
CHAPTER III.
The Saxdwicii Islands : Social Life and Scenery.
Happy as are the Sandwich Isles in their climate, scenery, and people, behind that fringe
of cocoa palms, amid these quiet little towns that nestle among the bananas, and look
stiller far than the peak that rise over all, there is a ferment at work wliieh may
eventually upheave the kingdom of Hawaii. The foreign element is increasing. Out
of 56,897 inhabitants which the census of lS7:i gives to the islands, but 1-9,014 are
natives. The people of mixed blood numbered at that date 2,-tS7, the Europeans :J,539j
including 619 English, 395 Portuguese, -Z-Zi Germans, and 88 French, 889 Americans —
that is, people from the United States — and 1,988 Chinese.
Foreign Society .ind its Influence.
The American element thus predominates, while, owing to their vicinity to
California, all the "institutions" and civilised ways of life are peculiarly American.
Indeed, civilisation was first introduced among the jieople from the United States, and to
this day the king's advisers are chiefly selected from that nationality. Still, until late years,
no attempt was made to go further. The Americans, like the rest of tlie Europeans,
were subjects of a brown-skinned king, but beyond the influence which their superior
knowledge gave them, they were content to l)e simply white Hawaiians. But when a
king had to be elected, an eifort was made by them to substitute a republican form of
government for the monarchial system, which is alone suitable for people as yet not very
advanced either in political theory or jiractice. Their efforts were, however, signally
nnsuccessful. The only result of their efforts, and the proposed cession of Pearl River
to the United States, was to arouse that spirit of patriotism which many thought a
feeling which did not stir much on the pleasure-loving people. The cry was " Hawaii for
the Hawaiians ! " and to such extremes did the national feeling run, that a( the Ijiennial
* "Of child, and :\ifr, and slave" — charity forbids the insertion. But I fear that in this .\ftcmoon Land
there ai-e some dwellers to whom even this would apply ; only they have ceased to dream of eitlicr.
THE S-iXDWICH ISLANDS: NATIONAL FEELING. gl
election of delegates to the legislation, which happened shortly before King Lunaliio's
death, a house was elected, for the first time in Hawaiian history, in which there was
only one foreigner. Lunalilo, the "well beloved," was a democratic princej and showed
extreme deference to the popular will during his year of office. Having died without
naming his successor, the Legislature had again to elect a sovereign by ballot. The
candidates were Queen Emma and David Kalakaua (p. 3-2), who had been a rival of
Lunalilo a year before. Popular feeling all ran in favour of Queen Emma, and when, to
the astonishment of the nation, Kalakaua was elected by an overwhelming majority,
the old passions of the race burst forth. Kalakaua was accused of having "bought"
the legislative, and of representing the foreign interest. The committee appointed to
convey to the king the news of his election was mobbed, and driven back maimed and
bleeding into the court-house; their carriage was torn in pieces, and the spokes of the
wheels distributed as weapons among the rioters. " The ' gentle children of the sun '
were seen under a new aspect; they became furious, the latest savagery came out, the
doors of the Hall of Assembly were battered in, the windows were shattered with clubs
and volleys of stones; nine of the representatives who were known to have voted for
Kalakaua were severely injured; the chairs, tables, and furnishings of the rooms were
broken up and thrown out of the windows, along with valuable public and private
documents ; kerosene was demanded to. fire the buildings ; the police remained neutral,
and conflagration and murder would have followed, had not the ministers despatched an
urgent request for assistance to the United States ships of war Portsmouth and Tuscarora,
and H.M.S. Tenedos, which was promptly met by the landing of such a force of sailors
and marines as dispersed the rioters.'' But Kalakaua prudently took the oaths of office
in private, amid a concourse of representatives who had limped to their places, or were
in some instances supported, with their heads in bandages and arms in slings. For ten
days the joint protectorate lasted, but ever since the foreigners have entertained a vague
dread of their brown-skinned neighbours, which they never had before. A " restless,
sullen, half-defiant spirit " is abroad among the natives, and it is evident that to rule the
Hawaiians will not be the easy task in the future it has been since the days when Kamehameha
the First made himself master of the islands. The king has proclaimed his brother —
Lelia Kamakaeha — his successor, and has reorganised the military service with a view to
making it a more efficient and well-disciplined force. The Budget for 1876 was 913,357
dollars, and of this sum foreign affairs and " war " absorbed 64,549 dollai-s — a melancholy
sign, as a writer on the islands remarks, that the small Pacific kingdom has to fall
back upon the Old World resource of a standing army as large- — in proportion to its
population — as that of the German Empire. Li contrast to this retrograde move, it is
pleasant to record that during 1S7S the first railway — one of five miles, between the Port
of Punalu and the village of Keaiwa — was opened, and that the first telegraph line —
forty miles between Wailuku and Lahaiua — came into operation during the same period.
Yet American influence is still all-powerful. The press is American, the coinage is
American, and the very slang English which the people — and even the king— speak has
a peculiarly "Yankee" flavour about it. Americans "run" the Government, and fill
the highest offices of State, which at one time they had to share with Englishmen — or
3^
THE COUXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
rather Scotsmen, for the North Britons seems to have monopolised (hese dignities. The
chief merchants are Americans, but some of the most thriving shopkeepers in lionululu
are Chinese. Though in many of the shops native assistants are employed, the Hiiwaiians
show little aptitude for commerce, and in the science of money-making have no chance in
the competition with the coolies. Perhaps this fact accounts for the prevalence of happy
faces, and the absence of those hard, careworn, sullen physiognomies so characteristic
of the people one meets in the streets of great towns. In a former chapter I have
spoken of the familiarity of everybody with everybody else ; but already the reader will
have seen that heartburnings and national enmities are not wanting in these isles; and
even the Americans wlio are Hawaiian born have a very strong national feeling, and would
hail the day when the islands fell under the sway
of the great Republic. The smaller English com-
munity hangs together after a cliquish fashion, and
not unlikely cherishes a kind of grudge against
the Americans for their paramount influence in the
affairs of the islands. iVfiss Bird tells us also
that there are German residents, cliquish as Germans
are all the world over. Then, since the establish-
ment of the " Honolulu mission," church feeling
has risen rather high, and has of course tended to
divide society. There are in addition drink and
anti-drink, pro and anti-missionary, pro and anti-
vaccination, pro and anti-vivisection, pro and
anti-reciprocity treaty parties, "and various other
local naggings," which tend to keep foreign social
life from stagnating. Its civilisation is exotic
— as all civilisation is believed to have more
or less been — but in Hawaii it is too crude, too
gorgeous (palace - way) , and altogether too new
for a people who in one generation have emerged from heathendom and savagery into
Christianity and civilisation. Republicans conduct the Government, and in State affairs
Miss Bird notes a taint of that combination of obsequiousness and flippant vulgarity,
which none deplore more deeply than the best among the Americans. There are a king
and a court, titles and officials without number, uniforms stiff with gold lace and the
order of Kamehameha, royal dinner parties, with iii&nus printed on white silk, Sevres china,
and liveried footmen, and side by side with this, the " king-takes-a-drink " kind of
over-familiarity. With the exception of dollars and sugar, it is rare to hear any
subject discussed with verve. The Americans feel but a languid interest in English
news, no matter how important, while the English, on the other hand, retaliate by
affecting — or perhaps feeling — an ostentatious apathy regarding events specially absorbing
to the Americans. The papers are filled with word}' gossip and entertaining scurrility.
They snarl over trifles, which to a stranger seem ludicrously small, and as there is no
telegraphic (communication with the outer world, the people have to live as best they can
KALAKALA, KING OF THE SANDWICH
ISLANDS.
hawaiiaih' gossip.
33
on the miliou of indigenous growth, between the departure of one mail and the arrival
of another. The pulse of the world beats, but the Hawaiians feel it not, no doubt owing
to the causes mentioned, though a good deal of this apathy is due also to the lack of mental
MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK.
{Ende^ at Kealakakv.a Bay, Haicaii, in 1874.)
stimulus, and the "indolence born of the climate." Yet Hawaiian social life is as kindly
and unaffected as society in which the best American element predominates usually is,
while the cheerful alohas which welcome the stranger makes him cease even to long for
the more prosaic " How d'ye do's ? " of those of his own skin and tongue.
125
84 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Education, Crijie, and Decay of the IIawaiians.
Crime is low in the islands, and education high. A voter for a member of the
Legislature must be possessed of an income of at least 75 dollars pei- annum, and be able
to read and write. Education is compulsory : there are 32 1 teachers, or one for every
twenty-seven children. In 1S74, out of 8,931 children between the ages of six or fifteen,
8,287 were actually attending school. The school tax is heavy ; for there every man
between the age of twenty and sixty pays two dollars per annum, and there is an additional
general tax for the same purpose. In 1S76, C8,329 dollars were devoted to public instruction.
Yet all this is likely before long to be in vain, for the population is decreasing at the rate
of 2,000 per year, which, should this rate continue, fixes the final extinction of this
interesting people in 1897. The whites conveyed to these shores the elements of
civilisation, but at the same time the causes which are slowly but infallibly destroying
the race. The chiefs, or alii — those tall men who seem almost of another race from the
common people — are a nearly extinct order, and Miss Bird tells us the few who remain are
nearly all childless. " In riding through Hawaii," writes this intelligent lady, whose
notes we have found so trustworthy, " I came everywhere upon traces of a once numerous
population, where the hill-slopes are now only a wilderness of guava scrub, and upon
churches and school-houses all too large, while in some hamlets the voices of j'oung children
were altogether wanting. This nation, with its elaborate governmental machinery, its
churches and institutions, has to me the mournful aspect of a shrivelled and wizened old
man, dressed in clothing much too big, the garments of his once athletic and vigorous
youth. Nor can I divest myself of the idea that the laughing flower-clad hordes of riders,
who make the town gay with their presence, are but like butterflies fluttering out their
short lives in the sunshine." The islands could support millions, and the civil list, so
ludicrously out of proportion to the resources of the kingdom, could suffice to keep going
a machinery of government for such a population. The following table of the area of
population, taken from the last census, proves this : —
Hawaii
Maui
Oiihu
Kauai
Molokai
Lanai
Niihau
Kahoolawe
Total 4,000,000 56,897
In addition, there are several other uninhabited islands. The extreme height above the sea
of these islands varies from 13,953 feet to 400 feet — the first elevation being that of
Hawaii, the last of Kahoolawe. Nor is there ever likely to be a greater population, for
the Hawaiian islands, though possessing one of the most salubrious climates in the
world, and a lavish soil, is not a country which possesses attractions for the ordinary
Acres.
Por-alation.
2,500,000
16,001
400,000
12,334
350,000
20,671
350,000
4,961
200,000
2,349
100,000
348
70,000
233
30,000
—
DECAY OF THE HAWAIIANS. 35
European or North American immigrant. The patch cultivation in the narrow gorges
is beneath the notice of a farmer with a proper sense of the dignity of his calHng, while
the larger areas require labourers to work them, and these labourers are not to be had in
the Sandwich Islands, where the population have a great antipathy to manual toil, and
can live without it. Insects, owing to the absence of the birds which ought to prey on
them, destroy wheat and other cereals when stored ; hence grain and flour are imported
from California. Cacao, coffee, cinnamon, and allspice, are all attacked by a blight so
ineradicable that in some places the shrubs have been rooted up. Oranges also suffer from
the blight, so do mulberry trees, while cotton cultivation languishes under the depressing
influences of a caterpillar's ravages. Even the forests are in some quarters disappearing,
owing to the attack of a grub and the ravages of cattle. Sheep, so successfully reared in
the breezy uplands, near the snow-patched volcanoes and lava-fields, are threatened with a
depreciation in their wool, owing to the spread of an " oat burr," in regard to which the
Legislature has much to say, when it can spare time from devising new taxes to meet the
ever-increasing expenditure and the ever-decreasing tax-payers. Once on a time, the whalino-
fleet was a source of great wealth to the islands, which material advantage was, perhajw,
counterbalanced by the sensible depreciation of their morality which was experienced after every
visit. But the whalers and their dollars have deserted Honolulu. " A gex^eraX pilikia prevails.
Settlements are disappearing, valley lands are falling out of cultivation, Hilo grass and
guava scrub are burying the traces of a former population, the natives are rapidly diminishing,
the old industries are abandoned, and the inherent immorality of the race, the great
outstanding cause of its decay, still resists the influence of Christian teaching and example."
Such is the jeremiad which one of the warmest-hearted of the friends of Hawaii and the
Hawaiians is compelled to make after a review of the island prospects. Yet Hawaii has
suffered none of the grievous wrongs which other lands visited by the white man have. The
Hawaiians were always a feeble folk, but their equal rights, secured by treaties and law, have
ever been religiously protected, and the influence of the whites, who have mainly aided them in
the administration of affairs, has been uniformly for good. The men who have mainly shaped
the destinies of the kingdom of Kamehameha have been without reproach. Adventurers
and rogues, no doubt, have appeared, but these have never been allowed much voice in the
country, and the missionaries, to whom — in spite of all tirades to the contrary — the islands
owe so much, have ever been on the side of justice, morality, and the natives. Yet the
day when the great feather cloak* of the Kamehamehas, and a few rude monuments, will
remain the last remnants of a vanished race, cannot, I conceive, be very far distant. Unless
the decadence is arrested, this century will leave few Hawaiians to carry on the line of
their national existence to the next.
Crime of a serious character is not common. Analysing a list of 4,000 convictions,
we find 125 different offences entering into it. Thus, " for furnishing intoxicating liquors
* Those mantles were made of the bright canaiy yellow feathers, one of which is found under each wing of the
" Oo " bird {Melithreptes Facifca), which inhabits the mountains of Hawaii. There is only one of these mantles now
in existence. It is spread over the throne of the king on state occasions. The other was buried with King Lunalilo —
and was a right royal shroud, since it could not be replaced, except by the labours of generations, and a
cost which it is impossible to calculate. Even the art of weaving them is lost.
36
THE COUXTKIES UF THE WORLD.
to Hawalians " — a Hawaiian Legislature being forced to pass this self-denying ordinance —
92 persons were punished, 10 for selling "kava" or " awa/' a native intoxicating drink,
without a licence. These licenses are confined to Honolulu, and in 1876 brought into the
treasury 7,050 dollars. Those for selling opium — greatly in demand, owing to the Chinese
indulging in it — were even more profitable, for the treasury benefited by them to the extent
of 19,200 dollars.
The Hawaiians are, in one respect, not a moral peojile, so that we need not be
surprised to find convictions for violating the marriage tie numbering 384 ; 50 persons
were punished for practising medicine without a licence; 197 for furious driving, which,
with "furious riding," seems to serve as an outlet for the latent savagery now coaxed by
LAHAIXA IX MAUI, SAMJWItU Il-LAXLIS.
civilisation into decent subjection; 37 for cruelty to animals; 121 for "'gaming;" 32 for
"gross cheating;" and 01 for violating the Sabbath. It is, however, only fair to the
Hawaiians to say that this black list includes Chinese and foreigners, either resident in or
visitors to the island. Otherwise, without this saving explanation, 178 convictions for " assault,"
248 for "assault and battery," 12 for " assaults with dangerous weapons," 49 for " affray,^'
674 for drunkenness, 87 for "disturbing the quiet of night," and 13 for murder — all within
two years — would rather militate against the rejmtation of King Lunalilo's subjects for
"harmlessness." Even then statistics show that cases which the law takes cognisance of
are on the decrease. But, if active crime is comparatively small among the natives, the
seventh comm.indment is not strictly obeyed. In early times the Hawaiian Islands were
a scandal even to seamen. They were proverbs for one kind of immorality : the people
and their visitors simply revelled in debauchery, and the former are to-day reaping the
fearful crop which their ancestors sowed.
THE HAWAIIAN LEPERS.
37
Leprosy axd the Lepek Settlejiext.
Leprosy is the ivTemesis of " the Islands." The disease heing incurable, the Legislature,
finding that it was spreading, and that the habits of the people rendered contagion impos-
sible to be avoided, passed a law in 18(J5 by which all infected persons, regardless of position,
•were to be removed to the island of Molokai, there to be isolated from the world, and
remain with nothing to do — but to die. The task was a painful one. Every effort was
made by the natives to conceal such of their friends as were tainted with the terrible maladv,
for they knew that once denounced it was the duty of the Islands' Sheriffs to commit them
for life to the leper settlement. All sympathy and kindness, consistent with regard for the
VILLAUE UI W.ilKIKI.
(A favourite summer hiunt of the cUlzetis of Honolulu.)
living, and the very existence of the Hawaiian nation, were paid the unfortunate people
by the officials; and, indeed, it was not until ls7.'3 that the Act was strictly carried into
force. Then the number of lepers had become so alarmingly great that fear was entertained
that it would also attack the whites. Between ISCC and 1874-, 1,11.j were sent to
Molokai, but the number affected is now rapidly decreasing ; though, as the disease is
hereditary, it will not be stamped out for a generation or two. No more terrible fate
can possibly await any one than this necessary separation from kith and kin. Mothers
are torn from their children, children from their parents, and husband from wife — and
as the deportes are necessarily pauperised, it is a grievous burden on the poor Hawaiian
kingdom to support its stricken people. The disease is a loathsome one. Slowl}- — and,
happily, sometimes rapidly — feature after feature goes, until one who was once a rural athlete,
or a Honolulu belle, becomes a hideous mass of rotting flesh, in which it is difiicult
to recognise the human form divine. Miserable as is the lot of those whose state has
38 THE COUNTRIES OF TUE WORLD.
gone so far, that of the comparatively well is even worse, for they are compelled to
witness all this, knowing that they too must travel the same path — for they are " a
community of doomed heings, socially dead, whose only business is to perish," existing
in " a home of hideous disease and slow coming death, with which Science in despair has
ceased to grapple." And there they must remain, " men and women who have ' no more
a portion for ever in anj-thing that is done under the sun.^ " There is a Protestant
church near the landing; and another church at Elalawao, at some distance from the
landing (where is also the hospital buildings and the greater number of lepers), tells of
the devotion of Father Damicns, a Roman Catholic priest, who, for the sake of these
stricken children of the Sun Islands, was content to exile himself, and if he is not already
a victim to the fearful malady of those among whom he labours in love, will, before
long, be numbered among " the noble army of martyrs." Here also is a leper governor,
who holds his leper court (and among the exiles are many who, in happier days, were
often seen in the little palace at Honolulu); a Protestant pastor who is himself a leper;
and two school-houses, where the children of the settlement receive instruction in Hawaiian
from a teacher who is also one of the afflicted of their race. Yet even here, in this living
death, vanity is not dead, for we are told that on the island may be seen women, hideous
and bloated beyond description, " decorated with h'lH of flowers, and looking for admiration
out of their glazed and goggle eyes." Some years ago, when the King and Queen
visited the island, they were greeted on landing by the music of a leper band. "The
sprightly airs," writes a gentleman who accompanied the royal party, "with which
these poor creatures welcomed the arrival of the party sounded strangely incongruous and
out of place, and grated harshly upon our feelings. And then, as we proceeded up the
beach, and the crowd gathered about us eager and anxious for a recognition, or a kind
word of greeting — oh, the repulsive and sickening libels and distorted caricatures of the
human face divine upon which we looked ! And as they evidently read the ill-concealed
aversion in our countenances, they withdrew the half-proffered hand, and slunk back with
hanging heads. They felt again that they were lepers, the outcasts of society, and must
not contaminate us with their touch. A few cheerful words of inquiry from the physician.
Dr. Trousseau, addressed to individuals as to their particular cases, broke the embarrassment
of this first meeting, and soon the crowd were chatting and laughing just like any other
crowd of thoughtless Hawaiians, and, with but few exceptions, these unfortunate exiles
showed no signs of the settled melancholy that would naturally be looked for from people
so hopelessly situated." In this way, as kindly as can be, the Hawaiian Government
is trying to stamp out the terrible malady.
Language.
Few of the Sandwich Islanders can speak English. Their own language is so pleasant
and so easily acquired that the whites readily learn it, and even lo\-e to speak the musical
tongue which seems so thoroughly in keeping with the soft climate and dolce far nicnte
life which it has induced. Our hard surnames, like Fisk and Wilson, get metamorphosed into
Filikina and "Wilikina; but Owhyhee, which Captain Cook gave as the name of the island,
IIAWAIIAX LANGUAGE AND INTERESTS. .-jy
was a mistake on his part, since it was never anything but Hawaii {Ilah-vije-,'i'), the discoverer
mistaking the prefix O, which is the sign of the nominative case, for a part of the word.
Foreigners in the Sandwich Islands invariably drop their own names for Hawaiian plants,
even though these have been familiar to them under their "home" designations, and take
those of the islanders, and even when talking among themselves employ expressive
Sandwich Island words. For instance, everybody uses the word Aloha for a greetino-, a welcome
farewell, thanks, love, or good-will. One white will greet another with Alolia, just as,
in other places, he would with a "good morning," and a lady, in writing to a friend,
will add in the inevitable postscript "an aloha" to this or that common acquaintance. It
expresses in one word everything that is kindly and pleasant, and as nobody mistakes
what it means, it forms the most acceptable of all modes of sending "compliments"
or conveying good-will. Again, nothing is more common than to hear some one say that
he or she is "in a pilikia" (p. 35). Indeed, it is very difficult to get along without
this word. "It means," writes Miss Bird, "anything, from a downright trouble
to a slight difficulty or entanglement. 'I'm in a pillkia' or ' weiy pilikia,' or ' inUkui.'
A revolution would be a 'pillkia.' The fact of the late king dying without namino- a
successor was pre-eminently a 'pillkia,' and it would be a serious 'pillkia ' if a horse were
to lose a shoe on the way to Kilauea." Hou-hou means " in a huff," and makai " on
the sea-side," and mauka "on the mountain side." A host will ask }ou to sit on "the
mauka side of the table," or to take the makai seat in his buggy, when he o-ives ^•ou
an evening drive by the sea-shore. The natives have no surnames. A man may have
one name, and his wife and children totally different ones ; nor does the same name
always remain by a person, or even indubitably express the sex of the proprietor.
ScGAH, Sheep, axd Volcanoes.
Among the subjects about which most people in Honolulu and everywhere else talk
is sugar. Missions and whaling have given jjlace to this, as the great " interest " of
the islands. A cent up or a cent down in the American sugar-market is a bit of news
in which even languid Hawaii shows an interest. But the heavy import duties which
the sugar had to stand, before it could be imported into the United States, until recentlv,
acted prejudicially against it as a profitable crop. Hence was started the " reciprocity
party," who were willing that the United States Government should acquire Pearl River
Lagoon, on Oahu, as a naval station, on condition that Hawaiian sugar should have the
duties, which so heavily handicap it in the American market, taken off — this cession,
it may be noted, being entirely in the interest of the " sugar ring," without any regard
to the feelings of the natives. But at present sugar is more profitable in prospect than
in actuality. The market is not very great,* labour is scarce, and, the Government
prohibiting the manufacture of rum, one very lucrative subsidiary branch of its manufacture
is lost to the grower. Yet people will talk sugar, build saccharine castles in the air,
and very frequently grow bankrupt over the same bitter sweet.
•It ought to be added that "a rcciprocit}- treaty" (without Pearl River Lagoon) has been entered into
between Hawaii and the United States. The effect of this, Consul-General Woodhouse thinks, will he to raise
the augar-crop of 1878 to 30,000,000 lbs., and cause a stream of wealth to flow into the Islands.
40
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Next to sugar, they talk, in some places, of sheep, which flourish well in the high-
lands of Hawaii, near the volcanoes ; and when they are not discussing sheep or sugar,
they are having a little languid inter-««/ft« about the volcanoes, which are, perhaps,
that portion of Hawaiian scenery which strikes the freshly-arrived stranger niost markedly.
It would be difficult to understand how it could be otherwise. On Hawaii are two of the most
stupendous in the world — Mauna Loa (p. ~0), which is still frequently in eruption, and
Mauna Kea^ now extinct, each of which rises to a height of nearly 14,000 feet. Another,
THE HALE MAl-MAU, KILAVEA, HAWAII.
on the same island, is that of Kilauea — also often in eruption. This crater, really
a huge abyss — 4,000 feet high on the flank of Mauna Loa — has, according to Miss Bird,
the appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain. It is nine miles in circumference, and
its lowest area, which, a few years ago, fell about 300 feet, cpvers six square miles. The
depth of the crater varies from 800 to 1,100 feet, in different years, according as the
molten sea below is "at flood or ebb." "When quiescent, steam-cracks, jets of sulphurous
vapour, " blowing cones," needle-shaped crystals of sulphur always accumulating, and
continuous earthquakes, are the signs of the giant below being quiet, but not quiescent.
When its grand eruptions break forth, the Hale Mau-mau (or Home of Everlasting Fire),
or lakes in the southern side of the crater, sends forth suffocating gases in such voliunes
HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES AND TOWNS.
41
as to conceal the view o£ eveiything-, and give signs of the movements below in a series
of phenomena so marvellous and beautiful, that those who have witnessed them declare that
ordinary language is useless in conveying a jn'oper idea of the sights they have witnessed
(p. 40) . All around Mauna Kea is a lava desert of such wildness, that, unless in the old
volcanic regions of Europe, there is nothing like it, and when the last great volcanic eruption
of Mauna Loa occurred (ISOS), the great lava stream flowed several miles — until it was stojjped
EASTER ISLAND (FROM THE SEA'
by the sea, when it forms a trap peninsula a mile in length. On the island of Maui—
with a society which is largely made up of foreign planters and their families — is the
great crater of Mauna Halakala, one of the sights of the islands, but of this and other
physical features we must refer the reader to other works for a description.*
Hawaiian Towns.
Of the Sandwich Island towns, Honolulu, or Oahu, is, of course, the chief, and to a
foreigner perhaps the least interesting, because the least Hawaiian. Lahaina, on Maui (p. 30),
* Brigham: "Volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands;" Boddam-AVhetham, "Pearls of the Tacific," &c.
126
42 THE COUNTRIES OF THE AVORLD.
is more native. It is picturesque and tropical looking, with white latticed houses " peeping
out from under cocoa-palms, Lread-fruit, candle-uuts, tamarinds, mangoes, bananas, and
oranges, with the brilliatit green of a narrow strip of sugar-cane for a background j and
above, the flushed mountains of Eka, riven here and there by cool green chasms, rise to a
height of 0,000 feet." Once on a time it was a great missionary centre and whaling
station — the one being necessary, perhajis, as a corrective to the other— but a seminary
for the education of natives is about the only remains of the first, while the latter is
non-existent, and the high cliffs of the lepers' retreat on Molokai, in the distance remind
the visitor that even here the Fortunate Isles, so long sought, are not to be found. Hilo,
on Hawaii, is more missionary. It is, indeed, the paradise of the islands — its crescent-
shaped bay, and green houses concealed amid vegetation, away from the din and turmoil
of the world, make it one of the most charming retreats imaginable. Waimea, on Hawaii,
is a place which received its earliest population from a class of " mean whites," known
as " beach-combers " — runaway sailors, and the riffraff generally of the Pacific. The}-
were not exemplary personages, and though the place has now received sufficient of another
class of settlers to neutralise the early evil citizens, yet the "Waimea crowd" is not even
yet considered in Hawaii up to the moral mark, and in such quarters as this, the stories
which " the Earl and the Doctor," and similar voyagers picked up regarding missionaries
and their efforts originated (p. 37).
The writer finds as much difficulty in leaving the Sandwich Islands as the actual
visitor does. Happiness may not be atmosphere, as Lord Beaconsfield, in the days when
he was Mr. Disraeli, said somewhere. But as we in these tempest-tyrannised isles know,
it is very near to it, and the Hawaiian Islands have the best of climates. Let us hope
— though it is hoping against hope — that in time they may have that prosperity which
the advocates of reciprocity — which in this case means the "sugar interest" — declared they
would have. But with a white population increasing at the rate of 200 per annum, and
the natives decreasing at the rate of from 1,200 to 2,000, with males exceeding females
by nearly 7,000, this can hardly be expected to be shared by the Hawaiians, whatever
may be the case with the soil which is at present theirs.
CHAPTER IV.
Eastee, Ladrone, Pelew, Caroline, Marshall, Salomon, New Britain,
AND other Islands.
Before sailing northward and westward from the Sandwich Islands to the Ladrone group,
we may turn out of our course and visit the remarkable Easter Island, which seems like
a stepping-stone from the Oceanic groups proper to the American continent. Next to
the Galapagos and Juan Fernandez, it lies nearest America, and in many respects is so
interesting as to deserve, ethnologically at least, a full description (pp. 41, 44, 45, and
Plate XXXII.) .
EASTER ISLAND. 43
Easter Island.
Teapi, Rapa-Nui or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost 2,000 miles from the
South American coast, and 1,UU0 from Pitcairn Island and the Gambler Isles. In length
it is about twelve miles, and in breadth four, and somewhat like a cocked hat in shape.
The ends are lofty and bluff, and there is an extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The
island, indeed, is of volcanic origin, and abounds in craters which have been extinct for so
long that no tradition of their activity remains (p. 4-5). The country is singularly deficient
in wood. Boles of cocoa-nut palm, Edwardsla, Hihiscua, &c., are seen in some places, and
from the size of the paddles and other implements of the natives, it is evident that
large trees must once have existed, though they have long ago disappeared, and just now
the only approach to wood are the bushes, which grow but very slowly in some sheltered
nooks. There are no water quadrupeds, though rats have been introduced, and are
abundant, ^nd no reptiles exist. Even the frog, which has been landed, has not been
allowed to breed, and is now extinct. But it is the people who are most interesting.
They are of Polynesian origin, though their traditions aiford little clue to the quarter
from whence they came. It is a current belief that they came — at least to some extent
— from Oparo or Rapa-ti, distant about 1,900 miles. But who made the great stone
images (p. 44, &c.) which are now the chief attraction of the island to visitors no one knows.
It is more than likely that they were here when the present inhabitants arrived, and it is a
belief of various ethnographers that probably the race who formed them were the frequenters
of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America. When the island was first
discovered, the islanders possessed neither the means nor the knowledge to construct
anything similar to these monuments, the workmanship of which is of a high order.
Even at the date of Cook's visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty-seven feet in length,
and eight feet across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while others still standing
appeared much larger. One of the latter was so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a
party of nearly thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which these colossal
images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in length, twelve to sixteen feet broad, being
from three to twelve feet long, all built of hewn stones in the Cyclopean style, very
much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, or the Ruins of Tia-IIuanuco in Peru
(Vol. III., pp. 310, 311). But these images and platforms are not peculiar to Easter
Island. On Swallow Island, distant about from thirty-five miles north-west of Enderby's
Island, a large stone pyramid of long standing exists, and on some islands near the
equator, not far from the Solomon group — and in New Caledonia — remains of solid
masonry have been seen. There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been
built up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them. The grey lava (trachyte),
of which all the images are made, comes from the crater of Otu-iti (p. 44).* The
natives of some of these islands, in which remains of buildings are found, have
traditions of white men having been there a long time before, " but," they say, " they
» Captain Palmer, R.X. : "Kidnapping in the South Seas" (1871), PP- 28-29; Dr. Palmer, R.N. : Journal
0/ the Royal Geograpldcul Society, Vol. XL. (1870), pp. 167-181 ; Dr. Davies, R.N. : Froceediiigs of the Liverpool
Literary and Philosophical Society (1874-75), p. 275.
44
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
were turtles, and arrows and spears would not injure them," alluding, no doubt, to some
early Spanish adventurers, cased in " lobster " mail, who were cast away, or who had
>^
TLATFOBM IN THE VICIXtTY OF OTl'-ITI ("THE LITTLE UILL ") E.ISTEK ISLAND.
visited these islands. One of the best of these colossal images of stone is now in the
British Museum. It may be added that, unlike most of the Polynesian Islands, Teapi is
generally barren, and — perhaps owing to the absence of trees — there were at the date nf
the last visit to it no canoes, except a few very old worn-out ones in a cave. Captain
Cook described them as having only four, and in 1852 the few which were seen were
ingeniously pieced together out of little bits of wood sewn together, so as to form planks.
IMAGES AT KOXORORAKA, EASTER ISLAND (XHE ONLY ONES NOW ERECt).
The population is now verj^ small, and live poorly on the produce of their cultivated
patches, on the few fish which they can catch by line from the rocks, and on the shell
fish which abound on the shores.
s
46 THE COUNTKEES OF THE WORLD.
The Mari-VXa, or L.U)koxe Islands.
Passing among a number of scattered islands little visited, and o£ comparatively
small importance, we come to a group owned by the Spaniards. The Robber Islands
are twenty in number, and received their name from Magellan in 1521, on account of
his forming but an indifferent opinion regarding the honesty of the natives, though
the alternative title is derived from Mariana of Austria, Queen of Philip IV. All of
them are volcanic, irregular in outline, and most picturesque, clothed with luxuriant vege-
tation, and favoured with a climate hot, but tempered by the trade winds. The usual
tropical crops grow, and wild hogs, cattle and horses, asse.s, mules, and even llamas, which
have been introduced, flourish. The islands north of Guam are uninhabited, and overrun
with wild cattle, pigs, and goats, which afford attractions to vessels trading to the other
islands, visiting them in order to lay in supplies. Of late years, Americans, and it
is said Sandwich Islanders, have settled themselves in Agrigan, and the population
has likewise been increased by the arrival of natives kidnapfied from other parts of
Polynesia. On Guam is a considerable town, built of coral limestone and bamboo, and
inhabited by a mixed race of Spaniards, Mexicans, and Philippine Islanders ; the aboriginal
Ladrone Islanders having, like aboriginal races generally, when they come in contact with
the Spaniards, almost ceased to cumber their native soil. Scattered over Tinian, another
of the islands, are a number of square pyramidal pillars, each distant about six feet from
the other, and with an interspace of about twelve feet between the rows. Each pillar
is itself about thirteen feet high, surmounted with a semi-globe, the flat portion upwards,
the whole being constructed of sand and stone cemented together, and plastered over.
Their use is not known, but probably they were dedicated to sacrificial purposes.
BoNiN Islands ; Anson and Magellan Archipelagoes.
The Bonin Isles are almost outliers of the Philippines, which may be more conveniently
considered as continental rather than oceanic isles, lying off the coast of Asia. The Bonins
are about fifty in number, and are all small, the largest (Peel) being only fourteen miles
and a half long. There is no native population, though some Japanese have squatted
themselves on the group, which is also visited liy Japanese junkmen, who, aided by
British subjects settled on the islands, carry on a contraband trade with the Japanese
Emjiire. Whalers also touch at them for the sake of the fresh water and turtles with
which they abound.
The Anson and Magellan Archipelagoes are dotted with little scattered isles of volcanic
origin, without any permanent inhabitants, probably owing to the intense volcanic action
which continually disturbs them. " Lot's Wife," a strange pyramidal rock, distant
from any other land, is one of the most remarkable objects in this part of the world.
It rises, sheer out of the ocean, to the height of 350 feet, and against it the
ocean dashes with futile violence, and resounds with a strange weird noise in a cavern on
its south-eastern side.
THE C.iKOLINE, ELLICE, AXD PELEW ISLAJS'DS. 47
The CauolixEj Pelew, and Ellice Islands.
The Caroline and Pallou, or Pelew Islands, extend over an area of 2,000 miles from
east to west, but the actual amount of dry land comprised in this stretch is very small.
The MenchikofE Atoll is, for example, only 500 square miles altogether, and of this but
six miles are reared above the surface of the sea. Few of these are elevated — M'Askell's,
one of the highest, only rising to 100 feet, and Yap, in the Pelew group, being the
only one which has hills containing gold and silver; though, as yet, these "mines" have
only been " indicated " — not worked, if, indeed, they are worthy of the expenditure of
any labour. All the Carolines, except three, are atolls.
The Ellice, Vaitapu, or De Peysters group is a collection of low lagoon islands, with a
population of about 300. The other two groups are uninhabited, and though claimed by the
Spaniards as dependencies of the Philippines, Spain has no settlements on them, and no repre-
sentative of her authority. The islands are, however, very fertile, and the climate agreeable,
in spite of severe hurricanes now and then sweeping them. Owing to the visits of whaling-
vessels, rude hotels — called " accommodation houses " — have been established at the chief
places of call, for the convenience of the captains and crews. These houses are usually
kept by runaway sailors, who are bj' no means a virtuous race of unlicensed victuallers,
and whose presence, as well as that of their guests, has acted so prejudicially to the
moral and physical welfare of the natives that they are fast decreasing in number. Mis-
sionaries have also established themselves on some of the islands, but meet with great
hostility from the demoralised whites, and the natives acting under their influence. The
inhabitants of Hogoleu — one of the Carolines — are a cruel and treacherous race — so treacherous,
indeed, that thoujjh the shores of the island — or rather chain of little islands so called —
abound in beche-de-mer, great caution must be exercised in obtaining it, as the crews
of several vessels have of late years been attacked by the islanders armed with large Spanish
knives, brass-hilted cutlasses, spears, and slings, which latter weapons they can use with
great precision and murderous effect. They number some 15,000. The population of
Bornabi — another of the group — numbers about 70,000, in addition to upwards of 100
Europeans and Americans, mostly escaped convicts and runaway sailors, who find it profitable
to buy tortoiseshell and beche-de-mer from the natives, again to dispose of it to the
traders at a profit of 500 per cent. Near ]\Iatalanieu Harbour, in Bornabi, are seen the
rivers of a fortified town evidently not built by the natives, but by some civilised people.
The stones of the walls are eight or ten feet in length, and must have l^een brought from
some other country, as no such rock exists on this or any of the neighbouring islands.
Similar ruins exist in Strong's Island (Ualau), of which the natives can give no account.
It is believed that they were erected by Spanish pirates, or buccaneers, several centuries
ago, Bornabi being then a stronghold of these lawless rovers.
The Pelew Islanders are a very different race — being usually described as "amiable,
gay, and innocent," though such characteristics must always be received merely for what
they are worth — that is, not much — as passing voyagers, even when possessing the mental
WAR CUr^TL'.MK OF THE NATiVKS OF THE CAUOHNE l::;LANUa.
(From Specimens in the JUuseum ds Paris.)
THE PELEW ISL.1lN'DS.
49
qualifications necessary for forming such a judgment, cannot jiossibly have the rcquis^ito
experience of the people on whose character they pass such dogmatic verdicts. One
of them — " Prince " Lee Boo, son of " King '" Abbe Thull — visited England last centur\-,
as the guest of the East India Company. He had not l^eun in this countrv over a few
TATOOIXG OF THE XATITES OF roXATE, CAF.OLIXE TsLAXIlS
months when he caught small-pox and died. He is buried in Rotherhithe churchyard,
" far away from his own pleasant groves of waving cocoa-nut and shady bread-fruit trees."
On a tombstone over his gi-ave is inscribed tliis coujilet : —
■' Stop, reader, stop ! Let Xature claim a toar —
A Prince of mine, T/ce Boo, lies Tiuried liere."
— a kindly sentiment, if exjiressed in more than ordinarily indifferent necropolitan " verse."
127
50 THE COrXTKIES OF THE M'ORLD.
The Maksiiali, and Kixosmili. Guoips.
The Marshall Isles form wliat i;; known as the ]\Iulgravo Archipelago, hut the dry
land forms only a hundredth jiart of the lagoons, and a sulisidenee a])pears to lie going
on. The islauds lie iu two chains, running north and south, slxt^" to one hundred miles
apart. The western of these is also called the Raldick, and the eastern the Kadack
Chain. The islands are low, and the soil generally scanty, hut they produce hreaJ-fruit and
cocoa-nuts iu ahundance, and hanauas in sufticient quantity for the wants fif the inhahitants,
a fine athletic race, who have not had much communication with foreigners, and are
now lieing gradually civilised by the efforts of the American missionaries settled amongst
them. They have canoes, made out of sewn together planks of the hread-fruit tree, in
which they make long voyages from one island to another.
Much the same description may be given of the Gilbert and Kingsmill group,
discovered, like the former, by Marshall and Gilbert, in 1788. The Gilbert group consists
of some fifteen islands, one of which, Narakin, is said to be the most beautiful coral
isle on the Pacific. "Viewed from the mast-head, it is like a garland thrown upon
the waters." The height of none of these exceeds six feet, but a slow elevation
seems to be going on amongst them. The population at the time of the latest
estimate was calculated to number between 30,0OU and 00,000 souls, very savage and
inhospitable in their intercourse with strangers, and even in their relations to each other
far from kindly, or actuated by the good feelings which even barbarians exercise to their
own people. The people of Pitt's Islands are, however, a better class, and are n<it addicted
to the bloodthirsty wars which characterise the Kingsmillers generally.* Even the benign
restraint of "taboo" is not known to them, and their religious belief is of the rudest
description.
Due west from the Kingsmills is Ocean Isle, fifteen miles in circumference, but
with neither harbour nor anchorage, though thickly inhabited by a fine-looking race.
Pleasant Island, west again of Ocean I.slaud, is fourteen miles in circumference.
Its population is about 1,400, and amongst them are always a number of runaway
seamen, who contribute to their morals and civilisation the usual items which the levanted
mariner bestows in return for the barbarian's hospitality.
The Solomon Isles, New Britain, New Ireland, New Hanover, and the
Adjiiralty Isles.
All these islands form a connected group. The Solomons consist of ten jirincipal and a
great man}' smaller isles, of volcanic origin, one of which possesses an active volcano, but are
surrounded by only scattered reefs, no doubt owing to the coral reef isles being destroyed
by the volcanic eruptions. They were discovered in l.")(i7 by Alverdo de IMendana, the
* "Kates of Miinkiml," Vol. II., pp. ")l-.5').
THE SOLOMON, NEW BKITAIN, AND NEW IRELAND ISLANDS. 51
name they now bear Leing given them "to the end, that the Spaniards supposing them
to he those isles from whence Solomon fetched gold to adorn the temple at Jerusalem,
might be the more desirous to go and inhabit the same." But when Mendaiia went oi,t
on a second voyage to them, he could not again light on the islands, and it was nearly
three centuries afterwards that the French formed a settlement at San Christoval, which
they had ultimately to abandon on account of the ferocity of tlie inhabitants. Indeed,
to this day, though the islands are visited b}' small vessels from Australia, and by
American whalers, for the purpose of trading tortoiseshell, it is not considered prudent
to land, and the jirecaution is even adopted of allowing only a certain number of canoes
to come alongside the ship at the same time ; the head chief is alone permitted on
deck, while the bulwarks are protected to a considerable height by " hammock nettings,"
in order to prevent sudden boardings by the treacherous dealers in tortoiseshell. In
spite, however, of all these prudent precautions, several vessels have fallen into the
natives' hands, and the crews been murdered and eaten. The islands are very fertile,
and in the moist humid climate flourish dense, unhealthy forests, which cover part of the
country even to the tops of the highest mountains. Nearly all of the islands are well
peopled, but with the exception of Eddystone Island, on none of them are the inhabitants
friendly towards Europeans. All of them are bloodthirsty in the extreme, and so addicted
to cannibalism, that Captain Cheyne tells us human flesh forms their chief article of diet.
"1 have been most disgusted," he writes, "on visiting some of their houses, to observe
human heads, arms, and legs suspended from the rafters." Even at the time of INIendaSa's
visit they looked upon man-eating as so natural, that the chief of Ysabel sent " to
him a present of a quarter of a boy, with the hand and arm," and the fact of the
Spanish commander ordering it tp be buried gave great offence to the natives.
New Britain and New Ireland are large and imperfectly known islands, \\ith many
smaller ones lying off their coasts, the soil and productions resembling those of New
Guinea. The country is mountainous and well wooded, though containing fertile valleys,
yielding in abundance the crops of this part of the tropics. New Hanover is not much
known, but in its general character does not differ widely from the other groups. The
Duke of York " Island," as it is improperly called on the charts, is really a group of
twelve small islands, seven of which are inhabited. All of the islands consist of coral
limestone, and rise at some parts abruptly from the water in steep perpendicular cliffs.
The whole of them are densely wooded and very fertile, though the soil is not at
all deep.*
The natives of all of these groups are fierce savages, horribly addicted to man-eating.
In one house in New Ireland, Mr. Brown counted thirty-five human lower-jaw bones
suspended from the rafters : most of which were blackened with smoke, but some of them
were quite clean, and had not been long there. A human hand, smoke-dried, was hanging
in the same house, and just outside he counted seventy-six notches in a cocoa-nut tree,
each notch of which represented a human body which had been cooked and eaten there.
The name of the chief was Sagina, which means "smelling of," or a "strong smell,"
* Brow... : Journal of the Hoi/rd Geoijrauhkal Soeieti/, Vol. XLVII. (1H77), p. 139.
THE COUXXrJES OF THE "WORLD.
and it was given him because the smell of Inimau flesh was said to be always perceivetl
in his village. Yet food seems to be jilentit'Lil in all the islands. Bananas, yams, taro.
AXOE OF THE SOLOMOX ISLANDS.
sweet potatoes, cocoa-nuts, and papaw, are all abundant, and the natives declare — though
this seems doubtful — that pigs and fowls were on the island before any vessel visited
them. The people are Papuans, well made and athletic — all ver}- much alike, but speaking
so many dialects that a native of one district can rarely understand a native of another
only a few miles awa\-. The Wesleyau missionaries have recently formed settlements on
l^'i';!- I I
N.\TIVE.S ur NEW IRELAND.
the islands, though not without mishaps, some of (he native teachers having been killed and
devoured by the ogres whom they wished to instruct in better ways, spiritual and gastronomic.
Two hundred miles west from New Hanover, and about the same distance from New
Guinea, are the Admiralty Isles, consisting of one central island, lying in the middle of
THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS: NEW HEBRIDES; QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISL.VNDS.
13
a number of others, all covered with beautifvil verdure. The people are dark Papuans, thoun-h
not so black as those of New Ireland, and are not so barbarous as their nearest neighbours.
Almost the only clothing of the men is a wreath of flowers and a shell — the Ociiliiui ovum.
They are cannibals, and share with the Solomon islanders the reputation of beino- hostile
and treacherous, though, perhaps owing to the multitude of their guns, the Challenger
people established excellent relations with them. They are, however, excitable, and it is
not at all unlikely that those who would calculate on their being even worse, would be
exercising a prudent reserve. Like most savages, they are thievish, and gratitude is a
OFFICERS 01' U.M.!-. " CHALLENGER '' BARTERING WITH THE NATIVES UF THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS.
term which, like chastity in the Sandwich islanders, has no equivalent in their language,
the one virtue being almost as strange to the Admiralty islanders as the other is, or was,
to the Hawaiians.
The Exchequer and Hermit Isles, similar in character to the Admiralty grouj), but
inhabited by a more tractable race, lie to the north-west of the islands we have just left.
The New Hebiudes axd the Queex Charlotte Islands.
The New Hebrides consist of a large chain of volcanic isles, all fertile, and some of
considerable size. The principal are Espiritu Santo, ISIalicolo, Vate, Erumanga, Tanua,
Aneiteum, and Api. The whole of them are undermined by subterranean fires. There
54 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
are several active voloanoes, and most of tlic mountains in the <>-roup are either extinct,
or semi-quiescent crater cones. In the valleys the soil is exceedingly rich, hut during the
rainy season fever and ague prevail to such an extent as to make the climate very
trying to Europeans Until within the last few years, these islands were unsafe for
Europeans to land on. Sandal-wood traders visited them, hut owing to their frequent
disputes with the natives, murders ft.llowed, and altogether such was the hostility
between the two races that the New Hebrides were for long dreaded by all visitors. But
thanks to the efforts of the missionaries, and the visits of a less lawless class of traders,
settlements for commercial purposes have been formed on the islands, and Europeans
reside there in perfect security. Erumanga, the natives of which murdered the
missionary 'Williams in 1839, is perhaps the worst of the group, and the inhabitants of
the different islands exhibit considerable diversity in personal appearance, language, habits,
and intelligence. They^ are cannibals, yet this fact does not seem to have acted pre-
judicially against the population. Aneiteum, according to Mr. Turner, possesses about
5,000 inhabitants, Tanna (p. oG), 15,000, and the whole group at least 60,000 souls. AVithin
the last ten years the good understanding between the whites and the natives was likely
to have been disturbed by the acts of the kidnappers from Australia. Under the guise
of engaging labourers for the Queensland plantations, these scoundrels enticed natives on
board, and then set sail with them under hatches. As the entrapped New Hebrideans
could not understand a word of English, the authorities in the colonies were for some
time unable to put a stop to this " black-bird trade," as it was facetiously termed.
Mainly, however, owing to the active measures resorted to by the war ships, the traffic is now
at an end, and the British name recovering its lost prestige. Captain Markham describes
the line of volcanic activity as having the largest islands on either side a little apart
from the actual eruptions, but the numerous conical peaks in every part of the group
indicate a period of activity on every island. The water is very deep round all the shores,
and the hills which seem to rise out of the sea are clothed with a dense vegetation of
cocoa-nuts, which are not confined to the sea-shore, but gprow in clusters in all the
inland valley's as well, the weeping iron wood [Casitarlna equisetifolid), the beautiful
candle nut tree [Aleiirites triloba), and other fine timber. The groups farther to
the eastward, and beyond the ISOth meridian to Tahiti and the ^larquesas, appear
to have been peopled, as to their plants and animals, by waifs and strays from
distant continents. But the Solomon and New Hebrides groups, together with the Fijis,
have a life peculiar to themselves. The islanders are not a good-looking race, being pure
types of woolly-headed Papuans, but are merry and cheerful, though easily alarmed. And
here it may be remarked, that these islands seem to be a point where the Polynesian
race dovetails among the Papuans or Melanesians. For instance. Cherry Island is inhabited
by a handsome and friendly Polynesian race, with straight hair. The island of Tecopia,
and the Duff Islands, also seem peopled by Polynesians. It was said by the late Bishop
Patteson that the Swallow or Reef islanders, though Papuan in appearance, speak a dialect
of Maori, and therefore must be classed among the Polynesians, while the Lom-lom
islanders, their near neighbours, are in all respects like the Santa Cruz people — that is,
Melanesians. The Polynesians despise their Melanesian neighbours, and are always at war
THE QUEEN CHAP.LOTTE ISLANDS; NEW CALEDONIA. 56
witli tbem; yet it is curious to find them inosculating with them by living- in small
islands in the midst of their grouji, inhabited by the hated race of black-skinned and
frizzy-haired Painians*
The Queen Charlotte, or Santa Cruz Islands — not to le confounded with the small
islands of the same name lying off the north-west coast of British Columbia — are situated
about midway between the New Hebrides and the Solomon group ; indeed, may be said
to he a northern continuation of the New Hebrides. They are volcanic and well wooded, and
though mountainous, fertile. Several of them are " reef islands," but not regularly with
central lagoons, such as those seen in Torres Strait, " but,'" to use the words of Captain
^larkham, who has given us by far the best description of this group, " are raised upon
the reefs themselves, and vary in size from small rocks or islets to islands several miles
in circumference. They are generally covered with dense scrub, overlopped by cocoa-nut
trees, and wherever this is the ease, as at Lom-lom and Nukapu, they are inhabited."
The New Hebrides, on the contrary, have few coral reefs, a peculiarity due, according to
Dana, to the volcanic eruptions killing the coral zoophytes in the surrounding seas. In
Santa Cruz is a fine harbour, and on ^'ankoro was wrecked the ship of La Perouse in
U'^S, though it was not for forty years afterwards that the fate of the famous French
explorer was ascertained.
CHAPTER Y.
New Caledonia; The Fijis; Tonga; Niue.
European colonies in the Pacific are on one hand of ancient, and on another of modern
origin. The Spaniards in their roamings in search of gold early settled in the Philippines
and other islands, which we have alreadj' spoken of ; the Dutch kept more in shore ;
the French, however, after the First Napoleon had stimulated the nation to acquire
colonies, settled on New Caledonia, while the English, the greatest colonisers in the world,
and the chief explorers of Oceania, confined themselves to Australia, until the progress of
their settlements in that direction compelled them to annex Fiji, just as at an earlier date
Norfolk Island, and to some extent Pitcairn Island and Lord Howe Island, were peojiled
either by force or willingly l:>y men of F]nglish extraction or antecedents. It is probuljle
that in time other nations will look to Oceania as a home for their surplus population,
or as the locale of outlying stations where their naval power may be consolidated. Hence
the rumours that Russia is seeking a station in the Pacific, and that Germany is about
to acquire part of Samoa. The Unitel States, we know, have for long been in search
of a good naval station among the islands, while the annexation of New Guinea by
England, and the actual annexation of Tahiti, which France at present "protects," can
only be questions of time.
* A. H. JLirkham : Jvurual of the Hoijal Geoc,rapl,\cnl Society, Vol. XLIL (1872). pp. 213-213 ; " The Cruise of
the Sosario" (1875); P.ilmrr : "Kidn:ipping in the South Seas" (1871), etc.
56
THE COUXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
New Caledonia, The Isle ov Pines, The Loyalty Islands.
The large island of New Caledonia was discovered by Cook in J?7 I. It lies about 800
miles from the nearest point of Australia, and 1,UUU miles from the North Cape of New Zealand.
Its averao-e breadth is 35 miles, and its length 250 miles. It is more or less mountainous
throughout, and patched with forest from the shore to the highest point on the island,
an elevation of -1,300 feet above the level of the sea. The suil is in jilaces rich, while
mines of iron, copper, nickel, cobalt, &c., are found in the mountains, and in some of
the little isles lying off the coast considerable deposits of guano have been recently
discovered. The island was taken possession of by the French in 1850, with the ostensible
^ *^ "^i.
SCENE IX THE ISLE OF TANXA, NEW HEBRIDES.
object of cultivating sugar and coffee, but in reality for the establishment of a
large military and naval depot, which might aid in establishing Gallic power in
the Pacific. Still more recently it was made a convict settlement, which rose into
importance from the fact that it was selected as the jilace of expatriation for the Com-
munists. There are, however, few now on the island, but of late the colonists have had
to contend with attacks from the natives, a peculiarly iierce, cannibalistic race of
Papuans who have never altogether acquiesced in the rule of their new masters. There
are, however, a number of free settlers, who cultivate the usual tropical products. Sheep
rearing has not proved a success, but bananas, sugar cane, yams, and taro seem to thrive
well, though, as a whole. New Caledonia is not nearly so tropical looking as the opposite
coast of Australia. The "Kanaks" are not fond of working, and . accordingly the
eolonisls import labourers from the New Hebrides. Noumea, the ca]iit:il, is quite a French
town, alive with military bands, and a variety of gay uniforms, and even of fashionably
128
58 TItE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
dressed ladies, who iu the cool of the evening' parade the Hue Magenta, though the immher
of civilians on the island are much fewer than at one time they were. Indeed, the chances
are that in future the majority of the settlers will be convicts, who have been pardoned
on condition of remaining in the place of their quondam bondage. These with their
descendants will in time form a considerable population, though whether for evil or good
yet remains to be seen. The British Consul reported in the year ISTS that none of the
nickel mines were working, though there is said still to be plenty of ore. Considerable
quintities of copper, cobalt, and antimony are also exported. Gold is mined to some
slight extent, and in addition to several other minerals not yet found in paying quantities,
an inferior quality of coal has been found in various places. The broken character of the
country will always militate against New Caledonia being an agricultural settlement. The
east coast is, indeed, quite unfitted for culture; the west is better, but even there the
amount of arable land is very limited. Cattle may be bred on the grassy hill slopes in
sufficient number to feed the population of the colony, but in the opinion of those well qualified
to judge it will always be dependent on Australia for bread-stuffs. At present, indeed, the
Government meat contractor draws his supi)lies of cattle for slaughter from Newcastle and
Gladstone, in Australia, and from Norfolk Island. Thanks to the well-directed labour of the
convicts, water has been brought into the town of Noumea, and roads and telegraphs have been
ramified throughout the island. Hills have been levelled, mangrove swamps filled up, and
the town and harbour beautified and improved in every direction during the last few years.
The convicts also have constructed batteries, earthworks, and other public conveniences and
necessities; indeed, without them, the colony would be at a standstill. Some of the
deportes are very skilful, handicraftsmen, jewellers, wood-carvers, and workers iu pottery
ware. Earth suitable for terra cotta having been found in several places, busts, statuettes,
and vases of beautiful shape and ornamentation were exhibited by these over-ardent
citizens of the Republic at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. In addition to the prisoners,
there are — as we have already remarked — a number of New Hebridean labourers, importa-
tions from the Solomon group being forbidden. The natives of the former islands do not
care so much to come to New Caledonia as to the English colonies, and they do not
seem to pick up the French language with the same ease that they acquire "pigeon
English," which is now spoken in nearly all the South Sea Islands, and is becoming the
medium of communication between different tribes. During 1877 the total number of vessels
visiting the islands was loG : of these but 28 were French and 114 British, and the
coasting trade is almost entirely carried by British ships carrying French colours.* " In
round numliers, at the beginning of the year 1877 t the aljoriginal population of the colony
numbered about 1-'3,0UU, and the Europeans 10,000. It may be divided into two classes : free,
■5,800; under restraint, 11,110. The former class may again be snh-dividei into employes o{
Government, 3,0.50; civil, 2,700. During the year there have been 118 births as against
• An "Annual" is published by the Government ; that for 1S77 contains a paper on the island by Captain
Chambeyron, being a communication addressed to the Societe do Geographic ('ind December, 187-4). See also
Gamier : in " Bulletin do la Societc do Geographic " (1878) ; " Illustrated Travels," Vols. II., III., &c.
+ Consular Keporta to the Foreign 06Sce for 1878. As a great number of commimists have returned, these
statistics must now be somewhat modified.
o
NEW CALEDONIA: FIJI. 59
224 deaths; marriages, 31. The total value of the imports for the year 1877 has reached
9,G8.3,60Ufr. (say £387,344-), of the exports 3,0Cl,954fr. (say £163,478). The expenditure
of the colony has been 2,193,37 Ifr. (say £87,735)." M. Jules Gamier remarks that
tropical products, with the exception of tobacco and coffee, are subject to the attacks of
grasshoppers, and the rainy season coinciding with that in which the cotton is picked,
this otherwise profitable crop is apt to be damaged. Oil-yielding plants and the pro-
duction of the mulberry and silkworm have been introduced with success.
New Caledonia is surrounded by a great barrier reef, which is continued almost
without any long interruption to the Isle of Pines (Kunaie), twenty-eight miles south of the
main island, while to the north, reefs stretch for nearly 100 miles, with here and there small
islands inhabited by savages of a very malevolent type. This character used also to be shared
by the natives of the Isle of Pines, though it is more than probable that their enmity to the
whites was due as much to their ill treatment by the sandal-wood traders as to their natural
ferocity. There are now several trading establishments, and a large missionary settlement
on the island, and the result of this combination of commerce and Christianity has been
that the natives have become very harmless to the white man, though, owing to their
possession of firearms, not quite so innocuous to their neighbours on the south-eastern
part of New Caledonia. Their villages are on the coast, built in the middle of cocoa-nut
groves. They number about 2,000, and until recently were determined cannibals, who ate
their enemies, and avoided the Isle of Pines, equivalent of the poor rates of more civilised
latitudes by putting their old people to death, or — what amounts to the same thing —
leaving them on a barren islet until they perished.
The Loyalty Islands are separated from New Caledonia, to the west of which they lie,
by a strait forty-five miles in breadth. They are four in number — Uea, Lifu, IMare, and
Tika— but each isle is surrounded by several smaller rocky islets of coral formation. Until
1841 they may be said to have been practically unknown, and, indeed, it was not
until 1849 that they were examined by war ships. The soil varies, but is in places rich,
and supports a large population. The natives, owing to the outrages of the sandal-
wood traders, were for long incensed against the whites, several ships' crews of whom
they massacred, but of late missionaries have settled on some of the islands, and are
gradually weaning these fierce Polyneso-Papuans from the error of their ways. The climate
of the islands is cool and agreeable in winter, and even in the summer the Loyaltys
are not unsalubrious, though disturbed by frequent earthquakes. All of these islands are
claimed by the French^ and the latest official census gives the population at 13,334.*
The Colony of Fiji.
The Archipelago of Fiji or Viti comprises a group of nearly 200 islands, besides
rocks, reefs, and islets. Of these, about eighty are inhabited. Its area may be roughly
estimated at 8,034 square miles, of which at the present time only about 16,000 acres
are under cultivation. The present population consists of about 100,000 natives, and less
* "Tableaux de la population, etc., dcs Colonies fi-an(;aises, pour I'annce 1375" (1877).
61)
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
than -2,000 whites. But the climate is a pleasant one, and owing to the recent acquisition
of the' islinds by the British Government, it is likely that the colonists will rapidly
_S^CSJ^<v>^€g^f fe^ag^ ~^
FISHIXG-VILLAGE, LN A GUOVE OF COCOA-NUT TREES, NEW CALEDONIA.
increase in number. In Levnka the average heat is about 79°, but this is tempered all the
year round by cool southern breezes, which render the actual heat less unendurable than
the meteorological returns would lead us to believe it is. Levuka itself is, moreover, an
exceptionally hot place, for in the uplands, even in the interior, the thermometer shows
THE FIJI ISLANDS.
61
a much lower mean. Yet, throughout the whole country, the health of the whites is
good, dysentery — generally brought on by excess— being almost the only disease very
prevalent. European children often suffer from a disease of the eyes, induced by the
glare of the sun, which for an hour or two in the middle of the day is excessively trying.
The chief islands are Viti Levu (or Big Fiji), Vanua Levu (or Big Land), and Taviuni,
the finest of all the islands both as to its soil and scenery. It is, indeed, as it is often
called, the garden of Fiji, though smaller than the two just mentioned, which are each
about 300 miles in circumference. In addition to these islands, the white settlers affect Koro,
NATIVES OF FIJI.
Yanua Balavu, Mango, Lakemba, and Chichia. The capital (Suva) is on the south coast of
Viti Levu, at the head of a magnificent harbour, but Levuka, the old eajjital and the chief
commercial centre, occupies a central position on the eastern side of the smaller island of
Ovalau — eight miles long by seven in breadth.
The islands are of volcanic origin, with lofty mountains, and well wooded with the
ordinary trees of the Oceanic islands. The vegetation is remarkably luxuriant— bread-fruit,
bananas, plantains, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, and arrowroot growing freely, while cotton,
sugar, pearl-shells, maize, beche-de-mer, coffee, and cocoa-nut oil are exported. In
1876 the revenue of the islands was £38,535, and the expenditure £68,636, to meet
which deficit there was a grant made from the Imperial Treasury of £35,000. Fiji, in
addition to other indubitable signs of advancing, has already a public debt of £85,900.
Gi THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Nevertheless, it is still far from nourishing, for in 187C its exports were £107,464,
awl its imports £138,000.
The islands, it is believed, were originally discovered about the year l(i43, by Tasman,
but it was not until 1S04 that some runaway convicts from New South Wales managed
to reach the islands, and get themselves recognised by the natives as leaders in their
inter-tribal wars. To the crew of a wrecked ship and these pioneers of shady antecedents
the Fijians owe their knowledge of firearms, for it seems that the convicts were enabled
to not only convey themselves to the cannibal islands, but also bring their muskets along
with them. In their new homes. King Na-Ulivou's new subjects led their old lives,
with the result that they were soon thinned out. The last died in 1840. But in 1835 a
few whites of manners more reputable had established themselves at Levuka, and in
that year, also, the Wesleyan missionaries arrived. Thus the white settlers began
to increase, and by 1858 so many had found it their profit to squat on the different
islands, that in that year the native king, or leading chief, Thakombau, offered his dominions
to England. The offer was, however, declined, and a proffer of the sovereignty to the
United States met with no more favourable reply. But trouble was brewing for the Fijian
monarch. In 1846 some of his swarthy subjects had attacked the United States' Consulate,
for which act the King was fined a much larger sum than he could pay. But a
Syndicate of Melbourne financiers settled the 45,000 dollars demanded, and in return
obtained great grants of land, which, though not yet settled on, may in time become of
value. Soon riots became common, and the unruly whites who came to the islands were
such a source of annoyance to King Thakombau, that with his free will the English
Government, on the 30th September, 1874, annexed the whole of his sovereignty, pensioning
him off, and so securing a new colony, which iiiaj/ prove valuable, but at all events will
relieve the Australians of the apprehension long entertained that a foreign, and possibly an
unfriendly power, might establish itself too near them. To use the language of the King
in ceding the islands — if matters had remained as they had been for twenty years previously —
" Fiji would have been like a piece of drift wood on the sea, to be picked up by the
first passer by." Then as au emblem of the new order of things, the King despatched
to the Queen his favourite war club— " Na Vu-ni-Yalu," that is, the "root of war" —
covered with emblems of peace. This characteristic weapon, at once symbolical of
the rule that had prevailed in former days, and of the nature of its stalwart master, is
now profusely adorned with silver ornaments, the handle being entwined with fern leaves,
and doves in silver, and the top surmounted by a massive crown.* The Fijians being
unstable as labourers, the planters have been forced to import the natives of the New
Hebrides and other islands, particularly those of the Gilbert group, who, however, are
neither so docile nor so industrious as the Hebrideans. The white settlers would — as is
usually the case in such quarters — bear improvement, but they are certainly a vast
improvement over the first European examples on whom the Fijians had to model their
early civilisation. The last of the convict settlers was a polygamous individual, named
Paddy Connor, who, among other worldly goods, possessed 110 wives and 48 children.
He had led a life of the lowest depravity, but latterly chiefly concerned himself with
* Ricci: "Fiji; our new rrovince in the South Seas" (1875), p. 125.
THE FIJI ISLANDS. 63
the rearing of fowls and pigs, and was possessed but of one ambition, and that was that
the number of his family might be increased to half a hundred. Originally he had been a
" White Boy/' and with his whole regiment deserted to the French on their landing in Ireland
in 1802. He was afterwards transported, and passed nearly forty years on the Fijis.
Commodore Wilkes saw him there in iStO. He sjwke with a broad Irish broo-ue, and
requested that if any of the story he told was untrue, he must be excused, for he
had been so much in the habit of lying to the Fijians, that he hardly knew when he
was telling the truth. Another early pioneer, Charlie Savage, was a Swede, but not a
convict. He was also a man of greater intelligence and ambition than Connor, and among
his numerous wives espoused the daughters of the greatest chiefs. He was killed in 1814.
in an affray with the natives of A'anua Levu, who, having cooked and eaten him, made
sail needles of his bones as a token of the victory they had gained over a man whose
power was getting so great as to threaten a new despotism to them. Another typical
character was " Harry, the Jew," who at an early period found his way to Fiji. Id
passing from island to " island at the gateway of the day," this individual of London
birth and seafaring training had a chequered career. On one island he was on the point
of being killed and baked; on another he found countrymen from whom he had soon to
decamp, owing to a trifling difficulty he got into through disposing of a watch which
would not, under any circumstances, go, while the Christian natives on another island finding
that " he belonged to a people who had killed Christ," refused to receive him. At last, in the
Namosi A'^alley — a hotbed of cannibalism — he found a resting-place, the honour of " brother-
hood." and an infinitude of wives. He was, when last interviewed, so thoroughly Fijian, that
he had lost all record of time, and could not tell whether he had been fifteen, twenty, or
twenty-five years in the country, but this he was certain of — he hated all Christians, and was
fond of Fijians.
Of the present residents and planters, shopkeepers, traders in beche-de-mcr, (or-
toiseshell, cocoa-nut oil, &c., the great majority are British subject?:. There arj, in
addition, a few Americans, a good number of Germans, and a sprinkling of other
nationalities, many of them men of fair standing and position. In a Consular Report
it is stated that "the class of people settling in Fiji has much improved of late. They
are chiefly British, and as a body bear a good reputation. Many arrive with a capital of
from £2,000 to £3,000, and it may be said all possess some means. Among the planters
are some who have held commissions in the army and navy ; and a few of the officers
who have served or are serving on the Australian naval station have invested capital in
the country ; others again have held public offices in the colonies, such as those of mayor,
alderman, magistrate, and director of railways. There are also squatters, farmers, pro-
fessional men, and tradespeople." The capital is not described as an attractive place.
Liquor stores occupy too prominent a place in it, and the slouchy, idle whites, who seem
all day loafing around them, with the still worse-looking natives, do not ajipear the most
promising elements out of which the backbone of a colony can be formed. Happily for it
they are not the backbone, and though eventually the natives will disappear, for the
present, at least, beyond an epidemic of measles, their physical, if not their moral
condition has not been deteriorated by the change of sovereignty. They number about
6i
THE COUNTRIES OF THE ■\VORLD.
VIJIAX DANXE.
200,000, mostly savages, the majority lazy, and all treacherous and discontented, but
the people who for the time profit most by the annexation are the two thousand whites
scattered over the islands. Cannibalism^ at one time frightfully prevalent among the
Fijians, is now on the wane, and will soon become extinct.
Tonga, or Friendly Isi^nds.
These islands are situated about 260 miles to the west of the Fijis, but are neither
so fertile nor so well wooded. The inhabitants number about 22,000, and owing to their
enterprise, intelligence, and capacity for colonisation and association, have been called the
Anglo-Saxons of the Pacific. Their Government, which is now framed on a European
model, is said to be well conducted, and altogether very creditable to the King and his
Prime Minister, an American gentleman. Coffee cultivation is being forced by a law
which compels every householder to possess 25 coffee trees, and 200 cotton bushes, but the
indolence of the natives does not always permit of their picking the crop, for it must not
be lost sight of that the history of Tonga's civilisation is really the history of the King
— George Tabu — his people showing little interest in the progress which he is forcing
NATIVES AND IDOL OF THE MARQUESAS.
33
THE TONGA ISI.oiNDS.
6.3
them to adopt * At latest accounts f he was a man over eig-hty years of age, and possesses
more sagacity, energy, and liberality than any man in his dominions. The soil, tlioiigh
not so rich or so e.^tensive as that of the Fijis, is sufficiently fertile. Indeed, it is too
fertile for anything but the indigenous flora. For instance, potatoes yield only one crop, fresh
seed having to be sown each time, but the sweet potato and yam succeed very well. Buying
and selling copra is the chief commerce here, as in all the South Sea islands, and has of late
almost displaced the cocoa-nut oil trade from the market. There are, besides, several British
firms, branches of German houses, which carry on an immense trade with the Polynesian
and Papuan Islands, and have theii- chief depots in Samoa, doing business in Tonga.
C.IPTAIN COOK TKEATIXO WITH THE NATIVES OF THE SAMOAX ISLANDS.
Indeed, the Germans are obtaining a strong footing in all these islands, and it is feared
among the British traders that the end of the wordy treaties entered into between the
Berlin people and the Tongan King may be the eventual annexation of the group. The
buildings in the capital are, in some cases, very good, the King's " palace " and the
residences of the other leading men being really handsome structures, equal to the best
appointed villas both in design and finish. The Tongaus are a remarkably fine race,
and until the annexation of the Fijis, lorded it over the less intelligent people of that
group. They had even formed colonies in the Viti Archipelago, and had not the British
Government absorbed the whole of the islands, there can be but little doubt that the
Tongans would have done so, as already they were playing the part of the warrior race
* Consular Reports, 1866.
+ His successor will be his son, David Unga, an intelligent, polished, and altogether European gentleman.
129
C6 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
who had been called in by the Fiji King to aid in repressing his rebellious subject
chiefs. Most of the natives are now Christians — either of the Wesleyan or Roman
Catholic types — and it is no longer dangerous to travel unarmed over almost any of the
islands. Owing to the comparatively small amount of land on the islands, the sale of
any to foreigners has been properly prohibited, and, indeed, renting it has been stopped,
as the King got tired of the endless exactions and annoyance of the Crown tenants. This
will always prevent the natives from being swamped by whites, and already in the capital
(Nukalofa, in the island of Tongatabu) there is a Legislative Assembly, a Custom House,
Bank, Government printing-office, and so forth, in which most of the appointments arc
filled by natives. Mr. Spry describes the town of Nukalofa as prettily situated in a
bread-fruit and cocoa-nut grove, which gives it a pleasing shady appearance, and yet is
sufficiently open to admit the cool refreshing breezes of the trade winds. " Facing the
sea are the Government offices, the residences of the King, the Governor, &c., while the
native houses are lightly constructed of bamboo and palm leaves, and are for the most
part surrounded with small enclosures, shut in by fences made of cocoa-nut fibre and
leaves, and shaded by bread-fruit and other varieties of tropical trees of luxuriant foliage."
The natives still dress in their old fashion, but a decree has prevented the use of the
fapn, or native cloth, beaten out of the bark of a species of mulberry, the object of the
edict being to encourage the growth of cotton, and so enriching the islands.
NiUE, OR Savage Isl-Ucd.
This is a solitary islet, about thirty miles in circumference, with a population of over
■l-,000, lying eastward of the Tongas, and due south of the Navigators. Cook gave the island
its name, owing to the " wild boar-like " ferocity with which the natives repelled any
attempt at opening communication with them. John "Williams was equally unsuccessful,
and two natives, whom he had persuaded to accompany him for instruction, were slain by
their countrymen, because shortly after their return home an ejiidemic broke out, and was
attributed to their contact with the whites. Of late years missionary effort has been more
successful. There is now a station on the island, and most of the people — indeed, it may
be said all of them — are civilised, and as Christianised as they could be expected to
become in the space of the few years which have elajjsed since they were in the lowest
state of savagery.
CHAPTER YI.
The Samoax, Society, Georgian, and other Islands of Oce.ania.
The Samoan, or Navigator Islands, contain seventeen islands of some size, and though
surrounded by coral reefs, most of them are of volcanic origin. Indeed, in several of
them, there are extinct volcanoes. The Samoans are a very intelligent race, and missionary
«ffort was at an early date so successful among them, that the people arc now all civilised.
THE SAMOAIs^ ISLANDS: THE SOCIETY ISLANDS. 67
and devoted to the arts of peace, though even yet the want o£ a strong central Govemmeut
allows too great power to the minor chiefs, who imitate other " civilised " Governments,
by going to war with each other. The population is estimated at about 34-,0O0, spread
over an area of 1,1C:J square miles. The vegetable products are bread-fruit, cocoa-nut,
bananas, palm, oranges, lemons, pine-apple, yams, coffee, nutmeg, wild sugar-cane, and
other tropical plants. The islands carry on a considerable trade with Europe, chieliy
through two or three great Hamburg mercantile houses, which have stations on these and
other of the islands. The Samoas are exceedingly beaiitiful and rich. The small islet of
Aborima is an extinct crater, with high walls all around, the only entrance to which is
an opening capable of admitting one canoe at a time, and even then the entrance being
guarded with trapping lines, the men stationed on the rocks could easily overturn all
canoes that attempted to pass. Hence the people of ^lanono, to whom it belongs, have
long used it as a kind of fortress, to which they have retreated in time of danger. In
Savaii the mountains attain a heiglit of 3,000 feet, and most of the islands are well
watered, and abound in springs, lakes, and small rivers, which enable the rich soil to
produce fruits in abundance, while vegetable food is supplemented by great numbers of
poultry, hogs, and dogs, in all probability indigenous, or at least have been so long on
the islands that the history of their introduction is now unknown. The capital is Apia,
the nominal seat of government, and where consuls of various nations reside ; but of late
years the islands have been much disturbed by the efforts of an adventurer to obtain
supreme control over them, and the almost open civil war has been the consequence. The
King — or rather the principal chief — for the want of the islands is a central Government — has
long been making overtures to England and the United States to take jiossession of them,
but hitherto without success. Germany, however, has been casting imperial glances in
that direction, and there can be but little doubt that in the end the Samoan group will
become either a colony of Prussia, or a naval station for the Pacific fleet of the Empire.*
The Union, Tokelau, Fakaafoan, or Oatabuan group, consists of three islands of
considerable size, and several smaller ones, lying 300 miles north of Samoan. Most of
them are atolls, inhabited by about 1,000 people of Polynesian race, but still heathens of
a quiet, undemonstrative description.
The Manihiki Isles consist of about ninety-two low, small reef isles, .peopled by an
inoffensive race, among whom the missionaries have made much progress.
Society, ok Leewaed Islands.
These form a cluster of six large and several smaller isles, and constitute three
principalities— those of Borabora (p. 9), Raiateia, and Tahaa. Unlike the Tahitian Isles,
which we will presently refer to, the Society group — discovered by Quiros in 1005, and
named by Cook in honour of the Royal Society of London— they are independent. The
largest island (Raiateia), sixty miles in circumference, mountainous and rugged, though
•Turner: '•Nineteen Years in Toh-nesia " (1861); Pratt: "Grammar and Dictionarj- of the Samoan.
Language" (1878).
6S
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
the coasts are low and swampy, and girdled by a barrier reef, has a population of 3,000.
Huaheine, the next largest, has a population of 2,'A)0, and the other isles a smaller
number. But all the people are energetic and industrious, excellent shipbuilders, and
capable of forging all the iron they require. In their own vessels of eighteen to
twenty tons burthen, they trade in arrowroot, cocoa-nut oil, and other products, as far as
Hawaii and California, and throughout Polynesia their flag, which is the same as the red
and white ensign of Tahiti, is known and respected. A regular code of laws was solemnly
enacted, in 18:22, by the National Assembly of Huaheine, whieh code has since been
MATAVAI BAT, TAHITI.
adopted by the other principalities. The French, after their usurpation of a protectorate
over Tahiti, seized the island of Huaheine, but they were soon forcibly expelled by the
natives, who in 184-7 received the assurance of the English Government that their
independence, and that of the other islands of the Leeward group, would be protected,
in consequence of a guarantee entered into with the French Government. The people are
all Christians.
Geougian, Windwaud, or Tahitian Islands.
These are five in number — Tahiti, Tapamanoa, Eimeo, Titouaroa, and Maltea, in addition
to the usual cluster of little islets which dot the Polynesian Archipelagos. Tahiti, or
Otaheitc, is the chief of the group. It has an area of 430 square miles, and a population
YOUXG MEN OF TAHITI.
70 THE COrXTKIES OF TUE WOKLD.
of 7,000, including that of Papeite, the capital, a pleasant little town of mingled French
and Polynesian character. The interior of the island (p. ri) is ver}- mountainous, the highest
peak attaining an elevation of 11,500 feet, but along the coast there is a rich level tract,
cultivated by the natives and the European planters who have settled on the island (p. G8).
The scenery is very fine — high precipitous hills, alternating with lovely valleys, and lakes
embosomed amid tropical vegetation, the whole country rejoicing in a climate perfectly
healthy and more enjoyable even to Europeans than that of most of the other Polynesian
islands. It is Tahiti which Byron calls —
" Thu happy shores without ;i l;i\v.
■\Vhore all pai-tafcc the cai-tli without dispute,
And bread itself is gather'd as a fruit ;
Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams.
The godless age, when gold disturbs no dreams,
Inhabits or inhabited the shore.
Till Euroiio taught them better than before,
Bestow'd her customs, and amended theirs.
But left her vices also to their heirs."
The Tahitians (p. 67) bear the reputation of being one of the most handsome of the
Oceanic races ; all of them are Christians, and though a few of them, since the French
missionaries came to the islands, have become Roman Catholics, the greater number of
them cling to the old teachers who first taught them the new faith and the arts of peace.
Sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, arrowroot, cocoa-nut oil, &c., are among the products of the
Tahitian islands, and prior to the establishment of the French protectorate large quantities
of these articles were exported. But since the people have been subjected to a foreign
yoke they have lost heart, and from being active agriculturists, have sunk into a state of
apathy and dependence.* In 1^76 the gross imports into Tahiti, from all countries, the South
Sea Islands excepted, may be estimated approximately at £130,000, but a considerable portion
of their goods are transhipped to the neighbouring islands. The exjwrts were valued — in
Tahiti — at £124,000, and consisted of cotton, copra, f cocoa-nut oil, pearl-shells, edible fungus
(for China), oranges,cocoa-nuts, lime-juice, beche-de-mer, vanilla, guano (re-exported), pearls,
logs of Tamana and other timber, arrowroot, coffee, honey, wax, and other products of the
islands. The pearl-shells, however, come from the Low Islands (p. 7~), dependences of
Tahiti, while other of the exports were from the French possessions of the ^Marquesas,
the Society, and Harvey Islands, &c.|:
Pomare, King of Tahiti, was the first convert to Christianity. He died in 1S21,
and after the short reign of a young son, was succeeded in 18:27 by a daughter, who is still
nominally Queen of the islands, though in 181-2 the French, under the thin disguise of a
"protectorate," took forcible possession of the islands. The Queen appealed to Europe in
defence of her rights, and for assistance to her people so bravely asserting their independence,
but in vain ; and at the present day the islands, in their policy, commerce, and civilised
institutions, are virtually French. The present population of Tahiti and the other protected
• Pritchard: " Polj-nesiau Iteniiniscences" (18G0). t Dried coca-nut kernels.
J Consular Eeports, 1878.
TAHITI: THE HAE%'EY TSLES. 71
islands is under 10^000, and owing to the introduction of European diseases, rum. and other
concomitants of civilisation, the number is rapidly decreasing, though the introduction of the
temperance movement, led by the Queen, has done much to check the tide of drunkenness
which was so rapidly overspreading the land. The higher-class natives are well educated, either
in the schools which the French have established in Tahiti, or in the South Sea Academy,
instituted in 1S27, on the picturesque island of Eimeo, for the instruction of the children of
Polynesian missionaries, merchants, and others, without the necessity of sending them either to
America, Europe, or to New Zealand. The French " protectorate " is exercised most jealously,
and even harshly. Since the inauguration of this wolf-like guardianship of the lambs, owing
to some fancied insult to the French flag as far back as 1S.3S, the islands have been going from
bad to worse, and though the Queen is allowed £1,000 per annum, she is daily subjected
to annoyance, and even to personal indignities. Indeed, so strictly is the line drawn, that
when the Queen was offered a passage to Morea on board the ChalleiKjer, the authorities
objected, on the plea that holding the position she did, she could only go there in a
French shiji. At one time the French spent a good deal of money upon the islands, but of late
the decree has been passed that Tahiti must pay its own expenses. The result is high import
duties, and countless restrictions on trade in every direction. The plantations are returning
to their natural condition, and the remnant of the island commerce is in the hands of
foreigners. Papeite, the capital, is a very ordinary looking village, pleasant, but without
any imposing features. The dwellings of the Europeans, as described by Mr. Spry, are
constructed for the most part of wood, are roofed with palm leaves, and extend " all
along the edge of the bay, while diverging or running at right angles, or parallel, are
pretty roads, A\hich help to make regular streets, around which, and on every side, rise up
bread-fruit, cocoa, palm, and orange trees, which make up in cheerfulness for any deficiency
in effect" (p. 17). At one time great things were expected from Tahitian plantations, and
the Tahiti Cotton and Coffee Plantation Company (Limited) is a sore subject to many of
those who invested their money in what turned out an utter failure commercially. At
Atimano, the scene of this venture, the houses are falling into decay, the estate is
becoming a wild and desolate plain, and the whole affair remains a monument of bad
management, and the recklessness with which sanguine men will spend what is not their
own.
The Harvey, or Cook's Isles.
These are distant about 500 miles from the Society Isles, and about the same distance
from the Samoan group. They are eleven in number, but the largest is Raratonga, or Oruruti,
a volcanic island, with mountains -kOOO feet in height. In 18^3 the population was about
8,000, but the peojile have now dwindled down to about 3,000, all converts to Christianity,
and living peaceably among themselves under three kings, one of whom is the suffragan
of the other two. The other islands — also Christianised— are ruled each by its own chief;
they possess a population of 16,000 in all, though, as in Raratonga, this is decreasing.
At first such was the ferocity of the people of these islands, that the missionaries
had to desert them. But nowadays the whole of the Bible, and many educational
and religious books, have been translated into, or written in their tongue, and printed
72
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
and bound on the islands by natives trained in the typographical arts. Few— if any of
the young— are unable to read and write, and many of the people have been educated as
teachers and missionaries.
The Austral, or Touboua! Isles, comprise five principal and several smaller ones, distant
300 or -iOO miles south of Tahiti. The natives— now only about 2.000 in number*— are
MOUNT llIAUEM, TAHITI.
Christians, and own the " protectorate " of France, from the fact that at one time the
islands were dependents of Tahiti. The islands are expressly beautiful and fertile, and,,
according to Mr. Chisholm, the natives are some of the best specimens of a Polynesian
people.
Low Archipelago; Pitcairn Island.
The Paumotus, Dangerous, or Low Archipelago, consists of eighty-one islands, scattered
over a watery area of 1,852 square miles, but of which only 76 square miles are habitable
• According to general consensus. But the French Official Reports — the latest of which is 18G4 — puts the
population as low as 675, probably an under estimate.
LOW ARCHIPELAGO; PITCAIRN ISLAND.
73
land. These islands are said to contain only about tliirty species of trees and plants,
and though most of the islands are habitable, none of them are thickly peopled. Anaa,
or Chain Island, the chief of them, has a population of 5,000 ; but the whole group is
believed not to have 10,000 in all. Most of the inhabitants profess Christianity, and are
tolerably civilised under a French protectorate. Their trade consists chiefly in cocoa-nut
oil, tortoiseshcU, and pearls, which are sent to Tahiti for export (p. 70).
Among the outliers of the group is Pitcairu Island, a basaltic patch out of sight of
any other land, five miles long by one broad, and surrounded on nearly every side by cliffs
.^^^P^^v^.
ROCKS IX THE PAUMOTUS AKCHIPEL.^GO.
over 1,000 feet in height (p. 77). Its only interest consists in the fact that it has become
the home of the descendants of the mutineers of the Buiinfi/. In 17S7 Lieutenant Bligh
— to repeat in the briefest possible manner this familiar tale — was sent to search for the
bread-fruit tree among: the islands of the Pacific with a view to its introduction into the
West Indies. A long stay at Tahiti had utterly demoralised a erew^ composed of
elements then too common in the English navy, and it only required the exercise of the
tyranny of the martinet captain to precipitate (in 1789) the rebellion for which they were
ripe. The ringleader was Fletcher Christian, Acting Lieutenant, who, after casting adrift
the captain and the few who adhered to him in an open boat,* sailed for Tahiti. How-
ever, fearing pursuit, Christian, leaving a number of his companions, who preferred to
* They afterwards reachLd Timor, 3,600 nautical miles from the place where they were abandoned (near
Tofua, one of the Friendly Islands).
130
74. THE COrXTKEES OF THE WORLD.
stay on the island, set sail in search of a new home, and finally settled on Pitcairn
Island, and burnt the Buunli/. The whole colony then consisted of nine British seamen,
six Tuhitian men, and twelve women of the same race. Concord among a band of such
desperadoes was impossible, and accordingly within the next ten years all the Tahitian
men, several of the women, and all the sailors, with the exception of Alexander Smith
who took the name of John Adams — and a few of the women, had died of violence
or disease. Twelve of the mutineers who had remained behind in Tahiti were subse-
quently captured, and three of them were hanged, but all search for the remainder was
abandoned, and the story of the mutiny was becoming a mere naval tradition, when, in
ISOS, the captain of an American ship reported that he had touched at Pitcairn Island
— discovered by Carteret in 17()7, and named in honour of the midshipman who first
sighted it* — and found there Adams and the descendants of his companions in crime.
It was not, however, until ISIJ, that a British war-ship called at the island. Adams
was then still alive, and had changed his ways of life so much that he was now
the guide, philosopher, and friend of the younger generation, teaching them to revere
the flag and the nation he had so dishonoured, and to walk in those ways of righteous-
ness which the quondam A. B. of the Bounty/, during the period he ate the king's
biscuit and drank too freely of his rum, had been ignorant of. The results of his efforts
had been so successful, that the descendants of the mutineers were a model, virtuous
race, amiable and simple-minded to a degree that exists only in Utopia, except in the
South Seas. After this they were frequently visited by British ships, and in W■^\
their number had become so great, that the island was found too inconveniently small
for them. Accordingly, at their own request, they were conveyed by the Britit-h
Government to Tahiti. The immoralit}- of their relatives in that island, however, so
disgusted them, that they sold the copper bolts of the Bounfij, and with the proeee.ls
chartered a vessel to take them back to Pitcairn Island. In 1830 they were taken under
the protection of England, owing to the annoyances they suffered from the visits of the
lawless crews of whalers. A code of laws was drawn up for them bj- Captain Elliot
of H.M.S. Fli/, who also gave them a British ensign, and recognised the Governor whom
they had elected in place of old Adams, who had died in 18£9, full of years, and the
honour which an old age, well spent, after a youth of dissijwtion, won for him from
those to whom he had forfeited his life for his crime of thirtj'-nine years before.t Pitcairn
Island now became a familiar locality, and in 1S55, finding their numbers disproportionate
to the land at their disposal, they were granted the much more productive and larger Norfolk
Island, which, owing to the abandonment of transportation, had been cleared of criminals.
However, some years later, several families again removed to Pitcairn Island, reducing the
* It has boen supposed to be the " Encama(;ion " of Quiros; hut this is impossihlc, as Encarnacion — most
prohahly the island now called Ducie— is described as a "low, sandy island," which is the very antipodes of
what Pitcairn is.
+ This is the generally accepted statement. But it is only fair to mention that the step-da<ighter of Adams
— an old woman, who in 1878 was stiU living on the island— does not give quite so good a character of him.
Family differences, however, may have had something to do with this, and the other statement that it was Young,
and not Adams, who did all the teaching of the young Pitcairners.
PITCAIKN ISLAND. 75
number o£ those left iu Norfolk Island to :i02. Those on the latter island still retain
their virtuous character, though, owing to their more frequent intercourse with Eurcjjeans,
they have acquired the manners of civilised society, with some of its less rejirehensible
tastes. Music they are exceedingly fond of, while dancing they inherit as a jiassion
from their ancestors. The men engage in whaling, and herding cattle, or cultivating
their little plantations, while the women attend to their families, and assist in
the farm duties. The faction who returned to Pitcairn Island are, however, the more
interesting portion of these people. They retain all their pristine innocence, love of
England, which they never saw, and of their English relatives. On no island can the
mariner be wrecked with greater safety than on Pitcairn, for hospitality to a fault, and
unselfish kindness, is the lot of every one. In 1875 one of twenty-three shipwrecked men
of the Liverpool ship Khandekh who sighted the island, after rowing in open boats three
days and nights, writes as follows : — " Soon a boat was put off from the island and came
alongside of us ; she was manned by seven or eight fine young men, who brought us
provisions, rightly presuming us to be a shipwrecked crew. They put one of their own
hands into our boat and jiiloted us to the island, where we were most kindly and hospitably
received, nearly all the inhabitants coming on to the beach to welcome us. The best beds
in the houses were put apart for us, and we were in all respects treated more like brothers
than a. lot of sailors. The cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, pine-apple, and man}- other fruits grow
in great abundance, especially oranges, lemons, and citrons. There are seventy-three
inhabitants all told, men, women, and children, some being very handsome, the women
having beautiful hair, and, allowing for the hot sun, have fairer skins than would be
supposed, being hardly darker than Europeans. They depend on passing vessels for all
their clothes and agricultural implements, &c., always going barefoot excejit on Sundays,
when some few of them wear boots. They grow sweet potatoes, yams, cotton, arrowroot,
and Indian corn, which they give in exchange for clothes. The chief person in the island
is Simon Young, grandson of Midshipman Young. He officiates in church on Sunday,
also at the day and Sunday-schools ; they use the Church of England service, and generally
read a sermon from some volume.* All have a fine ear for music, and sing most
beautifully. When anything has to be decided they call a general meeting, and go by
the majority of votes. They still have a cannon which belonged to the Bounti/, and a
carpenter's vice. We were on the island fifty-two days before we sighted a ship, and
were treated with the greatest kindness all the while. We left one of our crew behind
us, he having married one of the inhabitants during our stay. Consumption is the only
disease known among them, of which, I believe, the youngest daughter of Simon Young
has died since I returned to England. There is a great scarcity of water, which, they
fear, will eventually force them to leave the island. Crockery is much needed, as in eases
of accident they cannot get it replaced. Musical instruments would be much appreciated
in their singing school." Still more recently t Admiral De Horsey, R.N., visited and
reported upon the island. He confirms the account we have given, and adds to it many
interesting particulars. The population, at present, numbers ninety of all ages, of which forty-
* In 18')2 a chaplain was sent out to tlieni, but he went with the majority to Norfolk Island.
t In September, 1878.
76
THE COrNTKIES OF THE WORLD.
one are males, and forty-nine females. There is but one survivor of the generation which
immeiliately followed the mutiny, viz., Elizabeth Young, aged eighty-eight, daughter of
John Mills, gnnner's-mate of the Bounty, and of an Otaheitian mother. The oldest man
on the island is Thursday October Christian, aged fifty-nine, grandson of Fletcher
Christian, the ringleader of the mutineers. The population may be furtlier described as
consisting of sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls. The deaths
on the island have numbered about twelve in the last nineteen years. No contagious
diseases visit the island, nor are the animals subject to disease. The governor of tlie
island is at present James Russell M'Koy, who is also steersman of the boat which
he built — the only one on the island — in place of the one which was destroyed in saving
a shipwrecked crew.* This "magistrate and chief ruler" is "in subordination to Her
JOHN ADAMS' HOUSE, PITCAIKN ISLAND il825i.
Majesty the Queen of Great Britain," and not only administers the laws, but enacts
them. There are two councillors to advise and assist the chief magistrate, while the
"heads of families" are convened for consultation when required. The laws bear no
date, but were drawn up by the present chief magistrate on accession to office, and are
evidently compiled from former ones now destroyed. Admiral De Horsey remarks that the
"almost puerile simplicity of the laws is, perhaps, the best evidence of the good conduct
of the people." The law is merely preventive — no case of the only three crimes con-
templated as possible — murder and assault not being among them — having been known to
occur since the laws were enacted. The governor is elected annually on New Year's
Day, and is open to re-election. Both sexes of and above the age of seventeen have
a vote. The pious characteristics of the people I have already referred to, and the
Admiral adds that family prayers are said in everj' house the first thing in the morning,
and the last tiling in the evening, and no food is partaken of without asking God's
* That of tlie Coriiuallis.
f Ml *" I
1 1
'I'l p
III
ii'iiii
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!''4illlllli"'«"!'' ill
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I: 111
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liliiilliiiiiiiililil
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iliiiillllillililllliiiilllilillliiilllliliiiiiil;l
78 THK COUNTRIES OF TllK A\-OELD.
blessing before and afterwards. Fifty-four years ago Captain Beechey wrote that "these
excellent people appear to live together iu perfect harmony and contentment, to be
virtuous, religious, cheerful, and hospitable; to be patterns of conjugal and parental
affection, and to have few vices." The same eulogium still apjilies to the children who
have followed in the footsteps of their parents. Sunday is strictly observed, but in no
Pharisaical spirit, for the people are eminently religious, and find their chief pleasure in
]>rayer and praise, and moreover their walk and conversation are in keeping with their
professions. The chaplain and schoolmaster is Simon Young, who in the duties of the latter
utfice is assisted by his daughter. "The instruction comprises reading, writing, arithmetic.
Scripture, history, and geography. The girls learn sewing, and hat-making as well, and
the whole are taught part-singing very effectively. Every child and unmarried woman at
present has to attend school from nine to twelve, and from one to three p.m. Schooling is
conducted in the church-house, the same built by John Adams (p. 76), one end of which is
used as a library, open to all. English is the only language spoken or known." On the
island are a few sheep, goats, pigs, fowls, cats, and dogs, and — though Admiral De Horsey
does not mention the fact — not long ago it was reported that a plague of mice threatened
the destruction of the islanders' crops. There are no springs on the island, but as it
rains generally once a mouth, they have usually sufficient water, though there have been
years in which they suffered from drought. Scarcely any trees good for timber grow on
the island, and there is no money on it, except a few coins kept as curiosities. There
are also no alcoholic liquors used, except for medicinal purposes, and a drunkard is as
uuknowu as a doubloon. The men are chiefly emjiloyed in growing beans, carrots,
turnips, sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, cabbages, and a little maize. Pine-apples,
figs, custard-apples, &c., are common, but the bread-fruit tree, which was at one time
plentiful, is now rapidly dying out. They also employ themselves in house-building,
canoe fishing, and the women in cooking, sewing, hat and basket-making, as do their
relatives on Norfolk Island, and all take their share in public work when required to do
so. The only communication they have with the outer world is with jxissing ships,
averaging about once a month. But even this is precarious, as most ships " fetch "
to windward of the island, and those which do sight it — chiefly vessels on their way
to or from San Francisco — are frequently unable to commimicate. They have no
communication whatever with Tahiti, and very rarely with Norfolk Island or New
Zealand. A few of the islanders have experienced a desire to return to Norfolk
Island — a not unnatural wish for a chano^e — but the chief magistrate thinks none are
likely to go. " Her Majesty the Queen," concludes the Admiral, " does not, I believe,
possess in any part of the world more loyal and affectionate subjects than this little knot
of settlers. I may here observe that a notion appears to prevail among the Pitcairn
Islanders that her Majesty's Government are displeased with them for having returned from
Norfolk Island (which as their lordships are aware, they did in two parties, the first in
1859, and the rest, I think, in 1804), although their return was, I believe, at their own
expense, and they have since been no burden to the Crown. This notion, whence received
I know not, I ventured to affirm was without foundation, feeling assured that her Majesty's
Government would rather honour them for preferring the primitive simjjlicity of their
PITCAIE^^ ISLAXD: THE MARQUESAS. 79
native island, to either the dissolute manners of Otaheite, or even the more civilised but
less pure and simple ways of Norfolk Island. No one acquainted with these islanders
could fail to respect them. A religious, industrious, happy, and contented people, they
will lose rather than gain by contact with other communities." This primitive simplicity,
we fear, is destined in time to be deteriorated. As ships more and more frequently visit
them, and shipwrecked crews reside ou the island, the moral barometer will inevitably fall.
Indeed, already. Admiral De Horsey remarks that the presence of an American — probably
the love-sick mariner referred to (p. 75) — among them is a doubtful acquisition to the
islanders. Thei'e is even a possibility that from being treated with neglect, or simply as
curiosities of civilisation, they will be petted and spoilt. They were, at the date of Admiral
De Horsey's visit, in want of flannel, serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, soap, and tools,
and as the boat which they had built was rapidly going to decay, a new one— or even two — in
case of accidents, was urgently required. Owing to the exertions of some benevolent people
interested in their behalf, two boats have been obtained, in addition to funds wherewith to equip
the islanders with some of the other necessaries and comforts they require, and the Admiralty
is willing that a war-shij) should now and then visit them. .Meantime, therefore, they
will have some encouragement to persevere in their j^raiseworthy, but hitherto unacknow-
ledged, efforts on behalf of shijDwrecked crews; though we hardly think that English
munificence is usually so long memoried that it will develop a potentiality for pauperism
among the descendants of those whom Byron celebrated in his poem of " Christian and his
Comrades." And as nobody has as yet proposed to send them an attorney, an apothecary,
a politician, or a journalist, it is possible that it may be some time before Mr. M'Koy
or his successor will find it necessary to drive forth any corrupting agency from the
Pitcaim Paradise.*
Marquesas, Gajibiee, and Scattered Groups.
Leaving Pitcaim Island, smaller than most of the Oceanic isles, yet more interesting
than almost any one of them, the Hawaiian kingdom excepted, we must, before arriving at New
Zealand, touch in the briefest possible manner at one or two other groups of some interest.
The Marquesas — Mendana, or Washington — group, is composed of thirteen principal islands,
and many smaller islets. The largest is Nukahiva, eighteen miles by ten, now containing a
population of a few thousands, though at one time it had many more, and, indeed, on the
island there are signs of an ancient civilisation of which history has preserved no record. All
the islands are volcanic, and in Nukahiva there is one centi-al extinct volcanic cone 3, SI 2 feet
in height. The islands produce sugar-cane, cotton, cocoa-nuts, bamboos, j'ams, and other
tropical products, but though the French claim authority over the islands, the population, num-
bering, according to an official census of 187.j,t about 6,011, are for the most part fierce and
warlike, and in a state of cruel and sensual heathenism (Plate XXXIII., and p. SO). They arc,
* The old but evc-r-frc-sli story of the niutinj- of the Boioitij and its sequence has been told in a variety of
publications. Among them may be emimerated Barrow: "Mutiny of the Soiintij" (183.5); Mun-ay: "Pitcaim;
the Island, the People, and the Pastor" (186i) ; Belcher: " Miitineers of the Bounty" (1870); the works of
Sliillibeer, Brodie, and Meinicke, and an article in CassclVs Fiimily ilaoa^i'ie, 1879.
t This seems an under-estimate, for in publications of authority, not twenty years old, they are given as
high as 30,000.
80
THE COUNTRIES OF TlIE WORLD.
nevertheless, about the finest race in Polynesia, and until the Spaniards- after the method
of their nation— managed to incense the natives by their cruelties, they were considered
YOUSO WAKUIOR, OLD MAN, ANll WOMAN 01' THE MAKUUESAS ISLANDS.
rather a mild and amiable people. Another name, execrated to this day by the people
o£ Nukahiva, is that of a certain Captain Porter, who more than sixty years ago took
forcible possession of the island, and committed unprovoked cruelties on the unoffending
inhabitants.
THE GA5IBIER ISLES ; SCATTERED ISLES ; HOWE ISLAND.
81
The Gambier Isles are a small group on the south-east of the Low Archipelao-o,
consisting of five considerable and several smaller isles, situated ou a lagoon, an examina-
tion of which first suggested to Darwin his theory that atolls are isles of depression. lu
1873 the population numbered 1,500, and like that of the former group is under French
•"protection."
The Scattered Isles are in the north-central portion of Polynesia, east of the Marshall
and Gilbert groups, and to use the words of Dr. Bryce, " are so separated from one another,
as to render grouping impossible." Among these may be mentioned Christmas, Fannino-,*
Palmyra, Jarvis, Maiden, Starbuck's, Penrhyn, Sara-Aun, Dudosa, Saraarang, and others.
Most of them are lagoon isles, and show a slight elevation, " the lagoon in several beina-
converted into dry land." The Phoenix and Central Polynesian groups, " with Baker,
'IX THE CORAL SEA.
Rowland, and Jarvis between, are all true coral reefs, and most •"'f them have lagoons ; in
some, however, this is filled up, and several, as Washington, Oatafu, and some others,
give proof of a slight elevation."
Lord Howe Island, Noefolk Islixd, axd the Kermedec Group.
Howe Island is another little basaltic patch, not far from the coast of Australia,
■which does not appear to have been inhabited by aborigines — as Piteairu would seem to
have been at some very early period — and is of no ethnological importance. Yet,
like Juan Fernandez, Ascension, Tristan d'Acunha, Inaccessible Isle, and other oceanic
rocks and islets, it has a historj' and an interest all its own. Its interest is, however,
like that of Pitcairn, one that appeals far more forcibly to the mind than does the
emharasi de ric/iesse of the thickly-peopled groups which we have glanced at. Saving
* In the Almanack de Gotha for 1879, and in Die Bevillceruiig dcr Erde for 187S, Drs. Bchm and Wagner
put Fanning Isle among the British Colonies, and give its population, twenty years ago, at 150. Slalden is also
classed as such, and its population put down as seventy-nine in 1876, but that of Starhuck's is not enumerated.
131
S2 TlIE C0UXTRIE6 OF THE AVOKLD.
a little time, therefore, from isles that are better known or merely attractive to ethno-
lou-ists, let us halt for a brief space at this little visited one. Does anybody weary for
a "liidge in some vast wilderness?" That very undesirable residence is now a little
difficult to be had. The world is fast tillinu- up, and railways, steamboats, and tour
contractors are agencies most inimical to hermits of all degrees. Still there is a chance,
and for a man weary of his species I c-an entirely recommend Lord Howe Island. Out
of the multiplicity of isles "amid the melancholy main," it is puzzling on even a good
atlas to pick the one dedicated to the hero of "the glorious 1st of June.' Ships sail
in and out of Sydney Harbour, yet few ever land at this tiny islet, discovered as far
back as 17SS by Lieutenant Henry Ball, while on a voyage to Norfolk Island from Port
Jackson, in Xew South Wales. Xo land lies nearer it than Port Macquarie, 300 miles
west, and Norfolk Island is nearly double that distance from this lonely spot. Only
about seven miles long and two or three in breadth at its greatest width, a vessel might
be almost in the vicinity of it without being aware of its situation, were it not for the
high oceanic peak of Ball's Pyramid (p. 84), which can be seen twelve or thirteen miles distant.
But its own hills are even higher. Mount Gower being 2, SCO and Mount Ledgbird some
400 feet lower. The soil is volcanic, but rich, and covered with a bounteous vegetation
of palms, screw pines, and wild figs, and a dense undergrowth of ferns, grasses, and the
fairy-like orchids that twine from trunk to trunk. Wild pigs are the only large bush
animals, but goats are nearly as abundant as they were on that other island of romance
whilom reputed to be the home of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner. Fruit trees and
culinary vegetables grow abundantly, and among the first features which strike the weather-
beaten seaman who comes on this summer isle of Eden are the orange groves, and the
patches of water-melons, pomegranates, onions, potatoes, Indian corn, pumpkins, and
tobacco — all of which have been introduced. Vines grow well, and the banana ripens
its gi'eat golden bunches of delicious fruit. Dogs yelp round the houses, oxen plough the
patches of cultivated land, horses there are a few, while the cat, which follows woman all
over the world, is on Lord Howe Island kept in full occupation by the swarms of mice
which have taken up their quarters in this secluded siding of the globe. There are
swarms of ducks, pigeons, paroquets, magpies, doves, and mutton birds, valuable for their
oil, though not particularly toothsome as food, while off the reefs fish of many kinds can
be caught in abundance. No reptile, not even a lizard, exists on the island ; and its
woods are frequented by no animals more terrible than pigs and errant cats, who dine
sumptuously on parrots and turtle-doves every day of their vagabond lives. Even in that
prosaic Admiralty paper from which we take these particulars the land seems a paradise,
and none the less paradisaical because it is a small one.
Lord Howe Island we find on the maps, but it does not seem that even the ubiquitous
tourist has managed to reach this far-away land. In vain we search the British Museum
for its literature, and even the librarian of the Royal Geographical Society shakes his
learned head when his client<-le asks for the latest or any other book on this patch in the
Australian seas. Few ships — and even,' year fewer than ever — touch at it. Victoria takes
no cognisance of it, and even New South Wales has not had its earth-hunger whetted
by the sight of the oi-eanic fragment which lies to the west of it. Lord Howe Island
LORD howt: island. S3
is^ ill fact, a no man's land, and as yet no king, kaiser, or potentate of any type lias
claimed jurisdiction over it. It is interesting, therefore, to bear that it is partially
inhabited. A merchant vessel bound on a voyage from jNIelbourne to Fiji, recently
became becalmed off it, and was immediately saluted in English by two men who
I'ame alongside in a boat, and found an anchorage for the vessel. Shortly afterwards
a bullock was seen in harness coming towards the beach, drawing a sledge laden with
fowls, oranges, bananas, eggs, and other good things. These the delighted settlers
insisted on the captain accepting, without making for them any charge whatever. On
shore, a pileasant and even civilised community of twenty persons, including several
children, were found. All of them were English or American, and one old lady had lived
on the island over thirty years. Here she had buried her husband, a quondam whaler, and
here her daughter was married, and her four grandchildren born. They are most primitive
and simple-minded in their ideas, enjoy excellent health, and, having abundance of food,
no taxes, no newspapers, no politics, few bickers, no heartburnings, little unsatisfied
ambition, and therefore no anxiety for the future or the present, are very contented
and happy. The great event in the simple annals of their lives is the arrival of a ship,
and of all ships a man-of-war. Sometimes they are six or even twelve months without
sighting a sail, and men-of-war do not usually appear much oftener than once in four
or five years, if as often nowadays. They are said to lead moral lives, and open
quarrels of any kind are much more unusual amongst them than in that Eahama isle of
which Mark Twain gives so ludicrous, if perhaps, not strictly " reliable " a description.
They have no established form of government, but a retired whaling captain, an old man,
was in 1877 the general arbiter to whom they referred all disputed questions. His opinion
is looked up to with profound respect, and from his decision there is usually no appeal.
Their food is pork, fish, fowls, onions, isotatoes, &c., and what they can obtain from
passing ships in exchange for their own commodities. At present there are — according to
Mr. Corrie, who in 1S77 presented a Report on the island to the Admiralty — about 10
or 50 acres under cultivation, and some 150 to 200 under grass. The ianiilies each
cultivate their four or six acres, growing potatoes, maize, onions, tobacco, and obtaining
their animal food by either killing their domestic fowls, cattle, or pigs, or hunting the
wild ones in the bush.
The hunting, indeed, of these wild pigs affords the chief amusement of the islanders.
One of the first things which strikes any one landing is the number of ferocious-
looking dogs, either chained or loose, though in reality their character quite belies their
appearance, most of them being very docile brutes of various crosses. They are the
"hunters," while those which are secured are more of the bull-dog type, and are called
"holders." The pig-hunter has at least three dogs, two "finders" and one "holder."
"The finders seek for and bring the pig to bay. The hunter is guided by their cry, and
hastens to the spot, having the holder in leash. "When near enough the holder is slipped,
and at once, at the risk of being torn open, should it be a boar, or severely bitten, if
a sow, it takes hold of the pig by the ear; one of the other dogs then, if good, some-
times seizes the other ear. This is the moment for the hunter, who, watching the
opportunity, rushes in, and, taking the animal by the leg, overturns it, and planting his
84 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
foot on its neck, the moment he can make his dogs let go, plunges his knife into the
throat, and the hunt is over." Of course, should the dog not have pluck enough to hold
on a sufficient length of time, or quit hold before the hunter is quite ready to stick the
pig, the chances are that it will turn round on its pursuer, and in a trice the positions
of hunter and hunted are reversed. A rough game of cricket and a "hand" at euchre
seem about their only other pastimes. They have no doctors, and hence, as might be
expected, do not require any. There is no cemeteiy, each family burying their relatives
on isolated little spots of ground selected by themselves. Beyond suspending all work
and amusement on the Sunday they have no form of religion. They have few books,
the small library they possessed having been burnt some years ago, and as yet a Church
dignitary has not considered the Howites worthy of his attention. The only complaint they
made to their last visitors was that they had no schoolmaster, and as ships rarely visit
them now they were often in want of clothing. Once on a time Howe Island was a
great resort of whalers to procure wood, water, and fresh provisions to enable them to
prosecute their voyage without the necessity of going into port. In these palmy days as
many as sixty or eighty vessels would touch there in the course of the year, and
accordin<Tly it not unfrequently happened that the island had English news from American
ships some weeks before the same was known in New South Wales. It is believed that
the first settlers were three white men and three Maori women, who came in 1834. But
finding that they could make but little money they soon left. A doctor lived there for
three years, and whalers were in the habit of calling there and staying for a short period
as a sort of holiday " run ashore." In 1835 there were only nine people on the island.
In 1853 they had increased to sixteen, and in 1877 there were forty; but this number
seemed to have dwindled down to twenty-five, which was tbe census at the latest date.
Five years ago a ketch left the island for Sydney with eight souls on board, but was
never heard of again. Gradually the place will get depopulated. The inhabitants have become
disheartened, owing to the few ships which touch at their quiet home. They are naturally
attached to a place whore many of them were born, and dread going out again into the
great world ; but with their produce rotting in their barns, and their kinsmen having
apparently forgotten them, there will certainly not be much attraction in Lord Howe
Island for another generation. This rich spot is, however, capable of supporting three or
four hundred people, and it is just possible may in time become of more importance than
it is at present. To whom does it belong ? It would be perhaps cruel to suggest to the
many kingdomless kings who figure in the Almanack de Gotlia that here is the ideal
monarchy where Bismarck must cease from troubling, and princelings may be at rest.
Still, when there are as many candidates for an elective crown as there are for the hall-
portership of a City Company, it seems peculiar that no one has as yet dreamed of
hoistins his fla"" over the fair little isle which bears the name of the victor of Ushant.*
Ball's Pyramid (p. 82), a lofty cone rising sheer out of the sea,t is situated not far
from Lord Howe Island, and bears the name of the discoverer of that microcosm, and
* Corrie : "A Visit to Lord Howe Islanil" [Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXII., pp.
136—143).
+ TUcro is .1 good illustration of it in Palmer's "Kidnapping in the South Seas" (p. 127).
BALL'S PYRAMID ; NORFOLK ISLAND.
85
still farther south lies Norfolk Island, 900 miles east from Australia, and 300 miles due-
north of the North Cape of Australia. It contains an area of only 13i square miles,
and even the whole of this space cannot be utilised, as the surface, though as a rule
tolerably level, is broken by some hills, of which Mount Pitt — 1,050 feet above the sea —
is the highest. As a rule the soil is fertile, and water is everywhere plentiful. Norfolk
Island might, however, have remained unknown to fame were it not for two circum-
stances. Up to the year 17SS it was totally uninhabited, when a few settlers were
despatched from New South "Wales. Then a couple of hundred convicts were sent to keep
POLYNESIAN FISHHOOKS.
1. Large New Zealand Carved Fishhook, of Red Pine, or Rata-wood, and Human Bone, jagged edge: with Line complete.
2. Hook from Honolulu, Sandwich Islands— Mother<if- Pearl and Shark's Tooth, with Brush; perfect specimen. 3. Hook from
Navigator's Islands (Samoa)— Pearl, with backing of Cocoa.nut, Human Bone, and Line ; complete example. 4. Pearl Hook,
from Samoa ; also 5 and 6, smaller specimens in front, of different shapes. These Hooks are for capturing the Bonito, Sword
Fish, Abicore, Ray, Zebra Fish, &c.
them company, but in 1807 the convict establishment was broken up. However, in 1825,
it was again made a penal station, and henceforth, until "transportation" was finally
abolished, Norfolk Island became an evil proverb, owing to the character of its inhabi-
tants— the most hardened of criminals, corrupting even to the convict settlement and
the rascaldom of New South Wales. Yet Norfolk Island, viewed from the sea, is a
picturesque spot, rock-bound in some places by high basaltic pillars. Even with
boats it is difficult to approach the island, on account of the surf, except at Sydney
36 THE COUXTRIES OF THE -WOKLD.
Bay and the Cascades, but the interior of the ishmd is peculiarly charming, the hills and
valleys, clothed with fine grass, and scattered here and there with clumps of the noble
Norfolk Island pine {Ai-aucaria e.rcelan) , so that it looks like one grand park. There is
an avenue of these trees a mile and a half long, and unequalled in beauty. " Sheep and
cattle," writes Mr. Hood, "sleek and comfortable-looking, are seen in all directions,
revelling in the abundant pastures; and wild turkeys, fowls, and pigs find luxurious
abodes mider the .shelter of the thick groves of guava, lemon, and loquat trees, from
whicli one disturbs large flocks of pigeons, descendants of the imported dovecot breed. "^
Of late years, as already noted, Norfolk Island has got a population more in keeping
with its soft surroundings. The Pitcairn islanders proceeded thither in 1S50, impelled by
necessity, though they left the beloved isle of their birth with tearful eyes, to seek a
new home :3,000 miles from their old one. At that time they numbered 194, and were
all safely landed by H.M.S. Blordi/sJiire on the ^th of :May. In 1864, Mr. Nobbs, their
" chaplain," reported that they had increased to 248 persons, nearly equal as to sex, and
up to that date — in eight years — there had been 117 births and 2G deatll:^. In 1871
the Pitcairn community was 297, secessions having taken place in the interval (p. 7S), but
several other settlers had made their appearance, for the whole population of the island
was, eight j-ears ago, 481, a number which has since been increa.sed, though the Pitcairn
people keep clannishly to themselves, not intermarrying much with the other colonists.
A recent visitor to the island remarks that " one of the loveliest spots on earth is now
occupied by perhaps the most moral and well-behaved community in existence, after having
been for fift}^ years a blot upon the face of creation ; the abode of criminals of the
deepest dye, of whom endless tales might be recounted, which would only serve to make
the blood run cold. One could not but feel a wish, as we passed up the street, that the
great old prisons, with their dismal emblems of punishment, and their hundred dungeons,
were levelled with the ground, and every trace of the former history of Norfolk Island
obliterated." Phillip Island — a little islet off Norfolk — is noted as the former haunt of
the now extinct "Phillip Island Parrot" [Nestor prududus). The place of this bird has
been taken by raljbits, which have, at the last accounts, eaten up every scrap of vegetation
within their reach, converting the islet into such a bare mound, that the wonder is how
they manage to exist.
The Kermedecs consist of several small rocky basaltic isles, 400 miles north-east cf
New Zealand. Sunday Island, though the largest of them, is only twelve miles in
circumference. Its highest point is 1,(527 feet above the sea level, and rugged and
unattractive-looking Ihough it seems, until recently an American family lived on it.f
• "Voyage of H.il.8. Fawn,'' quoted Ijy Angas : " Pol)-nesia," p. -JiCi.
+ Spry: lih. cit., p. 143; Boddham-Whefham : "Pearls of the Pacific:" Gill: '"Songs from the Pacific," and
"Life in the Southern Isles;" V'ongc: "Life of Bishop Pattcson;" Brassey : "Voyage of the Siiiikaiii ; ''
Campbell: "Log Letters fi-om the Challenger;" Wylde : "Voyage of the Challenger;" Turner: "Nineteen Years
in Polynesia ; " Forbes: "Two Years in Fiji;" Williams: "Fiji and theFijians;" Semper: "Dio P:i!au.Inseln; ''
Beechey: "Zoologj' of the Pacific, &c., during the Voyage of H.M.S. Jilossom, 182.5-28," &c. i:c.
SJ
CHAPTER YII.
New Zealand : Its Genekal CuABACTEitisTrcs.
Leaving behind the " summer isles of Eden/-" we arrive at a country greater than all
of them, and though it may not luxuriate, as they do, in the glories of coral strands
and tropical vegetation, it is a region where the white man can more fittingly find a
home. Here the soil yields abundantly, but yet not so exuberantly as to render toil
unnecessary. Here is sunshine, but also the clouds which render the sunshine a something
to be enjoyed, a land where the temperature is not so severe as to chill all energy, save
that of keeping oneself warm, bat yet not mild enough to induce the sleepy languor of
the Hawaiian or Tahitian Isles. In a word, we come to New Zealand, an English colony
with a great future, and one eminently fitted for the abode and increase of the English
race. In our voyage round the world we have had to touch at several British colonies.
First we came to Canada, which is scarcely a colony, but a viceroyalty of England —
and more. Then we visited the West Indies and British Honduras. But tropical colonies
can never be Lesser Britains : here the Englishman may come, make money if he can,
but he does not make them his altiding place. He returns " home " to spend the dividends,
the rents, or the rupees which he has accumulated by moiling under equator suns.
He is not a colonist — only a resident in a country not England, though, accidentally,
it may be, under the English flag, and which has been to him a foreign laud. In
the Falkland Islands we have also met colonists — after a kind, and in the Fijis is such
another dependency of F^ngland as is Belize and British Guiana, only a little more healthy.
But in New Zealand, for the first time, we find a real British colony — that is, a colony
in which not only the vast majority of the inhabitants are of English birth or origin,
but where the English race can also live and perpetuate itself. New Zealand, in many
respects, is Vjetter fitted to become another England than any other colony of Britain.
Indeed, so well are the colonists aware of this, that with the usual kindly exaggeration of
our kin beyond the sea, they have designated their country " Great Britain of the South." lu
the first place, it is the most distant of all our so-called dependencies, though one of the
nearest, in point of resemblance, to our islands. This gives the colonists a self-reliance
which is wanting in countries lying contiguous to those on which, in emergencies, they
may rely. The New Zealander — and the same may be said of all the Australasians —
cannot always be "turning tail" on the colony in disgust: he must remain and make the
best of his bargain, and, as a rule, he does remain, and fares as well as men so situated
will do. AVhen the New Zealander — I am not going to inflict on the reader that tiresome
sketcher of the ruins of St. Paul's— comes " home," he has sent his roots deep enough into
the soil to render the colony be has temporarily left more to him than the land he
is now visiting. New Zealand is not only far away from the mother country, but it
MAP OF NEW ZEALAND.
NEW ZEALAND: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
89
is also distant from any other laud of importance. A thousand miles of ocean lie between
it and Australia. This circumstance, and also the fact of its having one of the most
extensive seaboards possessed by any country in the world, will inevitably make the New
Zealanders of the future an even more self-reliant and maritime race than they are at
present. The climate, though perhaps not so agreeable, take it all in all, as that of
Tasmania, is yet, on the whole, better suited for men requiring to lead an active life,
and for the development of a robust, ruddy race. Owing to the north and south extension
of the islands for 900 miles, tliere is a considerable variety of climate. The south has
a temperature not unlike that of the south of England, and the north — of course, at the
antipodes the portion nearest the equator, and therefore the hottest — somewhat similar
BVXEDIX IX 1870.
to that of the countries lying around the Mediterranean. In New Zealand, as in all the
southern hemisphere, mainly owing to the disproportionate amount of sea to land, the
extremes of temperature are not so great as in the northern hemisphere, nor between
winter and summer are there such differences.
Geneeal Geography axd Feattjhes.
New Zealand is the name of a country, not of any particular island (p. 90). The
colony, in reality, is composed of three large islands and an infinity of subsidiary small ones,
including the almost Antarctic Auckland, Macquarie, and Campbell, and the western outlier,
Chatham, which, in size, is really as large as Stewart's Island. These detached specks were
doubtless at one time all integral parts of one continental land-mass. The islands, however,
usually included in the colony are the North Island, the Middle, or South, Island, and
the real South Island, lying south of this, but much smaller, viz., Rakiura, or Stewart's
132
90 THE COrXTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Island. The latter is at present very sparsely- occupied chiefly by the native Maoris
and half-castes, though the Government is attempting to form a settlement there,
and induce Europeans to come and catch the abundance of fish which abound in the
neighbouring' seas, as well as the excellent oysters — equally plentiful. The area of these
three islands* is almost equal to that of Great Britain and Ireland, viz., 10^,000 square
miles, with a length of l,l:iU miles, and an average breadth of 1'20 miles. At no part
do they attain to a greater width than ~oO miles, and at one jwiut (Auckland), the
two coasts are separated by only six miles of land.
New Zealand is now divided into counties, but up to 1S75 the colony was a con-
federation of nine provinces, each province being autonomous, having its own Legislature,
olHcials, and Superintendent, or Lieutenant-Governor, elected by the votes of the
people of the province. This system of government has now been abolished, and the
islands own but one Governor, and one legislature, but the provinces still remain as
geographical facts, and when, in subsequent sections, we have occasion to examine the
country more in detail, we shall take these as convenient bases on which to found our
descriptions. Everybody still talks of certain districts by their old provincial names, and
as many of these provinces were settled by peculiar classes of colonists, they will continue
to have certain characteristics of their own, in addition, of course, to those physical
features which Acts of the General Assembly cannot alter, albeit, in a new country, it
can rapidly effect almost anything else. These provinces we shall accordingly' describe
more fully by-and-by, but meantime, as they must often occur in the following pages,
it may be as well to mention briefly the names of their old political divisions. Auckland
occupies a considerable portion of the north of the North Island, extending from coast
to coast. Hawke's Bay and Taranaki lie respectively on its south-east and south-west,
while south again from these, extending from east to west, is Wellington, the cajjital
town of which of the same name being the colonial seat of government. Cook's Strait
separates the Middle (or South Island) from the northern one. Its most northern pro-
vinces are Nelson and Marlborough, lying on the east and west; Westland runs some
distance down the west coast, till it reaches the most northern boundary of Otago ; Canterbury
lies on the east coast between Marlborough and Otago, and Otago extends from shore
to shore to the south. Its southern extremity is called Southland : this was, at one
time, a separate province, but before the abandonment of the provincial form of government,
it was united for administrative purposes with Otago. Auckland, Napier, New Plymouth
(p. 90), Nelson, Greyniouth and Ilokitiki, Picton and Blenheim, Christchurch, Duuediii
(p. 89), and Invercargill, are the chief towns respectively of Auckland, Hawke's Baj',
Taranaki, Nelson, Westland, ]\Iarlborough, Canterbury, Otago, and Southland. At the
census of March 3rd, 1S7S, the population of the whole islands, exclusive of 15,001)
•Here I must take an opportunity of thanking Sir Julius Vogol, Agent-General for the Colony, and
formerly its Premier, for his polite attention in supplying me with a series of official and other dotuments,
including an excellent article liy himself on New Zealand. These, and numerous other works, have been con-
sulted in the preparation of this sket(.'h, though, of the 600 or 700 puhlications on the colony, I can pretend
to a knowledge of but a small portion. JIany of the data have also been revised by prominent colonists,
either b) letter or through personal communications.
KEW ZEALAJfD: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 91
aborigines, numbered 41J,il2, scattered over an area of 102,000 square miles, though, in
reahty, over less, as two-thirds only of the country are fitted for grazing and agriculture;
the North Island containing about 4.J.,000 square miles, the Middle Island 57,U(J0, while
Stewart's Island has an area of only 1,000 square miles. In 18.51, when the first census
was taken, exclusive of Maoris, the population was 26,707. In 18.58, it had risen to
59,413, showing, in seven years, an increase of 122 per cent. Three years later it had
risen to 99,022, and, in 1871, to 299,.51k At the date of the latter census, of the
65,858 dwellings in the colony, 1,967 w^ere entered as simply "tents," and 2,516 of
"cob," sod, &c. At the present time the number of Chinese cannot be less than 6,000,
for, in 1871, there were 4',816 of them in the country, including two females.
What distinguishes New Zealand over most new countries is the great extension which
railways have taken. Roads are a first requisite of any new country, but roads are
necessarily slow means of communication between one part of the country and another,
and ordinary roads, moreover, unless when this is exacted in the shape of grudgingly
given tolls, return no interest on the capital sunk in the making of them. The states-
men who of late years have controlled the affairs of New Zealand, took a bolder view
of the situation, and determined at once to have railways, and railways they have, to an
extent which the colony has every reason to be proud of. No doubt these railways havo
not been made for nothing; on the contrary they have given the colony that luxury of
older governments — a national debt of twenty millions. Doubtless, also, there are some
who will shake their heads over this go-ahead policj^ of Sir Julius Yogel — for to him its
execution, if not inauguration, is due — and prophesy dire things for the future of New
Zealand. At present the colonists ai-e taxed heavily — and some sanguine souls are even
proud of this — but they have something to show for the revenue paid to their Govern-
ment, though, say the men of little faith, all this will go on verj' well until the credit of
the colony is exhausted, and the crown lands are all disposed of. Then will come chaos.
However, hitherto there have been no signs of this, for the revenue has increased rapidly,
and as good roads through a country constitute a great attraction to colonists, in so far
that it permits them to get their products cheaply and rapidly to market, and renders the
cost of supplies not ruinous to a settler a few miles away from a seaport, where the cost is
only a little over that of the European city from which they were brought. Moreover, the
curse, the danger, indeed, of all new countries — our colonies among others — is parochialism.
The interests of one part of the country get in time, owing to its distance from another,
entirely local. It objects to pay taxes from which it can see no return, and which,
moreover, it suspects to be spent at or around the capital, hundreds of miles away. To
this cause is owing the multiplicit}^ of South American republics, and, it may be added,
the endless revolutions which afflict these unhappy political caricatures. To the jealousies
engendered by separation and distance are also due the various Australian colonies, and
their unwillingness to confederate, an unwillingness which is also even more mischievously
displayed in South Africa. Let us, however, take Australia as an instance. Victoria
insisted on breaking off from New South Wales, because the settlers near Port Phillip
conceived — and rightlj- — that their interests were not very well attended to by a legislature
and officials whose homes were in Sydney. In like manner the South Australians had a
9:J THE COrXTRIES OF THE WORLU.
dislike to be taxed, and their taxes spent by Jlelbourne bureaucrats. Hence arose another colony
with its seat of Government at Adelaide. Queensland was also an outcome of this feeling.
The Moreton Bay revenue was, the ^loreton Ba}- people considered, not sufficiently spent on
and under the control of ^loreton Bay squatters and shopkeepers, and thus a third offshoot
from New South Wales was added to the Australian Dominion. But this subdivision is not yet
at an end, for the Cape York settlers are already beginning to grumble at the way Brisbane
PORT MOERAKI.
lords it over them, and as a colonist soon makes his voice felt, a fresh autonomy is quite
ariong the possibilities. And so it was in New Zealand. The provinces were in reality separate
colonies, and were rapidly intensifying their jealousy of each other, so that in time con-
federation or fusion would have been difficult. But the railway policy tied them together,
and is diminishing their rival interests. This railway policy is important, for on it really
hangs the future of the country' — financial and otherwise. The originator of it has met
with so much opposition that it is only fair to hear what he has to say for himself.
This I am in a position to supply in the following j/jrc'c/.* .- — In 1S70 the population was
24'8,000. This was a time of extreme depression in the colony. The Imperial Government
removed from the colony all the Imperial troops. The colonists were confronted with
NEW ZEALAND: ITS RAILWAYS.
93
tlie probability of i-enewed disturbances with the natives, besides having to bear very heavy
pecuniary burdens resulting from previous difficulties of the same character. The native
question in the past had absorbed the lion's share of attention. The heroic work of
colonisation had halted in consequence. The pioneers of Otago and Canterbury had, it is
true, done a great deal in the way of making roads and bridges, and a railway system
of an important character had been commenced in Canterbury and Southland. There was
•n'AIAMAKAUlA VIADlfT Ol' THE CITAGO U. N. RAILWAY.
no want of desire for more railways, but hitherto the colony had given no assistance to
such works ; the native question absorbed too much attention. The colonists, left to them-
selves, adopted a new course. They determined that the whole strength of the colony's credit
must be used to open up the means of communication, to promote settlement, and to
increase by emigration the population. They argued that only by settlement could the
Maori difficulty be met, and that for the rest the lands of the colony were fertile enough
to warrant any expenditure necessary to open them to the operation of human energy.
At the time we speak of (1870), New Zealand had fewer railways than probably any other
civilised country. The short interval of nine years sees it in the possession of a larger
extent of railway in proportion to its population than any country in the world. The
94
THE COUXTIUES OF THE WORLD.
Government i>f the neighbouring' colony of Victoria recently cited the following statistics,
which, it will be seen, heal- out the statement just made: —
The introduction of j^opulation was a cardinal feature of the policy adopted by the
colonists. Superior to any feeling of jealousy of the new-comers, they have spent during
the eight years some £1,250,000 in assisting 93,000 human beings to emigrate to their
shores. The total poj)ulation has increased by more than 60 per cent. The work of the
eight years, then, has been the opening of over a thousand miles of railway, the increase
of population described, and the construction of some 2, .500 miles of ordinaiy road, chiefly
through native districts. One of the most welcome results has been the disappearance of
the Maori difficulty. With work open to them, with a knowledge of the value of their
lands, and with an awakened comprehension of the advantages of peaceful life, they have
aided instead of retarded the progress the colony has made on the path of settlement.
The North Island is not so completely colonised as the South Island. As yet there is not
a through railroad between Wellington and Auckland. But the last questions with the
Maoris which stand in the way of the completion of this work are disappearing, and the
North Island promises in the future to become as prosperous, and to support as large a
population, as the South Island.
Naturally the pecuniary results from the northern railway's are less than those of the
south. During the year ending the 30th of June last the railways in the South Island
yielded, over and above working expenses and the cost of fully maintaining them in a good
condition, a profit of 2-G5 per cent, on the whole outlay. It is since the 30th June last
that the railway has been completed through from Christchurch to Dunedin, and even now
there is a gap between Dunedin and Invercargill. During the year, therefore, the result
of which has been slated, the railways were open only in fragments of different lengths,
NEW ZEALAND: ITS AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE.
92
auJ the result must be considered very good. The results iu the North Island are not
as yet so favourable. There the railways are more fragmentary than in the south, and
the settlement of the country is less advanced; but there is no reason to doubt that the
returns will improve. It must, however, be borne in mind that when the railways were
commenced it was not expected that for some time they would yield a profit.
It is not without a purpose we have dwelt so much on the history of the last few
years. It is necessary to be aware of the facts disclosed iu order to understand the
present condition of the country. The construction of the railways and increase of
population have created a large demand for land, and its price has gone up very much in
consequence. The demand has not been of a speculative character. It has been based on
actual results, and enormously as the value has increased, it is still considered far below
the i^rice which it should command on the basis of its productive yield. The following
figures show the returns from crops for the four years ending 1$7(3, irrespective of land
laid down in English grass, of which there were 2jl85,.34i acres in 1877: — *
1873.
1874.
1575.
1876
Total cultivation, acreage
yif^,^. < Acres
I Bushels
( Acres
°''' • I Bushels .
1 Acres
^'^^'■>' ( Bushels .
376,156
132,428
3.391,634
110,472
3,292,807
22,124
606,492
549,844
105,674
2,974,330
157,545
5,548,729
16,236
477,162
607,138
90,804
2,863,619
168,252
6,357,431
27,656
901,219
787,824
141,614
4,054,377
150,717
4,707,836
27,679
801,379
The mere sightseer, who first lands iu New Zealand, is disappointed. He has journeyed
many thousands of miles to see strange sights — and he has seen them. Most probably he
has crossed the American continent at its broadest part, and has looked on the varying
panorama which passes before the passenger who speeds by rail across the United States
from New York to San Francisco. At the Sandwich Islands he witnesses another, and
a widely different phase of life and scenery, comprising all the soft beautj' of the
tropics. At the Fijis he is again on British ground, but black men instead of brown
meet his eye, and a landscape even more tropical than that of Hawaii surrounds the
" travelled man from foreign lands." In Australia the surroundings are more British.
Melbourne, or Sydney, are only little, but more pleasing, Londons ; but once in the bush — ^the
country in the Antipodes is always "bush," even though there should not be a shrub in
sight for twenty miles — he knows that he is in a land lying under strange stars. But
when he f^oes ashore in New Zealand — say at the Bluffs, the seaport of Southland, and
runs thence by rail to Invercargill, he imagines that he has been dreaming, and tluit Britain
is but a few hours away, instead of two months' as rapid travelling as the science
of the nineteenth century can supply. Mr. Anthony Trollope's record of his impressions
* From an article on the colony contributed hy Sir Julius Yogel to the Ghk (T:Ondon), Novoniher 27, 1878,
corrected hy him, and communicated to the author of this work.
I
O
o
E-
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55
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lilllmlMr:fiiiliiii:ii;iii],,;,ii[iii'iii[[iiii;iiiliiiliiili'iiii:''"iiiiiiiiiii.
NEW ZEALAND; FIRST UIPKESSIOXS.
97
of such a journey may be familiar to some of my readers, and express the feeling which
has been often expressed by other visitors less capable of describing them. Coming ashore
at The Bluff, the famous novelist found that he might as well have asked to see a moa
— the great bird which, in former times, used to stalk about these islands (p. 9S) — as
a Maori. The scenery was wild — not unlike that of the west coast of county Cork —
but the land was poor. Hills were all around, and mountains in the distance. Nothing
could be more unlike Australia ; and though New Zealand is popularly associated in our
minds with Australia, it may be as well to say once for all that i)erhaps no two countries
are more widely different than the northern collection of colonies and tlie southern one. " The
two countries both grow wool, and are both auriferous. Squatters and miners are common
A MAORI C.UIVED CLVB.*
to them. But in all outward features they are dissimilar — as the}- are in the manner of
the people, and in the forms of their government. I found myself struck for a moment
with the peculiarity of being in New Zealand. To Australia generally I had earlj- reconciled
myself, as being a part of the British empire. Of New South T\'ales and Van Diemen's
Land I had heard so early in life, as to have become quite used to them, so tbat I did
not think myself to be very far from home when I got there. But New Zealand had
come up in my own days, and there still remained to me something of the feeling of
awful distance, with whicb, at that time, I regarded the young settlement at the Antipodes —
for New Zealand is, of all inhabited lands, the most absolutely Antipodean to Greenwich.
* This club 13 composed of scoriaj from Mount Egmont, and was foiinil, in 185o, by the artist, Mr. William Strutt,
in the bush of the Mangorei district, five miles from the base of the mountain. The design of the club is the
body of a lizard with head of a man, the latter forming the handle. On the opposite side is also an adaptation
of the lizard, with a human skidl for head. The length of the club is 11. | inches.
133
9S THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
I i-cmcmberoa the first appearance in public of the grim jokes attributed to Sydney Smith,
as to the cold curate, and the hope expressed that Bishop Selwyn might disagree with
the cannibal who should eat him. The colony still retained tor me something o£ the
mysterious vagueness with which it was enveloped in early days, so that when landing
at The Bluff, I thought that I had done something in the way of travelling. Melbdurne
had been no more than New York, hardly more than Glasgow, certainly not so nuuh as
Vienna. But if I could find myself in a Maori pali, then, indeed, the flavour of the
dust of Pall Mall would, for the time, depart from me altogether. Most travellers have
experienced the feeling — have anticipated a certain strangeness which they have never
achieved. But when I reached Invercargill, I felt exactly as I might have felt on getting
out of a railway in some small English town, and by the time I had reached the inn,
and gone through the customary battle as to bedrooms, a tub of cold water and supper,
all the feeling of mystery was gone. I began to inquire the price of tea and sugar,
and the amounts of wages which men were earning, Init had no longer any appreciation
of my Antipodean remoteness from the friends of mj' youth." Xor, indeed, need this be
a matter of surprise. New Zealand towns — owing to the climate being so much more
like that of England than the climate of Australia — are very similar to the towns we
are familiar with on this side of the globe. In the New Zealand bush the dull-coloured
foliage of the gimi-tree forests no longer meets the eye, as it does over a great portion of
Australia. Wood is, indeed, in places, very expensive, owing to its scarcity. Again, though
we all know the Australian apteryx — or strange wingless bird which figures in its coat of arms
— the visitor will be woefully disappointed if he expects to catch a glimpse of one out of the
carriage window as he runs up from The Bluff to Invercargill, or from Port Chalmers to
Dunedin. He sees no animal not fiimiliar to him : though, of course, should he be a
zoologist or a botanist, he will not fail to detect a thousand minutise which do not strike
the glance of a layman. The introduced animals and plants are killing off the native
ones, just as the whites are displacing the Maoris. For instance, in the populated distrcts
the native rat has all but disappeared before the English one, and the so-called New
Zealand '• llax" is getting exterminated indirectly 1)y the agency of the Dutch clover. The
latter introduction grows among the flax plants, and the cattle, in order to get at it, rush into the
bush and break down the " flax," which is accordingly disappearing over considerable districts.
But with the doubtful exception of the rat, there is no (juadruped which is native. The
kangaroos, platypus, and other curious mammals of Australia, are as unknown on these
islands as are the dingoes, or native dogs, which are such pests to the squatters in the former
country. The birds of New Zealand are more peculiar, though the moa is now only
represented by the skeletons and even eggs which are found over the country, though
some will have it that they are still in existence— a statement which rests on no foundation
of fact, though there can be but little doubt that these gigantic birds, twelve to fourteen
feet in height, existed in the country long after the Maori race arrived from some of
the Polynesian Islands. But the parrots, cockatoos, laughing jackasses, native com-
l)anions, lyre birds, and bell birds, so characteristic of Australia, find no representatives
in New Zealand. Everything, to the freshly-arrived traveller, looks like the land he has
left, supposing he has come, as have most of the colonists, from England, directly by
XEAV ZEAI^YNL): GKXEKAL CHAEACTEEISTIGS. 99
sea. " Everytliing- is English. Tlie scenery^ the colour and general appearance of the
waters, and the shajje of the hills are altogether un-Australian, and very like to that with
which we are familiar in the west of Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. The
mountains are brown and sharp and serrated, the rivers are bright and rapid, and the
lakes are deep and blue, and bosomed among the mountains. If a long-sleeping Briton
could be awaked, and set down among the Southland hills, and told that he was travelling
in Galway or Cork, or in the west of Ross, he might easily be deceived, though he knew
the nature of these countries well ; but he would feel at once that he was being hoaxed
if he were told in any part of Australia that he was travelling among Irish or British
scenery."* Every British product prospers better here than at home. Bees swarm
more frequently, hens lay more eggs, and, as in Australia, ewes are more certain with
their lambs than with us. There are certain other colonists who also prosper much too
kindly for the colonists' comfort — weeds, to wit, and in an especial degree the thistle,
which was, either accidentally, or, as some will have, by enthusiastic Caledonians, introduced
into the country at an early date. The rabbit here, as in Australia, is already something
worse than a nuisance : it is an absolute pest to agriculture — a torment which bleeds the
farmei-'s profits by honeycombing his lands and cropping his scanty pastures. The owners
of " runs " do what they can liy sending the animals back to us in the shape of curried
rabbit in tins, but even then they multiply far faster than they can be destroj-ed. In
this juncture the legislature has stepped in, and by offering premiums for the destruction of
the "furry folk," paid out of assessments levied on the landholders, have tried to eradicate
them : just as, in a similar manner, the kangaroos and wallibies are being waged war
against in Queensland. Too little labour and too many rabbits may, in brief, be described
as the crooks in the New Zealand farmer's lot. Large tracts in Otago and Southland
are being brought to a state of barrenness by the action of the rabbits alone. FaN'oured
by climate and the bush-covered rocky nature of the country, the conies breed with great
rapidity, and soon depreciate the value of the land. Great difficulty is experienced
in keeping them out of the grass paddocks, and wherever they come they destroy the
pine and fruit-trees, rendering, as in some districts of Victoria, the country for the time
being absolutely barren. In that colony — and it may be cited as an example of what the
rabbit can do when it gets the upper hand — it costs 15s. per acre to clear the ground of
the vermin, in addition to the enormous loss entailed by the destruction of stock and
fertility. In one run of 29,000 acres in Southland, 26,000 rabbits were killed in four
months, a costly operation, since the skins were worth only lid. apiece, while they cost
•3d. to obtain. The presence of this immense number of rabbits on the estate reduced
the lambing of the flocks by 20 per cent. On twenty-four holdings in the southern part
of the island, during 1876, no less than 1,059,000 rabbits were destroyed. On the same
runs there were 153,000 sheep fewer than were shorn previously, and these runs produced
1,700 bales of wool less than they did formerly. That amount of wool, taken at a
moderate computation of £15 per bale, would give a return of £25,000, which, at 10
per cent., would represent a capital of £250,000. f No doubt, in time the colonists will
* Trollope : "Australia and New Zealand," Vol. II., p. 324.
+ The Times, Februarj- 6th, 1879.
100 THE COUNTRIES OF THE -WORLD.
be able to copo with this invading host, but meantime the fact o£ the host existing
ought to be known as a Hscal difficulty as well as a zoological actuality.
The foregoini; data will have given the leader some idea of the general characteristics
of New Zealand (.Map, p. S8).* These may be brieHy condensed into a very few words.
The coast line is, as a rule, much broken, especially that of the North Island, 1,500
out of the 4,000 miles of shore being credited to that part of the colony ; but the northern
and southern coasts of the Middle Island are also deeply indented, and on all the islands
there are good harbours. The islands are of volcanic origin, and very mountainous, and
amono- these mountains are a few active and many extinct volcanoes. In the North Island is
a central range, containing, among other peaks, Mount Ruapahu, 0,000 feet in height, and
capped with perpetual snow, and Tongariro, an active volcano 0,000 feet high. Along
the west coast of the Middle Island there are also high mountains, which, towards
the east, assume the form of table-lands and isolated peaks, culminating in Mount Cook,
13,200 feet in height. The Soutliern Island is comparatively low, the highest elevation
beino- 3,000 feet. In all the islands there are plains of considerable extent, but these are
more abundant in the Middle than in the Northern Island, which is to a considerable
extent covered with evergreen forests of fine trees, and tracts of farming land, with here
and there rich valleys. In the Middle Island, however, there are many excellent
areas of land, suited either for crops or for grazing purposes, and though the streams,
usually short and navigable only for a few miles from their mouths, are liable to
overflow from the melting of the snows, they supply abundance of water power. The
chief of those in the North Island is the Waikato River; in the Middle Island the Clutha,
Mataura, and AVaiau-ua (p. 121). There are numerous lakes, none of them of very large
size, but some exceedingly curious. Among the latter must be classed Lakes Rotomahana and
Rotorua, round which are numerous beautiful gej'sers, which throw up water of a tem-
perature of 214" Fahrenheit, and constitute one of tlie show places of the colony (p. 119).
The Provinces.
We shall now say a few words about each of the old political divisions, taking
them, however, in their geographical significance only. In the Middle Island (Te wai
pounamu) there are Otago, Canterbury, AVestland, Marlborough, and Nelson ; in the North
Island (Te ika a maui), "Wellington, Hawke's Baj', Taranaki, and Auckland.
OUujo contains about 15,500,000 acres, and is IGO miles long by about 105 in breadth.
Its general features we have already indicated, as being of a peculiar Scottish or west of
Ireland type. The scenery, both on the sea-shore and in the interior, is very varied, and
in the former region possesses the character of being, on the west coast, a succession of
sounds, fjords, or inlets, some of them of immense size, with great depth of water, and
quite land-locked, though at present unfrequented, save by the whalers, who still visit this
part of the world. Sir George Bowen describes these great arms of the southern ocean
as "cleaving their way through the massive sea wall of steep and rugged cliff far into
• In tliis map, tlie old rrovincial Divisions havo, for tlie reasons already given, tjcen marked.
i^''""i'i;r?> fc
5 ^
iHiV,.:
o
lOZ THE COUXTUIES OF THE WORLD.
the wild sulitude of the lofty mountains which form the Cordillera, or 'dividing- range/
of the Middle Island," and the highest peak of which (Mount Cook, p. 1 00) can be seen
in clear weather more than two hundred miles out to sea. IMilford Sound far surpasses
all the others in magnificence; but all these inlets, like the very similar ones of Norway,
British Columbia, and the western sides of other countries (Vol. I., p. 67), have many features
in common. Admiral Sir George Richards, who surveyed them, remarks that "a view of
the surrounding country from the summit of one of the mountains bordering the coast,
of from 1,000 to 5,000 feet in elevation, is perhaps one of the most grand and magni-
ficent spectacles it is possible to imagine ; and standing on such an elevation rising over
the south side of Caswell's Sound, Cook's description of this region was freshly called to
mind. He says : — ' A prospect more rude and craggy is rarely to be met with, for inland
appeared nothing but the summits of the mountains of a stupendous height, and consisting
of rocks that are totally barren and naked, except w^here they are covered with snow.'
We could only compare the scene around us, as far as the eye could reach, north to ^Milford
Haven, south to Dusky Bay, and eastward inland for a distance of sixty miles, to a vast
sea of mountains of every possible variety of shape and ruggedness ; the clouds and mist
floated far beneath us, and the harbour appeared no more than an insignificant stream.
The pirospect was most bewildering; and even to a practised eye, the possibility of
recognising any particular mountain, as a point, of the survey from a future station,
seemed almost hopeless." Anchorage it is almost impossible to find. Accordingly, as in
the corresponding fjords of British Columbia, vessels visiting these great inlets have to
"tie up" to pieces of rock, or to the trees which grow down near to the water's edge.
Sir George describes Pembroke Peak as rising over Harrison's Cove in Milford Sound to
the height of nearly 7,000 feet, covered with perpetual snow, and with a glacier reaching
down to within £,000 feet of the sea. The lower slopes of the mountains around are
covered with fine trees, and with tlie luxuriant and evergreen foliage of the tree fern and
other beautiful undergrowth of the New Zealand forests. Two permanent waterfalls, one
700 and the other 540 feet in height, add picturesque beauty to the gloomy and desolate
grandeur of the upper part of Milford Sound. " During a storm of wind and rain,
mingled with snow and sleet, which, though it was the middle of summer, raged during
three days of our stay, avalanches were often heard thundering down, with a roar as of
distant artillery, from the snow-fields above; while a multitude of foaming cascades poured
over the face of the lower precipices, hurling with them into the sea masses of rocks and
trunks of trees. On the other hand, nothing could exceed the charm of the few fine daj-s
which we enjoyed during our voyage." There are also many lakes and smaller rivers, but
the Clutha scarcely comes under the latter designation, for its length is estimated at 220
miles, and its discharge at ], 090,000 cubic feet per minute. There are great tracts of
forest land, though most of the timber easily accessible to a port or town has been
thinned out, and almost the entire western seaboard is a dense bush of fine trees.
The climate is peculiarly healthy, a fact attested by the number of strong healthy ruddy
children seen around every settlement and town, and the general prosperity of the province,
in si)ite of the invariable colonial grumble, is certainly as great as that of any other
part of New Zealand, which is equivalent to saying that Otago is blessed with peace
NEW ZEALAND: OTAGO ; CANTEKBrKY. 103
and rough jilenty. The industries o£ the j)roviuce are, in the first jalacej agriculture. Next
comes gold-digging, which is pursued over an area of 10,000 square miles, though it is
almost needless to say the whole of that immense acreage is not mined over, only '•' pros-
pected," and in which the digger is at liberty to "spot" any claim to which he may take
a fancy (p. 101). There are several considerable towns in the jirovince, but the only one
which need claim our attention is Dunedin, the capital not only of Otago, but in reality the
Largest and most important " city " in the colony. It has excellent buildings, public and
private schools, a university, and nearly every other institution which a town of its size
in the most enlightened country of Europe would possess, and though with a good deal of
the raggedness and want of finish common to towns in "new countries," is a really
handsome town, and one remarkable in more wa3's than one. At present it cannot have
a less population than 30,000. Otago was first settled by Scottish immigrants in
ISIS, and to this day it is the Scotland of the South. The chief residents are
from North Britain, " Macs " abound, and Scottish ways of life and thinking prevail.
Scottish thrift is seen everywhere, the university is only a second edition of that
in Edinburgh, while the gain of the Otago High School has been the loss of the one
in the "grey metropolis of the North," from which it has attracted its main strength.
Otago is a seaport, but the harbour is not capable of admitting large vessels ; hence
they anchor at Port Chalmers, seven miles distant, but from which there is a railway
to the capital.*
Canterhurii is an essentially English and episcopal province, just as Otago is a Scottish
and Presbyterian one. It was founded by ]\Ir. Gibbon Wakefield, Mr. Robert Godley,
Lord Lyttelton, and others, with the intention of its becoming a settlement of men and
women professing the tenets of the Church of England, and who were to live in comfort,
if possible, but certainly in the full profession of their faith. The history of the struggles
of the Canterbury Association to obtain the mastery over the Colonial Oflice, and to govern
their colony without regard to the views of the home Government, are interesting, and not
uninstructive, and form a bulky portion of the early chronicles of New Zealand. But
for our purposes it is enough to know in 1853 the settlement merged into the province
of Canterbury, and its distinctive history was soon after effaced. The colony has thriven,
bnt not on its origmal basis, and is as moral a settlement as exists in New Zealand,
though I am unable to learn that this is due in any appreciable degree to its original
ecclesiastical status. Indeed, as far as I can ascertain, Canterbury is not nowadays more p.
Church of England district than any of the other provinces, though, perhaps, the proportion
of people belonging to that denomination is large. Yet the number belonging to other
sects shows the impracticabilit}^ of "dictating to any community the religious convictions
* This and the various colonial sketches -n-hicli follow are not intended to ho exhaustive, or to supply the
special information required by emigrants. In the case of the Australasian colonies, this is perfectly unnecessary,
as all of them publish detailed handbooks and other information for the nse of intending settlers. They also
have Agents- General or Emigi-ation Agents in London, from whom such information can be readily obtained
in the latest and most official form. Not to enumerate other publications, the " Official Handbook of New-
Zealand" is an exhaustive treatise of this nature.
104
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
by whicli it shall be guidcil." lu the town of Christehurch there is not nearly so
stron" a Church bias as may be seen in any cathedral town in England, and there are
si-'iis that in a few years the very recollection of the province having originally been intended
as one of a single denomination will be lost to the colonists themselves, unless, indeed,
the foundations of a cathedral which remains unbuilt should perpetuate the memory of
a vani^^hed enthusiasm. The area of the province is 8,(593,000 acres, of which 2,500,000
constitute a great plain, sloping down to the sea. There are also other tracts capable of
cultivation, though a considerable portion of the country is hilly, the hills — as in the Banks,
Peninsula — being mostly the remains of extinct volcanoes. Christehurch, the capital of the
THE TVI OK PAESON BIRD (Prosthoimclfra Novce Zcatandiic) OF NEW ZE.VL.A.NU.
province, is built on a plain about five miles from the sea, on the banks of the little
river Avon. The Port is Lyttelton, connected with Christehurch by a railway, which
runs part of the way through a tunnel under the hills, this tunnel — made at the cost of
£200,000 — being rightly considered both by the New Zealanders and their visitors as an
extraordinary prnof of the energy of the colonists. Christehurch Mr. Trollope describes
as not so handsome a town as Dunedin — indeed, not a handsome town either positively
or comparatively — but comfortable and thoroughly English, as the New Zealand "cities"
more than those of any other colony are. Most of the houses and churches are built
of wood, l)ut as usually happens in the wooden constructed colonial towns, the banks
are fine stone buildings. "When I said that there was little in the province of Canterbury
— save the name— to remind the visitor of the history of its origin, I should have
excepted the name of the capital itself, and those of the streets in the capital, which
NEW ZEALAND; CANTERBURY.
105
are named in honour of various Cburcli of England bishops. Hence we have Gloucester
Street and Lichfield Street, Hereford Street and St. Asaph Street, Colombo Street and
Antigua Street, and as the Irish Church is especially honoured, Armagh, Tuani, and Cashtd
Streets. The country round Christchurch is especially English-looking, owing to the
CAKVED MONUMENT IS NEV ZEAI.A>-D.
fact of its being divided into English-looking fields, with English grasses and hedges.
What gives it an even more home-looking aspect is the presence in too luxuriant
profusion of the gorse, which, though only introduced a few 3'ears ago, has taken so kindly
to its new home, that to cheek its vagrant propensities adds greatly to the expenses of
the farmer. The Canterbury plains are not an interesting part of the country so far as
scenery is concerned, but from an agricultural point of view they form one of the finest
tracts in the whole colony. Here the modern Canterbury Pilgrims sate them down, and nowa-
134
]06 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
ilays the whole plain is dotted with paddocks containing some :20,0(i(l acres eacli, the grass
consisting of coarse tussocks, but capable of "carrying" two sheep to three acres, which
for aboriginal grass is a proof tli:it the soil which supports it is good. The country is,
however, brown and bare, and the great central range, with its rugged snow-capped peaks,
is too far away to relieve tiie monotony of the treeless expanse of country. There is in
these plains not a great amount of cultivated land, the corn land lying iliicily in
the river " bottoms," while the " squatters," anxious to prevent " free selectors " or
"cockatoos" from taking up ground for cultivation in the middle of their runs, have
bought the land for great stretches. Hence pasturage is still on the Canterbury Plains
the chief feature of the civilisation that has reached tluis far. The present price of land
in the province is -1-Os. per acre. At this figure it has been largely purchased
by " squatters," or graziers. Xow, in Australia, no squatter, as Mr. Trollope points out,
could afford to pay this figure for land on which to run his sheep. If he paid even
half that price, it would only be to keep off "free selectors." But in New Zealand
the climate is so different, that the squatter can sow his ground with English grasses,
knowing for certain that they will flourish as well as in the old country, and that as a
consequence the soil, instead of supporting only one, or even half a sheep an acre, will
"carry" five, six, or seven sheep, with a corresponding profit, which soon recoups him for the
£i an acre he has paid for his run. Still, Canterbury exports considerable quantities of
grain to the other provinces of New Zealand, and even to ^ ietoria and England.
Indeed, Canterbury is the chief wheat-growing province of New Zealand, the average
yield being 21 bushels per acre. Considerable quantities of barley and oats are also
raised, at the rate of, res])ectively, 19 and 2-Zh bushels an acre. The province may,
writes Mr. Maskell, be considered as divided into three longitudinal zones — the mountain
zone, almost wholly devoted to pasturage, the central, or plain zone, comprising all the
rest of the province, pastoral in those parts as yet unbought, agricultural in the rest,
and the peninsular or eastern zone, partly timber-producing forest, partly pastoral and
partly devoted to cheese-making and dairy-farming.
The climate of Canterbury is generally mild in winter, and with the summer
heats modified by cool breezes. In some years the province is visited with
severe droughts, lasting through the summer from September to April, but these are
exceptional. The meteorological tables "denote an equaljle climate peculiarly adapted
to Englishmen, and the effect of this is shown liy the fact that trees and plants frnm
home flourish with great luxuriance, while others, which an English winter would
destroy, grow without danger in the open air. It must be understood that the
above remarks apply chiefly to the eastern or lower part of the province; naturally,
amongst the mountains, and higher from the sea, the climate is somewhat changed. There
is more rain, more cold in winter and less heat in summer. But in no part can the
province be said to have a bad or inclement climate. In a report on the climate of New
Zealand by Dr. Hector, published by command in 1809, the annual mean temperature of
Canterbury for the eleven previous years is given as 55-1", and tlie mean annual rainfall
at Christcliurch for the same period, .•51-0.5(5 inches."*
• "Official Handbook of Xiw Zoaland," 2nd Edition, p. 127.
XEW ZEALAKD: WESTLAND ; lIAELBOROrCrH. 107
Wentland is one of the chief miuing districts of the country, and, in addition to
gold, exports considerable quantities of timber, which clothe the banks of its chief rivers,
the Grey and the Awarua; but along the rivers and lakes there is j^lenty of land fit
for agriculture and pasturage. Of the total area of Westland (4,44^ square miles), the
mountain ranges and forest lands occupy 2,813,lil acres; the rivers and lakes, 29,759
acres ; and open country, 173,800 acres, making in all ■3,0-1:5,700 acres. Coal is also
found, and all the rivers and bays of its southern part abound in fish. AA'hales are
caught off the coast, seals are frequently seen : the killing of these animals, and the
curing of fish, ought to be profitable occupations. The New Zealand "flax" [Pliormium
teiia.r, in reality a species of lih) grows in all parts of the country, but, except a little
used by the Maoris, this fine fibre has not been properly utilised hy the settlers, the
diflficulties of cleaning it of the resin being one of the chief obstacles in the way of
making this familiar product of the islands such an article of commerce as it might
otherwise become. Hokitika, the capital, is a thriving town, the centre of several
gold-fields, and in time will become the head-fjuarters of a mighty army of tourists,
attracted to it by the glorious scenery and the glaciers around ]Mount Cook, aljout which
Dr. Haast has written so enthusiastically and pourtrayed so well. " The climate of the
province is so uniform that the same clothing might be worn in the hottest day of
summer and the coldest day of \vinter," a fact, no doubt, strictly true, for I read it in
a Government document; albeit, the reader ought to bear in mind that in the literature
of emigration agents no colony in which they are interested has ever a merely reputable
climate ; it has always the " very best in the world," a statement that has of late
years lost somewhat of its early emphasis, since a sceptical world has learned to discount
the zeal of these imaginative gentlemen.
Marlhorovgli has a total area of 3,000,000 acres, of which :200,0O(l are "agricultural
land," 1,300,000 fitted for pasture, 50,000 acres forest land fitted for cultivation after
clearing, and the remainder hilly or mountainous country, heaA'ily timbered or of a rugged
and bleak aspect. The general aspect which the country presents is a succession of
parallel valleys and mountain ranges, some of them rich and loamy, covered with flax,
and in the drier portions and at the base of the hills with fern and tussock grass. Gold
is found in places, but the timber trade is as yet, with agriculture and grazing, the chief
occupation of the inhabitants, who are a great deal more prosperous than they will
allow to those who visit them, though perhaps not quite so flourishing as their official
historians announce in publications indited for the information of intending additions to
their number. Thej- export flax — and when I speak of "flax," I must be understood to
mean the Pliormivm tena.r — wotd, tallow, malt, hops, and timber. They also grow con-
siderable quantities of cereals ; but Marlborough cannot be styled an agricultural province,
though the climate is so equable that many plants which in England we must cultivate
in-doors, and even vines to some limited extent, can be grown in the open air. i\lr. Trollope
describes the scenery of the coast as very charming : headland after headland, and broken
bays, with rough steep mountains, coming sheer down into the blue waters. A voyager
feels, as he looks from the deck of a steamer on such a country, an irresistible desire to
lyg THE COTXTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
explore these weird valleys ami fjords ; and in spite of liis knowing that if he ascended
one brown hill he would only survey another in no appreciable degree different, he cannot
believe that the spot which meets his eye has a monopoly of what ever loveliness there may
be in the place. Picton was, at one time, the capital of the province, and is perhaps still,
in its own esteem and in those of visitors, the principal "city," but Blenheim was the
seat of the legislature before the consolidation of the provinces was brought about.
Picton, like most New Zealand ports, looks a pleasant ragged little town shut in between
the mountains and the sea, and surrounded by refreshing green fields and gardens,
and orchards which produce English fruit in the greatest profusion. Yet a visitor some-
times wonders how the place lives, though, if he is not anxious for an indignant remonstrance,
which reads like a statistical lecture, lie had better keep his (piery to himself. It is
isolated from the world, and has no road from anywhere to anywhere, except to Blenheim,
which is its rival, and little communication with the outer world, save by aid of the
steamers from Wellington and Nelson, which touch here once a week. Wool is its staple.
There are cjuite as many sheep in this little province as in Western Australia; and no
doubt the shipping of their wool, as well as the other products which we have mentioned,
manage to save the place from death. Yet the world seems to deal not unkindly with
the Pictonians. Their houses, shops, and gardens have "a general look of sleepy, well-
fed prosperity ; " and though there may be an occasional inward surprise as to where
the garments and the food come from, it is undeniable that the citizens of this and
other little New Zealand towns, which seem to the uninitiated visitor stagnant or decaying,
are well clothed and well fed.
From Picton the steamer route lies through Queen Charlotte's Sound up Admiralt}-
Bay, one of those wonderful land-locked harbours in which New Zealand abounds, and
through the French Pass on to Xelsoii, a settlement the name of which is more familiar
to English ears than that of Picton. It is the capital of the province of the same name,
so called in honour of the great English naval hero, and has had its ups and downs in
the chequered history of New Zealand. The general features of the country are bold
and grand mountains, with rich valleys, and a soft and genial climate. Cereals, potatoes,
hops, dairy produce, fruits of all kinds, wool, woollen cloth, leather, ropes, ale and porter,
" wines from the grape and other fruits," cider, the inevitable " flax," &c., are among
the articles which Nelson claims to contribute to the riches of the world. But in the
soil there is also great store of metals ; among tliese iron ore ranks first, and as coal and
limestone are found in close proximity, the Nelsonians not unreasonably consider that
they, or their cliildren, have a great future before them. Lead, copper, and gold are
also claimed, but as yet these have not come much to the front in mining statistics.
Nelson is a pleasant town, and one at which the disappointed traveller first begins to
get hopeful that at last he has not done his long voyaging for nothing. Here he does
see a few Maoris "loafing" about, and, after all, apparently not so unhappy as, on theoretical
grounds, these representatives of a vanishing race ought to be. Yet Nelson is not rushing
ahead at a rate which need alarm any one. It is prospering after a quiet, durable fashion,
as is also the province; but it is not likely for some time to attract great additions to
A MAORI CHIEF (UXTATTOOED).
s
]10 THE COUXTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
its i)ui>iilation. The land is good, but not particularly well farmed, and the greater portion
available for agrieullure has been sold. AVheat-growiug does not pay, unless a farmer
can o-et all bis labour done by his own family, and, as a consequence, Nelson did not —
whatever it may do now— a few years ago grow enough wheat for its own conpum]ition.
"But,"' writes a recent visitor, " though sleepy, it seemed happy. I was there about tlie
beginning of September — a winter month — and nothing could be sweeter or more pleasant
than the air. Tiie summer heats arc not great, and all English fruits; and grass and
shrubs grow at Nelson with more than English profusion. Every house was neat and
prettv. The site is, I think, as lovely as that of any town I ever saw. IMerely to
breathe there, and to dream and to look around, was a delight. Nobody seemed to be
either rich or poor — to be either great or humble. They manage themselves after a
sleepv, fat, and plentiful, rather than prosperous fashion, which is not without its
advantages in the world. Their children are generally well taught — and certainly
should be so, as there is nothing to pay for education. Every householder paj-s £1 per
annum towards the school, and for every child between five and fifteen the parents pay 5s.
a year, whether the child be at school or not. The payments are made as a matter
of course, and the children are educated. I was very much in love with Nelson during
the few hours that I passed there ; but it is not the place to which I would send a young
man to make a fortune" — which is the opinion of Mr. Authonj' TroUope, and possibly
is not very widely different from that of the Nelsonians themselves. But having
allowed the famous novelist to say so much in du])ious praise of the " city " and province,
it is cnlv fair that I should conclude this sketch of the IMiddle Island of New Zealand
with the opinion of ISlv. Elliot, one of the official compilers of a document which Sir
Julius Vogel has put into my hands. If this is not sufficient to make everj- sportsman
hie him Antipodes-ward, I am afraid colonial fine writing hits far wide of the mark.
" Any account of the province of Nelson would be incomplete without a notice of
the exceptionally fine climate enjoyed by Blind Bay, where the city of Nelson and the
older settled districts are situate. Not only has it a greater amount of fine weather
than any other spot in Now Zealand, but it escapes almost completely the south-east
and north-west gales which blow so frequently through Cook's Strait and on most parts
of the coast. The thermometer seldom rises to SO^' in summer, and the heat is nearly
always tempered l>y a refreshing breeze from the sea ; while in winter it rarely falls
below 30". The latter season is generally regarded as the most enjoyable portion of the
year, bright cloudless skies, a liracing atmosphere, and a soft gentle wind being its pre-
vailing character. The scenery of Blind Bay is universally admitted to be most pleasing.
Hugged, snow-clad mountains in the background, enclosing a large and fertile valley,
thickly studded witii comfortable homesteads, washed by the placid waters of the bay,
make up a picture which no written description can adequately pourtray. From its
earliest settlement. Nelson set an example to most of the other towns of the colonj- in
making provision for the convenience and well-being of its inhabitants. In self-imposed
taxation for making and maintaining its streets and roads, for city drainage and obtaining
a noble supply of water, and in establishing an admirable system of public education,
it took precedence of all other places. Nor has it been backward in other matters, which.
NEW ZEALAND: NELSON: WELLINGTON. Ill
though smiill in themselves, contribute largely to the enjoyment of life. The woods and
fields are alive with English song-birds, the skylark in particular being in greater numbers
than in any district in England. The sportsman, in the proper season, can fill his game-
bag with pheasants and quail within sight of town ; and the time is not remote
when deer-stalking may also be followed, as both fallow and red deer have been turned
out and are becoming numerous. Hares have been introduced, while rabbits, in places,
are in such numbers as to have become almost a pest. Something also has been done
towards stocking the rivers with trout and ponds with perch ; and the fisherman can
always be assured of sport, if he will seek it, in the rivers, creeks, and bays, as excellent
fish of numerous kinds abound on all parts of the coast. To families in easy circum-
stances, who desire a fine climate, with English society, and the advantage of being able
to get for their children a good education. Nelson offers singular attractions."
Hitherto we have concerned ourselves solely with the " South," or, as it in reality is,
the Middle Island of New Zealand. We now cross Cook's Strait, and arrive at the capital
of the colony, the " city " of Wellington, which was also, at one time, the capital of the
province of the same name, and are in the North Island. The province is so varied that
it is imjiossible to give any general description of it. Mountain and plain, forest and
open land, valleys with brawling rivers, and swampy lands around the borders of lakes,
might, in vague terms, be described as among some of the characteristics of Wellington
throughout the 7,;J00,000 acres which are included in it. Its southern coast-line extends
from Sinclair Head to Cape Pailiser, including Palliser Bay and Port Nicholson, stretching
from the shores of which is a fertile vallej- — that of Hutt — shut off from the open country
of the west coast by mountain ranges, which also, on the other side, divide it from
Waiarapea Plains. The best land naturally has long ago been taken up, as Wellington
first appears in colonial history in 1840, but there is still unoccupied ground which is oiien
to purchase, provided the settler is skilful with the axe, and not afraid of hard work
and a lonely life. But the province is essentially — so far as farming goes — a pastoral
one, the wheat and barley grown not being " by any means sufficient for local consumption."
In proportion to its area, Wellington is the most heavily timbered region of New Zealand,
and the least important so far as mineral riches are concerned. Coal and gold both exist,
but merely as mineral curiosities, and the limestone cliffs of Manawatu Gorge have not
yet been utilised, most of the buildings in New Zealand being of wood. Manufacturing
industry is being developed, and the vicinity of the colonists to the powers that be have,
of course, had its effect in obtaining for them their fair share — some of the other provinces
will declare a little more than their fair share — of public works. The town of Wellington
is built almost entirely of wood, owing partly to the cheaper character of this material,
but perhaps even in a greater extent to the frequency of earthquakes. It has a pretty
position at the head of Port Nicholson, and though by no means such a fine place as
Dunedin, is, as the seat of government, rather imposing from a New Zealand point of
view. But to the visitor who arrives from such gay European-looking cities as Sydney
or Melbourne, Wellington looks a poor dull place. It has been compared in appearance,
from the sea, to St. Thomas in the ^yest Indies (Vol. II., p. 305), but the likeness is very
11-2
THE COCXTIUES OF THE WOKLD.
sujierlicial, for St. Thomas is one of the most unhealthy of tropical towns, while Wellington
is one of the most pleasant and salubrious of those in the temperate zone of the
South. " A little windy " is about the worst that can be said against the New Zealand
capital — unless, indeed, to this is added, " and a trifle earth((uaky." This hard impeach-
ment cannot be gainsaid, for in IS 18 the "city" — then a very small one — was nearly
destroyed by a series of shocks, so severe that for a time it was seriously considered
whether it would not be necessary to desert the spot, and seek out a new position for the
future metropolis of antipodean Britain. Like all capitals the sites of which have been selected
on geographical grounds, Wellington is a good deal dependent on the presence of tlie
Parliament for everything which gives it life. In the vicinity of the city there are some
NEW ZEALAND BAT {Chalinolobiis iuherculatvs).
pleasant spots, to which a visitor is always taken. Among these are the remains of the primeval
forest, which, until a few years ago, covered all the hills in the neighbourhood of the town,
the botanical gardens, the Horokiwi glen, a beautiful spot some forty miles out of
the town, and the island of Kapiti, once the home of the famous Maori chieftain
llauparaha, the instigator of the Wairau massacres, the first and only INIaori trouble
the Aliddle Island ever knew, thoiigh, unhappily for the Northern one, these have been
only too prominent incidents in its stormy history. llauparaha — in spite of
jwetical justice awarding him a different fate — after all his troubles in bond and
in prison, and almost to the scaffold, lived many years in peace, and died at a
fuie old age. His son, of the same name, is still living, also a mighty man among
the Maoris, and likewise a person of consideration to the whites. In Wellington it
is said of him that he has killed men, but never eaten them; that his father killed
and ate very many men; and that his grandfather, like a true jMaori, killed and ate,
and at last was killed and eaten himself. Tiiis little graduated history of the Rauparaha
XEAV ZEALAND: WELLINGTON; HAWKES BAY.
113
family^ iu the matter of killing- and eating, veiy aptly illustrates the genesis of i\Iaori
civilisation, for the fourth generation will proLaLly neither kill nor eat men, but die
comfortably in bed of old age — or of rum. "Wellington is not only the seat of Parliament,
but also of the Government and of the mounted constabulary, who took the place of
the British regiments, which, much to the indignation of the New Zealand colonists.
VIEW OF L.iKE TArpO, ArCKL.\XD.
were withdrawn when they — the colonists — began not only to levy, but to spend their
money without anv control from the mother countrv.
Hawke's Baij has an area of about 3,000,000 acres, rather more than that of Lincolnshire,
Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire together, while its physical features partake some-
what of the characteristics of the three English counties named. The fertile basin of
the Trent is represented by the fruitful but only partially cultivated Ahuriri Plains, while
the pastoral districts of Leicestershire find their counterparts in much of the undulating
135
1 1 I THE COrXTRIES OF THE WORLD.
country in the southern part of the province. The northern part, thoii>rh capable of
supporting large Hocks of sheep, is more broken, and little fitted for agriculture. The
town of Xapier forms a picturesque-looking little capital, and rather prepossesses people
in its favour as they approach from sea. The townspeople will not fail to tell you that
such and such like eminent visitor was reminded of the Bay of Naples when he first
saw the "city" — a reminiscence, no doubt, the distinguished traveller had of a great
many other towns lying on the shores of a bay, backed by pleasant country — albeit,
Vesuvius is wanting in the picture. The climate of Napier is, however, almost Italian;
while the literary tastes of a former Commissioner of Crown Lands are evinced by the
streets being named in honour of Shakespeare, Emerson, Browning, Brewster, Dalton,
and other literary and scientific celebrities. Wool forms its staple, the sheep of the
province being as numerous as those of the rest of the island put together. Otherwise,
Hawke's Bay is not rich. But, unlike Auckland, Wellington, and Taranaki, it has never
been disturbed l)y native wars. The soil originally belonged to the great tribe of the
Ngatikahungunu, who have been always friendly to the Europeans, a pleasant circum-
stance, perhaps explained by the fact that the tribe receive some £1-2,000 or £13,000
l>er annum as the rent of pasture lands occupied by the whites. And here it may be
noted that though in the ]\Iiddle Island of New Zealand the Australian system of
feeding sheep on the natural grasses prevails to a great extent, in the Northern Island
the stock is almost entirely fed on English grasses. Hence the soil, instead of supporting
about a third of a sheep to an acre, " carries " five on the same amount of land.
Taranaki takes its name from Mount Egmont, a snow-capped mountain, known to the
natives as Taranaki (p. iHl). It is, in proportion to its area, one of the best of the
provinces, but having suffered fearfully from Maori wars, it would be a misuse of language
to describe it as prosperous, or even as approaching to prosperity. The province has
a genial, bracing climate. In spite of the su<iw peak of Egmont (8,270 feet high), the
vine, the peach, the apple, and all other crojis of the mildest temperate regions, flourish.
Yet, of the 1,. 500, 000 acres fit for settlement, only about 175,<I00 are in the hands of
farmers, and of this amount only a small proportion is cultivated. The coast, to within
a few miles of Cape Egmont, is generally low and rocky, but at the point named it rises
until it presents to the ocean a bold cliff face 100 feet in height, rising gradually inland
in the direction of the mountains. It is divided at intervals by valleys, most of them
containing rivers or streams, running more or less in a direct line from the mountains to
the coast. Between these vallej's are plateaux, generally very level, and the soil consists
of a rich Ijlack vegetable mould, from nine to eighteen inches in thickness, overlying the
volcanic tufa."
New Plymouth is a charmingly situated town, though, unfortunately, without a harliour
worthy of the name, and the province generally is only too much in keeping with its capital —
pretty to look at, but not exceeding rich. Whatever maj- be the possibilities of the future, the
Taranaki people do not at present grow enough wheat for their needs, and cattle rearing is not
one of their staples, while sheep are few and not wealth-producing. Tliero are, however,
various minerals, the chief of which is the titaniferous or "steel" iron sand which forms the
XEW ZEAL.1XD: TAE.iX.UiI. 115
teach all around the coast. It also exists in the volcanic tufa which surrounds jNIount
Egmontj and is found nearly pure in the bed of every mountain stream. On the sea-shore
it exists in almost inexhaustible quantities, and the Taranaki settler, as he sees it sparkling
in the sun, and lovingly feels its weightiness in his hand, has dreams of mighty things
yet in the future for him from this source of riches. It has yielded 01 per cent, of fine
iron, but hitherto it has been found very troublesome to smelt. However, these difficulties,
it is believed, can be overcome by using a flux composed of cakes of powdered charcoal
mixed with clay, and, possibly, in time the works which have been erected will be successful,
as the supply of material is practically inexhaustible, the iron sands being found along
the east shore of the North Island as far as !Manukau Harbour, in the Province of
Auckland. There is also abundance of timber, but timber is not a rarity in New
Zealand, and, of course, the inevitable "flax," and other potentialities of wealth. But,
as yet, by far the greater part of the province is inaccessible to Europeans, the natives,
in spite of the recent overtures to the Maori king, stubbornly maintaining their old
strongholds, and refusing to allow a European to occupy land — or, in a word, to have
anything to do with them. After all the native troubles which the province has
endured, the wonder is how it has ever survived, or the courage of the pioneers held
out. Yet they talk — courageous hearted men that they are — of the advantages of
their poor little province, and will assure the sceptical visitor that bankruptcies are
unknown, a fact, if fact it is, which may be explained on the familiar commercial principle
that there can be no insolvency where there is no credit. This, at least, is the unkindly
•commentary on the jubilations of the Tarauakiaus made by one of the most distinguished
■of their visitors. The first acquaintance made with Taranaki was through the visits
of whalers, who had frequent encounters with the natives, and inspired such wholesome
terror that for a time the natives deserted the country near the coast, and either migrated
south or retreated into the depth of the forest. Still later, in 1834, we find them taking
a number of shipwrecked people prisoners, though on this occasion thej' did not eat them,
preferring a quantity of soap which they found among the stores. This they baked in their
ovens and devoured, \A"ith what result to their digestion may be imagined. In the year
1839 the Plymouth Company bought some land from the natives, who had in fear and
trembling crept back to the country once occupied by their forefathers. But so few were
they that when Ernst Dieifenbach visited Taranaki he wandered for days without meeting
a single person or sign of habitation, save a few deserted plantations. The handt'ul of
wretched natives had hid themselves in the depth of the forest of their beautiful countrj',
afraid to face the white man, of whose prowess they had such unpleasant traditions. When
the first emigrants landed in 1S41, Mr. "Wliitcomb describes the few natives who greeted
them as miserable and dejected. Many of them were at times absolutely naked. After
a while, gaining confidence, they came out of their hiding-places in the forest, and from
distant places on the coast, " in order to see the white man, to marvel at his works, to
trade with him in fish, firewood, and potatoes, and to share in the blankets and otLier
things which had been promised in payment for the land." Disputes about the payment
for the laud soon ensued, and the Governor having decided that Jew's-harps and small-
tooth combs were not a sufficient equivalent for the suil, which with such trifles the New
11,; THE COUNTJRIES OF THE WuKLD.
Zealand Company had bou-lit it— the land, had for the time being to be given back to the
natives. The result of this iwlicy— for ix.licy it was intended to be— was disastrous to the
settlers. Many left; others went into the heavily timbered laud to hew out new homes
for themselves; while othei-s purchased back, in the course of the next ten years, a little of
the line wild land lying waste and uncultivated by the uatives, though at a cost altogether
disproportionate to the immediate value of the ground. This decision of the Governor,
founded on broad principles of justice and right, was, however, misunderstood by
the natives. Then a land-league was formed amongst them, and with the land-league
bcijan the great Maori war of ISCO. Of this war I need not speak: it resulted in
little oain to anybody, and fearful loss to most concerned. The tale of our repulse from
the Gate Pah is not one over which men of the English race need dwell with any pride.
But the Waikato tribe was crushed, but not conciuered. They retreated still further into
their wilds, and there they still live. From liking the Europeans, they have come to
hate them, and now try to protest against their religion and their manners still further
by throwing off the Christianity which the missionaries taught them, and setting up, not
their old faith, but a new one. This fresh manufactured religion was called by its votaries
the Pai Marire, and its professors Ilau-Haus (How-Hows), from the repeated use of that
exclamation in battle or when war is imminent. It seems an absurd mixture of old Bible
legends and horrible Maori practices, and the little ingenuity which had been bestowed on
its drafting appeared to have been mainly devoted to making it as repulsive to Europeans as
possible, and yet so acceptable to the old converts as to defy the missionaries to win them
back again. The \\ ar ended in 1 SG5, but the natives have never yet acknowledged themselves
beaten, and since that day there have been various smaller disturbances.* They have, in
imitation of the Europeans, set up a king, who is still living in his own territory in the
Waikato country, into which he will admit no white man, except on sufferance. Various
attempts have been made to get him to enter iuto jjleasanter relations with us, but as
yet without marked success. There is a " pale " in the old Irish sense, set up in the
north island of New Zealand, and that " pale " is erected by the natives against the
whites, a circumstance not in any degree very flattering to our pride. But in time even
King Tawhiao will yield; already (in 1S78) he has met Sir George Gre}- in a friendly manner.
His people are melting away ; they no doubt imagine themselves much superior to us man
for man, but already they know that their gallantry can never stand against oui' united
force, and so in time they will sell their land, and even Taranaki will be at peace. In
thirty years the decrease of the Maoris (p. 109) has been something enormous. In 184-^
they were estimated at 114,000; in ISoO at 70,000; in 1858 they numbered 55,790;
in 18G0 they were estimated at 45, OIK), which is the number they are given at in the
last census ; but many old colonists whom I have consulted consider this an exaggeration.
It is probable that none of the figures given are correct, but they afford at least an
idea of the manner in wliich this unfortunate people have been vanishing.
Auckland comprises within its boundary nearly one-half of the Xortheni Island, and
being the most northerly part of the colony, its heat is greater than that of any other
* Gudgeon: " Keniinisccnces of the War in New Zealand" (1879).
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;3
' ihiiilapiiirr'JiiNiiiii.mirmiiiBiiii \m^\
11 Si THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
part of New Zealand, yet no part of the colony is more liealtby. Extremes of heat
and cold are unknown, while, owing to the large seaboard and the prevalence of sea-
breezes the summer heat is not nearly so great as in the same latitude on the Australian
coast. The summer nights are generall}' so cool that a blanket cannot well be dispensed
with • while even in the depth of winter frost and ice arc almost unknown. During a
period of ten years the births registered in the province exceeded the deaths by 1-2,112, a total
which, it is needless to say, is much higher than in England or in any European country.
Indectl, in this department of vital statistics New Zealand stands pre-eminent. Judging
from the statistics of the last few years, the colony could be made to doulile its popula-
tion in fifteen years, excluding altogether immigrants, and merely relying on the excess
of births over deaths. In England, for instance, the birth-rate is about 3.5 per 1,000,
and the death-rate, a very low one for Europe, Uj per 1,000. In New Zealand, on the
contrary, there is a birth-rate of 11 per 1,000, while in 1870 it had the extraordinary
low death-rate of 12"4: per 1,000. In the same year the excess of births over deaths
rose to the enormous percentage of 230, while in England and Wales it is generally
somewhere about 55 per cent., and in France is in many years scarcely appreciable.
Returning to Auckland, we find that while 73 out of every 1,000 invalid soldiers were
annually admitted to the hospital with fever, in New Zealand the number is only 1 per
1,000.* Fine timber of various kinds, and all European fruits, such as would grow, say
in Greece, llourish in Auckland. The " native dog," supposed to have been introduced
by some passing vessel, has become extinct, and the onl}- other quadruped, the " native
rat," has been exterminated by the " English rat." In many parts of the bush there are
wild pigs, supposed to have been originally introduced by Cajitain Cook, and pig-hunting
may be considered one of the sports of the country. Pheasants have become acclimatised
in abundance, and there are numbers of native pigeons, ducks, and waterfowl. The remains
of the moa are numerous, as well as those of other extinct wingless birds. The parson
or tui bird (p. 101), the bell bird, and a number of smaller species, relieve the stillness of
the woods, but there are few singing birds in New Zealand. Starlings, rooks, .sparrows, and
other English birds have been introduced, and are getting numerous. Seals, whales, and
sharks, and an abundance of edible fish, are found around the coast, and doubtless in
time the rivers will swarm with salmon and trout, which have been introduced with every
prospect of succeeding. Coal is found in very extensive beds in the province, while iron,
both in the forms of the ferruginous sands and ironstone, abounds. Gold is extensively
mined. Silver, lead, and tin are known to exist, and coi:)per was for a time mined,
though, owing to the costliness of working, the undertaking has hitherto proved unsuccessful.
Cement, fire-claj-, and other potters' raw material have been found ; while traces of iietroleum
have been discovered in Poverty Bay of so encouraging a character as to give foundation
to the hope that at some future period New Zealand will be independent of the outer
world for its light. The northern part of the province is generally broken and of very
unequal quality, great tracts being unfitted for tillage, but still not without much good
land. The settlers chiefly employ themselves in rearing cattle ; sheep farming is
extending, but the cultivation of cereals has not hitherto been carried on to any great
♦ Tlioinson: '-The Stoiy of New Zialand" (18.79).
XEW ZEALAND: AUCKLA^S'D. 119
extent. The great seaboard of the province is likely to make it one of the strongholds
of the shipbuilding' industry of the country, and already a fleet of smart schooners and
cutters attest the grasp which this trade has taken in the North Island, and presages
the greater development which most probably it will take in the near future. The
Isthmus of Auckland, connecting the northern j)art of the province with the southern,
and about twenty-five miles in length, is nearly all well cultivated and fenced, sheep
farming, grazing, hay and wheat growing being the chief directions which agriculture
takes. The contour of the country is generally undulating, though broken here and there
by volcanic cones. The southern part of the province is watered for :^00 miles by the
river Waikato and its tributary, the Waipa. The former rises in the Tongariro and
Ruapehu Mountains, volcanoes 7,5()(J feet and 'J,l'J.j feet high respectively, situated in the
province of Wellington. About thirty-five miles from its source the river gets lost in a
lake (Taupo) within the j)rovince of Auckland, twenty-five miles long, and over 1,330 feet
above the level of the sea (p. 113). About thirty miles from Tauranga, a well-sheltered
harbi)ur and town, is the lake district, which abounds with natural phenomena, that have
rendered it, like the national park of North America (Vol. II., p. 91), one of the show
places of the country. " There are," wTites Dr. Kidd, " three large and many smaller
lakes, the water in some of which is of a sky-blue colour. For miles the surface of the
earth around Rotorna and Rotomahana Lakes (Plate XXXIY., and p. 117) is in a state of
perturbation : holes and puddles filled with boiling mud abound everywhere. The great
attractions of the district, however, are the geysers and magnificent terraces. These
wonderful terraces are formed by a silicious deposit from the warm — in some places
boiling — water that flows over them. The chief terrace, or rather series of terraces, one
above the other, is 300 feet at the base and 150 feet high, the front being of circular
form, and the whole structure grand and stately in appearance. On the lower terraces
are hollows filled with the warm water flowing ovei', and forming natural marble baths.
The water in thom is of a deep l)lue tint, and the surface of the terraces exhibits a great
variety of colours, pure white, pink, and blue predominating. This district is now much
frequented by tourists, as well as by invalids suffering from rheumatism, sciatica, wliite
swelling, &c., and it will doubtless, when better known, attract visitors from Europe." *
But even apart from the Southern Wonderland, the scenery of Auckland is pleasant and
even grand. The interior contains many of those landscapes which makes New Zealand so
attractive (p. 1~5), while the coast is destined before long to attract visitors from the
neighbouring colonies (pp. 1:J0, l:il).
Auckland was originally intended to be the chief province of New Zealand; its
capital was at first selected for the capital of the colony, and to this day the
Aucklanders would, I am afraid, say very contemptuous things anent the intellect and
penetration of any one who would deny their claim to be the cream of New
Zealand. There is no doubt that such it originally was. Here long before New Zealand
was divided into provinces — before, indeed, it was known or recognised as a colonj the
Pakeha Maoris, or Europeans who had taken up their abode with the natives, lived and
* See also Hochstetter: "Xcw Zealand; its Physical Geography, Gcolog}-, and Xatural Ilistoiy " (1808);
llundby: " Kotomahana " (1870) ; '■ Rei.se der Osterreichischen Frcgatte Kova'-a um die Erdo," &c. (ISG-t), &c.
1:10
THE COUXTRIES OF THE WORLD.
traded, generally married, and not imfrequently wore eaten. It was in the province
of Auckland, at Kororcka, in Bay of Islands, that Heke, the Maori chief, thrice cut
down the liagstaff which the settlers had erected, and thus kindled the flames of that war
with which New Zealand has been so unenviably associated in the world's recollection.
Here Bishop Selwvn settled before New Zealand had the number of bishops it has
in modern times; here, up to 1S(M, lived all the New Zealand Governors and bureauo-
crats • and in the pleasant town of Auckland, up to the same date, met the General
Assembly or Federal Parliament of the provinces, until it was removed, for a reason that
has never made itself clear to the Aucklanders, to the "city" of Wellington, a more
central but less interesting town. Auckland Mr. Trollope looks upon as the typical New
Zealand town. Dunedin is, no doubt, more populous; but Dunedin is a Scottish town, just
THE "sentinel" ROCK, WHITE ISLAND, AUCKLAND (DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF CAPTAIN COOk).
as Canterbury is an English one, and in cither a Maori is just about as rare as he is in
London. But in the streets of Auckland the Maoris and the half-castes still wander
about in a listless and not always sober condition; and into this city, redolent of New
Zealand, wander at uncertain intervals the Pakeha Maori, sometimes with his Maori brevet-
spouse, in quest of tea, sugar, and lirandy. ^Nlaoii weapons are common "curios" in every
tavern or private house, and out of the soil are continually being dug lethal tools (p. 97),
which speak of other times — chronologically not very far off, but soon to be separated
socially from ours by a wide gulf. Of their share in the ^laori wars — with which
Otago and Canterbury had no more to do than Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, which,
like the Otago and Canterbury poojile, had to assist in paying for the powder and shot —
the Aucklanders are rather proud, and are not disinclined to sneer at the South Island
towns claiming any share in this groat feature of the colony. But for Auckland to
consider herself the chief province of New Zealand is only in keeping with that feeling
which leads New Zealand to regard herself as the chief colony of England — a kindly
NEW ZEALAXD: AUCKLAND.
121
sentiment, wliich is, however, not acquiesced in by any of the other colonies : Canada,
New South Wales, Victoria, the Cape, Jamaica — any one of our dependencies — loudly
declaring herself to be the brightest jewel in the " diadem of the Queen," always,
however, with the proviso that, except in po2:)ulation, each and all of them are better than
England. "In Victoria the boast is made with true Yankee confidence in 'our institutions.'
Victoria declares herself to be different from England, and therefore better. But in New
Zealand the assurance is altogether of a different nature. The New Zealander, among
John Bulls, is the most John Bullish. He admits the supremacy of England to every
place in the world, only he is more English than any Englishman at home. He tells
you that he has the same climate, only somewhat improved ; that he grows the same
produce, only with somewhat heavier crops; that he has the same beautiful scenery at
THE BOVLDER BEACH, WHITE ISLAND, AULKLAXD.
his doors, only somewhat grander in its nature and more diversified in its details ; that
he follows the same pursuits and after the same fashion, but with less of misery, less of
want, and a more general participation in the gifts which God has given to the country.
He reminds you that at Otago, in the south, the mean temperature is the same as at
London, whereas at Auckland, in the north, he has just that improvement necessary to
furnish the most perfect climate in the world. The mean temperature of the coldest
month at Loudon is 37°, which is only five degrees above freezing, whereas at Auckland
it is 51°, which enables growth to continue the whole year. In the hottest month the
mean temperature at Auckland is only 68", which, says the Aucklander, neither hinders a
European from working nor debilitates his constitution. All good things have been giver
to this happy land, and when the !Maori has melted here will be the navel of the earth.
I know nothing to allege against the assurance. It is a land very happy in its climate :
very happy in its promises. The poor Maori, who is now the source of all Auckland
poetry, must first melt ; and then, if her coal-fields can be made productive, and if the
136
122 THE COUNTKIES OF THE WORLD.
ii-on which is wasla-J to shore among the sands of the sea can be wrought into steel, I
see no reason why Auckland should not rival Loudon. I must specially observe one point
as to which the Xew Zealand colonist imitates his brethren and ancestors at home, and
far surpasses his Australian rival : he is very fond of getting drunk. And I would also
observe to the New Zealander generally, as I have done to other colonists, that if he would
blow his trumpet somewhat less loudly the music would gain in its effect upon tiie world
at laro«." Such at least is the opinion of the chronicler of Barsetsliire. Gold is not a
product which is to be depended on as a stay for any country, though it may give it a
temporary tillip, and even conduce to its eventual prosperity, if the gold, by the digging of
which its soil is impoverished, is devoted to the development of the real riches of the
country and the formation of works of permanent utility. The first gold found in
New Zealand was discovered in 185:2 at Coromaudcl, in the province of Auckland, though
in this locality the diggings did not prove productive. In 1800 the Middle Island
diwo-ino-s " broke out," and in 1807 gold was found in the Thames River in the
Northern Island, and the city of Grahamstown, the centre of the Auckland gold-lields,
was established. The "diggers" — for the word "miners" is not, as in America, applied
to those who wash gold out of the soil — are, as a rule, a well-behaved and even courteous
race of men, and though doubtless, like many people in " the colonies " and elsewhere,
they drink a great deal more than is good for them, they will abstain for weeks at a
time, only "going on the spludge" — as the phrase is — when a lucky hnd is made, or the
"bed rock struck" in some more than usually enticing manner. Then it is etiquette to
ask the "digging" to drink. However, except at such rare periods an occasional "nobbier"
will sufTiee the hard-working miner, whose life is one of alternate high hopes and bitter
disappointments. Sir Julius Yogel justly claims that the gold-fields of New Zealand have
been very productive. From the year 1801 to the end of 1877 they yielded gold to
the value of upwards of £33,500,0(1(1. In eleven years gold to the value of £11,207,700
was exported from Otago alone; from Westland to the value of £0,313, 835; while Nelson
sent off in the same period (from ISCO to 1871) £1,4-58,310, and Auckland £2,103,940.
It is probable that the yield will improve, as gold mines all over the country are being
systematically worked. But it is not advisable for any one to emigrate with the sole
object of devoting himself to gold mining. The pursuit is an uncertain one, and there
arc many experienced miners already in the colony. Coal — as we have already noted —
exists in vast deposits in New Zealand. In some parts it is of the best finality; in others
it is brown coal. Great attention is now being paid to developing the coal mines, and
considerable quantities are brought to the ports for steamship purposes, which formerly were
supplied from New South Wales. There is reason to think that petroleum, copper, and
silver alwund, and evidence of a rich ore of quicksilver has been discovered ; while the ores
of iron which abound in different parts of New Zealand are calculated to do a great deal
mure for it than all its mines of the more precious metal.
The Kauri pine {Dam mam australk) is one of the best and most characteristic \tces of
the province. Its timber is exported to all parts of New Zealand, Australia, and the South
Sea Islands, for the purpose of shipbuilding, as well as for general use in joinery and
other domestic industries. It does not grow further south in 37"' 30' S. lat. Accordingly,
NEW ZEALAND: HISTORY. 123
it is not found in the southern part of Auckland, or in any of the other ishinds.
Its gum — used in the glazing of calico, in the preparation of a cheap snbstitute for copal
varnishj and (though this may be a calumny) in the manufacture of " real " amber mouth-
pieces— -is also a great article of commerce. It is dug out of the soil where it had fallen
in ages past, though the trees from which it exuded have long ago disappeared in many parts
where the gum bears witness to their former presence. The soil in which it is found
being invariably barren, the Government have placed no restriction on its collection.
Accordingly, it has been calculated that as many as ^,000 men have, at one time, been
engaged in digging it, though of late years the demand for labour has rather lessened the
attractions which gum digging has for the more shiftless kind of colonist, who loves to toil
and rest at periods when he is " i' the humour." In three years (1870 — I^IZ] no less than
14,270?; tons, worth £i97,199, were exported. A good deal of this is brought to market
by the Maoris, who, at the Auckland price for first-class gum — £-30 to £2>'i per ton —
may earn from £1 10s. to £1 per week, though the average "wages made" are about
£i. We have said that the kauri gum is got out of the soil. It still exudes from the
trees, but the digger makes his harvest out of what has remained behind, after the trees
of the old forests had fallen and rotted on the place where they stood. After some
practice the digger learns where to search for the gum. Armed with a long spear, he
prods the ground, and by touch knows where the hidden spoil is concealed. No doubt
thousands of tons yet lie in the soil, but as the kauri forests are being rapidly
cleared off by the settlers' axes, a time will come when the world must find a substitute
for kauri gum, as well as for the copal which, in many respects, it resembles.
HisToiiY, Prospects, etc.
The Maoris (p. 109), some account of whom I have given in a companion work
to this, were undoubtedly Polynesians, who to this day jjreserve the tradition of their
arrival in this country, and even the names of the chiefs, and the canoes in which they
arrived. A Sandwich Islander, who came with Captain Cook, could make himself understood
by the natives of the North Island.
Who among christened men first sighted New Zealand must always remain a moot point,
though it is proliably Tasman who has the best right to that honour, albeit he never
set foot on its soil. In 177(5 Cook landed, and had some bellicose intercourse with the
natives, and it was he who took possession of the islands in the name of King George
III. of England. For seventy-five years after Cook's visit we had communication with the
islands, but the Colonial Office always waived the responsibility of assuming any absolute
political control over them. The vagabond Briton had, of course, found them out.
With his usual capacity for making himself quite at home he had squatted down on the
shores, and without that certificate of character which I very much fear he might have
had some difficulty in obtaining from any quarter, or which he might have hesitated to
ask from the authorities at Norfolk Island or Port Arthur, he became a Pakeha Maori,
always as much married as he could afford to be, and sometimes, with his national
taste for doing at Rome as the llomans d<<, tattooed over considerable portions of his
104 THE COUXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
person. He traded " flax " and sold fire-arms, killed seals and harpooned whales — sometimes
on excellent terms with the natives, now and then their master, but not uufrequently
nmning in hot haste away from the culinary fate which he had reason to apprehend at
the hands of his man-eating associates. Missions were established, but the mission-
aries quite as often got eaten as succeeded in converting the stubborn, but withal
intelligent natives. In 1S35 a ]Mr. Busby attempted some form of government, but
he failed; as did also a certain Baron de Thiery, who, in spite of his French name
and title, was a Briton. The Government saw no good in colonising New Zealand. On
the contrary, according to the philanthroi)ic views which then, more than now, controlled
Downing Street, the Colonial Secretary hesitated to risk the almost always fatal experiment
of bringing white men in contact with brown ones. But the inevilal)le could not much
longer be delayed, in s\nte of the passive resistance of ministers and the more active
objections of missionaries. And so, after various tentative settlements, in 1825 a New
Zealand Company- was formed, with the intention of buying land from the natives. It
did not, however, accomplish much; and so wlien, in 1 8 :it', another New Zealand Company
arose out of the ashes of the dthcr one, with Mr. Gibbon Wakefield and other better and
less self-seeking men at its head, the ground was almost clear for their efforts. Then the
Colonial Office could no longer postpone action, and accordingly, on the 13lh of June,
1S39, New Zealand was proclaimed a part of New South Wales, and Captain Hobson was
appointed " Consul," with power, if it so j^leased him, to assume the rank of Lieutenant-
Governor. Colonel Wakefield and his settlers set vigorously to work, and in a brief space
of time had " bought " from the natives a territory as large as Ireland f ?r a trifling sum,
paid in muskets, gunpowder, flints, red cotton nightcaps, pocket-handkerchiefs, looking-glasses,
shaving brushes, sealing-wax, and Jews'-harps, without, however, inquiring very closely
whether the delighted Maoris qu'te understood what it was all about. Then it was
Captain Hobson's turn. On the site of the present city of AVellington he negotiated
the treaty of Waitangi, by which the Maoris surrendered their island to England, and
recognised the Queen of England as their sovereign, tiiough still retaining their private
rights as owners of the soil. This is the basis of our claim to the jwssession of New
Zealand, and is still law, albeit it has had to be confirmed by the shedding of much
blood : for it is very doubtful whether the chiefs and headmen who signed it understood
it any more than those who peddled away their land in the vicinity of Wellington for
the trifling considerations which Colonel Wakefield gave them for it, or if they did, it is
more than questionable if they had any commission from their tribesmen to do so. Then
the seat of government — at least, of such government as there was — was removed from
the Bay of Islands to the site of the present city of Auckland, where it remained until
— as has been duly noted — in 1804 "VN'ellington attained that distinction. In 1842
New Zealand became a bishopric, the first holder of the episcopal ofltice being Dr. Sehvyn
— afterwards Bishop of Lichfield — and soon, aided by the missionaries of different
denominations who had been there before him,* and liy those who succeeded him. New
Zealand became, in name at least, almost a Christian land. The Canterbury settlement
(p. lll-'i), under the high-minded Godley, and the Presbyterian one of Otago, soon
» Buller: '• Forty Years in New Zealand" (1879).
3
y,
D
126 THE couxxraES of the WUKLD.
followed. Then came the raiscliief the seeds of which had been l;iid l.y the fatal
jKilicv of allowing settlers to bribe the natives into alienating their land. The Taranaki
Native Land League gave the first expression to this patriotic feeling on the part
of the Maoris. " The money," they said, " which we receive for our laud is soon
gone, but the land remains with the Europeans for ever ! " This was the signal for war
to the knife. Some of these contests we have briefly noted in passing from province to
province. They were almost necessary on the part of the whites ; but at the same time
no >Tenerous writer cau withhold fmm the ^Maoris that admiration which the sight of
a nation fighting against fearfully unequal odds must obtain from their foes, and even
from their enemies. Still immigration, though temporarily checked, never flowed backward,
and with the discovery of gold in 1852 it largely increased. In 1800 the discovery of
gold in the iliddle Island gave an immense impetus to the colony, which stimulus
spread in 1^(57 to the North Island on the opening out of the Auckland gold-iields. In
1S53 New Zealand obtained a Constitution, and in 1851- the first General Assembly sat
in Auckland. In 1876 the provincial form of government passed away, much to the
benefit of the New Zealand of to-day, and still more to the future of these "insulie dives
opum prope Australia."
New Zealand social life and manners* have such a family likeness to those of Tasmania
and Australia that it is better to delay any sketch of them until we consider the latter colonies.
Nor is it necessary to dwell at any length on the outlying islands of the " Britain
of the South." Sli'H-art Island we have already touched on, but lying away from the
coast are the Chatham and Auckland Isles, the Snares, Campbell, Antipodes, and Bounty.
Of the Chatham Isles, Wairikaori, or Chatham, is the largest, and about one-third
of it is productive. It is known that at one time most of these islands were inhabited by
the Maori people, but owing to murderous invasions from the North Island of New
Zealand, the latest census only gave 172 as inhabiting the group. No gold has
been found, though the plants and animals are almost identical with those of the rest of
the New Zealand group. The AucJclaiid group is very mountainous, with scarcely any
level land, and as the soil is covered with a thick bed of peat the islands are useless for
agriculture. At one time there was a whaling establishment here, but it was abandoned
in 1852. Campbell Island is the home of the "wandering albatross," whose nests, containing
one egg, are found in abundance here. The Anfijjodes are volcanic isles, uninhabited.
Bountij Island is also remarkable as being the nesting place of the " Lowland albatross,"
which lays two eggs. The Snares are unpeopled, save b3- innumerable multitudes of penguins,
and the burrowing mutton bii-ds, which undermine the ground-like rabbits.f
Plants axd Animals.
The plants and animals of New Zealand have no relation to those of Tasmania
or Australia. The only ten-estrial mammal — the rat — has probably been introduced,
• See Lady Barker's ".Station Liie in Xew Zealand," and "Station Amusements," for a description of the
salient aspects of rural life.
+ For a complete description of the omitholog)- see Buller : " Birds of New Zealand " (1 873).
NEW ZEALAND: PLANTS AND ANIMALS; PROSPECTS. ]-Z7
but the bat (p. 1\2) is indigenous. Even the fifteen or sixteen species of whale found off
the coast are peculiar to the neighbouring seas. Of reptiles and amphibia, there are eight
species of lizard peculiar to the islands, a ringed sea-snake, and one species of frog, limited to
the North Island, and found in no other part of the world, though, like the Australian frogs, allied
to those of South America. The green frog of Australia, which was introduced a few years
ago, is rajiidly increasing and spreading. In addition to fifty or sixty species of introduced
birds, there are about 150 native ones, the most remarkable of which are the wingless or
struthious birds, of which the extinct moa and the living apteryx are the most remarkable
representatives. There are also two species of cuckoo, both of which leave New Zealand
in the winter, and must, therefore, fly over at least 1,200 miles of ocean before they find
a resting-place. Of the fresh-water fishes, about 40 per cent, are found nowhere else, and
the same fact holds true as regards the marine ones. Insects are few in species and
individuals, though there is an exception to this rule in the case of the spider order, which
numbers about 100 species. The most remarkable feature about the plants is that one-
eighth of them belong to the fern family, while in Great Britain these form only one-
twentj'-fifth of the flora. Again, in Britain trees and shrubs form but onc-forty-seventh
of the flowering plants, but in New Zealand they comprise one-eighth of the whole. No
rose, hyacinth, willow, primrose, or wood anemone is found ; but, on the other hand, the
woods are gay with tree ferns, though the horse-tails are singularly absent. Of the 9o0
or 1,000 plants, about 700 are peculiar, and of the remainder, about 250 are Australian
and 60 European.*
Finally, we need only say that the trade of New Zealand is rapidly increasing. In
1S78 its revenue was £1',1.4'5,5C0, and its expenditure £170,316 h'ss than this. Its exports
are chiefly wool, corn, flour, gum, and preserved meat, and its imports from Great
Britain are iron, textile fabrics, and clothing.f
New Zealand is burdened with a heavy debt, but up to date she has shown no signs
of breaking down under it. Should her prosperity continue, and above all, should her popu-
lation and her revenue increase, her future is well assured, even though the return from the
Crown lands should fail. Living on capital and forestalling the future is a dangerous system
for a young people to commence housekeeping on, but an examination of the state of the
colony inclines me to think that bankruptcy is among the contingencies which are least to
be apprehended. This kindly hope one can entertain without being quite so sanguine as
Sir Julius Vogel.J
* These figures are given roughly, as the flora is not yet fully investigated. But it is not likely that the
generalisations of Sir Joseph D. Hooker (" Flora of New Zealand '') ^111 he materially altered hy future discoveries.
+ "Statistics of New Zealand" (1878) ; Hayter's " Australian Statistics" (1878), i-c.
J A pessimist will find much food fur a contrary helief in Jlr. Alex. J. Wilson's admirable " Eesourcea
of Modern Countries" (1877), Vol. II., p. 187.
VlhW UI: HEN LUMuM>, TASMANIA.
CHAPTER YIII.
The Coloxy of Tasmania : its General Characteristics.
Sailing westward from New Zealandj we arrive at another British colony l^'ing in the
sea south of the eastern part of AustraHa. This is the large island known, until recent
times, as Van Diemen's Land, though, if the reader desires to keep in the good graces of
the colonists, he had better call it by the modern name of Tasmania. Van Diemen's
Land was, no doubt, the designation originally applied to it, and which, therefore, by all
rules of scientific nomenclature, ought still to be retained. But the name had an evil
memory. It smacked of the hulks and the chain-gang, and a " Van-Diemonian "
was, for long, the synonym for a convict. The flavour of its old condition as a place
of transportation still hangs about it, and is a sore subject with the untainted settlers.
Yet it had no more reason to be scoffed at as the prison home of Britannic blackguards
than have Devon or Dorset, because Dartmoor and Portland are within their bounds.
For more than twenty years no convicts have been sent from England to Tasmania.
There are still a few of the old stock remaining at Port Arthur; and, of course, as
Tasmania, even in its state of rejuvenated virtue, is not altogether free from domestic
roguery, the old convict settlement will likely, for long to come, be kept from falling
TASMANIA: EARLY HISTORY.
\-Z'.)
into utter decay by the presence of a few vagabonds of colonial breeding, just as
Darlinghurst, Pentridge, and St. Helena will be for the reception of the law-condemned
knaves of New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. Discovered in IGU, it was
named in honour of his patron, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, by Abel Jans Van
Tasman, a Dutch mariner, who was not only grateful for favours to Mynheer Van
Diemen, but was also violently in love with the Satrap's daughter, after whom he
named a cape and an island, still tolerated by the colonists to whom the secret of
VIEW OF HOBAKT TOWK, TASMANIA.
their nomenclature has descended. It is not, however, until the end of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries that we find any one paying much attention
to it. But in the year 1802 the French navigators were casting suspiciously hungry
glances at it, which probably accounts for the fact that in the year 180;3 a few English
soldiers and convicts were landed not far from the spot where Hobart Town now
stands. Then free colonists arrived, and were assigned portions of land in proportion to
the capital they brought into the country. Settlements multiplied, and public works
grew up rapidly under the hands of the convicts, who also, in the form of "assigned
servants," supplied, in many eases, good and, to the farmers, certainly inexpensive
labour, though the British tax-payer took another view of the question. Finally,
in 1825, the colony, which had hitherto been a part of New South Wales — at
137
|;30 THK COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
tliat lime the only colony in Australia — was declared independent. Transportation of
criminals was abolished in 1853, and the name officially changed from Van Diemen's
Land to Tasmania, just as the Metropolitan Board of Works graciously gives a fresh
title to an old street which has got too notorious under its former one for respectable people
to care for it as a home. Since then it has not been progressing anything like the rest
of the Australian colonies. The reasons for this are various, but, as we shall presently
find, are mainly to be referred to the fact that long familiarity with convict labour spoilt
the people, just as a familiarity with slavery in any form demoralises those who, for
the time being, seem to most profit by it.
Yet in beautv, climate, and natural riches, the island yields to none of the
neighbouring colonies, and is, indeed, superior to most parts of Australia. In its
oreatest lenijth, nortii to south, it is iiO miles, and from east to west about 200
miles. Including the neighbouring islands, it has an area of 26,300 square miles.
Harbours a1x>und. Tlie south-eastern coast is deeply indented by the estuaries of
the Derwent and Huon, and by Storm Bay, Pitt Water Inlet, and Frederick Hendrick
Bay. On the west coast are the fine harbour of Macquarie, once a penal settlement,
and Port Davey. On the east coast are Oyster Bay and Spring Baj', and on the
north the estuary of the Tamar and numerous other small harbours. There are in the
interior open places of limited extent, but the general character of the island is mountainous
or undulating, with here and there deep narrow vallej's, drained by a stream, rarely of
any considerable size, except in the case of the Derwent, Tamar, and a few other rivers
never navigable for any great distance. The chief mountains are Cradle Mount (5,06'J
feet), Ben Lomond (.">,002 feet, p. 128), Ironstone Mount, Mount Barrow, Mount Wellington
(1,195 feet, p. 1 H), and others of a less elevation. A considerable number of the rivers —
especially those in the south-eastern section of the island — rise in beautiful lakes lying
embosometl among the mountains at an elevation of about 3,000 feet. !Most of the
countrj' is heavily timbered, though the trees being valuable, considerable tracts have
been cleared. But it must be remembered that, with the exception of the basaltic plains,
and a few other tracts incapable of bearing timbei", the best soil is that which supports
the bush, and that the greater portion of the island is uninhabited, and not likely to
offer any attraction to settlers for many years yet to come. Indeed, the soil, climate,
and position of many of the tracts render these parts of the country unfit for human
abode, in the present position of the Australasian colonies. Bass's Strait — 120 miles
broad — separates Tasmania from the south-eastern extremity of Australia ; but in almost everj'
respect it differs widely from New Zealand, and in plant and animal life, though not
as a rule in physical features, it approaches the great continental island which it lies so
near to. The shores are generally bold and rocky, especially on the west coast — where,
with the exception of the break for Macquarie Harbour, a broken range of barren cliffs
of columnar basalt is the barrier presented to the sea. The north coast has, however,
some sandy beaches, among others those along the fine estuary of the river Tamar, on
which, forty miles from its mouth, stands Launceston, the second town in the colony.*
• " Tasmanii— Past and Present," a Lecture, by Sir Charles Du Cane, Ex-Governor of the Colonj-
(1875), p. o.
I
TA«iIAXIA: GEOGRAPHY OF THE ISLAXD. 131
According to official information^ the island contains fifteen and a half million acres of land,
and the islands connected with it one and a quarter million more : leaving the unalienated
crown land-in-operty at about twelve million acres, of which one and a half million acres
are " be-pastured " — that is, leased by settlers for sheep or cattle runs. A great portion of the
country is covered by gum-trees, forming dense unexplored forests ; and of the eighteen counties
into which it is divided, five on the west coast are understood to be "uninhaliited and
uninhabitable." Others are settled to the extent of strips along the shore or by the
side of rivers. Indeed, without any wish to disparage Tasmania, or any other of our
colonies, I may add that the map, without some esplanatorj' letterpress, is not a very
sure guide to the inexperienced student, its " cities " being frequently in embryo, while
a county, and even a county town, in most of our colonies must not be taken too
literally, or, at least, so literally as to convey to the reader's mind anything like that which
the same terms do in Britain. Yet all agree that the scenery of Tasmania is very fine —
if not magnificent — like that of some parts of New Zealand. Even the dark sunless gum-
tree forests have to all, save the soulless, disappointed "cockatoo" (p. lOG), something
grand, so that, in a less metaphorical sense than that which Thackeray intended to convey
by the sarcasm, one can even conceive a " well constituted convict experiencing- a regret
at leaving Van Diemen's Lantl."
Sir Charles Du Cane even grows enthusiastic over the byways of the land he ruled.
The contrast in travelling from the sunny beaches, " doubtless destined to be crowned
with Antipodean Brightens and St. Leonards," to the dense forest depths, into which at
one plunge the roads often take, is pleasant in its variety. Overhead is the foliage of
the great trees, almost shutting out the light of day, and below the tree-ferns growing
with the most luxuriant beauty. " Not even the cry of a solitary bird would break the
stillness of these realms of perpetual silence, as we threaded our way slowly for many miles
along the narrow track, the sole sound heard being the tramp of our horses and our own
frequent and earnest exhortations to them to hold up, as they tripped over the stubs and
roots with which the tracks are so thickly studded. Then, perhaps, the sound of an axe
would strike on the ear, and the track would emerge upon a small patch of newly-cleared
and cultivated ground, in the middle of which was the hut of a settler who could boast he
was monarch of all he surveyed." The scenery is in some of its features very English,
in others very " un-English." In the settled districts the fields, surrounded by hedges,
the homesteads and cottages, the villages — and, above all, the public-houses, and the sounds
of revelry which emerge from them — are peculiarly British, while the mail-coach, with
its scarlet-coated driver and guard, who " work it " between town and town, " awakening
the echoes " — for often there is nothing else to awake — with the sound of the " yard of tin,"
and choking everybody within a score of yards with the clouds of red and black dust in
which the coach is enveloped, are almost more English than England of these latter days itself.
Yet all these aids to an Anglo-verisimilitude are exotic, as you are continually reminded
by the great tree ferns, the blue gum, the stringy bark, the peppermint tree, the Iluon pine,
the blackwood, the swamp gum, the white gum, the sassafras, the celery-topped pine, the
silver wattle, the tonga bean, and other trees which line the pathway ; and, above all, bj'
the flocks of gaudy-coloured parrots, flashing across the road, or settling on the telegraph
232 THE COfNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
wires. Were anything further needful to dispel the illusion that it is not through English
lanes the traveller is riding, it would be the swarms of white cockatoos following tiie plough
in the field, over the fence, wending their way to the clump of "ever-never-green"
eucalyptus, or disappearing in the dense and impenetrable sassafras and myrtle scrub of
the unreclaimed forest, the semi-tropical luxuriance and perpetual verdure of which
all bespeak another climate and a different order of things. The Tasmauians have no hot
lakes and ^eysers to boast of like the New Zealanders, and their sole scenic lions — the
Chudleigh stalactitic caves— are, it must be confessed, most uncomfortable sul)terranean
wonders, which every visitor feels himself conscientiously bound to see, but which he
leaves determined never to see again. M. Regnard visited Lapland and wrote a book
about it ; but he declared that though he would not have missed seeing Lapland for a good
deal of money, it would take a great deal more to make him see it again. These are evidently
a fair precis of the feelings of most exasperated visitors who ascend into sunlight again
after crawling, bruised, disappointed, and dirty, through the blackness, wet, dirt, and darkness
of the show place of Tasmania.
Resources; Animals; Climate.
In 1877 the population was estimated at 107,104, but there were then no aborigines,
the last of them having died the year previously. In 1878 the revenue from Custom-house
duties was £;110,(j^9, which shows an advance over the previous three years. In the same
year the total revenue was £3S1,U:J9, also an advance over what the statistics had to show
in 1S75, 1876, and 1877. The value of the imports were £1,:J(]G,8;J^, and of the exports,
£1,250,967. In 1878, £59,12;J worth of gold, more than double that of 1S77, were exported,
while the returns of tin or of tin ore for 1878 show that these mines are increasing in yield,
£■308,580 being the value of the metal sent out of the country. Wheat is the chief grain
raised, though, owing to the prohibitory import duties imposed by the neighbouring Australian
colonies, almost the only outlet for the surplus crop is to send it to England. Oats come
next as regards the acreage devoted to it, and barley last. The soil is excellent, the average
yield for wheat, barley, or oats being four quarters to the acre, and for potatoes from three
to ten tons, the crop in some cases rising even higher ; but the state of agriculture is low,
the chief object of the farmer, seemingly, being to get as many crops in succession out of
the land as possible, without putting anything in it, "and when his land will no longer
grow wheat, to encourage it to grow thistles for the benefit of his neighbour." This, at
least, is the charge brought against Tasmanian farmers by so lenient a critic of Tasmanian
shortcomings as Sir Charles Du Cane, who declares that he has seen, on what ought to be
the finest corn-gruwing land in the colony, thistle-down literally lying inches deep iu the
fields, and rising piled up like a snow-drift against the fences on either side of the road.
Under these circumstances, it is not wonderful to hear that agriculture does not pay. It
would, indeed, be rather remarkable if it did — especially with wheat at 4s. a bushel, instead
of £4, as it was in the days of the early settlers, and those farmei-s' friends the "old hands."
Sheep are, however, lucrative, and are likely in time to be still more profitable. Yet
the pastoral interests are comparatively small. There are only about two million sheep
A SCENE IX THE TASMAXIAX BUSH (KANGAROOS, EMU, AND "TIGER WOLVES").
1;J1 TIIE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
in the coliinv, whereas a single Victoria firm has the credit of shearing annually a
million, pastured over something like three millions of acres of freehold, or on land rented
from the Government. Cattle and horses also do well, but the great minor agricultural
or horticultural " interest " of Tasmania is fruit-growing. The climate of Tasmania is
adrairablv suited to this. English fruits grow even better than in England. Tasmanian
cherries are as fine as those of Kent, and infinitely more plentiful, and strawberries,
raspberries, gooseberries, apricots, plums, walnuts, and currants are in such profusion
that they are hardly valued, except in wholesale tjuantities. ^Mulberries are also grown
in profusion, and are so good that the Hobart Town people are inclined to think that
the man who has eaten of their mulberries has nothing more to do gastronomically in the
antipodean world. The apples and pears arc quite as good as those of England, which
those of Australia are not, and grapes ripen in the Dpen air. Thus Nature seems to have
intended Tasmania to be the jam factory of the South. And jam to a very considerable
amount it makes, and exports green fruits as well. For example, in 187.J the latter
were exported to the extent of Ho, 948 bushels, while the season's output of preserves
will often amount to 1,200 or 1,-500 tons. In Launoefiton and Hobart Town (p. 120)
there are large companies engaged in this business, and minor establishments are springing
up elsewhere, though the northern part of the island seems the best suited for the growth
of most fruits. Unhappily, however, there is a crook in the jam-maker's lot. The Australians
eat an immense quantity of all kinds of preserves. The Victoria stock-rider and miner are
especially sweet-toothed, but the colonial tariffs keeji out the Tasmanian jam, and so the
Tasmanians, to spite "the colonies," keep out, or at least make as dear as thej' can, the
Queensland sugar. Hence, by this concentrated foolishness, the gold-digger of Ballarat or
Bendigi, and the stock-rider of the Riveriua, eat dear preserves, nr cheap ones made of
pumpkins flavoured with fruil, while the Tasmanian confectioner still fui-ther hips himself
in the fight by making his wares with dear sugar, and so rendering his market even less than it
would otherwise be. Before leaving the sore subject of Tasmanian agriculture we may add, that
another reason why farming in the colonies — and, above all, in Tasmania — will not " pa}," is
the high rate of labour and the low jjrice of produce, in a country where there are many
producers and few consumers. Hence it is that good oat-land, capaljle of giving sixty
bushels to the acre, each bushel averaging 40 lbs., will not return to the o^-uer and farmer
combined over 10s. per acre. Bad farming has, of course, something to do with this, a country
with few manufactures and much laud more, but a belief in the worst kind of political
economy, perhaps, most of all. Rust is the great scourge of the Australian wheat grower,
and unless wheat brings a higher price than it does, in time it will cease to be a profitable crop.
Coal exists in considerable quantity, and of fine quality, and is mined, though not to a
great extent. Indeed, the island is mamly supplied from Newcastle, New South Wales,
though for domestic purposes the native article is in some demand. Gold is obtained both
from quartz reefs and from alluvial diggings, though the latter description of mines are
limited. The quartz is, however, likely to be more lasting, and to supply material for
the industry of a great number of men. Silver ore has been worked at Penguin Creek,
but the operations were not found profitable. Tin is, however, obtained abundantly in the
vicinity of Mount Bischoff, and iron is beginning to be mined to some extent. Slate and
TASIIAXIA. 135
limestone are worted, and various other minerals premise great things in the future. The
timber trees we have already noticed, though their wood is not yet appreciated by cabinet-
makers to the extent that it will be by-aud-by. Bark is largely exported to England
and to New Zealand for tanning purposes ; liut the hops, which may be extensively cultivated,
are, like the jam, shut out of the Australian ports owing to the high " protective " tariff.
In 187(3 the population of Tasmania was calculated at llir),-lS4, the males exceeding the
females, though not to the extent they do in most of the other neighbouring colonies. In that
year there were 7-lC mai-riages, .Sjl^O births, and 1,730 deaths. In the same year 8, .571 people
arrived in it, and 8,160 left it, though many of the latter were merely temporary absentees,
who had gone on a visit to Australia, New Zealand, England, or elsewhere. One remarkable
feature aljout Tasmania is the small mortality among children — particularly those under
one year. Taking an average of ten years, Hayter has arrived at the following data :
Out of 100 infants born there died within the first year, in Tasmania, lO'Ol ; in New
South Wales, 10'.5:2 ; in Queensland, 1»'G9; in Victoria, 12-50; in South Australia, l.j-61;
the number in England being about 16, and in Scotland about 12^. The percentage of
deaths of children under five was, according to Newell : Tasmania, 20-08 ; New South Wales,
J'^l 1 ; Victoria, 43'.j0 ; Queensland, 16-.33 ; South Australia, oi-N. The proportion of children
under five who died to 1,000 children of the same age living was : In Victoria (ten years), about
.52 J ; in England and Wales (thirty years), about 67i ; in Tasmania, less than 27. Thus it
appears that the mortality of children under five years of age in Tasmania is little more than
half that of the least healthy of the Australian colonies. It is also healthier than New
Zealand, which, as regards the death-rate, is the most salubrious of all the Australasian
group. The population, distributed according to their religious beliefs, belongs, about nne-half
to the Church of England; the next largest sect is the Church of Rome; and the
smallest of all — a mere fraction — the Jews.
Of the forty mammals found in Tasmania, one-half belongs to the order which comprises
the kangaroo and opossum, and among the most remarkable are the kangaroo, wallaby,
opossum, bandicoot, Tasmanian "devil" [I)i(sj/iirns ?<r.j2'/;K.5-, p. 14o), and "tiger wolf" {T/ii/laciniiis
cynoceph(dus, p. 1:3."5), both of which are very destructive to sheep.
The majority of the birds (162 in number) are identical with those of Australia. The
emu — thoiigh figured in the general isnl engraving on p. 13.3 — has been extinct for some
years, but the black swan (p. 137) still survives in a few of the out-of-the-^xay districts.
Game birds — quail, duck, snipe, golden plover, and pigeon — are common ; and in the
islands of Bass's Strait are yearly slaughtered, for the sake of its oil, and also for food by
the sealers, thousands of the mutton bird (PnJjj/iKs Ijrevicaudii.^). There are, however,
believed to be about twenty peculiar to the island. The notes of some of these are musical,
the most remarkable being the reed warbler, the tones of which are not unlike the nightingale,
the black and white magpie, and the butcher bird. The surrounding seas and rivers abound
in fish, the most valuable of the fresh -water species being the " cucumber grayling."
The trumpeter, which reaches a weight of 40 lbs., is the most appreciated of the salt-
water species, and during the last twelve years salmon trout, brown trout, tench, and
perch have been naturalised in many of the rivers and lakes.
l;3(i THE COUNTRIES OF THE ^VORLD.
It is evident that physically Tasmania is only a part of Australia, the islands iu Bass's
Strait bcin" llie last riMnaining- fragments o£ the land which once connected the two iu the
Tertiary period. In many respects it resembles Gipp's Land, on the opposite Victorian
coast, the great Australian Cordilleras having- impressed its features en the continent; but
the isolated position of Tasmania has brou<,'ht it more under oceanic influences than ^'ictoria.
Hence the better watered condition of the country and the more equable climate. The
climate, indeed, is very mild — almost perfection.
Mosquitoes, the {lests of many of the neig-hbourin<j colonies, are few, and though
nnxious reptiles exist, fatal accidents from their bite are rare. The extreme of heat
at Ilobart Town is 105°, and of cold 29'8° Fahrenheit. The hottest month is January,
the coldest July, while the mean temperature of the whole year is 54'92'-. These are the
averages of a number of years' observations, but in some jiarts of the island the winter's
cold never falls so low as 4o^. Snow seldom falls, and then only lies in the elevated
districts for any length of time. The average rainfall is 35 inches; at Hobart Town it
is much lower, but on the west coast not unfrequently there are very wet seasons. There
are no tracts of bare desert in the island : hence the hot winds of Australia are unknown,
except when, on rare occasions, the sirocco crosses Bass's Strait and visits the northern shores.
Even then it is rare that the hot blast lasts longer than the second day, when it is routed
by the cold wind from the Antarctic iee-fields. Hence the nights are generally cool, and,
unless during the warmest of weather, the bush fires, which are the terror of the Australian
squatter, are unknown. The latter end of summer and the whole of autimm are beautiful : then
it is that the holiday visitoi-s from Melbourne flock to Tasmania, likely before long to be their
playground. The winter is not a disagreeable season, albeit the wind blows loudly enough,
and hail and rain are frequent. There is a tradition that once on a time there was snowballing
for three entire days in the streets of Hobart Town, but no one, unless the " oldest
inhabitant," has any more experience of snow than seeing it whiten the crest of Mount
Wellington and the neighbouring bills; indeed, the favourite comparison of Tasmania with
the South of France is not quite so wild as some of the comforting colonial assertions.
Brazen music becomes in time monotonous, especiallj- when the performers all play the
same tune.
Towns axd Mex.
There are only two to\\Tis worthy of the name — Hobart Town (p. H9) and Launceston —
albeit there are a number of villages which, though possessed of mayors and municipalities,
must be pronounced — out of heaving of their citizens — as mere villages, destined, perhaps,
to become cities by-and-by. Hobart Town, the capital, has over 23,000 inhabitants, and
is a town \\ith less of rawness and ruggedness than usuall}' obtains among mushroom colonial
" cities." But the Tasmauian capital is no civic parvenu : it is, for the Antipodes, even
venerable, and has grown up leisurely and quietly, without any fillip from gold " excitements "
or vulgar " rushes " of any sort. Nature has done much for it ; John Bull's money a good
deal UKire; while the luiwilling labour of generations of convicts has raised its public buildings,
and macadamised its roads in that substantial, comfortable fashion that is usually absent from
young communities abhorrent of rates and jealous of the doings of finance ministers. Its quays
TASMANIA : ITS TOWNS.
137
and wharves are well built, and allow vessels of small tonnage to lie in the very heart
of the town. The buildings are good, and the private houses, in spite of the outcry about
hard times and a decaying colony, seem the abode of people who have got over the initiatory
struggles of colonial life, and attained that mellowness which easy circumstances and a sense
of the fact gives to mankind even at the Antipodes. The villas in the vicinity are quite
as dignified as any " boxes" in the suburbs of a large English town; and altogether, the waj-s
T}IE nLACK SWAN 01' AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA (C'jgmis atraivs).
of life, the clubs, and the picnics remind the visitor that, though he has altered his sky,
the people are the same as those he left behind him on the other side of the world. Mount
Wellington (p. lil) and Mount Nelson are familiar objects in the landscape, and
to climb them is one of the common amusements of the holiJaj'-making citizens and
their visitors. Hobart Town is indeed a show-place. The grumblers who declare that
the colony is going to the bad — which declaration the present writer takes the liberty
of doubting — assert that the capital is kept alive by the visitors who flock to it during
the siunmer mouths to escai^e the terrible heat of the Australian colonies. Tlio same people
138
133 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
affirm that iu the rural districts the settlers are so poor that they cannot live, though the
dullest eye can see that the most poverty-stricken farmer is in Tasmania infinitely better
situated than he would be as an agricultural labourer in Enoland or elsewhere. Indeed,
one of the writers on the colony — a settler of five years' date* — denies the pessimistic
assertion thus confidently made. No doubt, however, there is some reason for despondency,
or at least for discontent.
Tasmania, though patriarchal for an antipodean colony, is still young : it is not over
seventy yeare of age, and should have a long lease of manhood before it. Yet from ISGli
to 1S70 the total increase iu the population was only 103. In the latter year, :3iU emigrants,
chiefly German, were brought into the colony by a system of bounties, but the numbei-
was so small as to show that the effort to attract population by this means was a failure,
though it is still pei-sisted iu. But the statistics givcu prove, I think, that the
colony is advancing, though slowly, and that a better future is before " Sleepy Hollow," as
even the settlers themselves call their island home. Between Hobart Town in the south
and Launceston in the north there is not only a good macadamised road made by convict
labour, but u railway. Accordingly, this part of the island is compai-atively well settled,
and little laud is open for selection. Farms maybe bought or rented; but — and this illustrates
the weak point in Tasmaniau farming — the land is generally " worn out " — that is, everything
has been taken out of it, and nothing put in it, while it has not been allowed to lie fallow long
enougli for fresh soil to be formed by the breaking up of the surface materials. But along
the north coast, and on both the east and west sides of the island, there are still large
parcels of unoccupied, thougii wooded, land. There is, however, one consolation to the
owner of a bush-covered farm — that is, that the heaviest wooded soil is, as a rule, the
best. Launceston is beautifully situated at the junction of the North and South Esk rivers
with the Tamar, up which the steamer sails to reach it. Though not so populous as
Hobart Town — it has but 11,000 inhabitants — Launceston is commercially a more prosperous
place than the capital, owing to its vicinity to Melbourne, and from the fact that the
northern side of the island, of which it is the entrepot, is richer than the south. From
Launceston, also, b'ranches off another line of railway to Deloraine, which is intended to
run liy-and-by to Port Frederick, the lines thus traversing the richest parts of the colony.
The town of Launceston itself — if the Government buildings of Hobart Town were present —
does not fall much short of the capital in general appearance. The streets are well laid out,
the shops good, and the hills around dotted with villas and flower-gardens. To the north
the Tamar spreads out like a lake, and on the west the Esk, not much less beautiful than
its Scottish namesake, joins it. Like every other colonial town of any consequence,
Launceston possesses numerous churches, a fine town-hall, a public library and lecture-room,
a sumptuous mechanics^ institute, a club, a theatre, a botanic garden, and a multiplicity
of banks, which, in spite of the reputed poverty of the island, seem to prosper after a
wliolesomely (juiet fasliion. In the vicinity of the town, the Cataract and the Devil's Punch-
bowl, on the South Esk, and Clark's Ford, Distillery Creek, and Cora Linn, on the North
Esk, are favourite places for drives, but the scenery hereabouts is not equal to that of
Hobart Town. Doubtless, trade in Tasmania is, compared with tlie other colonies, pronouncedly
• "Tasmania," l)y a Hecent Settler (1S79).
TASMANIA: THE CONVICT DAYS. 139
dull. The male population has, in the first place, too many old and young people for a
prosperous colony, and the proportion of girls to boys among the rising generation is
greater than what usually prevails in older countries. It is, indeed, a remarkable physiological
fact that in the Australasian colonies generally the male progeny is more numerous than
the female, a rule which applies to horses, sheep, and cattle, as well as to the human race.
Nor is the population increasing much by immigration. In 1877 the population was 107,101,
not so much as a good-sized town of the tliird or fourth-rate order in Europe. Seven years
before it was 100,76.5; in 1853, 7o,(lO0. Compai-e this with Queensland, which in 1859
began her independent career with 18,000 inhabitants. In 1870 she had 115,000, and at
present the population cannot be less than '208,000 (as it was over 203,081 in 1877).
One chief cause for this was the stoppage of penal transporta,tion to the colony.
This aided, no doubt, the increase of population in one dii-ectiou, but it retarded
it in another. So long as convicts were in the country there was much imperial
money spent in it ; taxation was light, public works went on apace ; and instead of the
cost of farm labour being prohibitory, the "assigned servants" from the penal establishment
at Port Arthur always supplied an abundant and even excellent supply of assistants. The
ladies who remember the " old times " still talk regretfully of the unworthy women whom
a paternal government assigned them as cooks and housemaids, and of the red-coated partners
they had at Hobart Town balls when two of Her ^lajesty's regiments lay in quarters in
the colony. Martial music resounded in the streets, and loyalty was nurtured by British
money being lavishly spent for the benefit of the free settlers, who were burning and shining
lights in the midst of a wicked generation of deportees. There is a great deal of " loyalty "
yet, but it is not quite so blatant as it once was, and is likely to decrease in an exact
ratio to the decrease of Government subsidies to the Port Arthur establishment, which now
contains very few imperial convicts. For each of these a specified sum is paid out of the
imperial treasury; for her own wicked folks, of course, Tasmania must herself pay. Nor
could it be said that in the old convict days the country lacked prosperity. Hobart Town in
the south, and Launeestou in the north, developed during this immoral period into flourishing
towns, with schools, churches, and other public institutions; and it was convict labour that
made the splendid macadamised road which runs for 120 miles between these towns. Annually
over £350,000 were spent in the colony. Settlement progressed with great rapidity, and
the settlers grew rich. Nor is it easy to see how they could not. There was a market
for everything which they chose to raise, and there were even periodical famines — or,
at least, such times of scarcity that provisions rose to famine piices. For instance, in the
year 1801 flour was quoted at £112 per ton ; in 1807 the crop failed, and wheat rose
to £1 a bushel, or £32 a quarter, and then a gairison order was issued rendering it a
punishable offence for the settlers to charge more than £1 a bushel. In 1S17 tea was
quoted at 15s. per pound at the beginning of the year, but in May it rose to 40s.,
and so continued for some time. Tasmania even became the parent of new communities.
Bateman, Heuty, and Fawkner crossed Bass's Strait, and founded the flourishing, settlement
on the shores of Port Phillip which aftenvards grew into the most populous of all the
Australian colonies, viz., Victoria ; and " Yandiemonian ■" wc>ol, fruit, and wheat were in
great demand amonir all the other Australian colonies.
140 TflE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
But Tnsmaniu did not know when she was well off. The 'N'andiemonians hecame
fat, and kicked at the idea of their island being a penal settlement, and commenced
an agitation for the stoppage of transportation to it. " It began," writes Mr. Trollope,
"to be unendurable to them that their beautiful island, the sweetest in climate, the
loveliest in scenery, the richest in rivere and harbours, the most accessible of all Great
Britain's Eastern colonies, should be kno\TO to the world also as Great Britain's gaol. So
Tasmania spoke her mind, and, of course, had her way, as has been the case with all
Great Britain's children ever since the tea was thrown over at Boston." It is just
possible, however, that the Tasmanian children would have obtained their wishes not quite
so quickly, had not in the midst of the agitation come the Australian gold discoveries. Then
everv one who could muster enough to buy a pick-axe and shovel was rushing to the
Ballarat and Bendigo diggings at the rate of SOU a day; public offices were left deserted,
ships without crews or captains, farms without farmers or labourers, households without
servants, and sheep-shearers on strike for £7 a day. Under these circumstances the
Imperial Government, not unreasonably, hesitated to despatch a shipload or two of ruf-
fianism from the mother country to increase the chaos. As it was, the authorities had
enough to do to keep the convicts secure. Escapes were common, and the " assigned
servants" and "expirees" flocked to Victoria, with an effect on the moral and social con-
dition of Melbourne and the diggings which can scarcely be over-coloured. Accordingly, in
1S.J3, transportation to Van Diemen's Land ceased, and under the new title of Tasmania
the colony commenced a fresh existence. But, as we have more than once indicated, it has
not prospered ; the old convict labour and subsidies spoiled the free settlers for the time
being. Yet few could wish to return to the old days. The moral effect of the penal
settlement was utterly bad while it lasted, and the after results are evident in the low
moral tone which it is affirmed by some of the best friends of Tasmania unhappily
characterises the settlers at large. It must be remembered that many of the " old hands "
are now colonists, and fresh blood being scarce, they naturally tainted the rising generation,
with whom, indeed, they always came much in contact during former days when " assigned
servants," for whose durance the settler was responsible, were members of every household
of any consequence. The convicts in ^'an Diemen's Land were also some of the very worst
that could be sent. They were the overflow of New South "Wales and those who had
been transplanted from Norfolk Island, for a time the abode of the most desperate ruffians
who crossed the sea for neither the good of the country they had left nor that which they
had gone to. From 1801 to 1850, when responsible government was established, the
history of Van Diemen's Land is simply the history of a convict settlement. " How
to manage convicts, how to get work out of them with the least possible chance of escape,
how to catch them when they did escape, how to give them their liberty when they
made no attempt at escape, how to punish them and how not to punish them, how to
make them understand that they were simply beasts of Inu-den, reduced to that degree
by their own vileness, and how to make them understand, at the same time, that if under
the most difficult circumstances for the exercise of virtue they would cease to be vicious,
they might cease also to be beasts of burden : these were the tasks which were imposed
on the governors and tiieir satellites, not only on all officers, military and civil, not only
l.[.o THE COUKTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
on the army of <*aolers, warders, and sui-li like, which was necessary, hut also on every
free settler and on every free man in the island. For no one who had cast in his lot
with A'an Diemen's Land could Ije free from the taint of the establishment, or unconnected
with the advantages which it certainly bestowed." This graphic description of Mr. Trollope,
o-dthered from the mouths of those who had been eye-witnesses of and sharers in the
events described, is contirmed by Governor Du Cane, who had even better opportunities
of knowing the state of matters described. The convicts, in spite of the Government
vigilance, frequently escaped, and became bushrangers, living solitarily in the interior,
seeing no human face, save that of the black woman with whom they cohabited, unless
when a raid was being made upon the settlers' farms for jilunder, and sometimes for murder.
These ruffians also brutally ill-used the natives, shooting them down in the most wanton
manner — sometimes, it is said, as food for their dogs. When the island was first settled
thev numbered, according to various estimates, from 3,000 to 5,000, but owing to the
villainous murders of these bushrangers and others they rapidly decreased. The remnant
were gathered together by the Government, and the last — a woman — died in 1S76.
As for the convicts, the tales of their outrages on black and white Tasmanians would fill a
volume. Loss could not have been expected from them. As a rule, they were the most
worthless of mankind; and if any trace of a better nature remained, the discipline of
Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur was apt to extinguish it. Macquarie, soon abandoned,
was the place to which only the most abandoned and desperate of criminals were
sent, and by all accounts — I quote Sir Charles Du Cane — it " could have been little short
of a hell upon earth." Heavy irons and the lash were the punishments for almost any
offence, and the more insubordinate a man was the heavier he was ironed and the more
he was lashed, until his spirit was utterly broken or he became a human fiend. That,
indeed, many of " the prisoners " did become. At the entrance to the place of bondage
might have been written the inscription over the entrance to Dante's " Inferno " : " Leave
hope behind all ye who enter here." The prisoner could not escape by sea, and between the
convict settlement and the cultivated part of the island lay sixty miles of almost impene-
trable bush, through which ran an ill-defined trail. Yet the track was sufficiently marked
for any convict, who might escape and keep to it, to be hunted down, brought back,
and lashed and ironed worse than before. If they left the trail and took to the bush,
they generally either died of starvation, or survived by drawing lots which should first
be devoured by his companions. After Macquarie Harliour was abandoned. Port Arthur
remained the only convict settlement in the whole island. This station is situated on
Tasman's Peninsula, a neck of land on the south-eastern part of the island, very hilly,
deeply indented by bays, and covered with dense forests of gum-tree. It is connected
with the rest of Tasmania by the Eagle Hawk Neck, an isthmus which was always
kept closely guarded by armed men and savage dogs. If a prisoner escaped, the fact
was promptly signalled to the Neck. Then the guards — biped and quadruped — were on
the alert, and as it was next to impossible for the prisoner to escape by sea, the
chances of his eluding the guards by daytime was slight indeed. At night the dogs'
kennels — large casks — were turned bottom upwards, so that they usually lay on the toj)
of them and bayed the moon. The Neck was cut into by a narrow creek, over which a
TASMANIA: THE CONVICTS. 143
man could easily swim — if he did uot dread the sharks with which it swarmed ; but as
the sharks were dreaded even more than the dogs, it was but seldom that this method
of escaping- from bondage was attempted. There have, however, been a few cases in
which the convicts baffled their foes and reached the opposite land ; but even then the
runaway had a weary task before him before he could reach the haunts of men. Mile
after mile of trackless bush had to be traversed, and the stories of the hardships endured
by these hunted " miserables " still form a substantial item in the Tasmanian tales of horror.
But those days have passed away, and Port Arthur, with its pretty church and cottages,
looks as if it had never known the degradation of being the home of perhaps the most
infamous of men. Instead of thousands of convicts, there are now less than a score; and,
probably, before these lines are in the reader's hand the number will be so far reduced
that only insane criminals and colonial ones will be on the isthmus. The prison establishment
has the appearance of " a large, clean, well-built village, with various, factories, breweries,
and the like," and, in fact, of everything which is not and has not been.
The sacrifice entailed by losing the convicts was more to Van Diemen's Land than it was
to New South Wales, which thirteen years earlier had struck against them being sent to her.
The latter colony had become a large and self-supporting community, no longer dependent
on the money Avhieh the mother country gave her for the support of the offscourings of
England. Van Diemen's Land, on the contrary, was a comparatively small and poor
colony. When the agitation was set agoing for the stoppage of convict immigrants there were
not over 75,000 free inhabitants in the country. But these succeeded in their aim — spite of
the Government opposition — for national pride prevailed over the baser love of pelf. No
doubt, since that time there have arisen a great many people — in Tasmania and out of it —
who think the Vandiemonians acted too precipitately, and that, in a word, they were
too poor to be so prodigiously virtuous. The ladies' view and the farmers' view of it I
have already mentioned ; but there was also the Government view. With the expiry of
the convict system Tasmania got responsible government, and, " Lord of itself, that
heritage of woe " — as undoubtedly the gift has proved to many of the smaller colonies —
the Tasmanians became the prey of that objectionable personage, the small professional
politician. Taxes multiplied, and puljlic works decreased. The apathy and pauperisation
which always attend a community taught to rely on Government aid had, however, too
thoroughl}' sapped the Tasmanians' self-reliance for them readily to accommodate themselves to
the new order of things. Hence the feeling of sickness which she experienced, and the longing
for " the unwholesome nourishment which she herself was wise enough to throw away
from her." When Tasmania was under the convict establishment regime the demoralising
effect on the community must have been terrible. The mere fact of children having to
listen to the stories of such and such like " lag's " crimes was bad, but when the same
child had to grow up in daily contact with a man or a woman who had been one of
the vilest of criminals in England the effect must have been infinitely worse. These
" assigned servants " had often good masters, and were generally wise enough to know
when they were well off. But not unfrequently they were incorrigible vagabonds, who were
pei-petually — but naturally — trying to escape, or when uot escaping, shirking work, though ready
enough to eat the rations which they received in return. The master had no power to punish
144 TU£ COUXTKLES OF THE WOKLD.
them • but he had the right of sending- them before tlie nearest magistrate to receive the
Tasmauian cure for every convict ill. The " lag" marched over to the Justice of the Peace
with a scrawl to the effect— " Dear sir, please give the bearer three dozen, and oblige,
yours trulv, ." The magistrate was invariably a squatter, or at least an employer
of " assigned servants," and of course never for a moment doubted bis friend's words.
Indeed, as a general rule, there was little doubt about the turpitude of the recipient of
the three dozen, and in time the formal deposition of witnesses as to the servant's
character ceased to be demanded by the lax J.P. The man, having very little power to
revolt, "•enerally took the note — and the three dozen — and returned not much the woi-se,
physically, for his visit to the " Hagellator," though morally nearer the wild beast
than he was four-and-twenty hours prcN-iously. " A bold spirit," we are told, " would
perhaps run away. Then he would be tracked, and dogged, and starved till he
came back or was brought back, and the last state of this man would be worse
than the first." Sometimes the assigned servant did not escape, but remained to murder
his master and his master's family when a convenient chance occurred. Murder and
attempt to murder were the most common of Tasmanian crimes, and for these, as well as
for milder offences, hanging was the effectual cure, so far as the individual operated on
was concerned. But to kill one man did not deter another from the commission of the
crime he had suffered for. Indeed, so bitter were the lives of these deportees that it is
believed murder was often committed for no other object than to escape the misery of
their existence. Hence the hangman was in much request. The gaol chaplain — so runs
a traditional tale at Ilobart Town — once remonstrated with the authorities against the
inconvenient celerity with which the last office of the law was performed. " Thirteen
men could be hanged at once comfortably, but no more." The hangman was a well-paid,
though not a popular, official. So also were the Hagellators — old convicts promoted to the
employment of flogging their brethren at the different stations. After banishment was
done away with the flagellators found their occupation gone, and seem to have disajipeared.
At all events, nolwdy cares to acknowledge that he belonged to the profession. A few
died a natural death, but a great many an unnatural one when they were recognised by
their old patients. For the flagellators, as may reasonably be believed, w^ere not dearly
beloved officials : neither were they long-lived.
It was only the most adventurous spirits who escaped or attempted to escape.
A great many of the worst found this a difficult task. They were from the day of
arriving shut up in the Port Arthur establishment, or at least confined within the
limits of the Tasman Peninsula, and hence, if they attempted their escape, they had
to run the gauntlet of the men and dogs on " the Neck " or of the sharks in the
creek. But another section were employed on Government works, making roads through
the bush or wharves along the shore. They were under surveillance, though not always,
and hence may be said to have enjoyed, with what zest the gregarious "gaol birds"
of a great city could, the open-air life of the Antipodes. But the great majority —
men and women — were " assigned " as servants to the free settlers, who were so far
responsible for their safety that they were bound to report their escape immediately,
and keep them under a wholesome condition of disciphne. These sometimes levanted, but.
TASMANIA: THE CONVICTS.
145
as may be easily understood, tliey were not the material from whom the bushrangers were
principally drawn. " The first preliminaries of escape were easy," writes the eminent
novelist whose graphic word-pictures I have so often quoted. " A man could run into the
bush, and be quit at any rate of the labour of the hour. If he were shepherding sheep,
or building fences, or felling timber during the greater part of the day, no eye, unless
that of a brother convict, was upon him. He could go, and the chances of the world
THE TASMAXIAX " DEVIL " (Dasyurus ursiniw).
were open to him. But when these first preliminaries were so easy, it was, of course,
essential that they should ordinarily be rendered unsuccessful, and that the attempt should
be followed by speedy and shar]) punishment. The escaped convict was at once hunted,
and generally tracked by the facilities which starvation afforded to his pursuers. No one
but an escaped convict would feed an escaped convict, and none but they who had
established themselves as bushrangers had food either to eat or give. Even the established
bushrangers who had homes of some sort in the mountain recesses, who were in league \\ith
the natives, and who knew how to take the wild animals, the kangaroos, wallaby, and opossums,
139
j jjj THE COUXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
would not iinfrwiHently, Jrivon by famine, surrender themselves." Nevertheless, a few did
establish themselves for yeai-s in the bush, living the lives of solitaries, and only visiting-
tl»e settlements when driven by hunger. Some of these men were notorious in the annals
of tlic colony. Such an one was " Mike Howe," whose career was really wonderful. He
UvckI with a native girl, whom he afterwards murdered because she was not swift enough
of foot to escape with him when he was pursued, and was himself, in his turn, murdered
by a companion. Another was Brady, wliose exploits are fast getting into the domain
of myths. But others survived, surrendered themselves, or by good conduct or public
services earned a pardon ; and some, like Cash and Markham — well-known names in the
early history of the colony — now live the lives of respectable citizens. Markham hid
himself for seven years in a den he made in the bush. Then wearying for the sight
of human face and human companionship, he crept down — clothed in a sheepskin,
hao-o-ard and wild — to a squatter's house, and surrendered himself to the mistress of the
establishment, who happened to be the only person at home. The settler had already
experienced the attentions of Markham — in the shape of thefts — but being an Irishman, of
a kindly heart, he exerted himself on his behalf, and succeeded in procuring the man a pardon.
He now resides — or did — in the vicinity of Hobart Town, a prosperous market gardener.
"Expirees" are, of couree, common. Many of them flocked to the Australian diggings,
much to the indignation of the virtuous portion of the population. At some "gulches,"
" flats," or " gullies " — I am told — it was even attempted to establish a kind of check
against their entrance, just as the shopkeeper makes bad sovereigns pass through a tell-
tale hole in his till. A skilful detector of "lags" was stationed at the entrance to the
digging. From some peculiarity in manner, talk, dress, or walk — especially the " lag,"
which is said to be acquired from long dragging about of a ball and chain — this custodian
of the diggers' morals detected his prey, and gave warning. Then the " ^'audiemonian "
was " run out." Others settled down in the country ; and even to this day one cannot
travel far among the Tasmauian farmers before he is pointed out " an old hand." Some
of them will "acknowledge the corn," or "own up," to use their own expressions. But
the visitor who is inquisitive enough to ask the cause of his host having in earlier life
received the attention of the judiciary of their common country, will discover that the
offence for which he was " lagged " was of the mildest description — poaching, probably ;
or even that it was in the highest degree creditable to the suffering man — such as the
over-zealous vindication by his fist of injured innocence, or the assertion of family honour;
or possibly, if the "old hand" is very glib with the tongue, because he "struck a blow
for liberty " as a rick-burner, a Chartist, or an Irish patriot.
The " old hand " is, however, not as a rule an exemplary character, and has certain
peculiarities which are common to his order. He works by fits and starts — rarelj' con-
tinuously. He is not addicted to drink in the bush, and seems rather inclined to save
up his money until he has " realised a cheque," so that he may take his pleasure on a
large scale. Then he " knocks off," and makes for the nearest town. He first provides
himself with a new " rig-out," and then deposits the balance of his savings in the hands
of the tavern-keeper, with whom he " puts up," with an intimation that he " shouts until
that is finished." He lives a riotous life, is rarely sober, and not unfrequently in the hands
TAS5IANIA: THE " STRAITSIXEX." 147
of the police, until the landlord iuforms him that he has exhausted his credit. He may
extend his debauch a little longer by selling the odds and ends which he has purchased
dm-ing his stay in town, and nut uufrequently finishes it by also disposing of his wardrobe,
and returning to the bush in the ragged shirt and trousers he set out in. This he considers
" spending his money like a man ; " and the narration of his more or less apocryphal
adventures in Hobart Town oi- Lauuceston serves as literary pabulum for the leisure hours
of the "old hand" until the wherewithal for another "spree" has accumulated, when in
due time the same method of " knocking it down " is resorted to. The " old hands " are,
however, rapidly dying off, and in a few years these descendants will be only traditionally
whispered to have descended from a convict stock. " Society " in Tasmania is very
pleasant and very tolerant. But it draws the line at a " lag," and no matter what his
wealth or prosperity, sternly declines to admit him to its balls, dinners, picnics, and
garden parties. For the "old hand" there is, among the polite people of Tasmania, no
place for repentance, so jealous are they of the criminal taint, and so morbidly afraid lest
their own origin might be traced back to a convict twig in their genealogical tree.
The " STEAITSlfEN."
Among the material for the present and future criminal classes of Tasmania are the
half-bloods, of whom, especially on the northern coast and the islands of Bass's Strait,
there are a few; yet the Australian half-breeds' vitality is weak, and though the early
escaped convicts and others frequently contracted unions with natives, their descendants
are comparatively few. The " straitsmen," as the sealers of the stormy Bass's Strait are
called, were at first runaway convicts of seafaring tastes. On shore they would have been
bushrangers, and ou the water these reckless men often played the pirate. In their whale-
boats they waylaid little coasters and levied black-mail on them, or, hovering near some
coast settlement, dashed upon a solitary squatter for supplies. In still early days they w ould
have been Antipodean sea-kings ; in less tolerant times the " straitsmen " were pronounced
what they really were — unmitigated vagabonds. On the granite islands, which form a
kind of causeway from Tasmania to Victoria, they found homes and a field of labour. In
sheltered nooks they reared a cabin, cultivated a little garden, and then in lazy idleness
gratified their dislike of distraint and abhorrence of toil. But the growth of commerce
made them producers. Passing vessels bought their vegetables, and the sale of the
skins of the numerous seals in the vicinity enabled them to purchase all necessaries,
and often even to accumulate money, which they had few ojiportunities of spending.
Feeling their solitude, they obtained a dog and a few goats, or made a raid on some
solitary native hamlet and stole some of the women, to share the lot of the island labourers
and assist them in their toils. " Armed," ^\Tites Mr. Bonwick, " with a rude lance or
the mighty club, they rowed to a rock whereon the seals were basking in the sun, and
furiously attacked the huge blubbery masses ; or they pursued the monsters into their
caverned retreats, and fought like knight-errants of olden chi\aliy. The tripod was raised
on the blazing fire, the fatty carcases were melted in the ])ot, tlie oil was poured into the
barrel, and home came the man, toiling with the oar on a tempestuous sea, with his
148 THE COUXTKIES OB' THE WORLD.
(k-arly-puivhased pleasure. Success did not always' reward their efforts. Many a mile was
ro«ed and no prey seen. Often would their natural foe, the raging water, defy their
return, imprison them on a sandy strand, unsheltered and unprovisioned, until, starved into
resolution, they put off into the surge, and were buried in the sea. At times, imprudent
from courage, they were seized by the teeth of the seal or crushed beneath the ponderous
Ijody of the animal. The boat, driven from its moorings by the tempest, might leave the
mariner to perish alone on the ocean-girt rock. Even when associated with others, the
violence so characteristic of the race would lead to hasty quarrels and sudden fatal
retribution. Lawless themselves, bound by no ties but convenience and self-interest,
conflicts were not uncommon, and the community sought no protection but their own
strong arms, their own swift and certain revenge." So infamous did these men
become, that again and again were the authorities entreated to disallow any boats in the
strait, and to cheek, under cover of sealini;^, the perpetration of the most shameless crimes.
The wretched natives, " flying from the stern bushmen of the interior, found themselves
confronted by the still more cruel coasters : like the miserable flying-fish which are chased
by the monsters of the deep into the voracious jaws of the bird of prey." Their name,
even as far as the western limit of the continent of Australia, was heard of with
terror, and explorers lost their lives at the hands of natives whose hatred of the white
men had been roused by the outrages inflicted on them by these abandoned sealers. Nor
did the convict straitsmen limit their murderous attacks to the blacks. It is believed that
they were guilty of some, at least, of the murders attributed to the natives.
On Kangaroo Island was a community of forty persons of both colours and sexes, wha
seem to have reached the superlative degree of vice. There were continual quarrels among-
themselves over the division of the plunder obtained in piracies extending from Rottnest
Island, Swan River, to Bass's Strait. The island they lived on was a paradise of loveliness.
When Flinders discovered it, in ISOl, he found the "wild animals" so tame that upon
the approach of the sailors the seals gazed on them undisturbed, and even the timid
kangaroos were unscared by an apparition which conveyed to them no cause for alarm.
They were soon undeceived. The number of seals killed by the early hunters was great,
but owing to indiscriminate slaughter the animal is now nearly extinct. The mutton bird
was the chief animal food of the sealers, and its capture and preparation formed one of
the chief occupations of the black "gins" who were captured or obtained by treaty or
purchase. " They were removed to the rocky islets of the straits, and made to till the
land, collect sea birds and feathers, hunt after and preserve the skins of the wallaby, pick
up the nautilus shell driven on the sand by the storm, and take their turn at the oar."
All of the sealers were not convicts, thouo-h the moral status of few of them was elevated.
Some were even decent in their Uvl'.-;, and by bringing up their half-caste children
rejiutabl}', tried to atone for the crime of their ever having been born at all. In many
cases the women were treated abominably, though it must be allowed rather better than they
were by their own tribesmen. They even liked their lives, and it is said proved faithful and
affectionate wives, though they were extremely jealous of a rival, a trait of character by
no means common among the lower race of savages. For a quarter of a century there
lived on Preservation Island, in Hanks' Strait, old ^Munro, the "King of the Sealers,"
<:
3
«
o
-J
150 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
who held sway over his wild neighbours in a most wonderful manner. They listened to
his eounsels and deferred to his judg-ment, awed by his wise look and "dictionary words:"
though the Quakers, Messrs. Backhouse and Walker, who visited him, give no very
pleasant picture of either the "king" or his three aboriginal queens. With a few
exceptions, these sealers were a drunken, lazy, lying, lawless set of vagabonds, ready to
commit any crime, and frequently guilty of most. The women, instead of becoming better
in their company, generally increased in depravity. When "Robinson the Conciliator"
was engaged in collecting tlie aborigines whom the massacres of the settlers had spared,
he forcibly took these women from the Strait islands, to go, with the rest of their people,
to Flinders' Island, where an asylum — afterwards removed to Oyster Cove — had been pro-
vided for the remnant of the Tasmanian aboriginal race. There are still a few sealers in
the strait, though the seals are all but extinct ; but the islands now know a milder race.
Sheep farms have taken the place of their lawless retreats, and English shepherds' \^^ves
have made pleasant homes on the spots where the black gins were Hogged by their brutal
lords because they did not " clean the mutton birds." *
Prospects.
These are at present not bright. But they are dull, not because Tasmania is
naturally poor, but because its political arrangements shut it out from sharing the wealth
of its neighbours. These barriers to its prosperity I have already referred to (p. 134).
In climate, and everything that makes a country desirable for a reasonable man's resi-
dence, Tasmania is superior to Australia, and even to New Zealand. Bounty tickets,
entitling labouring families to a passage at a reduced rate, and land on arrival in pro-
portion to the number of the family, are granted on certain conditions by the Govern-
ment Emigration Agents in London.f Yet few immigrants are attracted to the country.
Xgr, unless some sudden and unexpected gold excitement acts as a stimulus, is there
much likelihood of* its receiving a large addition to its population. Political squabbles
do not help this colony any more than they aid the others which are equally subject to
them. In the Houses of Legislature parties are always so evenly balanced that a single
adverse vote often puts the Government in a minority. Consequently, more thought is
given to "keeping sweet" some particular constituency than attending to what are the
true interests of the country at large. Again, the Upper House — like the " Upper House "
in the other Australian colonies — is intensely conservative, so that there are frequently dead-
locks between it and the Lower one. Professional politicians in a busy community are apt to
come too prominently to the front, with the result that the credit of the country suffers
abroad, and its interests are often irretrievably damaged at home. The end of Tasmania will,
I conceive, be union with Victoria, and the sooner the better; for then the latter colony
will be unable to pass mischievous laws against the importation of the produce of the
former. The one feeling which seems most prominent in the Australian colonies is the
intense rivalry among them and jealousy of each other. These rivalries are likely to
* A full account of these " straitsmen " may lie found in Bonw-ick's " Last of the Tasmanians, " pp. 286—323.
+ The Emigrant .ind Colonists' Aid Corporation, 2o, Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster.
AUSTEALLi.: ITS EAELY HISTORY. 151
increase. But these are not even now greater than they were among the American
colonies before thej' united into one federal Eepublic. Rivalry is a useful stimulus to
exertion ; and as provinces of one great dominion, the different colonies of Australia can
find ample room for this without treating each other as if they were foreign countries,
with a mission in the world to ruin their neigbours. Even then there is a difficulty ; for the
large colony would dominate the smaller ones, unless each was to have its autonomj-,
as have the American States and the Canadian Provinces. This will come by-and-by,
when the Australian colonies are greater in number. But at present the Tasmanians
do not look forward to the prospect with any great zest. They declare themselves
ruined, and seem to take a grim sort of satisfaction in telling the world so. " The
public money has gone with the convicts, and the rabbits have eaten up the grass.
The rabbits, like the sheep, have been imported from Europe, and the rabbits have got
ahead of the shee})." But they do not bestir themselves to get rid of the rabbits. For
is not Tasmania " Sleepy Hollow ? "
CHAPTER IX.
Atjstralia : Its General Characteristics.
Vague dreamy ideas possessed the old geographers and seamen that far to the south lav
another continent — a Terra Amtralh, full of riches and wonders. But no man essayed
its discovery, and though it is tolerably certain that as early as the sixteenth century
the mainland of Australia was known to the Portuguese mariners as " Great Java,"
it was not until the year 1(306 that Torres sailed through the strait that bears his
name. His exploration was quickly followed up by the Dutch seamen, though it was
not until the famous voyage of Tasman (p. 123) that any very clear ideas were obtained
regarding this southern land — the New Holland of the Batavian voyagers. The English,
destined in time to be undisputed masters of the new region, did not make their appearan£e
until 1GS8, when the famous buccaneer, William Dampier, landed and spent five weeks
near Roebuck Bay. But it was not until between the years 1709 and 1777 that the
English obtained a thoroughly recognised right to rank as the discoverers in earnest of
a great part of Australia. Then it was that Captain Cook sighted a part of what is
now kno^ai as Gipp's Land, and coasted up the whole length of the eastern side of
Australia, rounding Cape York, and crossing Torres' Strait to New Guinea. This was
in 1770. Then, in 1773, Cook discovered New Zealand — or rather, re-discovered it (p. l:J-3)
— and his fellow voyager, Furneaus, examined part of Tasmania and Basses Strait. Twenty
or thirty years later we find Bass and Flindei-s engaged in the work of maritime dis-
cover}- in the same region : though the French Admiral D'Eutrecasteaux was their rival
in this honourable labour, and laid the foundation of that claim to part of the country
which, but for the firmness of Lord John Russell, might have obtained for our infant
152
THE COUKTKIES OF THE WORLD.
colonies in these regions foreign, and possibly unfricnJly, neighbours. Grant, Munay,
Stokes, and others continued the coast survey, until, about the year lSi3, our know-
led*^ of the outline of the great southern continent was complete. But the interior was
still partially or wholly unknown ; and even yet vast tracts are unexplored as rej^aids
their capabilities for settlement, though we may safely say that no great physical features
of Australia remain to be discovered. The very names of the explorers of inner Australia
would (ill a page of this book. Their work forms a bright chapter in the history of travel,
endurance, and unselfish love of science; but I must leave the reader to learn the out-
TIEW OF SYDNEY HAUBOUK, NEW SOVTIl W.\LES.
lines of their labours from the many accessible sources of information on the subject.
Some of them we may require to speak of later, or when we examine the nature of
the different colonies into which the continent is now divided, and narrate the story
of their settlement.
We have called Australia a continent — for so it is : it is the fifth great section of the
globe. A land 2,.500 miles in length and about 1,250 in breadth, with an area of 3,000,000
square miles and a coast-line of S,000 miles, cannot be called by any other name. It is
four-fifths the size of Europe, and one-fifth the area of America, though it resembles that
continent in only one particular, viz., in being surrounded by water, and in the rapid
progress it has made in wealth and population since first settlements were formed on its
AUSTRALIA : S03IE COMPARATIVE STATISTICS.
153
shores by Europeans. To continue our comparisons : it is ten or twelve times larger than
Borneo, Papua, or Madagascar. We shall speak by-and-by of the five colonies — the sis,
indeed, if we include the " unorganised " territory of North Australia — and the progress they
have made in wealth. But meantime it may be useful to glance briefly, by way of com-
THE EUXTA-HVXVA TUEE (Amxicarxn JJidltillli) OK UVEENSLAXD.
prehending the extent of the country and its importance, at the rapid bounds which it has
made within a i^eriod which is really comprised in the lifetime of a single individual.
Three generations ago its coast-line of 8,000 miles had scarcely beeu touched by a civilised
man : assuredly none had dreamed of fixing his home there. Nor was there much in-
viting in the great southern laud to tempt any one to settle on it. In the first place,
140
151. THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
it was utterly isolated. Next, the rivers which llowed out o£ the interior were few,
so that the arteries through which civilisation might peneti-ate it were rarer than in
almost any other region. Yet within forty years the enterprise and courage of English-
men have fringed its shores with infant colonies, which are progressing so rapidly that
several of them are already more powerful and wealthier than old-established European
states, and the capitals of which are cities of the first order, replete with every appliance
of civilisation and every luxury of the Old World. Some of these commonwealths, though
established since some of their present citizens were of mature years, are already able
to " exercise the powers of elaborate political systems, and sustain over these vast terri-
tories forms of government which blend the freest principles of the American with the
most venerable safeguards of the British Constitution." In thirty years they have risen
in population from 211,(100 souls to ;J,0U0,(MI0, or 834 per cent.; whilst during the same
period the population of Canada and the United States increased by 6G0 and 120 per
cent. In the same brief period the trade of these far southern colonies rose from less
than £G,UOO,00U to over .£0.3,UO(J,U0O, or 950 per cent.; while British trade, which in
the same space of j-ears experienced the greatest development, only increased 400 per
cent., that of the United States ^i'io per cent., and that of Canada about 650 per cent.
Yet there is no reason to believe that Australia has seen its best days, for its trade rose
from £03,0011, 01)0 in 1871 to £87,000,000 in 1874, an increase of 38 per cent, in three
years. In 1874 there entered into and cleared from the colonial ports 5,600,000 tons
of shipping; in the pastures of the continent — only a mere fragment of the whole country —
there are 70,000,000 head of live stock; and, in addition, there are 5,000,000 acres of
land under cultivation. Two thousand miles of railway are open, and much more in pro-
gress or opened. Upwards of ;J0,000 miles of telegraph are in working order, uniting
the colonies with every other part of the world. The annual revenues of the several
Governments approach £14,000,000 sterling. Y'et, though the population of the Austra-
lasian colonies has multiplied by seventeen since Queen Victoria began to reign, yet so
great is the area of these dependencies of Britain that, while there are 389 persons to
every square mile in England and Wales, in Australia the most densely populated colony,
Victoria, has but ten to the square mile, and the least thickly settled Western Australia
is po]iulated at the rate of one individual to every thirty-eight square miles.* In 1851
the exports from the United Kingdom to Australasian ports were valued at £2,807,356;
in 1871 it was £10,051, 08~,t or, in other words, thirty per cent, of the exports from
Britain to the colonies, and an increase in twenty years of 250 per cent. This proportion
must be even greater now, for in 1873 the export to these colonies rose to a declared
value of £17,610,152, an increase of no less than £7,558,170, or seventy-five per cent.
in two years. J
Let us now glance briefly — for the subject is so wide, and the literature on it so
immense, that brevity is essential and prolixity unnecessary — at the physical character
* Colomb : '■ Tho Xav.il ,inJ Militiiry lii sources of the Colonies "' {Journal of the Itoyal United Service
ImliliitioH, 1879).
t "Annual .Statement of the Trailc of the Tnital Kingdom for 1877," p. 7.
X Reid: "An Essay on Now South Wales" (187C), iip. 2, 3.
AUSTRALIA: PHYSICAL FEATURES. 155
of this country, then at each colony iiuliviJually, and finally at some social and other
traits which are common to these colonies and their inhabitants.
Physical Featl'ke.s.
E.Kterually, Australia is uninviting-, and, judged on the " special adaptation " principle,
seems little fitted for the abode of man. Even the savages which have made their home
here are among the lowest of men, and greatly inferior to all the surrounding races.
Nor were the}' ever numerous, while their rapid disappearance before the whites proves
that their vitality was feeble and their scale among the " provisional races " small. With
the exception of the northern coast, which is much broken, the 8,000 miles of coast-line
is singularly uniform and devoid of harbours. The conformation of the country leads us
to the belief that at one time it was the bed of an inland sea, in which the mountain
chains parallel to the east and west coasts were the tops of islands lying in an archi-
pelagcj, like some of those with which we have already become familiar. These mountains,
like those of other extensive land masses in the southern hemisphere, trend from north to
south, though the greatest length of the continent is at right angles to this, and runs, with
offshoots, at a distance of from twenty to one hundred miles from the coast, rising to a
height of from 2,500 to 4,500 feet in rough, inaccessible elevations. The highest peak
yet discovered — in the south-east — is Mount Koscuisko, which rises to the height of 7,300 feet.
The coast-lying valleys are rich and well watered, but out of reach of the sea breezes the
country is arid and waterless to a degree that hampers colonisation, and for long will
render it uninhabitable. The mountains of the west coast — which all recent explorations
have proved to be inferior to the east — also run north and south, but are lower, and in
places approach the coast. In the great Australian Bight they form sea-cliffs, from
200 to 400 feet in height. Behind these hills lie grassy waterless plains, dependent for
moisture on the uncertain rainfall. The north coast is low and flat in parts; but the
general character of the country may be described as that of a trough, the edges of the
basin descending to the interior in gradual slopes : this interior consisting of immense
plains, little elevated above the sea, and unbroken, except in the north-east, by hills
rising like islands in the midst of these extensive level tracts, scattered with native
grass, by gum-tree forests, or by the other herbage which in Australia constitute "bush."
Some of these plains are deserts, and likely for ever to remain such, as natural moisture
there is none, and water to irrigate them cannot be had ; but others are not unlike the
South American llanos (Vol. III., p. 103), or the Russian Steppes, only not so high, or
unhappily not so cold. In the rainless seasons — which occur at uncertain intervals — they
are all but sandy or gravelly wastes, but when there is a good rainfall they are covered
with a fair amount of grass. There are, however, strips of toleralily well watered land
throughout the interior, and on the north-east coast the climate and soil are capable
of growing all kinds of tropical products. The great sheep and cattle " runs " are elevated
downs, chiefly upon " the western slopes, or inland side of the mountain range of the
east coast." Further south, however, there are good tracts in like situations, where the
presence of mountains gives the necessary physical conditions wanting on the inland plains.
]5G TUE COUNTIJIES OF THE WORLD.
The rivers of Australia arc ueither few uor of small value, but owing to various circum-
stances only one or two of them have in-oved of much importance in opening up the interior.
Those of the east coast are perennial, and are, some of them, uavigaljle for small vessels fifty
to seventy miles inland; but those of the west coast are often during the diy season mere
chains of water-holes, separated by dry sand intervals, over which the stream Hows when
the rains or the melting of the snow of the high interior mountains fill them. For a
few weeks they rush along merrily, often overflowing their banks; then for the rest of
the year they all but disajipear.
On the north-west coast there are a number of large rivers which flow extantly,
being fed by the periodical tropical rains. The Murray is the largest of the Australian
rivers. It is the result of the union of a number of smaller streams rising in the
south-east mountain region, and uniting about hit. 34-^ south-east of the parallel of
lU*^ east to form the main current, which, under the name mentioned, can be navigated
during floods for 1,100 miles, and now and then all the year round. The rivers of
Australia also point to the interior having at one time been the bed of a sea, into
which they flowed out of the surrounding islands, great and small. For instance, the
Murray and its tributaries — the Darling, Lachlan, and !Murrumbidgee — during the first
part of their course flow so directly towards the interior that for long they were sup-
posed to debouch into an inland sea. This Mediterranean theory was long and not
unreasonably held by physical geographers. It has, indeed, been discovered that they
actually do pour their waters at firs-t into a central shallow lake, which in its turn finds
an outlet on the south coast. The Maequarie and the Lachlan, throughout a part of their
course, run through swamps, which no doubt were at one time their termination when the
locality was occupied by the sea, and which have not yet become dry land. During the
dry season these beds are mere chains of ponds, and the soil along the shores is thin and
poor — another proof of the theory that at no very distant geological jwriod it was mere sea
bottom. The Murray itself, which in former times must have repeatedly changed its
course, after draining an area of about half a million square miles, has no proper outlet
to the sea. It debouches into the lagoon called Lake Alexandria, which again communicates
with the sea at Encounter Bay. The rivers of the eastern slope are also different from
those of the west and north-west coast, in so far that, having shorter courses, they are
more determined in their character, and cut their way through the sandstone ranges in
their path with such velocity that, with the exception of the jVIurray, few of them are
navigable, or run for longer distances, including their tortuous windings, than twenty
miles, or pass inland through anj' distance further than fifty miles. Australia is, to men
accustomed to the northern hemisphere, a land of anomalies, and the rivers are no exception
to the vague rule that in the great southern island continent things go by contraries.
In the first place, there are no rivers in the world so long, and yet, take one with another,
so small. Tlic rule with rivers in a normal part of the world is that as the river
increases in length it also increases in volume. In Australia that does not follow. Like
some of the American rivers, they disappear in "sinks," or the amount of water con-
tained in them decreases, until, as we have seen, they become mere chains of ponds, or
disconnected " water-holes,-" valuable, no doubt, to the settler, as they afford his only
<
SO
D
<
loS THE COUXTIilES OF THE WOULD.
supplies of water until the river fills a<i:ain, but useless for naviyation ; or the river is lost in
marshes or shallow lakes, often evaporated uuJer the hot suu, until the space occupied by
it (luring the wet season is a plantless Hat of clay, "diced all over into squares under
the heat of the tropical sun." Several of them are salt, as are also several of the
smaller lakes, such as the Austin, in West Australia, and several others which have no
outlet, the evaporation being e(]ual to the amount of water which falls into them either
by stream or by rainfall. The lakes are also very inconstant as to the amount of water
in them at certain seasons or in certain j'ears. For instance, in 1817 Oxley discovered the
Regent's Lake, which, nine years afterwards, Mitchell found to be a grassy plain with only
a little water at one end. In 18:29, Lake George was a sheet of water seventeen miles
long and seven broad ; in 1836 it was a meadow and an aqueduct — an aged native remembered
the time when it was covered with bush. The interior plain of Australia has a surface area of
1,.">00,00(I square miles, scooped out of sandstone, though the Eastern Cordillera, from Cape
York to Tasmania, is granite and metamorphic rocks, overlain by silurian and carboniferous
beds, the latter of which yield in New South Wales abundant supplies of coal. The tertiary
beds capping alike the east coast and the granite islands between Wilsi;n's Promontory,
the most southern j)oint of Australia, and the most northern part of Tasmania, proves
that in the comparatively recent geological period in which they were deposited that
isi;uul and Australia were united (p. l^iti). Granite prevails in other parts, but the
Victorian " Dividing Range " is made up of old slates and igneous rocks, and abounds in
gold, as do also the schists cut by igneous rocks on either side of the Cordillera. Tertiary
rocks occur extensively in the interior, and in manj' parts of the west chalk covers the
old rocks, l)ut there are no volcanoes, and the country is undisturbed by earthquakes.
There are some grounds for believing that the Australian continent once stretched much
further to the east than it does now, and that a vast portion of it has disappeared under
the ocean. The finding of a thigh-bone of the dinornis (the moa), one of the gigantic
birds so characteristic of New Zealand, would also lead us to believe that land once
existed where now 1,000 miles of ocean rolls, sepai-ating two countries of Australasia
which have so little in common with each other. The mineral resources of the country
we shall speak of more fully when we sketch each of the five colonies into which the
Australian dominion is divided.
Cusr.iTE.
The climate of such an immense region can onl_v be given here in general terms.
Its great characteristic is its extreme di-yness and heat in summer. But though
the state of the thermometer, looking merely at the figures, seems almost incredible, yet,
in reality, the air being so dry, the persons experiencing a warmth of say 120" Fahrenheit in
the shade do not suffer nearly so much as they would with a less degree of heat but
a greater amount of moisture in the air, as is, for instance, the case in Central America
and other tropical countries. On the contrary, it is not unhealthy even when at its
worst. The frame feels, and is, elastic, buoyant, and capable of enduring fatigue ; and
the sudden variations of temjierature which in the LTnited States and many parts of Europe
AUSTRALIA: CLIMATE. 159
are so unhealthy are here iiractically imknowu. At Sydney — not the best climate in
Australia — the differences between the mean summer and winter temperatures is only 18"
Fahrenheit, and between the hottest and coldest months ^1", and at Melbourne they are
even less. The climate of the south-east, or settled region, is very like that of the
Mediterranean. lu the winter the evenings are cool, and ou the interior mountains snow
can be seen lying. Even on the upland pastures it falls now and then, but ou the coast
regions it is almost unknown. Here during the summer is experienced the alternate
sea and land breezes, and, owing to the extensive hot regions in the interior, the sea
winds have a tendency to lilow steadily towards the land. On the other hand, the hot
winds of Australia are a disagreeable feature of its climate. They come from the north-
west, and are the chief meteorological disagreeables of Autiiwdeau continental life. " They
generally last for three days, and may be expected in most parts of the south-east districts
four times every summer. The- barometer rises before the wind sets in, and continues
high during its prevalence, though generally in Australia, as in the northern hemisphere,
an equatorial wind depresses, and a polar wind raises the barometric column. The
temperature of the air is raised to 100" and 120" Fahrenheit in the shade, and
the breath of the wind feels like the blast of a furnace. The effect of one of these
' brickfielders,' as they are called, on the frame is highly distressing, and in delicate
persons often j)roduce dangerous attacks — determination of blood to the head, inflammation
of the throat and eyes, &c. ; green leaves turn suddenly sere and yellow, the fig and
the vine are destroyed, and whole fields of wheat and potatoes are blasted in a few hours.
Clouds of fine dust are a most painful concomitant. It insinuates itself through the
crevices of the doors and windows, so that escape is impossible. In short, the effects
are very analogous to those of the sirocco of North Afi-ica, the khamsin of the Araliian
deserts, and the hot dry winds of Cape Colony. In Western Australia and Tasmania
these winds do not occur; and they are much less severe in Victoria than in Sydue}'.
Independently of these, the heat is seldom very oppressive, and as settlement and culti-
vation proceed the hot winds and dust storms become fewer and less severe." They usuallv
blow in December, coming over the hot interior deserts; but already the huuhifores !<;d-
pork adi in New South Wales are lamenting that the hot winds, their especial pride
and their especial torment, are not what they used to be in the "good old times" — all old
times being understood to be good. Mr. Trollope did not find the heat oppressive;
neither did he find the mosquito ravage, as it does, for instance, in the city of
Washington during the mouth of Jul}-, when the strongest man finds his master in this
pestilent insect, and the stoutest congressman feels (if he survives the bite) that he
has gone through worse than an Egyptian plague. This much is due to the Australian
mosquito — for the insect is celebrated. Everybody who writes a book about Australia
has something to say regarding it — not particularly to its credit for amiability; the fact
being that, usually, Australian travellers, coming through no other mosquito haunted
land until they arrived there, were ignorant of how villainously spiteful its relatives
can be in other lands, which it has anything but favoured with its bloodthirsty
presence.
In the interior the heat is much greater than on the coast. The surface being almost
100
THE COrNTEIES OF THE WORLD.
Hat, there is no play for the currents of air upon it. Hence, as Mr. Ranken* points out,
only the heat is daily observed and nightly radiated. The soil in the summer is like
the floor of an oven, and the hot air — such is the summer of the country — may prevail
without variation hundreds of miles north and south of the tropics. South Australia,
from the want of any mountain range near the south to catch and condense the vapour-
laden winds from the Pacific, gets little rain, the fall varying from six or eight inches
at the head of Spencer Gulf to eighteen or twenty inches at Adelaide and Gawler. In
Victoria and New South Wales, from the presence of a contrary series of physical con-
AUSTKALIAN AbOKIGlXES.
comitants, the rainfall is considerable. At Portland, according to ilr. Acton, thirty-two
inches fell, at Melbourne 27'5Sf inches — though Neumayer estimated the evaporation at
forty-two inches; at Sydney as much as 48-95, t at Brisbane fifty, and at Rockingham Bay,
in latitude 18"^ south, where the hills are covered with fine forests, the rainfall in 1871
was no less than ninety inches ; but as soon as we pass inwards even here the effect
of the hot plains is evidenced in a decreasing rainfall, so that the inland plains are on
their western extremities almost as dry as inland Australia generally. We may add
tliat on the Australian Alps, owing to the dryness of the air, the snow-line comes down
to 7,11'5 feet, and there arc highland districts, such as Kiandra, 4,C10 feet above the
sea, where frost, hail, and snow are common throughout the entire winter, while in
• '• Dominion of Australia " (1874). t Kingston : " Eegistcr of the Rain Gauge, Adelaide " (1874).
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AUSTRALIA.
1(31
the plain below the heat has been known to rise to 140'' Fahrenheit. The greatest ex-
tremes of temperature ever known were at Sandhurst^ 778 feet above the sea, where
the heat rose one summer day to in^", and the cold fell in the succeeding winter to
27" 5' J but this was exceptional, and is quoted merely as a climatic curiosity. In Ballarat
the extreme of winter cold was once 2^" Fahrenheit. In Yietoria, September, October,
and November are bright, genial, slightly rainy, spring months; December, January, and
February — the summer season — is usually hot and dry, though in the beginning of it
occasionally with some wind and heavy rain ; in February bush fires prevail, owing to
the burning hot winds ; in March, April, and INIay there is experienced pleasant autumn
iV*-:^__
^, ..^]ig
THE DUCK-BILLEU i'LAi\ris OF AUSTRALIA (OrnitTiorti/ncJms anatiiius).
weather, and the country looks its best ; June, July, and August generally bring strong,
dry, cold winds, often with rain from the south. Hence the Australian farmer reaps
the grain while we are sowing it, and celebrates Christmas at midsummer instead of
midwinter. The terror of the "squatter" and farmer is, however, in the droughts, which
occur at intervals of about ten or twelve years, and inside the coast-ranges of New
South Wales and Queensland produce the greatest distress, millions of sheep dying
from want of grass and water, and hundreds of graziers being utterly ruined. In South
Australia and Victoria droughts are also common, though — in common with Tasmania —
A''ictoria is blessed with a more constant supply of moisture than most other parts of
Australia. In South Australia two or three years have been known to pass without
scarcely a drop of rain falling. But in the northern country tropical periodical rains
fall as in all the regions lying under the equator, and as the right wing of the monsoon
141
163 TllE COUNTRIES OF THE -WOULD.
sweeps across tliat territory the moisture is aljundanl ; but llie climate is, on the other
hand, so uuheulthy as to render settlement ditfieult.
Pl-AXT AXU Axi.MAI. LlI'E.
Tlie plants and animals of Australia are peculiar to it and part of the neighbouriag-
islands, including New Guinea and Tasmania. Some families of plants are alone found
here; and to add to its seeming unsuitability for man it has no native grain, fruit, or other
vegetable tit for human use, being almost the only tropical or temperate country which has
not. Yet the vine, tea-plant, cotton, tobacco, fig, mulberry, orange, &c., thrive profusely
when introduced ; and no part of the world yields more luxuriant crops of wheat than
South Australia. But, as is often remarked — less with a view to paradox than is usual
in such sayings — Australia is the land of contraries. The people stand with their feet
to those of Europe ; the animals do not carry their young in the ordinary fashion, but
in pouches; and the trees are all evergreen, and many of them turn their edges, instead of
their surfaces, to the earth and sky. These dense gum-tree {Eiicali/phts) and wattle forests
{Acacia) are peculiar, the leaves being placed vertically, so that the Australian woods have
not that depth of shade which the same density of trees would give in other parts of the
world. The leaves remain persistent until replaced by new ones, but the bark is shed
iinnually. Of Ei(ciiljpli(.i there are said to be 130 species, but the one most widely
scattered is the Enctilj/ptiis rosfrafa (the flooded gum-tree), the wood of which is durable
and takes a fine polish. Most of them are among the tallest of known trees. Until
recently it was believed that the Sequoia gigantea of California (Vol. I., p. ;319) was the
tallest of known trees, but it has now been ascertained that this elevation (-■5.52 feet) is far
■exceeded by the Eucalyptus ami/gdalina (p. 1(55), or stringy bark. In Gipps Land, a fallen
tree of this species measured 435 feet from the root to the highest point of the branches.
Another fallen tree on the Black Spur, at the foot of the Victoria Alps, and near the
source of the La Trobc river, measured ISO feet. In the Dandenong district, also in the
colony of "N'ictoria, a standing tree was estimated to be 450 feet from the ground. Another
in this district showed a height of 295 feet to the fifst branch, the height then extending
seventy feet further to the broken top branch, which then measured three feet across; thus
the whole length to the place of fracture was 365 feet. A still larger tree at Berwick
measured eighty-one feet in circumference at a distance of four feet from the ground. They
are thus as high as the Pyramids, and, growing with great rapidity, shoot up in straight
and smooth stems. The same oflRcial report from which these facts are" taken notes that the
locality of the big gum-trees is also the congenial habitat of the gigantic ferns of the colony
(p. 185), which abound in sequestered situations : where mountain streams dash through
■deep ravines, and have formed swampy banks and marshy bottoms for themselves. " Here
the giant fern attains its greatest growth, and is seen in all the completeness of its
graceful beauty, rising from forty to fifty feet in height, and throwing out from the top
•of its massive and upright stems a broad canopy of foliage; its tapering fronds from
five to eight feet long, under which an army of ' prosjjectors ' may encamp, or beneath
•which the grotesque corrobarees of the aborigines may be fittingly held, while their night
THE VEGETATIOX OF AUSTKALIA. 16S
fires glow 81011" the vistas,, and transform the bolls and tops of the gigantic ferns into
the semblance of a spacious editiee of some primeval order of architecture. The extreme
purity and softness of the air of this region are shown in the wild luxuriance of its vegetation.
Besides loftj^ spreading ferns are magnificent acacias and Howery banksias, the sweet-
scented myall, and miles upon miles of the beautiful mimosa, the country' during the
best part of the year being in a blaze with yellow flowers, and laden with a j)erfume
worthy of the gardens of Armada." The genus Casuarina (swamp oak, she oak, forest oak, or
beef- wood), comprise several interesting species of tree, while the Cedrclu Tooiia, or red cedar
— a tall, handsome tree — yields, perhaps, the best known and most valuable timber in the
colony of New South AVales. It is largely used for all kinds of carpentry, is easily worked,
and in dry situations is very durable. Some of the best qualities of the wood equal the
best mahogany, both in appearance and in intrinsic value.* Native grasses ai'e few in
number, but do not form continuous turfs, their tendency being to grow in isolated tufts,
with dry red earth or cracked earth between them. The result is that in order to give
stock a chance to fatten, or even to live, they must have the run of extensive tracts of
country (p. lOG). " Bush " in Australia means really the country, and is even used to
designate tracts on which not a tree can be seen for miles. " Scrub ■" is a name applied
to places where the forest is hampered by an impenetrable thicket of prickly shrubs
interspersed with creeping and flowering plants, and the banks of the rivers and
the shores of lakes are often covered with a dense growth of reeds fifteen to twenty
feet high. A country of the extent of Australia, though it may possess a vegetation
preserving throughout the same general characteristics, must be expected to vary in
different regions. Thus, while the interior of Queensland consists, as a rule, of higli-
lands with scarcely any trees, but abundance of herbaceous vegetation and grass, and the
vervain or brigalow scrub composed of small trees or shrubs growing on a clayey
soil, the northern parts of the colony are clothed with luxuriant forests. These
comprise, within the tropics, umbrageous trees of an Indian type, and sjilendid Araucarias
all matted together with leaves or binds of the convolvulus, calamus, or other plants,
mixed with parasitic orchids and ferns which luxuriate in their shade. It may also be
added that in the interior of the continent are found many plants which would indicate
that the country was at one time the bed of a sea. Among this maritime vegetation may
be mentioned the pig's face, or Hottentot fig {Mewmhr^aiiiJiemum), which, though a sea-
shore plant, may be seen covering tracts hundreds of miles away from the coast. The
forest vegetation also takes the line of the rivers, leading us to suppose that it was introduced
into some regions where it is now found by the action of running water when the rivers took a
course different from what they do at present. On the low-lying, swampy northern coast the
" mangrove " [Avicenni.a officinalis and Brufjuiera UheciVn) grows abundantly; and here also is
found the Adansonia Gregorii, or gouty tree stem, a counterpart of the African baobab tree; but
owing to the arid character of the climate of most parts of Australia, mosses and lichens
are rare. The eastern part of the country is richest both in plants and animals, and
ajiproximates more to the Indiau Archipelago than the rest of the continent. Here palms are
*For an exhaustive account of the Australian trees and plants, rulr Bentham : Flora Amtraliensh ; MuUer :
Trrigmeiita Phijtographiie Aiistra/is ; and lloore, in " Industrial Progress of New South Wales " (Sydney, 1870).
164
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
found, but their range does not extend much south of Sydney. The Norfolk Island pine
(p. Mi), allied to the bunya-buuya tree (p. 153), and the grass-tree {Xaul/iorrha'u), the black
bov, or grass gum-tree, a species of the lily order, of which several species form charac-
teristic features in the Australian landscape, are also limited to this belt, though they are
found in various of the off-lying islands. ^liiller has calculated that the flora of Australia
(including Tasmania) comprises about 10,000 species, of which less than one-half are
perhaps peculiar to it, and very few indeed of these are common to Europe. The
leguminous and composite orders comprise nearly one-fourth of the species. The myrtaeeous
<.,..; V\.^.//!!>fA A,,'
■fk,:-'^'M.:'-
THE ^I'OTTEL^ ItuWEll BIKD UF AUbTHALlA (C/tta»iyduJcra niactdafu).
]ilants, ferns, and grasses come next. But the most conspicuous feature in Austi-alian
botany are the Proteaceous plants (silky oaks, tulip tree, beef- wood, &c.), almost peculiar
to that part of the world. Then come, in the order of their abundance, the orchids,
epacrids, hemlock order, the BiosmcEc, a subdivision of the rues, the Liliacese, the Labiatas,
or dead-nettle family, the Goodenia>, the Figworts, and the Salsolaceai. The buttercup
order, the epacrids, and the Rosaeeae are not found north of the equator.
The animals of Australia are quite as peculiar as the plants. Few of them are found
elsewhere, while some of the leading groups of the continent and neighbouring islands are
entirely wanting. For instance, there are no monkeys, ruminants (chewers of the cud), or
pachyderms (pig and elephant order), and the great group of carnivorous animals is repre-
AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS.
165
sented solely by the dog-lookinw dingo, whose taste for lambs makes it lead a harried life
at the hands of the farmer. The only other carnivora are the seals; but there are many
bats, one of which is also found in Madagascar. There are four edentate animals, belonging
to the sub-order monotremata, all peculiar to Australia. They are tlie curious echidna, or
THE GIANT orM-TREE OF VICTOKIA (Eucalyptus amygdalina
spiny ant-eater, and the ornithorhynchus, or duck-billed platypus (p. 161), long known as
among the most peculiar of Australian animals, but whose full history is still a mystery.
Among the rodents, the curious water-rat (II//ih-om//.s) unites the characteristics of the
beaver-rat and dormouse. There are also several species of mouse, a jerboa, and the
half rat, half rabbit {Coniliirus constructor). But the marsupials form the most marked
feature in Australian zoology. This (the kangaroo and opossum) order numbers about 138 :*
* Some authors have reduced this number to 110.
166 TIIE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
iiiJecJ, Australia lias four-fiftlis of all the known species of tliis order. Of the remaining'
thirty-two not found iu Australia, nine are found in New Guinea and adjoining islands,
and twenty-three comprise the opossums. Their great peculiarity is that — to speak non-
scientificallv — they carry their young in a pouch, a fold of skin upon the female's abdo-
men, in which she can place the young within reach of the teats, and so, when travelling,
can suckle them. Altogether, at a rough estimate, Mr. Gerard Krefft, Curator of the
Sydney Museum, puts the Australian mammals at twenty-four bats, one dog, tliirty rats and
mice, and, in addition to the marsupials, a number of seals and whales, whose range is not
restricted to the Australian seas. There is, of coui-se, in addition, man ;* but there are as yet
few data for enabling u^ to know how long he has existed in Australia, and there is no evidence
of his remains having been found in such connection with extinct animals as would lead
us to believe that he was ever contemporaneous with any of them. It is unnecessary to
go into detail regarding any of the native quadrupeds of Australia, the chief — such as
the bandicoots, wombats, wallabies, and the larger kangaroos — being more or less familiar
by pictures or bv the specimens whirli arc in every zoological garden. Most of these
animals are fast disapjicaring. The dingo is being poisoned wherever he can be reached
by baits impregnated with strychnine, and the kangaroo hunts are about the only
"sports" which can be said to be peculiar to Australia. But even hunting with dogs
does not decimate the kangaroos fast enough for the squatter's peace of mind. Aeeordinglj-,
the different colonies have offered premiums for their destruction, and every year there
are enormous numbers destroyed, solely for the sake of the premium and the hides, which
are made into a fair quality of leather. Some of the imported mammals, however, threaten
to be quite as destnxctive as the native ones — the rabbit and the horse, for instance. The
ravages of the rabbit we have already had occasion to dilate on, but the horse and the ox,
now roaming at will over the pastures of distant parts- of the colony of New South Wales,
in the form of escapes from imported stock, are getting an actual pest. Like everything
else in Australia, they have increased with great fecundity, until it is now nothing uncom-
mon for 100 or 500 horses to be seen in a single " mob " or drove. The squatter on whosfr
run they are pasturing tries to drive them into a pound, there to slaughter them for the-
sake of their hides. The law is that if one is seen to be branded it should be advertised,
and handed over to the owner on his paying expenses. But it is not often that these-
advertisements are seen, the squatter finding it more convenient to kill the horse, and
then by destroying the hide to put out of sight all traces of the lost animal. It is rarely
that a fine animal selected from one of the herds pays for the trouble and cost of breaking
it. The wild horses have rapidly deteriorated, until their chests have got narrowed, their
shoulders poor, and their limbs straightened. They are sometimes run for sport ; but it is
not ever)- settler's horse which is fit for this amusement, and if it is, the running soon ruins
it. In time, as the country gets enclosed, these wild animals will disappear; otherwise they
will speedily render the scanty pastures useless, besides destroying the squatters' fences-
and enticing the tame horses of their paddocks.
Exclusive of Tasmania, the number of Australian birds is about 52S, distributed as
• "Races of Mankind," Vul. 11., pp. 113-123; and more especially Brongh Smyth: '• Thu Aburigincs of
Victoria" (1879).
THE .\NIJIALS OP AT'STR.MJA. ]G7
follows :— New South Wales, -lO-'J; Queensland, 11:J; Victoria, 351 ; South Australia, 313;
West Australia, iW; North Australia, 230. It is, however, not so rich in species as other
countries under the same latitude. Australia is famous for the beauty of her parrots,
over sixty species of which are found there. The honey-eaters are also numerous and
varied in plumage, while the bower-huilding satin-birds, the mound-raising megajjodes,
and the stately emus are peculiar to this region. Game species abound. There are many
pigeons, geese, plover, and quail, and every bay or island along the coast is swarming
with noisy sea-birds. " Some large groups are, however, altogether absent. We have
no woodfiecker, no humming-birds, no trogons, and few, if any, good songsters. Other
handsome forms compensate in some measure for the loss. Numerous game and singing-
birds have been imported from other parts, and all thrive well ; and thanks t<i laws for
the protection of game during a few months o£ the year, there will always be good sport
in the shooting season."* Even in regions very far from the coast the emu — {CcM/iariia
itovoe-IioUaiuruf, p. 133), which figures in the New South Wales and other colonial coats-
of-arms — is becoming verj' scarce; but the beautiful lyre-bird {Jleuura siqierba), so called
from having its tail-feathers spread out in the form of a lyre, is still frequently seen.
But of all the remarkable birds of Australia the bower-builders are the most remarkable.
The best known of these birds {C/dami/dodenc miicnlaia^ p. 101) is found in the n«rth-wostern
and less known parts of the country, but there are other species closely allied found in other
parts of the country, though all of their bowers are not the same in structure. They form ust
only a nest, but a bower of twigs lined with grass, and the avenues leading to it decorated
with feathers and shells, obviously intended for ornamentation, the birds, particularly
at the breeding season, taking a great delight in running backwards and forwards in
it. The regent-bird of Queensland and Eastern Australia generally (Sericuliin meliiuis)
also makes similar bowers; so does the satin-bird {PtiloHor/ij/ucJiwi holoserlcens). But
the most extraordinary of all these bower-birds is the AiiiLli/oniis iiiornata, or garden
bird, which has been described in the neighbouring island of New Guinea by Rosenberg,
Salvadori, and Beccari. It actually forms a conical thatched cabin, and in front a
"garden sj)ace," decorated with fruits and Howers, which it seems to take an almost
human pride in admiring the nicety of. The gigantic kingfisher, known as the
" laughing jackass," is an interesting bird ; and the black swan of New South Wales
and Tasmania (p. 137), when first chscovered, was remarked as belying an old Latin
proverb. The reptiles of Australia are numerous. There arc, for instance, several tortoises,
a "leathery turtle," which yields abundance of oil, many lizards, and in Queensland two
sjiecies of crocodile. There is also Moloch lioyrldas, a tuberculated lizard, in South
and West Australia, and the iguana, a gigantic species, which is said to be a dainty
article of diet when roasted, though this comestible is more spoken of than indulged in.
There are iipwards of seventy species of snakes described : forty-two of them are veno-
mous, but only five dangerously so, though, in reality, bites are rarely heard of, and the
settlers profess no alarm of the venomous reptiles, nor do they take any precautions
against them. There are many different kinds of frogs, including the tree-frog, whose
whose loud shrill voice is often heard during rain. The Australian seas abound in many
* Krefft, Uh. cli. ; McCoy: "The Natural History of Victoria"; Gould: "Birds of Australia," &c.
IGS THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKT-D.
iieculi.ir I'ornis of fisli. Among these is the arripis, the " salmon trout " of the colonists
thou"-h it has no connection whatever with that fish — the " Murray cod/' and the
"snapper" {Piigrns iinicolur), both of which are highly valued as food, though the latter
is perhaps the best : it sometimes attains a weight of 5Ulbs. There are also two species of
mackerel, and various other fishes which are used as food, or are interesting from a scientific
point of view.* The lower orders of life are also numerous, though the number of sjiecies
peculiar to the country is not so great as those of the vertebrata. For instance, of the
between ~<IU and -JOU moUusca described from the west coast, eleven are found in the
Mediterranean.
The tertiarv fossils of Australia are peculiarly interesting. In New Zealand the
modern fauna is distinguished by its group of wingless birds ; in Australia these birds
arc not present, fn like manner, the fossil remains of the tertiary, or latest geological
period, are largely composed in New Zealand also of gigantic birds closely allied to the
Apteri/x now living, but much larger. Australia, on the other hand, we have seen, is a
land of kangaroos and other " marsupials,'' or pouched animals. So also the remains found
in recent deposits are those of marsupials, but of a more gigantic form than the present
ones. Thus it is proved that in New Zealand, from the earliest period at which the
country had assumed an approximation to its present form, great wingless biixis were
chai-acteristic of its animal inhabitants ; and in Australia forms of life allied to the wombat,
wallaby, and kangaroo.
CHAPTER X.
Australia : Tiik Colony of New South Wales.
It would be perhaps charitable to accept the tales of geographical ignorance in higli
places with some grains of salt. But it is just possible that a Secretary of State for the
Colonies did once propose to throw a bridge over Bass's Strait, and it is undoubtedly
true that a late Cabinet Minister declared that he rarely found any of his colleagues who
could tell him how many colonies there were in Australia. Australia is indeed often
taken as a political expression, when in reality it is only a geographical one— a fact
sometimes lost sight of, or perhaps unknown. For instance, a leading journal once
announced the publication of the "Australian Budget;" it might also well have an-
nounced the issue of the Scandinavian one, for in reality Australia is at present divided
into four colonies, each of which is a sovereignty in itself, and as distinct the one from
the other as Sweden is from Denmark or Norway from either : indeed, a little more so.
Their only union is that they are all " dependencies " of England, and each of them is ruled
■• 8ee Report on thr Australian Fisheries, by Mr. Oliver, in " The Industrial Progress of New South AVales "
(1870),
142
IjQ THE COUNTKIES OF Till', WOULD.
Ly a oovernov dcspatclied from this country. Aeconlii)j,'ly, the brief space that is at
our disposal iu which to describe the political and statistical aspects of Australia may he
best utilised by sketching, in the most outline form, each of these colonies, with no relation
to their geographical contiguity, but siini)ly in an order, by following which we may
learn something regarding the early history of Australian settlement, in itself a wide and
interesting subject.
New South Wales* is the mother colony of Australia. It was the first settled, and
the one off which, directly or indirectly, all the others — South Australia excepted — branched
— Van Dicmen's Land, iu 1855; Victoria, iu 1S51 ; 'Western Australia, iu IS^o ; and
Queensland, in 1S59. South Australia was established in 18:j7 independently of Ntw
South Wales, but, of course, like all the others, it profited by the contiguity of the older
colony in its vicinity. Tiiough Cook was not the first navigator to sight Australia
(p. 151), yet the first tangible account of New South Wales which we possess is
derived from that great navigator. On the 28th of April, 1770, he landed in Botany
Bay, a few miles to the southward of the harbour of Sydney, and then took possession of
the island-continent in the name of Geoi'ge the Third. It is thus curious that at the time
the American colonies were beginning to be disaffected, and six years before they ceased
to be part of the Britisli Empire, England added to her possessions a southern territory
nearly equal to them in area, quite equal to them in mineral wealth, soil, and even
climate, though inferior in the area of country fitted for the abode of man. Eighteen
years after Captain Cook's lauding England began to utilise the newl^'-discovered continent
by sending thither a number of convicts under Captain Phillip, though it is unjust to
say that in despatching these unworthy people as the nucleus of a colonj'^, Pitt had no
higlier ideas of the future of the Australian Empire than to make of it a penal settlement, f
Phillip landed in Botany Bay in January, 1788, and while iu the bay the great French
navigator, La Perouse, sailed in, much astonished to find the British flag flying. The
spot where Captain Cook landed is still pointed out, nor have the features of the country
much changed since those days. The stream at which he filled his water-casks is still
running, and in honour of the greatest event in the history -of the colony, the owner of
the ground has erected a monument commemorating the remarkable incident which happened
near by. On the northern headland a slab marks the resting-place of Pere Receveur, one
of La Perouse's crew; and there is also a monument in memory of that great navigator,
who left New South Wales to explore new lauds, but whose fate was for many j-ears
wrapped in mj'stery (p. 55). Gradually, however, the continent was explored, and new
country in the interior discovered and opened up. Free settlers soon followed, and even
Botany Bay, so proverbially associated with the convict history of the colony, was not
long the locale of the penal establishment, for Captain Phillips, finding the country in
the vicinity altogether unsuitable for his inuposcs, deserted it, and removed his wicked
charges to Port Jackson, and there founded the settlement which for so long gave New
• To tlio Hon. 'William l'or.stor, Agent-General for the colony, I am indolptrd for many of tlie ofli.ial
documents, unoljtainable in ordinary English libraries, from -which the sketch which follows has hecn drawn.
t Flanagan: "History of New .South Wales," A^ol. I., pp. 30-34. See also Lang's History of the Colony,
and other works, where proof in support of this coiTCction of a general impression arc given.
NEW SOUTH AVALES: ITS EAKLY HISTORY. 171
South Wales an unenviable notoriety.* The French had still an ej-e on the country, and
for a time in their maps the whole southern district o£ Australia, ineliidiug what is now
known as Victoria, was styled " Terre Napoleon." The early convict history of New
South Wales was not a pleasant one ; indeed, it could not have heen much worse than
it was if Captain Phillips and his officials were to have remained alive at all. The
worst convicts were sent to Norfolk Island, but even those in the mother colony were
unpleasant sort of peojile. They were always reljelling', and frequently running away.
They were, moreover, often in want of food, and the black meu were troublesome in
the exti-eme. In January, 1788, the population of the new colony consisted of ],(l-'30
individuals, and its wealth in the ensuing' May of 'Z bulls, 3 cows, 1 horse, 3 mares,
3 colts, :J9 sheep, Itt goats, 7i pigs, 5 rabbits, 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, and
210 fowls — nut an extravagant beginning for a country which is now teeming with stock
of all kinds.
Passing over the troubles of the early settlers, and the quarrels of the autocratic
governors with their disorderly subjects, the failures of the settlers to grow corn, and
even their disappointment at growing what is now the staple of the country, viz.,
wool, we come down to 1825, when Sydney had gradually grown into a city of some
size. Then ^'an Diemen's Land separated from it, and in 1856, soon after the discovery
of gold in the neighbouring colony, responsible government was established, since which
period the country has gone on prospering exceedingly, until it is what we shall briefly
have to descril:ie. The names of its governors and colonial secretaries are preserved,
colonial fashion, in a multitnde of rivers, lakes, counties, towns, and streets. " We have
Phillip Street, Hunter Street, King Street, Bligli Street, and Macquarie Street, in Sydney,
not to mention the Macquarie River, and Hunter River, and Port Phillip. We have
the city of Brisbane, and the Darling River, with various Darlings, and various Bourkes,
and Gipps Land in Victoria, and Fitzroy River in Queensland, and Port Denison, quite in
the north, and the town of Young, and the River INIurray — and Belmore Hotels are
innumerable. I do not know that there is as yet any Kimberley County, but there are
Carnarvons, Russells, Laboucheres, Newcastles, Granvilles, Stanleys, Glenelgs, and Lyttons
without stint; as also are there Merivales, Rogers, Elliots, Pelhams, and memorials of
others, who from time to time have been either politically or permanently great in
Downing Street. Sir Hercules Robinson now (1873) reigns at Sydney, and when I"
(Mr. Trollope) " left that city, I heard enough to make me assured that before long
there will be a Robinson District, a County Robinson, a Town of Robinson, and a
River Robinson." The same — with a change of names — is true of almost every new
colony. A governor must be a very unpopular personage, indeed, who has not at least
one log "city" named after him; and as mountains are unhappily often more numerous
than towns in these new lands, he has usually a greater share than the colony cares
for in these geographical features and agricidtural sorrows.
» It may bo interesting to note that between 1787 and 1SG8, altogether 137,101 convicts -n-ere sent to
Australasia. Of these (between 17S7 and 1839), New South WaU-s got 51,082 inalcs, and 8,70G females; Van
Diemen's Land (between 1803 and 1853), 56,042 males, and 11,013 females; and Western Australia (from 1853
to 1868), 9,718 males, females never having been sent thither (" A'ictorian Year Book," 1877-78).
^12, TUE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Divisions oi' the Countuy.
The natural regions of the country— which contains 310,938 square miles— are the Eastern
seahoard territory, the Central range, and the Western Plains. The former region is undu-
lating liill and valley, interspersed with fertile alluvial flats, and underlain with great beds of
coal. The central region is chielly mineral— gold, copper, lead, tin, and other metals abound-
in". The interior plains constitute the pastoral region of the colony. Here are situated
the great sheep-walks, on which graze the millions of sheep and cattle, which constitute
the o-reat riches of the country. More than 10,000 miles of road intersect these tracts,
aifordino- free communication with every part of the country. Mail coaches keep up regular
communication with the most out-of-the-way places, and between 400 and 500 miles of
railway, owned by and under Government control, enable the squatter and miner to convey
their products and supplies to and from the coast at an average cost of l.^d per ton, while at
one time this decreased his profits to the extent of 6d. per ton. All the other appliances
of civilisation are found in profusion. Telegraphs, post-offices, schools, churches, and a
university — not to speak of fine libraries and learned societies, which do not limit their
labours to an annual meeting and a dinner — are found in the large towns. The press
is well represental, the Sydney newspapers being in many cases equal to those of London,
both in ability and, so far as there is room for it, in enterprise also, and, as a rule, are
vastly superior to those of any other part of Europe or of America at large. " Nearly
all the associations and institutions of European and American life, social, political, and
religious," writes an official historian, " have their representatives in the colony. Of
journals there are more than a hundred. Every considerable town, every interest, has
one or more papers, published once or oftener every week. There are banks with branches
in almost every township in the interior. Law holds its sway over all classes, and is
purely and efficiently administered in all its branches and jurisdictions. Life and
property are secure, and the means of living easy and manifold ; wages and profits high ;
education is generally diffused; and the comforts, elegancies, and amusements of life
are varied and numerous."*
Trade and Industry.
More than one-half of the Australian shipping is owned by this colony, and Sydney
also forms the port from which ramifies, as from a centre, the widely extended commerce
of the Pacific Islands. In time, doubtless, from the Australian harbours will
pour out great fleets of vessels to trade with America and Asia. Taking 1877 as an
average year, the value of the exports is given at £13,125,819, and the imports at
£11,G0G,5H1, most of the trade being either with the British possessions or directly with
Great Britain. The revenue is also on the increase. In 1851 it was £-100,050; in
1875 it was £1,121, 995; and in the last financial statement of the Colonial Treasurer the
public income is estimated at £4,919,893, while there was in the Treasury a surplus of
* "New South Wales : its Progress and Resources," by authority of the Commissioners of the Philadelphia
Exhibition (Sydney, 1876).
NEW SOUTH WALES: TRADE .\XD INDTJSTRT.
17.3
£-Z,4:7-i,d-2S.* There is also a public debt of £ll,72i,-il9. The population has greatly
increased of late years. In ISil this was stated at l^OjGGQ; in 1851, 197,108, after
giving up 68,3-35 to Victoria ; in 18G1, 358,278, after giving up 25,000 to Queensland;
in 1874, 584,278; while the latest data which we possess estimates the population of the
colony at 662,212 persons— or males, 367,.323, and females, 294-,889. The death rate of
the colony is 15'3-t per 1,000, the percentage of male deaths being 19'10 per cent,
higher than the percentage of female deaths to total deaths.
Wool constitutes the great wealth of New South "Wales. Over mile after mile
VIKW OF LAKE GEOHOE, NEW SOL TH WALES
of the colony, particularly in the Riverina — the Mesopotamia of New South Wales — ■
millions t of sheep pasture on the fattening salt-bush {Salsola), to an extent which
has been estimated in coin at £10,000,000, this sum, of course, including the total
value of the holdings, though it ought to be noted that in the majority of eases the
land does not belong to the squatter, but to the Crown, whose tenant he is. The total area,
leased at less than one halfpenny per acre for pastoral purposes, is nearly 150,000,000 acres.
The runs vary in size from 5,000 acres to 1,000,000 acres, and it is not unique to find a
* "The Financial Statement of the Hon. James Watson, Colonial Treasurer" (Sydney, February 12th, 1879).
. t Official returns show that in JIarch, 1877, there were in the colony 366,703 horses, 3,131,013 homed cattle,
and 24,.503,388 sheep.
174 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKI.P.
'• siiiiatUT'' owning' 150,000 sheep. There are also vast numbers of fine cattle, though
the limited market which exists for beef does not render this kind of stock so profitable to
the o-razier as sheep, the mutton of which is comparatively valueless, hut for the wool
there is alwavs a demand in the manufacturing cities of Europe and Ameiica. Horses
abound, and even llamas and alpacas are beginning to get common. Reform in the
land laws — which we may more fittingly touch upon when considering Australian
characteristics in general — has given a stimulus to cultivation, hitherto much neglected
in favour of the more lucrative, if infinitely more risky, " squatting." As crops of some
kind or other can always be produced in Australia from January to December, it is likely
that tilla"-e will year l>y year attract a greater and greater percentage of a population,
50,000 of whom are calculated to be engaged in some way or other in agriculture.
Could some efficient process — one more popular as to its result than the present one of
"tinning" — be discovered for preserving the superabundant Australian meat supplies,
the farmers of the Antipodes would become millionaires — as some of them indeed are —
and the hungry people of Europe never want an abundant supply of animal food. For
instance, it was calculated a few years ago — and as for all practical purposes it is still true
it is unnecessary to go into the calculation afresh — that, taking the number of cattle and
the number of people in Australia, every one of our brethren in that becattled continent
has two and a half head of horned "stock" and twenty-four sheep to his or her share,
children being calculated on the same liberal scale as adults; whereas, we in these fleshle^s
isles have but one-third of a bullock and one sheep. The price of meat averages from
2d. to 4d. a pound retail in the Australian towns, and nothing is more common than to
see excellent legs of mutton exposed at a price so ridicuhiusly small that one cannot
imagine how there can be any hungry people in the Southern Empire. IMore especially is
this a favourable condition of matters, since the working-man of Australia has wages
about double those of his home-staying brother. Bread is about the same price, while
groceries do not vary much from their cost in England. Hence it is that the working-man
in Australia never thinks of sitting down to a meal without butchers' meat on his table.
For j-ears the glut of meat was so great in New South "Wales and the rest of the
Australian colonies, that the surplus had to 1)0 got rid of by boiling it down for the
sake of the tallow, which can be easily exported and readily sold. In 1870 — since that
date the number has much decreased — in New South ^Vales alone, there were forty-eight
boiling-down establishments, in which, in 1869, 290,550 sheep and 210 bullocks were
converted into 07,175 cwt. of tallow, the carcases of all these animals being absolutely
wasted, while we were paying lOd. and Is. 4d. per lb. for what the Australian squatter
could not even use for the manuring of his land. Meat preserving establishments have
consumed a good deal of what was thus almost necessarily thrown away; but even yet
there is a surplus, which it remains for some inventive genius of the future to devise a-
means of palatably using for his own profit, and for the good of thousands in England
and elsewhere.
Wheat-growing is pursued in New South Wales on the table-lands, at a height of
from 2,000 to 1,000 feet, though the colony is not the granary of the South. Tobacco
is also grown to some considerable extent, but the quality leaves us something yet
NEW SOUTH WALES: MIXES. 175
to be desired. Maize grows readily as far south as the tliirtj-'sixth parallel. Its
quality is good; the crop is sure; and the yield, on the richer descriptions of land,
120 bushels an acre for the first crop, and (5.5 bushels an acre afterwards, the average for
the whole colony being 30 bushels per acre. Large quantities are exported. Sugar-cane
has only of late years become an article of cultivation, but already a considerable quantitv
«f sugar, rum, aud molasses i^- made every year. The grape-vine, in all its best varieties,
is now extensively naturalised in the colony, and there are many large vineyards in active
operation. In the year ISOS there were in the colony 2,531 acres of vines, the produce
■of which, in the shape of wine, were 285,283 gallons, together with 3,856 gallons of
brandy. There were also raised 700 tons of grapes for table use. During the year 1877
the area of the ^inej'ards had increased to -1,457 acres, the produce from which was nearly
800,000 gallons of wine, with nearly 3,000 gallons of brandy, and close uf)on 1,000 tons
■of grapes for table use. In the season, if at all favourable, grapes are sold plentifully in
the streets of Sydney at 2d., 3d., and 4d. per lb. Wines of excellent quality, both
Ted and v/hite, can be procured retail at Is. per bottle, and in bulk for 2s. Od. per
gallon upwards. Some experienced vine-gi-owers doubt whether the jiroduce of the
Australian vineyards can ever equal those of France and the Rhine. At present they
<lo not, though the common varieties of Australian wines are far superior to the same
class of French ones, and since many French and German viticulturists have settled
in the colonies, it is expected that they will aid iu improving the quality of the liquor
produced. In the Alberry District, and in the valley of the Hunter River, the yield averages
400 to 500 gallons per acre, and iu the latter region certain kinds of grapes have been
known to return 1,000 gallons per acre. The profit will probably be from £40 to £50 per
acre : at 2s. per gallon wine making will pay the vigneron.* All other fruits of the temperate
and sub-tropical zones grow with great ease. In New South Wales there are orange-groves
— planted as early as 1791 — as magnificent as any in Spain or Portugal; while olives,
capers, figs, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, custard-apples, guavas, bananas,
imts, almonds, passion fruits, loquats, quinces, jdums, nectarines, apples, and peaches, all
thrive, though not in the profusion or perfection they do in Tasmania. Potatoes grov.-
well, but barley, oats, &c., are chiefly reared for fodder. Lucerne hay, iu favourable
:seasons, is sometimes cut from four to six times a year. Mangold-wurzel, turnips, and
pumpkins are used for feeding choice cattle, but the commoner herds are reared solely on
the native grasses. Arrowroot thrives ; and on the northern river Ijottoms cotton succeeds.
Of late the rhea, or grass-cloth ])lant of China, has been cultivated with success, and it is
found that the New Zealand flax will also succeed. The mulberr\^-tree flourishes, and
accordingly the silkworm has been introduced ; but as yet sericulture is only an experiment
in New South Wales, though likely to be a successful one.
Mines, etc.
The mineral resources of the country are also great. As early as 1843 gold was
known to exist in New South Wales; but in the then condition of the colony as a
* Supplement to the Sijihicij Morniinj JliruU!, 1.5th Jtaifh, 187S.
176
THE COrXTKIKS OF TIIK WOKLD.
convict settlement it was thought wise to conceal a fact which might have the effect of
renderiii'^ the task of ruling the country even more difficult than it was. But of course
iu time such news could not he concealed, and as all the world knows, in I'^Sl came the
"rush to the Victorian diggings." The first effect of the discovery was to derange all the
settled industries of the young community, and secondly, to bring to the shores of Australia
an immense concourse of people of all nations, and thus to give the colonies a stimulus by
which they have never ceased to benefit. Up to 1871 the gold obtained was simply washed
out of the soil, or from the sand and gravel iu the beds of streams, yet so abundant
VIEW 01' C'-NMXGHAM's gap, MOVXT MITCHELL, NEW SOUTH W.ILES.
was the precious metal in such localities, that the colony had exported gold to the value
of £40,095,823, besides coining millions in her own mint. There were then ui)wards of
16,000 miners at work, but within the last eight years quartz veins have been opened
out, and gold mining is now more confined to large companies than it used to be. But
it is certain that great areas of countiy as yet unexplored will be found to be auriferous.
The great gold-fields of the West are within two days' journey of the capital, and
the gold mining centres present all the appearance of orderly and thriving townships,
with schools, churches, journals, shops, and places of amusement. The average amount
of gold annually exported is over £2,000,000, but a large amount is coined, or used in
various other ways. Gold mining is, however, a very precarious occupation, and the warning
NEW SOUTH WALES: MINES.
177
which Mr. Forster, the Agent-General of the Colonj^, addresses to emigrants in regard to
this attraction; very fittingly applies to all other auriferous countries. No doubt^ he
THE METItOSIDEROS SPECIOSA OF AVSTUALIA.
remarks, that gold has had a greater effect upon emigration, and has brought Australia
into notice more than many other productions worthier of note. Probably not a few
emigrants propose to themselves to dig or search for gold the very moment of thou-
arrival in Sydney, and expect to find the precious metal waiting to ))e picked up like
143
178 THE COUNTRIES OF THE AVOKLD.
pebbles, on tlie shore or in the streets. These ought to know that the places where
o-old is found — gokl-iiehls, or districts, as they are called— are some distance fiom
the coast, and often have to be reached by troublesome journeys; that to obtain gold in
marketable form and quantities, or to make its iiroduction a profitable occupation, generally
involves considerable labour and preparation, often a great deal of hardship, risk, and
anxietv ; that, as a rule, gold is seldom found on the surface, but has to be dug and
lifted from great depths, or crushed and sifted out of masses of the hardest rock, or washed
and winnowed out of large accumulations of rubbish. The successful gold-miner makes a
prominent figure. But success is the exception, not the rule. For one successful gold-miner,
hundreds are doomed to continual toil and poverty, some barely earn a subsistence, many
never emerge from the condition of a wanderer and wayfarer, or at most only gain a
"good living," such as can generally be earned in Kew South "Wales, at this or any other
occupation, by a steady, industrious, i^ersevering man. It is a life of hard work,
privation, exposure, danger, and disappointment, as comixired with almost any other
calling in the colonies. It has been calculated that the average of wages distributed
among all engaged or concerned in the production of gold is far less than the average
rate eai-ned in most other occupations. And this estimate is quite in accordance with the
fact of the enormous value of gold as compai-ed with other commodities, one of the main
elements of this value being difficulty of production. And if the capital, as well as labour
wastetl, be reckoned, the contrast will appear stronger still. In short, gold-mining, in all
its forms, has more of the essence of gambling than most other modes of investing labour
and capital. All things considered, it is better for emigrants to avoid trying their hands
at gold-digging or seeking until they have become fully acquainted with colonial ways.*
There are also tin and copper in the colon)', which some respect is paid to in certain quarters,
and there ai'c also ore shales, iron stones, silver, lead, and cinnabar, not to speak of
antimony, opals, rubies, and diamonds, in considerable number. But, as a rule, tlie
shrewd New South T^'alians are wise enough not to regai'd mining as their greatest
resource, and from their standpoint of national antiquity, which, compared with the other
colonies is almost respectable, are inclined to smile at the feverish enthusiasm of more
parrenn commimities over a copper or a gold "rn.sh" — a "rush," moreover, being in
New South Wales a very leisurely operation.
But coal ranks quite differently in the colonial mind. It is the one article which
the neighbouring sovereignties cannot boast of, though all of them affect to possess it in
greater or less abundance. But New South Wales alone works it to her own profit and tlie
advantage of those who so readily buy it. The village of Castlerengh is the centre of a coal
basin which has been traced about 100 miles to the north, south, and west, but the head
quarters of the trade are at Newcastle, at the mouth of the Hunter River, which empties
itself into the sea seventj'-five miles north of Sydney. In 1S71, there were raised l,304-,567
tons, valued at £700,22 1. In 1S75 the output was rather less, and in 1876 a little more.
Altogether, up to December, 1877, the total production of coal was 17,426,871 tons,
valued at .t9,110,2S;3. The chief collieries are along the valley of the Hunter, and it is
believed that the pits, which l)car the familiar names of north of England mines, are
• Tht' London Glvhe, December 2nd, 1878.
KEW SOUTH WALES: TOWNS.
179
practically inexhaustible. Forty miles south of Sydney lies the Illawai-ra Coal-field, for
which Wolloiig-ong is the sea-jiort, and at Hartley, west of the capital, there are also
collieries in full blast.*
Fish are transported, artificially frozen, to the inland towns; and in no part of the
world are oysters more abundant or cheaper than in this colony. The whale hsheries are
still of some interest, thougli most likely they will soon become extinct. In 1841, oil
to the extent of £2HfiOQ was exported, but in 1S7J; the two ships engaged in the business
ouly obtained enough to bring the export up to £;i,S97. Leather, weaving, and a number
•of other industries give employment to considerable numbers of people ; while, in addition
to the usual trades pursued more or less in every eommunityj brickmaking and ornamental
pottery, shipbuilding, &e., are followed to a considerable extent.
Towxs.
The following table, compiled by the Agent-General, gives in a synoptical form so
much information about the chief towns of New South Wales, that, in deference to the
parent colony of Australia, we may preserve it in this place : —
Feet
Avenifie Au-
nual Tem-
Distiict
Distance oni
Miles
Kasie.
On River.
above
Popu'a-
Direction
from
Sea.
perature in
shade, 9 a.m.
tiou.
from Sidney.
Sea.
Grafton .
Clarence .
40
68 2
13,750
450 N
22
TenterfiL'ld
Tenterfield Creek .
—
54-6
2,357
431 N
80
liourkc .
Darling- .
—
04 0
318
576 W
393
NaiTjibii .
Narrabri Creek
—
67-1
350
321 N
196
Annidair .
Diunaresq
3,278
.55-7
9,763
313 N
S«
Pint Jlauiniaric
Hastings .
.53
C4-4
2,132
240 N
1
MiuTunindi
Trib. Goulbui-n River
1,.')45
60-6
4,143
190 N\V
94
Dulibo .
JIacfiuarie
00-7
4,2.J0
226 W
1S2
Mudj^oo .
Cudgegong
—
.59-7
3,500
153 NW
121
Maitland .
Hunter .
98
60-2
13,642
95 N
18
Lambton .
Hunter .
—
5!) -3
—
— N
7
Newcastle
Hunter .
112
63-3
18,665
T5N
1
Oi-dn^c
Near JIacquarie
2,891
56-4
7, -598
154 W
124
Balhui-bt .
Jlacquaric
2,200
57-3
16,826
122 W
96
Forbes
Jlaequarie
1,0.50
Gl-1
6,761
239 W
176
Sydney .
Port Jackson .
155
G3 0
140,000
—
5
Liverpool.
ti(?org-es .
—
60-0
3,504
20 S
15
Wentworth
JMurray and Darling
—
65-1
1.202
700 W
476
Young-
I'.urrangong .
—
600
5.924
250 W
140
WoUongong-
On Sea .
—
62-3
5,698
64 S
—
JIoss Vale
On Sea .
—
55 -4
250
86 S
31
Goulburn
Mulwarrio
2,129
.56-8
13,720
128 S
54
Wagga Wagga
Mun-unibidgen.
59 -8
5,860
310 SW
161
Queanbeyan
Queanbeyan
—
50 -0
4,002
190 SW
60
Urana
Creek
400
63-0
350
393 S
218
Deniliquin
Edwards .
410
61-4
2,715
488 SW
287
Kiandra .
Snowy
4,040
43-0
250
313 S
88
Albury .
JIurray
572
59-3
9,195
351 SW
175
t'ooma
Murruinbidgee .
2,639
53-8
4,384
257 SSW
52
Eden
Sea .... .
107
59-0
1,214
285 S
—
Invcrell .
Slacyntire
2,358
383 N
165
Gleu Innes
Rocky Ponds .
3,700
—
343
373 N
120
* "Jlincs and Jlineral Statistics of New South Wales" (Sydney, 1875); "Annual Report of the Dci)artnient
of Mines for the Year 1876" (Sydney, 1877); Charles Robinson: "New South AVales " (Sydney, 1873);
Rolleston : "New South Wales; its Progress from 1862 to 1871" (London, 1873); Robinson: "The Progi-ess
and Resources of New South Wales '' (Sydney, 1878).
180 THE C'OT'XTRIES OF THE WOULD.
Svdney is no mushroom town of yesterday — and she knows it. Her harbour, Port
Jackson (p. lo2), is one of the Ihiest in thu world, and by the united testimony of all who
have visited it perhaps the most beautiful. It is not even surpassed by the magnitieent haven
of Rio Janeiro. The offieial historian grows enthusiastic — and for once the colonial inditer of
guides does not lie under the suspicion of allowing his patriotism to be disjilayed at the expense
of his accuracy — over the scene witnessed in entering this splendid arm of the sea. The
bold coast fronting the Pacitic is suddenly broken, and the giant cliii's form a portal to
the estuary of the Paramatta about a mile in width, but capacious enough to shelter the
navies of the world. In a few minutes the voyager leaves the swell of the Pacific outside,
and enters deep, calm water, protected on every side by high lands. The elevated shore,
which seems to shut him in, barring further progress, only opens out to aiford views of
innumerable baj's and inlets; while the central water is relieved by many a picturesque
islet, dotted with gardens and villas, half concealed amid thickets of bananas and other
semi-tropical plants. Yachts dart backwards and forwards, ships are continually sailing
in and out, steamers are crossing and re-crossing the harbour, while under tlie rocky
shore lie stretches of white sandy beach, such as Stanfield or Copley Fielding would have
loved to paint. The hills are well wooded, and form a chai-ming framework to the bright
blue water they enclose. The city itself is fine and picturesque, though in many respects
inferior to Melbourne ; but in the luxuriancies, elegancies, and amenities of life, Sydney
yields to no colonial town. Every one who has visited it has been charmed with the
hospitality and honhom'u' of the people, and the thoroughly at " homedness " of all whom
they met with. The excursions among the orangeries, gardens, and farms in the suburbs
are very pleasant, while a trip by the zig-zag line over the Blue Mountains (pp. 169, 170),
or a picnic on Mount Victoria, are described as among the f)leasantest of junketings. Tiie
most famous litteratenr who ever visited the colony declares that Sydney is one of those
places which, when a man leaves, knowing that he will never return, he cannot part
with without a pang and a tear. The to^vn has none of those signs of novelty which make
so many of the cities of the New World unpicturesque and distasteful. It is not parallelo-
gi'ammic and rectangular. " One may walk about it and lose the direction in which one
is going. Streets running side by side occasionally converge; and they bend and go in
and out, and wind themselves about, and are intricate" The harbour is so " inexpressibly
lovely that it makes a man ask himself whether it would not be worth his while to move
his household goods to the eastern coast of Australia, in order that he might look at it
as long as he can look at anything. The sea runs up in various bays or coves, indenting
the land all around the city, .so as to give a thousand different aspects of the water : and
not of water broad, unbroken, and unrelieved, but of water always with jutting corners
of land beyond it, and then again of water, and then again of land."* Australian scenery
— and among it that of New South Wales — bears iio high reputation among that portion
of the world who travel in search of the picturesque. The "everlasting gum-tree" is a
common phrase which represents the wearisomeness with its sameness. But in the Alpine
regions, along the banks of the llawkesbury, and in many other parts of the colony (p. IT'^)
• Sec also Burton: "Visitor's Guide to Sydney" (Sydney, 1874); and Illustrated Sydney News, March
16th, 1878.
ISO THE COrXTKIES OF TirE AVOKLT).
—not to speak o£ Sydney Harbour— there is some really be:mtit'ul and even striking scenery,
wliich the Austi-alians themselves little know of, and which, tliureldrf, they cannot exjiect
visitors, who ofton leave in ignorance of their existence, to grow gushing over.
CHAPTER XI.
Australia: The Coloxy of Vutouia.
Tin; first part of the now colony of "N'ictoria sighted hy Cook was probably the present
Cape Conran, or Cape Kverard, hi Gipps Land. This was on tlie I'Jth of April, 1770.*
Twenty-eight years afterwards Western Port was discovered by Surgeon Bass. In 180:J
Port Phillip was entered ; next year an unsuccessful attempt was made to colonise it by a
party of convicts under Colonel Collins. The country was, however, soon abandoned,
under the belief that it was unfit for settlement. Nearly twenty years passed away
before Hume Ilovell reached Corio Bay, having travelled overland from Sydney, f and
ten years more before the Messrs. Henty came from Lauuceston, in Tasmania, to found
the first settlement on the shores of Port Phillip, viz., that at Portland Bay. John
Bateman, also of Tasmania, arrived the next year, and purchased 600,000 acres of land
from the natives for the usual trlHe in Jews'-harps and shaving-brushes ; and a few
months later John Pascoe Fawkner's party sailed up the Yarra, and founded the city of
INIelbourne. In the following year the Government of New South Wales took cognisance
of the young settlement, and established a regular government at " The Settlement," or
'•' Bearbrass," for it was not until the ~nd of March, 1837, that Sir Richard Bourke gave
the name of Melbourne to the present metropolis of the colony. As the new Port Phillip
district increased in importance and population, the settlers kicked against the domination
of Sydney, just as distant settlers in the Riverina do at the present daj^, or as they did
at iNIoreton Bay until the malcontents set up for themselves, under the name of the colony of
Queensland. They were neglected, their money was spent on distant parts of the country,
and their representatives, who in those railroadless days had to travel long distances
to the legislature, were swamped by the noisy orators of Sydney. So after considerable
agitation— an agitation shared in, it may be noted, on the Port Phillip side by Messrs. Childers
and Lowe, the latter being Attorney-General of New South Wales, the former Collector
of Customs in the new colony — Port Phillip was separated from her parent, and established
in an independent form of government under the name of Victoria. The date of this event
— July 1st, 1851— is still celebrated. Melbourne was at that time but a humble city,
• Hiiyter: "Victorian Year Book for 1877-8" (Mulljourne, 1878); "Xotcs on the Colony of Victoria"
(irelbournc, 1875), &c. For these and many other official documents relating to the colony I am indebted to the
Department of the Agent-General in London.
+ I^billiere: " Early History of the Colony of Victoria," Vol. I., p. 188; Jlicliie : "Headings in Melbourne"
<1879), &c.
VICTORIA: EARLY HISTORY. 1S3
thougli the noiglibouring country was well settled by slieep farmers. lu the very montli. how-
ever^ in wliieli the separation was brought about, gold was discovered in the colony, and
in a few months more the city and the surrounding- country sprantj into a life and
vigour which it might have taken many years otherwise to attain. In reality, however,
it only then became generally known that there existed rich deposits of the precious
metal in the colony. For two years and a half previously a lump of gold had been
exhibited in the shop of a Melbourne jeweller, whieli it was said had been found in the
locality of the Pyreences range by a shepherd named Chapman. This created some
excitement at the time, but as the man was never able to point oxit the jilace where he
had found it, and speedily deserted a party he had undertaken to guide to the spot, it
was generally supposed that he was an impostor, who had obtained the lump by meltino-
down some stolen articles of jewellery. Still the hope of there existing a paying gold-
field did not desert the more sanguine or the more scientific of the settlers, for it was
known that as early as 1811 the Rev. W. B. Clarke, now deceased, had found the
metal in New South "Wales. It is also known that in ISoO gold was discovered at
Clunes, but the discover}- was kept concealed, lest it should injure the settler on whose
run it was found. There were various other finds in rajiid succession, but it was not
until the discovery of a gold-field by Mr. Hargreaves in New South Wales that the
discoveries in Victoria began to be paid attention to in earnest. The precious metal,
according to the Parliamentary Committee directed to investigate the different claims,
was first discovered, as noted, at Clunes, then in the Yarra range at Anderson Creek,
soon after at Buninyong and Ballarat, shorth- afterwards at Mount Alexander, and
eventually at Bendigo. " The deposits were found to be richer and to extend over a
wider area than any which had been discovered in New South Wales. Their fame soon
spread to the adjacent colonies, and thousands hastened to the spot, desirous of participating-
in the newlj-found treasure. When the news reached home, crowds of emigrants from
the United Kingdom hurried to our shores. Inhabitants of other European countries
quickly joined in the rush; Americans from the Atlantic States were not long in following;
stalwart Californians left their own gold-yielding rocks and places to try their fortunes
at the Southern El Dorado. Last of all, swarms of Chinese arrived, eager to unite in the
general scramble for wealth." The gold diggings went through the ups and downs which
characterise new countries; there were riots and crimes, but probably fewer than have
characterised other iilaces of a like description. Finally, on the 2:3rd November, 1S53,
responsible government was established in the colony, and Victoria has gone on prospering,
though not without many hitches in the machinery of state, resulting in a "change
of ministry" almost as often as a South American Republic changes its President.
Physical Features axd Popixation.
That the country has progressed is evident from the following facts : — When the
Constitution was proclaimed the jjopulation of the colony did not number over ;3(j4-,0OO ; it
now numbers (December, 1878) 879,386. In 1855 the land under cultivation amounted to
115,000 acres; it now amoimts to over 1,120,000 acres. The bushels of wheat grown in
184
THE COrXTKIES OF TllK WORLD.
a year then numbered 1,150,000 j they now amount to 7,018,:2.j7. The sheep numbered
4,000,000; they now number 10,114,268, a decrease from thiit of the previous year. The
cattle numbered 530,000; they now number 1,174,176, including -268,110 milch cows. The
horses numbered 33,000; they now number not less than over 203,150. The public
revenue was, in 1854, £2,728,000; it is now (1879) £4,000,000. The value of imjiorts
was, in 1854, £12,000,000 ; they now amount to £16,362,304. The value of the exports
was, twenty-five years ago, £13,500,000; it is now £15,157,087, though the cxjiort of gold
has fallen off from £11,000,000 in 1854 to £3,238,612 in 1877— indeed, the returns are
bOUKKE STREET, MELDOVRNE, ylCTOKIA.
gradually decreasing. In ten years the number of miners has fallen off from 63,053 in
1867 to 38,005 in 1877, the whole population of the gold-fields being 270,428 in 1871.
The quartz miners number 14,690, the alluvial miners 23,315, and of these 9/876 are
Chinese. These abstract statistics, derived from the latest official returns, show more
saliently than any mere description could the progress which the colony has made and
its present standpoint. Victoria, though the wealthiest of the colonies and the most
densely peopled, is the smallest of them all, its area being only 88,198 square miles (or
56,446,720 acres), compared with the 310,938 of New South Wales, the <;(;9,520 of
Queensland, the 9();5,690 of South Australia, and the 1,000,000 square miles of almost
unpeopled country which is claimed by Western Australia. Its extreme lengtli from east
VICTOKIA: ITS PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.
185
to west is about 420 geographieal miles, and its greatest breadth 250 miles, but owing to
the deep indentation of Western Port and Port Phillip its coast-line extends to nearly 600
miles. The highest mountain range in Victoria — the Bogongs — has an elevation of 6,508 feet,
VIEW OF I-ERX-TKEE CAVE, GII'PS LAND, VICTOKIA
but there are several others ranging from 4,000 to 0,000 feet. The Mun'ay (p. ISl) runs
along the northern boundary for 070 miles, but the Goulburn, with a length of 230 miles,
is the longest river which flows throughout its course entirely in Victoria. The surface of
the colony is varied, its entire length being traversed by a chain of hills, completely dividing it
into two parts, and thence called the Dividing Range, though this range sends off a number
of spurs in different directions. There are numerous salt and fresh-water lakes and lagoons,
144
186 'HIE COUXTKIES OF THE WOULD.
but many of them arc, tluring; the dry season, little more than swamps, and some of them
are the craters of extinct volcanoes. A g-rcat part of the colony, however, consists of
cattle and sheep runs of the character already indicated. Hence the population is very
unequally distributed. There are, for example, about 9-700 persons to the square mile, or
a trifle less than that of the Empire of Russia, and much less than that of the United
States, which has fourteen inhabitants to the square mile. But of this population, ^lel-
bourne, the capital, has, with its subui-bs, 251,000, rather less than Boston in the United States,
or Sheffield^ but more than Hamburg or Edinburgh ; while in the county of Weeab, in
the extreme north-west of the colony, it is on record that "there was not a single
inhabitant on the night ujwn which the census" of 1871 "was taken." Ballarat, the
second city in Victoria, is estimated to have a population, including Ballarat East, of
nearlv 10,000; Bendigo or Sandhurst, nearly the same, if not more; Collingwood, 21,200;
Castelmaine, 7,500; Clunes, 5,5U0 ; Stawell, 7,000; Daylesford, 4,500.*
The "-eneral nature of the climate we have already indicated, and need not again
describe. "With the exception of the hot winds, it is usually pleasant, though often
extremely warm during the summer months. Even the sirocco, which blows on an average
fourteen days in the year at ^lelbourno, though trying to invalids, young children, fruits,
leaves, and other delicate things, is not an unmixed evil, as the intense dryness produced
by it acts as a powerful disinfectant ; and the dampness, which in the south of Europe
produces such prejudicial effects, is unknown in Victoria. But doubtless, while they last,
the hot winds are not more agreeable at A ictoria than at Sydney, and are justly dreaded,
by new arrivals, and looked forward to with little pleasure by the old residents. They
frequently set in about 9 a.m., and blow from the north with great violence. The wind
often changes to south towards the evening, though sometimes it continues to blow from
the north for two and even three days. When the southerly wind sets in it usually does
so with a heavy squall, accompanied by drops of rain, thunder and lightning, and a
fall of the thermometer, amounting sometimes to as much as twenty or thirty degrees in
half an hour.
Victoria is, to all intents and purposes, a self-governing community, with a con-
stitution based on that of the United States, though this rather conservative system
has not been found to work under the control of a responsible ministry which the
Great Republic does not possess. There are no imperial troops in the colony ; it is defended
by volunteers, a number of paid artillerymen, and one monitor and a line-of-battle
ship, the expenses of which are defrayed out of the colonial funds. Its public debt
amounts to £17,022,005, or about £19 12s. 4Jd. for every man, woman, and child in
the colony. The taxation per head is about £2 16s. 3d., while the general and local
revenue combined amounts to nearly £6 9s. per head. The expenditui-e of a few of the
municipalities sometimes exceeds their revenue, but, as a rule, the cities, boroughs, and
• These figures arc for the most pai't from the " Victorian Year Book " for 1S77, pp. 32, 33, hut thoy differ-
chiefly in griving a smaller population to the towns— from the apparently official returns in the sketch of Victoria
written for the catalogue of its products sent to the Philadeliihia Exhihition in 1876. This discrepancy seems
due to the one statist taking the exact limits of the municipality as his guide, while the other includes
in addition the neighbouring villages or suburbs, sometimes under different Slayors and Town Coimcils.
VICTOEIA: TOWNS. 183
shires o£ Victoria ai"e well governed and prosperous communities ; and the same maj^ be
said regarding the colony at large, in spite of the intemperate talk, endless squabbles, and
occasional bluster of the politicians who are yet serving their apprenticeship to the most
difficult art essayed of man.
To^VNS.
Victoria is a colony made by that gold which may be the root of all evil, but is
and has been the origin of much good also. Gold nerved the heart of Cortes to seek
•out a new world for his country and to destroy a nation ; gold tempted Balboa to cross
the isthmus, and show the way to an even newer empire than that which Columbus had
discovered ; the love of gold hardened the soul of Pizarro to crush the civilisation of Peru,
and thus ruin a kingdom reared by men of greater intellect than those who wrecked it ;
and gold strengthened the hands and buoyed up the hopes of all the great explorers and
■voyagers of the ^Middle Ages. It even entered into the dreams of Columbus, and sent
Raleigh a-wandering all through the forest of Guyana. In more modern times it led to
the settlement of California, and undoubtedly it built up the colony of Victoria. Melbourne
•was a fair-sized town, engaged in shipping wool, when the Ballarat mines emptied it of its
inhabitants, only to fill it again with the tens of thousands who rushed in search of the
new El Dorado ; Ijut it wijuld never have been — or, at least, been so early — a great city unless
it had been for the gold discoveries. Its harbour — Williamstown, in Hobson's Bay — at
the mouth of the Yarra, is not verj'- convenient, for before reaching it vessels have to pass
through the Rip, a bubbling tideway between " the Heads," forty miles down from the city.
Hence Geelong (Plate XXXVI.) , which lies nearer the mouth of Port Phillip, had ambitious
dreams that it might perhaps become the great city of the South, and even built a
railway to Melbourne, under the belief that the wool shipped from that port would come
direct down to the more convenient harbour, and be thence despatched to England.
But, unhappily for the Geelongians, the railway had exactly the opposite effect : it did not
bring the Melbourne wool bales to Geelong, but it took to [Melbourne what little trade
■Geelong had previously possessed. However, the "city" has still a population estimated
at 26,000, has fine banks, very open broad streets, good dwelling-houses, and also ships
some little wool, albeit their feelings to the metrojiolis are not — and cannot be expected to
be — the very kindliest. Victoria has prospered as has done no other English colon}-, and
Melbourne has increased at a rate which is surpassed by no other city in the world, not
-even by Chicago or San Francisco. Melbourne is only put down in the official returns as
possessing a population of 02,000, though in reality it has nearer 252,000, the truth being
that municipally the capital of Victoria is a collection of cities really as much massed into
■one as are the cities of London and Westminster, or the numerous boroughs which cluster
round that portion of the metropolis solely under the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. All this
has been attained in less than half a century. [Melbourne the Melbournites naturally
•consider a very fine town; and so it is, but it is not a beautiful one, either in itself or
in its surroundings, as are Hobart Town, Sydney, or Dunedin. The Yarra is not an
attractive stream, nor do the Melbournites " blow " about it, as in colonial phraseology they
•" blow " about a great many other things. The town is built on undulating ground ;
188 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOi;Ll).
accordin;;lv the streets are not very level. But they are not picturesque on that account,
only, as Mr. Trolloix- remark;:, suflieiently steep to cause cousiJerable delay to the obese
and middle-aged pedestrian when tlic hot winds are blowing. But in the vicinity there
are no hills to produce scenic effect, and the neig-libouring- country is flat anil uninterest-
ing. But Melbourne, nevertheless, is a magnitieent city, with fine public buildings, and
streets built on the rectangular, parallclogranimic, Philadelphian plan. These streets are
wide (p. 1SJ-), and interspersed among them are large, open garden spaces, reported not to be
well kept or very lovely to look on, but still supplying admirable lungs to the town, and
preventing it ever becoming the unwholesome mass of brick and mortar which some
more ancient towns have in process of time grown into. The citizens walk in them, enjoy
a riis in uibe, and jwssibly even imagine that they are improving their minds while they
gaze at the statues which profusely deck them, though some of these petrous effigies are
bad enough to give a person of lesthctie tastes a prejudice against patriots and public
men generally for the rest of his natural life. Misery and hideous vice there are in
Melbourne — especially in the Irish and Chinese quarters — but it does not come continually
before the visitor's eyes. What strikes his view as he walks about the cities and its ever
increasing suburbs are the comfort of the people, and the solicitude of the Government to
give them all the benefits which the state can supply to private individuals. This much
we can say without encouraging in the Victorians that fatal colonial propensity for sounding
their own trumpet. " ' We like to be cracked up, sir,' says the American. I never heard
an American say so, but such are the words which we put into his mouth, and they are
true to his character. They are equally true as to the Australian generally, as to the
Victorian specially, and as to the citizen of Melbourne in a more especial degree. He
likes to be 'cracked up,' and he does not hesitate to ask you to 'crack him up.' He does
not proceed to gouging or bowie-knives if you decline, and therefore I never did crack
him up." The Melbournites are never weary of relating apocryphal stories of their
prowess in the way of riding, driving, fighting, walking, working, drinking, love-making,
and speech-making. These anecdotes, told always in the first person, get wearisomely
monotonous after a time. In the colonies they are perfectly understood, and the
individual who relates them is said to " blow." In Queensland " blowing " is a loud
blast; in South Australia it can be distinctly heard. It is still louder in New South
Wales, as any one who has perused an armful of official publications — especially those
prepared for foreign perusal — must be distinctly aware of. In New Zealand the blast is
still louder, and even the forlorn colonies of Tasmania and Western Australia will, if
caught in a cheerful frame of mind, "blow" a little. In fiict, all young communities are
addicted to a rational— and occasionally irrational — pride in the country or city in which
they have cast their lot, and so the traveller must be churlish to snarl at what, with his
wider experience and more elevated standpoint, he knows not to be so well founded as
he would desire it to be. Alelbourne is emphatically a fine town, but the streets are
long, and when the winds — not tlie cold ones — are blowing, " a very little walking is equal
to a great deal of exercise." These new towns are laid out on a large scale. Hence for
many years they are a little ragged, and Melbourne is no exception. Few of the streets
— even the fine Collins Street — are finished, nor has the city /Edile yet been powerful
190 TIIK COUXTEIE.S OF THE WORLD.
enough to get all the houses in one street of the same style of architecture, or even of
the same pretensions. Hence, though in most of the streets there are iine buildings, none
of them are magnificent throughout. But Melbourne is great inside, if not outside. It
possesses a university, schools, a museum, and library, all on a sumptuous scale, and a botanic
garden, which, by dint of the eminence of its director, is known in parts of the world which
has but a vague idea of the city in which it is situated, or of the colony which supports it
on such a liberal scale. There are hospitals and benevolent asylums, which stand in the
place of the poor laws and the poor rates of older countries. There are clubs as well
appointed as any in Loudon — indeed, "the club" is an eminently colonial institution,
which has thorouglily engrafted itself in every town of any pretensions — churches as well
filled as a bishop could desire, and lunatic asylums only too fully occupied, not to speak
of palatial prisons and penal establishments, never without an abundance of inmates.
There is also a stock exchange, on which a tolerable amount of gambling is done, not to
speak of the "vei-andah," a piece of the Collins Street pavement, on which men
congregate to buy and sell gold shares, a sort of petit bourse, frequented by a class
known in Xew York as " kerbstone brokers." Melbourne has always been considered the
naval oflicer's elysium ; it even surpasses Sydney. In walking along the streets of the
cities, amid the crowd of gaily-dressed people, fine equipages, and liveried servants — these
not very common — it requires an eye sharply observant of little things to detect that we
are among a people who might all have arrived here when the aborigines were encamping
on its site, or Buckley, the escaped convict, who lived among them for thirty-two years,
the only white man within 500 miles. The villas at Richmond, Brighton, and St. Kilda
are charming residences, though in beauty of situation and surroundings they must yield
to the suburban retreats on the shores of Port Jackson.
The state railways of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the centre, are among the
proofs of their enterprise to which the Victorians very justly point. Among the earliest
trips over them which the visitor usually makes is one to Ballarat (p. 192), which the gold
discoverers of 1853 metamorphosed from a few cotton tents to an extensive and beautiful
city. It is still a great gold-producing neighbourhood, though not the richest in Australia,
as the once famous mines of Ballarat are beaten by those of Bendigo. But the town itself
— a mushroom even among fungt>id towns — is very pleasant and very finished-looking,
which are not characteristics of Australian " provincial " cities ; and in spite of the
grumbling of the residents, and the jeers of the non-residents, the place seems prospering.
There is no doubt about the absence in Ballarat of the rowdiness and dirtiness of new,
and more especially new, Australian towns, while wages are good and living cheap. It
has a good public library, free to all, a mechanics' institution, a public garden, pic-nics at
the Lall-Lall Falls (p. ISO), a cricket ground, and regattas on Lake Wendouree — in fact,
all the " institutions," most of the conveniences and luxuries, and in the shape of a large
Chinese population, many of the vices of a great town.
Bendigo is not so fine a place, but is determined to compete with Ballarat in being
the metropolis of the Australian gold-fields. So fine a place, indeed, does it intend to be
that, in spite of the vulgarity of the gold-fields, it has of late years changed its name to
Sandhurst, which is less characteristic but more genteel than its old familiar cognomen.
\aCTOEIA: TOWNS. 191
Howeverj just at present, as a city it is neither commodious nor handsome. It has
"the appearance, which is common to all new mining towns, of having been scratched up
violently out of the body of the earth bj- the rake of some great infernal deity, who had
left everything behind him dirty, uncouth, barren, and disorderly. At Sandhurst you
see heaps of upturned dry soil here and there, dislocated whins, rows of humble houses,
built just as they were wanted, shops with gewgaw fronts put up at an hour's notice,
driuking bars in abundance, here and there an attempt at architecture, made invariably
by some banking company eager to push itself into large operations ; but with it all a
look of eager, keen energy, which would redeem to the mind the hideous objects which
meet the eye were it not that the mind becomes conscious of the too speculative nature
of the work done — of the gambling propensities of the people ai'ound — and is driven to
feel that the buying and selling of mining shares cannot be done by yea, yea, and nay,
nay.''* There is a "verandah" here, as there is in Melbourne and in most large
Victorian towns, and the not very scrupulous, but very quick-witted men who con-
gregate on the particular portion of the pavement so designated have nothing to
learn from the wariest of Capel Court Jiahitiws in the arts of " making a market,"' " getting
a quotation," or in raising the price of mining shares which they wish to sell, or lowering
those which they are anxious to buy. If one can believe all the tales told, this gambling
l>ropensity has infiltrated all ranks of society in the colony. Judges, clergymen, old men
and old ladies, young ladies, and boys at school, sons, unknown to their fathers, wives to
their husbands, servants to their employers — everybody speculate in mining shares. The
country is in a fever, and the result not by any means to its advantage. But it will
get over it in time ; and Victoria has within it the elements of a prosperity which, in spite
of its outside faults, cannot fail to make it a great country, or, let us hope, one of a great
Confederation of Australasian States.
Yet one can forget Bendigo, with its newness and unsightliness — one almost forgets
the verandah, with the Hebraic company there assembled — once the pleasant country is
reached. It is not a fine or a picturesque region, yet the farm-houses embosomed amid
foliage, the sheep stations with their pastoral wealth, and even the deal or log cabins
of the newly-arrived settler — "the new chum" of the colonist— are pleasant beyond
description to the traveller who has only a few months previously been a daily witness
of the misery and hunger of a large city in the Old World — or in the New — and of the
squalid wretchedness which is too frequently the lot of even the fabled happy peasant of
much of Europe.
Gipps Land is the south-eastern part of Victoria, and is separated from the Murray
district of Victoria by the Australian Alps, among which lie the eastern gold-fields-
Some parts of Gipps Land are poor, but no inconsiderable portion is richly grassed and
thickly wooded, and well fitted for the cattle which of late years have taken the place
of the sheep which were first put to pasture on them. Most of this country is taken up,
and not only taken up but bought, by great squatters, who t\itten the cattle for the
Melbourne dinner-tables, and are thorns in the flesh of the democratic ministries who
have of late years been advocating the claims of the " free selectors " to share the
* TroUope: lib. cit., Vol. I., pp. 382-419.
il'
\
1-, ■-ii(i."a,.riii,iiii|".Mi'li; ,!,ti.|iliil'fJii,(i|iitjhilf
VICTORIA: GIPrS LAND.
I'M
huge territories which the representatives of the future territorial magnates of Victoria at
present divide amongst them. Salcj a town with 3,000 inhabitants, and enough of banks,
with Iniildings magniticent enough, too, for ten times the population, is the capital of Gipjis
Land. These tine bank buildings, in the most out-of-the-way Australian towns, presage no
good. The banking companies are generally the money-lenders of the place, and as tho
squatters are often in debt the bankers become in time owners of vast projierties. Some
of them are, in a word, "the ogres which eat up little men." Walhalla, a very small
town of 1,700 inhabitants, is the centre of quartz and other mining operations. Jericho
GOVERNMENT HOl>E, MELliUlK.Mi, VIlTUKIA.
is another mining village, Matlock a third, and Wood's Point (o.")0 people) the most
important of all. But in this brief sketch of an important colony it is needless entering
on any elaborate description of these and other colonial " cities," which, moreover, have many
characteristics in common with the others which we have described and may yet describe.
In Victoria the " black fellows " are rapidly becoming extinct. It is estimated that at
the first colonisation of Port Phillip they numbered about IJfiOO. When Victoria became
an independent colony they were officially put down at :J,69;3 ; in 1873 there were
1,553 ; and in 1877 only 1,007. About one-half of these reside on different aboriginal
stations, and three of them were in 1877 married to women of "European birth and origin."*
'Annual Report of tho Board for tho Protection of the Aborigines of Victoria (187S)."
145
194
CIIAPTKK XII.
Australia : South anh AVestei{N' Aistralia.
All of the Australasian colonies, with the exception of the first which heads this chapter, may
bo said to be more or less offshoots of either New South "Wales or Tasmania. South
Australia, though owing much to its contiguity to A'ictoria and the "mother colony,"
and to the gold excitement and discoveries which did so much for the other sections of
the Antijwdes, nevertheless sprang into life independent of cither. As early as 182l>
the explorations of Captain Sturt attracted attention to the region which we now know
as South Australia, but it was not until ISol that an Act was jiassed fur founding in
proper form the CfJony, which already existed embryonically. Into the terms of this
charter it is needless now to enter j but one provision the South Australians are particularly
proud of : that is, that no convicts were to be sent to the new settlement, a bargain
which has ever been strictly adhered to. In lSl',1, in accordance with another proviso to
that effect, the b2,'M)A- people then in the colony received a Constitution with responsible
government, and in IS.jO the additional privilege of returning elected members to serve
in the Legislative Council.
South Australia : Its History.
The colony was not at first an unqualified success ; it had its nps and downs, as-
have all the other Australian colonies, and has, like them, suffered from the ignorance or
inexperience of those who at first attempted to guide its youthful steps. Indeed, very
early in its career it managed to get into debt to an extent which its revenue in ni>-
way justified, and to spend about three times what it earned. But the mother country
happily looked kindly on her children's extravagance, and lent them nione}- to pay their
debts. This indulgence has been justified by the result, for since those days — forty
years ago — South Australia has prospered, though the date of its first real jirosperity was
1S-1.">, when the rich Burra-Burra copper mines were discovered. Copper, indeed, has
been to South Australia what gold has been to ^'ictoria, albeit at one time it was feared
that the attractions of the mines in the latter colony would altogether depopulate its
neighbour. The people rushed in a perfect furore for riches to Victoria. They walked
overland, or they drove in teams, or rode on horseback. They left Adelaide in shiploads,
in open boats, and in every other conveyance which would enal)le them to reach the
EI Dorado which, in their heated imaginations, appeared to be the promised land which
so many of tiicm had despaired of ever seeing. To use the language of one of the
historians of the colony — ]\Ir. Sinnett — the little trodden overland route became "the
scenes of acti\c tiafflc, the principal camping places being every night lighted ui> by the
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: TRADE .\:ND WEALTH. 195
numerous camp tires of parties of travellers. At the same time that the men went the
money went with them. The banks were drained of coin, and trade partially ceased.
Scores of shops were closed, because the tradesmen had followed their customers to the
diggings. The streets seemed to contain nothing but women, and strong feelings were enter-
tained that no harvest would be sown, and that, allured by the more glittering attraction
of the gold colony, the small landed proprietors who formed so important a section of our
-ociety would permanently remain away, selling their land here for whatever triHe it would
fetch." The same description would apply to the " gold rushes " in almost any of the other
colonies. But the result — in the case referred to — was that the runaways came back, and,
as a rule. South Australia profited far more than it lost by the Mctoriau gold discoveries.
Like the other colonies. South Australia has also had her constitutional fever, her deadlocks,
and parliamentary si^uabbles. Her original Constitution was not agreeable to the growino-
importance of the colonists; accordingly, they got a new one, which came in force in
IS-jTi. Since that date, at all events, there has not been parliamentary stagnation, for
in tifteen years there were twenty-four sets of ministers.
Trade axd Wealth.
Yet this political activity has evidently not greatly interfered with the prosperity of the
country, if it has not helped it; for on the 1st of April, 1879, the population was estimated
at 2. J 1,7 S3, who, on an average, each imported £il 9s. 9d. worth of goods, and exported
LHO 13s. Id. worth. The country, which in 1839 was nearly bankrupt, is now proud to
possess, and pay interest with punctuality on, a national debt of £1,737,200, and raises a
revenue little shoi't of a million and a half sterling; has nearly 100 miles of railway, and
cities wliicli will compare with many of the best of those in older countries.* In proportion
to its area South Australia is well cultivated, for of all the Australian colonies it is the one
best suited for the growth of wheat. Oats, barley, and peas are also cultivated to some
extent, but tlax — though the soil is well suited for it — is only grown to a slight extent.
The vine was at one time likely to be grown extensively, but during the past eight years
there has been a gradual falling off in the number and extent of the vineyards, until at
present there are not moi-e than 4,000 acres occupied with them. The liquor is fair, Imt
unless the consumption of native wine increases it is not like!}- ever to form a staple
product of the colony. The cultivation of the olive is extending, as is also that of the
almiind and other semi-tropical fruits. Sheep form in South Australia, as in the
neighbouring colonies, an important source of wealth. In round numbers there are at
present about 7,000,000 in the colony, in addition to 115,000 horses, 242,000 horned
cattle, 22,000 goats, and 107,000 pigs.
The outlying pastoral districts were early occupied as sheep and cattle runs, under
leases from the Government, though with the provision that if at any time the tracts
* See '■ Summary of the Statistics of the Colony,'' published in the South Atistralimi Itvgister and Smith Aiistrnlion
Advertiser, ioT January 27th, 1879; Harcus: "History, Eesources, .ind Productions of South .\ustralia" (1876);
Todd: "Handbook of South Austi-alia," kc. For some of these documents, official and otherwise, I am indebted
to Sir Aithur Blyth, K.C.JI.G., foi-merly Premier, and at present Agent-General for the colony.
196
THE COrXTRIES OF THE WOULD.
so occupied sliuuKl l.c wanteJ bv the Government they can be resumed on the squatter
getting six months' notice. The agricultural settler then steps in, and farms take
the place of runs, the colony properly recognising the fact that land fit for growing
crops cau be more profitably occupied in this manner than by sheep farmers, who
will monopolise for every score of sheep as much ground as will feed a family. The
South Australians, no doubt, consider this as a pusillanimous way of looking at things.
Thev are fond of talking large and of handling articles on a great scale. A squatter
may grow rich rapidly, or become as rapidly bankrupt, by growing wool, as no
l'.VliI.I.\>IENT HOISE, ADELAIDE.
doubt the farmer may do liy growing wheat. But wheat is usually cultivated on a
comparatively small scale by multiplicity of growers, while wool is grown in lordly quan-
tities over great tracts and for a few individuals. Yet wheat, and not wool, constitutes
the agricultural woaltli of South Australia. In 1S7S — including a little grown in the
neighbouring colonies, but exported from Adelaide — the quantity of wool sent off from
South Australian ports was 118,.")(l:2 bales, valued at tl,SUL',401, but the wheat crop was
worth much more than that, though a considerable quantity of it being consumed in the
colon}- it does not bulk so largely in statistical returns.* Sheep farmers in South Australia
are liable to great losses from the droughts which so frequently visit the colony. During
• In 187S thfrc were 2,141,3U acres under tillage, and of this area over 1,300,000 were devoted to wheat.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: SHEEP FARMING.
197
some of these droiig-hts not a blade of grass appeal's after a certain time, and the sheep
are starved. Then the more provident settlers hie their flocks and herds to the coast,
or to any other region where a little food may be found. It is a colonial law that
a squatter has the right of driving his sheep over any other squatter's run, provided the
flock is travelling to or from the run, and the owner of the travelling " mob " has given
notice to the lessee of the land over which he is driving them. He must also drive them
at the rate of at least six miles per diem. This legal usage is at times abused by sharp
but shabby squatters, who drive their sheep in a long round, getting them a bit of feed
PO.ST-OI 1 ICE ANU TOWN HALL, AUELAUlt.
here and a bit there, until thoy complete the circuit of eleemosynary pasturage by returning
to their own scanty runs with flocks fattened at their neighbours' expense. It is needless
to say that this practice is not popular with the large squatters, who, however, cannot
prevent it, fen- a squatter must get his flocks to and from market. But in times
of drought it is execrated still more. Tlie squatter's pastures are day by day getting
browner and thinner, and he has barely enough to keep life in his own sheep until the
long prayed-for rain arrives. But what must be his feelings when he sees "mob" after
mob of starved animals arriving, and, witliout his having power to prevent them, still
further decreasing the feed? Such was the case in the great drought of 18G5-G(!. The
flocks which came first f-irod badly, but those which followed fared worse, until the line of
lyS TlIK COCNTIUES OF THE WOKI.D.
liiivel to the sea was strewi'd with dying animals, or with Iheir putrefying carcases.
If a sheep ilropjxtl it was left to die, for the niub had to move on to some other
district, in the hope of sullicient grass being still found there to keej) the animals
alive. Thousands were even slaughtered, in order that by reducing the number of
mouths enough grass could be kept for the i^urvivors ; and it is on record that one
tlesperate scpiatter, as a last resort, drowned a tlock of a thousand sheep in the sea. In
Adelaide sheep could, during this dismal time, be bought for next to nothing. Flocks
were offercnl for a shilling a head, and as the clouds still withheld their moisture would-be
jiurchasers lived to rejoice that their offer of sixpence a sheep was not accepted : for ilucks
and Jierds were an incumbrance.
These notes will show what a speculative business squatting is. A few pence a
])ound more or less on wool will make the fortune or complete the ruin of the
-struggling squatter. I think it is Mr. Trollope who notes as a remarkable fact that
in travelling in Australia the visitor sees comparatively few sheep. Nothing could
more strikingly illustrate the extent of the country. It contains millions of sheep and
thousands of sheep runs ; sheep constitute its chief inhabitants, and wool its riches.
Vet even in the pastoral districts mile after mile may be driven over and not a fleece
seen, and, what is still more curious, scarcely a blade of grass. Outside of " Godyer's
Kain Line " little or no rain falls, and this region is therefore exempt from purchase by
iigriculturists. For that reason, if for no other, it is in favour with the squatter, who, of
all created beings, dislikes the dingo and the "free selecter" worst. The country, it is true,
will not " carry" over one sheep to ten acres, hence the few sheep seen by the traveller; and
the same, indeed, is true of almost every other animal, which seem singularl}- absent from
these dry, cheerless, uninviting tracts of South Australia. Little grass existing, owing to the
lack of rainfall during the greater part of the year, the sheep feed on the salt-bush, a
species of orache {Alriplex UKinmularia), about two feet in height, which can produce
its foliage with the minimum of moisture. It is eagerly devoured by sheep, and is
accounted a safe kind of feed because it so rarely fails. Water is obtained from wells sunk
to the depth of from 50 to 120 feet. At this depth, water can almost always be got,
though of a brackish quality. Yet the sheep thrive on it. Sometimes the water from these
wells is raiscil by horse-power, occasionally by windmills, but most frequently by men. In
South Australia, outside the line of rainfall, which is the squatter's peculiar province,
most of the runs are rented from the Government, at a rate calculated on the number of
sheep they are believed capable of "carrying," but inside this line — in the agricultural
country visited by regular rains — most of the sheep farmers have bought the lands
wl-.ich they occupy, or they occupy them as commonage with the owners of neighbouring
freeholds.
Mixes.
The mines of South Australia are very important. Gold is found in it, and con-
siderable quantities of the precious metal have been washed out of the soil by " diggers,"
but it is not auriferous— at least, so far as yet known — to the extent that the other
colonies are. But it is cupriferous. Copper mines, of a quality far surpassing anything
SOrXH AUSTIiALIA: MIXES. 199
in the rest of Australia, are worked here, to the exceeding great profit of the shareholders
in them. Some of them, indeed, appear to be almost inexhaustible. The most famous of
these were the Kapunda (p. 2" I), Burra-Burra, and Wallaroo mines, until the diseovery
of the ]\roonla mines, not far from Adelaide, eclipsed them. In thirteen or fourteen years
the latter paid — up to 1S74 — £801,000 in dividends, without a single penny of capital
being subscribed. They were discovered by a shepherd employed on a sheeji run in the
district. The Burra-Burra mines are situated about ninety miles north of the town of
Adelaide, witli which they are connected by a railway. They were lit upon in 1S4-5,
also by a shepheril. The land on which the ore was supposed to exist was purchased, to
the extent of :iO,00() acres, by two com])anies, known as the Nobs and the Snobs, from the
supposed aristocratic or plebeian tendencies of the different shareholders. Forced by the
very democratic want of cash to coalesce, they cast lots for the land which each should
possess. The result was that the Snobs got the northern portion and the Nobs the
southern, but as it fell out that all the copper was on the democrats' lands, the aristocrats
were compelled to dispose of their acquisition for jiastoral purposes. The Snobs then
commenced work. Tlie copper lay on the surface, in the form, as it were, of a great
metalliferous rock, so that it could be mined with the least possible expenditure of labour
and money. In the first six years of their history the Burra-Burra mines yielded S0,0(tO
tons of ore, and a profit of nearly half a million sterling. As the company had begun
work w^ith a capital of £1,500 over and above the sum expended on the land, it may be
reasonably belie\'ed that the Burra-Burra mine shai-eholders were satisfied with their
dividends. Those were the palmy days of Burra-Burra : when the surface copper got
worked out, the expenses of the mines increased and the dividends decreased : then Wallaroo
became the greatest name in South Australian mining c^uotations. These mines are situated in
a dreary, waterless couutrj', so poor, indeed, that the original settlers all but despaired of
being able to keep sheep on it. But in 1859 copper was discovered, and in 1S(]0 more
at Moonta, a station ten miles distant, and the shepherds who discovered both mines
and the squatters on whose runs they existed became wealthy men. Thriving towns now
exist where only, a few jears ago, were one or two huts, and the smoke of smelting
works now rises into the cloudless sky over spots formerly unsuspected to be metalliferous.
In the vicinity of these mines patriarchal government run crazy is seen to perfection.
The miner desires to be near his work, and accordingly the cpieor rambling villages of
Wallaroo mines and ]\Ioonta mines have clustered round the very mouths of the shafts.
But the ground on which they are built is Government land, leased out specially for
mining, and not for building purposes. It therefore follows that the Cornish and Welsh
miners who have built their huts on these sjx)ts have done so in the face of the law:
they should have taken up their residences in the official townships further off. In these
town sites any one may buy his section and build his house, always providing that he
builds it in accordance with the Government specifications. In the townships alone
people are allowed to open a shop, the Government liaving promised the speculators
who bought the land at Kadina or iVIoonta that no other shops should be allowed to bo
established within a certain distance of them. "In these large mining villages nothing
can be bought and nothing sold. In reality, the man when he has constructed a house
oflO THE COUNTRIES UF THE WOULD.
has not even a house to sell. Ho should have built it in the otticial town il' he desired to
avail himself of his i)ropeity.'' But the mines at present discovered and worked are
believed to be only an earnest of the still richer ones to be discovered and worked in the
near future. At present cheap transit is a drawback to the development of the colony's
mineral wealth. AVhen the railway, lor which already the preliminary surveys have been
made, is constructed across the continent iioni Adelaide in the south to Port Darwin in
the north, the country some 200 miles north of Port Augusta, which is known to be rich
in copper, will be worked with profitable results. Ironstone, said to yield excellent "pig,"
exists in great abundance within an easy distance of the sea-board, and in many places
in the midst of large timber, from which charcoal for smelting purjjoses could be obtained
easily, and in great abundance.
Agricultural Wealth.
Wheat, however, will always be the product which will distribute wealth most equallj-
throughout all dasses of the community, and though it may not excite so nmch interest,
it will in the aggregate amount to far more than even the minerals with which the name
of South Australia has been so long associated. For instance, the minerals and metals
exported during 1878 only brought iu £374',501, while the agricultural products were valued
at £1,661,339 ; of wheat, 3,088,337 bushels, valued at £851,838, were exported ; of flour,
62, •274' tons, worth £77i),266; of wheat meal, 1,224 tons, worth £11,579; of bran and
pollard, 1,870 tons; while barley and oats were sent out of the country to the value of
more than £1,800. The returns do not, of course, include what is used in the country.
Now this amount of grain is not, as a rule, raised by a few great farmers ; it is
garnered by the free selecters — the " cockatoos," as they are jeeringly termed — who
cultivate a bit of land here and a bit of land there. Their number is so rapidly
increasing that in 1879 it is believed that there will be available for export some
170,000 tons of wheat, the yield from 1,305,851 acres being 2,332,042 bushels. Even
this return could, with a more scientific system of agriculture, be greatly increased, for
the South Australian farmer is perhaps one of the worst of the very indifferent kind
found in the Australian colonies. He cultivates badly, partly because he has not
learned to cultivate well, but mainly for the reason that with the minimum of labour
and expense he has hitherto been able to make a livelihood. He pays no heed to I'ota-
tion of crops. If a bit of ground grows wheat this year he will make it grow wheat
next year, and try to make it do so the next again, until the virgin richness of the
soil is exhausted, and it yields no longer. Then, when it is all but too late, he will
endeavour to return, in the shape of expensive manures, what lie has so prodigally extracted
from it. " Fallow " is a word not found in the " cockatoo's " vocabulary, and the idea of
making home manure is about as strange to him as are many other canons of old countrj'
husbandry formulated by those who are older and wiser than he. He finds it easier to bni-n
the stubble from his fields than to collect the straw: and, for that reason he does so. He
is never weary of boasting how far he is ahead of the British farmer in labour-saving
appliances; and so proud, indeed, are the authorities of the reaping machine in use that
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: AGEICULTURE.
;J01
THE L\RE BIRD OF AUSTRALIA (Jfeiuirtt -liperto) AXD COCKATOOS.
Ihey figure it in the official memorandum annually issued for the use of immigrants.
This instrumentj devised to gather the wheat crop with as little labour as possible, i.s
146
202 THE COUXTKIES OF THE WORLD.
known as a " strippor." It is lined with slicet iron, and lias a row of iron fingers so sliaiiecE
and fittctl as to catch the wheat immediately under the ear, and so, by the forward motion of
the machine, drawn generally by three hoi-ses abreast, the ear is stripped from the straw
and drawn into the machine, where a drum with beaters await it, and threshes the grain
from the ear, throwing it all together to tlie back part of the apparatus. So after the
machine has gone round the tield it returns to tlie corner whence it started, and folding-
doors being opened behind, it discharges its cargo of wheat cut and tlireslied, the
winnowing only being required to ])repare the grain for the bags into which it is
deposited, placed on a team, and carted to the nearest ^wrt or railway station, or sold at
once to the millers and corn factors. Tiiis method of harvesting the crop shows how dry
the climate is. In California, and some of tlie other western States of America, a very
similar method of gathering the wheat crop is adopted, for in these regions also the air is
sufficientiv dry to enable the grain to be bagged without the long and risky drying process
necessarv in moister regions. The result of this lazy, thriftless farming is that the
soil is getting impoverished and the farmer ceasing to be anything save a wheat grower,
without enterprise or ambition, though orderly, industrious, and self-supporting.
^lost of the farmers own their land, but the tenant system is not unknown, though
it is unpopular with all parties concerned, and will in time cease. The tenant gives
but unwilling toil to soil not his own, while the proprietor has none of the social
advantages which the ownership of broad acres confers in England. All he expects Uy
get — and, as a rule,- all he gets — is just so much per cent, on his money, and that,
indeed, he does not always get with the regularity he would had he invested his funds
in gas shares, water, a soap-making company^ or any other unpicturesque security; for though
the tenant pays, if the times are good, something like nine per cent, for the use of the
soil which he grows his wheat on, he looks upon it, if the season is bad, as a matter of
course that he should have a corresponding reduction, and if the times are very bad
indeed the landlord's chance of getting any rent at all will Ije about equally poor. Should
the proprietor think diffei-ently, and resort to stronger measures, in this land of limitless
acreage, the tenant will simply move elsewhere, and as his farming appliances are, as we have
seen, not very extensive, the landowner, by seizing them, is not likely to obtain much,
except the odium of the neighbourhood in which he lives, and the maledictions of the colony
at large, neither of which will greatly aid him in a new coimtry, where a man's wealth
depends to a great extent on the multitude of his friends. The South Australian
"cockatoo" is imiversally described as not a romantic-looking person, but one who enjoys in
a modest way a plenitude of the necessaries, if not many of the luxuries, of Antipodean
life. His crop in the soil, or in sack, his mind is not harassed with any of the multi-
farious cares which trouble a farmer in the true meaning of the term. Accordingly, the
" cockatoo " takes service as a shearer with a large squatter, and earns a few pounds while
his grain is growing; or he keeps a team of bullocks, and freights wool to the nearest port
or to the railway station; or possibly be "puts in" a month or two at some gold digging,
hoping by this means to add a little to his store, or to free more quickly than he could
ofiierwise do the farm which he has bought on credit from the Government. Tlie land
laws of tlie Australian colonies are all alike in this resjiect : they enable the poor mei»
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: THE XORTHERX TERRITORY. li):]
"to obtain a portion of the soil on easy terms. But they differ in every other respect.
In the various ofHeial documents issued by the different colonies full information is
•usually yiven as to the methods to be adopted in order to become an Australian sipiire.
But as South Australia has now passed a new Laud Act, it may be well to recapitulate
the chief points in it, as given in a memorandum issued by the authorities in Adelaide.
L'nder this Act the whole of the waste lands of the colony south of the twenty-sixth parallel
•of south latitude — in other words, all the land which will grow wheat — form one area
•open to intending purchasers as fast as it can be surveyed. All waste lands have a price
put upon them by the Commissioners of Crown Lands — not less than £1 and not more
than £2 per acre ; a price, it will be seen, much higher than in the United States and in
the Canadian Dominion. However, should they not be taken up at the fixed price, that
^irice will be reduced every seven days by not less than 2s. Cd. and not more than 5s. per
.acre until it has reached the minimum of £1 per acre. After it has reached this minimum
it can come down no lower until the end of five years. Then the unselected lands may be
•offered for sale in blocks, of not more than 3,000 acres, on lease for ten years at an
:annual rental of not less than Od. per acre, with a right of purchase at any time during
the currency of the lease at £1 per acre. Suppose an immigrant, arriving in the colony
■with a little cajjital, is desirous of taking up land, he will first of all see what lauds are
■open for selection, and having examined them and made himself acquainted with the
sections, the quality of the soil, the water privileges, the average rainfall, and what he
a-egards as the actual value of the land, he will see what is the price Government has put
■on the piece he fancies. If he thinks the upset price too high, he will wait a week or two,
until it is reduced te what he thinks is its proper value. He will then put in his application
at the Land Office for the section or sections he wishes to obtain, with a deposit of ten
per cent, on the whole amount, stating, at the same time, whether he intends to reside
ijjereonally or by his servant. Should there be no further application for the same blocks
ihe will be at once accepted as the purchaser; and he will then have to sign an agreement,
Ibinding himself to the conditions upon which the land is taken upon credit. He will
then enter ujwn the land and make the necessary improvements — either by fencing, erecting
a, house or farm buildings, or by making reservoirs or water-tanks — to the value of
2s. fid. per acre for the first year. He will then have to plough, and have under cul-
tivation one-fifth of the land during the first year, or two-fifths during the second
year. At the end of five j'ears, if a personal resident, and he can afford to pay the
purchase-money, he will obtain the fee simple of his selection, and henceforth it will
he his own, to be dealt with as he thinks proper.
The XoiiTHERN Tekiutory.
The term South Australia, as at present applied to the colony, is really a misnomer,
for many of the 903,090 miles contained in it are north of Victoria, and are even the most
northern part of the whole continent, the Cape York Territory alone excepted. Adelaide,
the capital, is, for instance, several degrees north of Melbourne and very little south of
.■Sydnej". However, at the time it was established the colony was certainly the most
201
TUK COUXTIUES OF THE WOULD.
southcra on the mainland of Austnilia, and it would be saorifieing too much to the spirit
of nomenilatural aceuraey to change its title now. Nevertheless, though we usually include
under the name of South Australia only the country lying around and behind the great
Australian Bight and Spencer Gulf, it extends in reality to the whole length of Australia.
This northern territory, the capital of which will be at Port Darwin, may eventually
become independent, but at present the Adelaide magnates control it and dispose of its
lands. It contains about 500,000 square miles, but with the excqjtion of a few settle-
ments of little importance on the coast, the aborigines have it all to themselves. A telegrajili
line nms through its entire length, and already the project for opening it up by means
of a railwav is taking shape, so that before some of tiie readers of these lines are old
men or women the " Northern '"erritory of South Australia," which is at present
THE KAPl'NDA COI'l'F.U MINES, NEAR ADELAIDE.
colonially in as larval a conditimi as A ictoria was thirty or fcirty years ago, may have
become a full-Hedged dependency of England, or at least of the Australian Dominion.
Palmerstou, a tiny settlement at Port Darwin, is the nucleus of a capital, and as the
j)oint where the telegraph line enters and leaves the continent, and where the railway
will begin and terminate, it must in the end be an important locality for trade. To build
this telegra]ili line for nearly :i,000 miles, at a cost of £370,000, was a gigantic undertaking
for a colony with about a fifteenth of the population of the capital of Ilngland. It was
taken through an almost unknown country — indeed, through the region in which Burke
and Wills perished in the attempt to cross it — a region in which there was little water and
no supplies. If the railway be ever built it will cost at least £10,000,000, and though at
present it is difficult to see where the traffic to support it is to come from, there need be
little fear that in time the population will follow the iron road, and that it will add
enormously to the imiiortancc and prosperity of our Australian provinces. Sheep will
spread northward, and copper mines at present lying unworked, owing to the prohibitory
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: TOWKS.
i05
expense of gettin* the ore to the coast, will be opened up. Port Darwin has gold in its
immediate vicinity, and there are those who declare that in a few years the Victoria and
Roper River gold mines will be among the richest in the colony. " A world of hopes/'
wrote Mr. Trollope some j'ears ago, when discussing the prospects of the railway scheme,
"rise to the mind of the sanguine proprietor as the largeness of his scheme endears it
more and more to his heart, till he sees the happiness of thousands and the mao-nifieence
of himself is the realisation of his project. I cannot believe in expenditure of £10,000,000
on the construction of a railway which is to run through a desert to nowhere ; but I do
believe in the gold-fields and pastures of Port Darwin, and in the beauties of the Roper
and Victoria Rivers ; and hot though the country be, I think that another young colony
will found itself on the western shores of the Gulf of Cai-pentaria." No doubt this
VIEW OF COLLIXGKOVE, NEAR ADELAIDE.
railway- will not have the advantages which the one across Xortli America had in having
at the further end of it such a town as San Francisco was when it was first mooted
in earnest, nor for its support such wheat-growing countries as are Oregon and Illinois.
But, nevertheless, it will be built.
Towxs.
The only one of the South Australian towns which need be even briefly adverted to
is Adelaide. Named in honour of the queen of William IV., it is little more than forty
years old, and though it has not progressed at the same rate as Sydney or Melbourne,
yet the stranger leaves Adelaide with the impression that the colony of which it is the
capital is a success. It is not in itself a seaport, for it is built on the bank of the
Torrens, an unpleasant little river, meandering over a plain seven miles from the ocean.
Neither is the surrounding countrj' particularly charming, for the only claims which it
makes to the jiicturesque are due to the Mount Lofty range of hills which form its laud-
£0C THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
ward Wkgrouud, and amony; the valleys of which nestle those villas which the
Australiua citizens so affect. Indeed, it has been said that " nobody lives in Melbourne,"
the " everybody " who lives out of it being;, of course, the wealthy dinner-givinj;-
people with whom the pii^sing tourist, likely to write books, mostly comes into contact.
As this chronicler tinds that his invitations usually compel him to go to and from
hospitable houses by train, he naturally concludes that "everybody" in Melbourne
Jives at one of the pretty seaside towns on the shores of Port Phillip, or in one of the
villas which for miles line the roads leading out into the bush around the metropolis of
Victoria. It is not the same in Adelaide as in Melbourne and Sydney, but still the city
is netting quite large enough to induce the well-to-do people to seek the country after the
work of the day is over (p. iJOo).
Adelaide also illustrates another prominent feature of the Australian colonies —
that is, the towns are populous out of all due proportion to the countr_v. For instance,
in Adelaide and its suburbs there may at the present time be about ;3J',000 souls —
there were in 1S7G, 31,573 — or more than one-ninth of the whole population of the
colony. This proves — and the example of Adelaide is only one out of many other
illustrations which could be produced — that the "bush" is ceasing to have attractions
for new comers, and that the native population discharges itself with reluctance out of
the overstocked towns. This is also beginning to be the case in the United States;
er in other words. North America is ceasing to be a " new country," and is ass\iming
the conditions of older communities. But the back country in America is already so well
settled in most parts that the effect will not be experienced so soon as it will be in
Australia, unless it alters for the better very soon. The towns can only prosper to a
eertain extent if not fed by the country. They can only absorb a certain amount of
foreign products, and it stands to reason can export less and less should the back
country cease to supply in greater and greater quantity the raw materials which the
townsmen work up and manipulate. ]\Ieantime, however, the metropolis of South Australia
shows no signs of decay. It is fresh, clean, and airy, and the citizens and their insti-
tutions prosper. The town is built on the regular geometrical plan in favour with new
American " cities," and is therefore very prim, jjroper, and unpicturesque. The public
buildings are splendid, as public buildings usually are in Australia. It has a Post-office
which will compare favourably with similar buildings in any of the other colonies, a grand
Town Hall (p. l'J7), a Parliament House (p. 196), a Governor's residence, and other public
iiHices such as few towns in England with four times the inhabitants can boast of. It
has — also a wholesome Australian fashion — so many and such tine churches that its envious
livals designate it " the city of churches," when thej' do not sneer at it as the " farinaceous
town" — wheat, the staple export of Adelaide, being, of course, in the eyes of Sydney
and Melbourne, which are " lanigerine " cities, a source of wealth not to be named on
the same day with wool. It has also a pretty theatre, and of course numerous banks,
which may or may not be a sign of the prosperity of those for whose " accommodation "
they are built. If people have nothing to pawn there will be no pawnbrokers ; but
the frequency of the three lialls in any town or in any locality is not usually considered
a sign of the thrift, wealth, or pros2)erity of the inhabitants. The botanic gardens
■WESTERN ArSTEALIA: HISTORY. 207
(p. 334) are also fine scientificall}', and lovely spsthefically, though they do not equal those
of Sydney. But no gardens in the Old World or the New can ever be expected to equal
those of Sydney in beauty : these are first, and all the others second, but at a long interval
from those magnificent pleasure-grounds of the oldest of the Antipodean cities. The eitv
is hot in December, January, and February. Then, we are assured by the writer from
whose lively descriptions I have culled some of these notes, " men and women sigh for
9o"-' in the shade, as they within the tropics sigh for the temperate zone." The
Adelaideans are proud of their town, and not prone to admit anything to its discredit.
But the heat they allow, and even take a pride in declaring that the " farinaceous city '"
is the hottest in Australia south of the tropics.
Exports axd IirpoRXS.
Though there are a number of smaller towns, yet the capital on the shores of the
Gulf of St. Vincent is the enfrepoi by which most of the foreign commerce enters the
colony, and through which the greater part of the colonial surplus production leaves the
country. Owing to the great falling off in the ex}X)rt of copper, the total imports iit
187S exceeded the exports of actual produce by £308,320. These amounted to £3,940,907,
being £383,001 in excess of those of 1877. The total imports amounted to £4,258,317,
or £107,438 more than those of 1877. The falling off of the mineral exjiorts were
£190,083 less than those of 1873, or less than half the average of the four years, l87:i
to lS7o inclusive, the decrease being due not to a falling off iu the yield of the copper
mines, luit to the state of the copper market not encouraging mining enterprise.*
Western Australia : History.
This is the largest in area, but the smallest iu imiMrtance, the poorest in resources,
and the least promising or important of all the Antipodean colonies. Our notice of it
may be therefore brief. A picture is not meritorious according to the size of the canvas,
or an actor according to the superfices of the stage : otherwise the million square miles
which this languishing Australian province boasts of would give it an importance over
all its sisters. In reality it possessed, at the end of 1877, only 27,838 of a population,
while the immigrants were almost counterbalanced by the emigrants. Its public revenue
during the year in question was £165,413, and its expenditure £182,959. It is need-
less to add that Western Australia is in debt, and, like the mother country, has
been getting deeper and deeper into debt ever since she learned the art of Ijorrowing.
In 1873 she owed but £35,000; in 1874 this indebtedness was more than trebled, until,
in 1877, Western Australia stands in the world's books for £161,000. No doubt this
•"Statistical Register of South Australia" (187S): and for general information on this and other Australian
colonies — Bates and Edeu : " AVarburton's Journey across Australia" (187-)); Forrest: "Explorations in Aus-
tralia" (187.)): I)ilke : "Greater Britain" (1869); Hardman: " JI'Douall Stuart's .Tournals of Explorations in
Australia" (ISCC) ; Tennison- Woods' " Historj- of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia" (1866); GordoQ
and Gotch: "Australian Handbook" (1879); Braim : "New Homes" (1870), the works of Harcus, Todd West-
garth, i-e. &c.
20S THE COUNTRIES OF TUE WORLD.
is an insignificant amount for a public debt, and, when compared with the lordly
Jtltj,000,000 of Victoria, hardly worth noticing. But for a people not numbering so
many as a fourth- rate English town it is more than sufKcient, especially when their
prospects are as dull as they are at present. It is, therefore, a poor consolation for the
statistician to point out that in proportion to the population New Zealand and Queensland
are infinitely more heavily indebted, so that, indeed, all the other Australasian colonies
are in a worse plight — with the exception of Tasmania, which, next to Queensland and
New Zealand, has been most extravagant. But all the neighbouring colonies are prosperous,
and can, with more or less ease, bear the burdens they have put upon themselves — buidens
it ought to be added not incurred in wars, as is the bulk of the debt of the older
countries, but for important and useful public works. Western Australia is, however, almost
retrograding.
In itself the colony is not blessed with many natural advantages. It is, as an
American visitor remarked, " the best country to run through a hour-glass he ever saw."
It is sandy. Then its poverty has forced it to take within its bounds guests, not strange,
it is true, to the Australian colonies, but whom all the others have long ago eschewed.
In a word. Western Australia was from the first a convict settlement, and though
"prisoners" are not now sent, the number of these deportees within the colony must
for long give it the jail taint. Tasmania, it is generally conceded even by the Tasraanians,
has seen its best days, and is fast sinking into that dull quiescence, neither death nor
life, which is the characteristic of so many countries in Europe, of so many country
towns in European countries, and even of some colonies not in Australia. It has none
of the lusty life, the loud self-assertion, not even the boastfulness of the sister provinces.
Now, when a new country ceases to boast, its spirit must have been thoroughly broken.
But to this pass even Western Australia has come. A more than ordinarily spirited person
will attempt to crow about " our resources ; " but the attempt is the recklessness of
despair.
The colony may have patches of good land, but these fertile districts are separated
one from the other by intervals of desert, so that farming in Western Australia must
be farming in a series of oases. Hence the distance of the settlements from one
another makes it difficult for the settlers to dispose of their produce; and the distance
of the colony itself from the other settled portions of Australia still further separates it
from the tide of commerce which, year by year, is laving more profusely the shores of
the remaining four colonies. Add to this that it has no gold — or, at least, no paying gold
diggings, which is much the same thing — while the presence of the yellow metal in nearly
every one of its neighbours attracted from it many settlers whom it has never yet been
able to call back again, and that endless forest and poison-bush-eovered districts render sheep-
farming over much of the country an impossibility, and the woful plight in which the colony
is ])laced may be grasped. To all these troubles may be added the fact that labour is
difficult to be procured, that the two or three thousand "aboriginals" in the country are
not to be relied upon either as toilers or neighbours, and that the assistance which the
convicts sui)ply is not an adequate recompense for the blight which the name of "lag"
inflicts on the colony. Yet, though the settlement did not primarily commence as a place
WESTERN AUSTRALIA: HISTORY.
209
of banishment;, about the first intrusion of the region on public notice was owing to the
New South Wales authorities, as early as 1826, forming an outlying colony of convicts
on the shores of King George's Sound, at the spot where the village of Albany after-
wards established itself. Soon, however, owing to the reports of Captain Sterling, a
settlement of free colonists was founded on the Swan River. Hence many who are
yet middle-aged may remember Western Australia under its earlier and more familiar
name of " The Swan River Settlement." Then the convicts were removed, and, as the
Swan Riverites imagined, the Bill Sikes physiognomy was no more to appear among them
VIEW oy THE SWAN EIVEE, WESTERN AVSTRALIA (GRASS TREES, KLAfK SWAN'S, AND KANGAROOS),
under official auspices. But they were mistaken. The first colonists were humble men,
not ambitious of in any way distinguishing themselves as heroes. They desired to live
with less toil than they did at " home," and, if possible, make their bread, and the bread
of their wives and families, surer than it had been during the dull times which England
was experiencing half a century ago. Yet, in spite of themselves, the tale of the pioneers
of Western Australia is as manly a tale of hardships endured, and of sufferings borne, as
any which have come down to us. They were not successful. The aborigines were nume-
rous, and being, after their own savage fashion, patriots, failed to look upon the proceedingf
of the new comers in the light which the latter would have desired. So there was much
miscellaneous killing on both sides, and on that of the pioneer colonists so much dis-
couragement that at one time it was seriously proposed to abandon the attempt to found a
147
210 TUE COVXTKIES OF TlIK WOULD.
home on the western shores of New Holland. Rust and moths devoured the wheat, and as
the country did not supply anything which could iill its place, starvation more than once
faced the colonists. In these circumstances the Albany people remembered that, in Tasmania
and New South Wales, imperial money was once spent freely on convicts. And what
excellent roads and brid<,'es these deprjived persons used to make! Accordingly, in t-pito
•f the fact that the other colonies were rebelling against transportation to their shores,
the faint-hearted men of Albany petitioned for convicts. But the petition was indig-
nantly rejected by the colony at large. Again a still more extensively signed petition
was circulated, but again rejected, for poor as the West Australians were, they virtuously
declared that they had not come to such a pass as that proposed for their deliverance.
But things went from bad to worse, until, chastened by adversity, and demoralised by lack
ef cash, at a public meeting held in the capital it was resolved to request the Governor
to represent to the imperial authorities the desire of Her ^lajesty's faithful lieges in
Western Australia to enjoy the very diluted blessing of convicts, of convicts' labour,
and — of British money spent in the keep of British convicts. That was in ISiO; and
in due time, just as Tasmania had declined to have any more " lags," and the Home
Government were at their wits' end what to do with the offscourings of their jails,
the first "prisoners of the crown" arrived at Freemantle, and, until 1S68, they continued
to arrive in the numbers which we have already noted (p. 171). The chances are that
they would yet have been sent, for the imperial authorities showed no desire to abate
the despatch of criminal cargoes, and the colonial government having once tasted
the wages of other men's iniquity, in the shape of good roads and bridges and public
buildings made by convict labour, seem to have made up their minds to accept it for
good — or evil. But the neighbouring colonies objected. Especially virtuous was South
Australia. It declared that her neighbour's " lags " escaped across the border, and
that, therefore, she would not tolerate such a well-spring of corruption on her borders.
The end of this agitation was, that in 1808 banishment to Western Australia cease<l,
and ever since the colonists have alternately tried to prove that they never wished for the
convicts, that they were an immitigated curse to her — forgetting the bridges and the
roads which they had no money to make — and that the stingy Government "at home"
cheesepare and economise shamefully in the matter of the money they devote to the
support of the still remaining prisoners, and, of course, in the matter of money they " spend
in the country," which, in colonial eyes, is the final purpose of convicts. They even, ac-
cording to Mr. Trollope, bring still more serious charges against the perfidious people who
in these isles have the ordering of penal matters. " No female convicts were sent out
to Western Australia, and therefore an influx of women soon became, above all things,
desirable. Women were sent out as emigrants in respect of whom great complaints wei"e
made by the colony against the Government at home. It is said that the women were
Irish, and were low, and were not calculated to make good mothers for future heroic
settlers. It seems to me this complaint, like many others m.ide in the colonies generally,
has been put forward thoughtlessly, if not unjustly. The women in question were sent
that they might become the wives of convicts, and could not, therefore, have been expe-
diently selected from the highest orders of the English aristocracy. Another complaint
AVESTEEX AUSTRALIA: GENERAL COXDITIOX OF THE COLOXY. 211
states tliat tlie couvicts sent were not convicts of the kind ordered and promised. Tliere
was — so goes the allegation — a condition made and accepted that the convicts for Western
Australia should be convicts of a very peculiar kind, respectable, well-grown, moral, health v
convicts — who had been, perhaps, model ploughmen at home — and men of that class. I
have always rej)lied, when the allegation has been made to me, that I should like to
see the stipulation in print, or at least in writing. I presume the convicts were sent
out as they came to hand ; and certainly many of them were not expressly fitted to work
on farms at a distance from surveillance. The women, I do not doubt, were something
like the men ; and in this way a population, not very excellent in its nature, was created.
But — the men worked for nothing." At the latest date for which we have accurate data,
there were within the colony 1,700 prisoners — either in prisons or at working depots in
various parts of the colony — in addition to 1,214- prisoners having tickets-of-leave, and
1,MQ having conditional pardons. This number is, however, exclusive of the colonial
prisoners and the " expirees," the greater number of whom reside in the colony, owing to
the very stringent regulations which the other colonies have made in regard to them. No
man — no matter who — can land, say in Adelaide, without having a certificate from the
police authorities of the Western Australian port from which he started to the effect
that he is not, and has never been, a " prisoner of the crown." The result of this state
of matters is that the convict flavour pervades the whole country even to a greater extent
than it did in Tasmania immediately after " prisoners " ceased to arrive, for the popu-
lation is much smaller than the other colonies. The free colonists seem to be divided
into two classes : those who have been " lags," and are always struggling to free them-
selves from the convict reputation which attaches to them ; and those who were never
"prisoners of the crown," but are eserfcised in soul, lest they should in time come under
the ban which attaches to so many of their neighbours.
General Condition of the Colony.
At Rottnest Island there is a penal establishment for "aboriginals," where the feeding
is so excellent and the discipline so light that the chief ambition of the black man is
to qualify himself for this insular elysium. At Freemantle, a "hot, white, ugly town,"
there is a still larger one for white convicts, but as the imperial deportees are year by
year decreasing, the great jail, capable of accommodating S.jO inmates, will soon become
deserted by all save colonial ruffianism. Freemantle is the second town in the colony —
indeed, there are really only two worthy of the name — and the port for the capital, which
lies further inland, on the banks of a brackish lake formed by the Swan River. The
metropolis — Perth — is a pretty town of 7,000 inhabitants, which has, of course, pre-
eminence over Freemantle, in so far that it is the seat of government and the residence
of the principal people in the colon3\ The people are — or ought to be — poor, if there
is anything in statistics. But they seem tolerably prosperous, in spite of the hard times
which they deplore; and though grumbling at their fate, and ever waiting for the sudden
"turning up" of the panacea which is to make all their fortunes, manage to get along
and keep out of the bankruptcy court. The great proportion of the non-official residents
Zli TUE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
have the convict taint. These are, or have been, ticket-of-leaves men, or are the descendants
of such. Yet serious crime is not great in the town or vicinity, though the virtuous
portion of the colonists will declare that their neighbours who have fallen into crime are
only restrained by the paternal regulations of the police from indulging in a pandemonium
of killing and stealing. There are certainly a Sikcsian flavour and physiognomy throughout
the community ; but if the visitor be not particular about the antecedeuts of the man who
waits behind him at table, or who edits the local paper which he reads, he may enjoy himself
in a subduedly pleasant way in the " city " of Perth. Albany is also a pretty, but very
small, town in King George's Sound, surrounded by useless scrub covering stony hills, and
distant 'ZGO miles from the capital. The times are dull, but Western Australians are waiting
for the deus ex machind which is to give them the prosperity which at present they lack.
They grow wheat, but the moths and the rust destroy it, and at present flour is actually
imported from regions either blessed with a better climate or with farmers possessing less
elementary ideas about agriculture. Wool-growing is pursued with some success, though
even in that department of money making the squatter of Western Australia is a small
man compared with his brethren in Victoria, New South Wales, or even South Australia.
Altogether, in 187(5 the live stock of the country consisted of 25,:J63 horses, 44,550
cattle, and 688,292 sheep. So much of the country is covered with the poison-
bush [(rastrololium), far too expensive to eradicate over the great tracts necessary for
grazing, that it is a common calculation that a sheep requires from ten to twenty
acres as feeding ground. In other words, so much of a " run " is useless that after
deducting the poison shrub patches comparatively little of an extensive tract can be utilised
for pastoral purposes. There are fisheries for pearl shells on the northern coast, which
are yearly increasing in value, and the business in sandal-wood [Santaliim latifoliiim) is
assuming ccnsiderable proportions. The trade in jarrah-wood, or flooded gum-tree
(p. 162), is also beginning to crop up hopefully, and as this timber, though easily
worked, is very hard and impervious to the white ants and to water, the chances are
that it may yet save Western Australia from the ruin which has been always threatening
to overtake it, but from which it has hitherto escaped. Lead ore is also beginning to be
exported to Great Britain to some small amount, and as copper has been found, with a
promise of coal, the prospects of the country are not so very black as lias been painted.
Altogether, in 1877 its exports amounted to the value of £373,352, and its imports to
.€362,707. At that date it had 68 miles of railway and 1,567 miles of telegraph open;
and the sanguine men of Western Australia are beginning to think that if only gold —
good paying gold-diggings — would turn up, the world would flock to their country, and
they would grow rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Perhaps so. jNIeantime, like most
of the other Australian colonies, it consists principally of coast settlements, the population
rajiidly thinning as the sea is left, until in the interior kangaroos and opossums have it
nearly all their own way. Altogether, for little men, with no great ambition and a
capacity for waiting, there are many worse countries than Western Australia in which to
pitch their camps.*
• Bercngier: " I.a Nouvtllc-Nursie, Histoirc d'une Colonie Benedictine dans I'Australie Occidontalc 1840-1878"
(1879); Jung: " Australien und Neueeeland, historisehe, geographische und statistische Skizze" (1870), etc.
O
O
■<
D
s
211.
CHz\PTER XIII.
Australia: Qieexslaxu; Austualian Ciiakacteristics.
"We li.ave left tlie newest of tlie Australian colonies to the last, but we have said so
much about the otiiers that it is neither necessary nor expedient to devote much space
to Queensland, extensive, important, and progressive though it be. A few statistics may
therefore suffice to convey to the reader the salient facts about the territory wliich in
IS.JO branched off from New South "Wales and commenced existence for itself. Tliougli,
doubtless, in time the country in tlie vicinity of Cape York will emulate the example of
the mother colony, yet at present Queensland extends through 19 degrees of latitude and
1.")^ of longitude, the whole area comprised within these limits being GC9,.j20 square
miles, or in all 120,192,800 acres — a region eleven times larger than England. It has a
seaboai-d of 2,250 miles, abounding in harbours, and though the northern part is hot
and unhealthy, the southern and interior regions are well fitted for Europeans, and in the
mountain chains which intersect the colony there are elevations 6,000 feet above the sea>
In the most southerly point are the highlands of Stanthorpe, a granite table-land, with
rich tin mines, and a climate not unlike that of the south of England. Immediatelj'
adjoining are the fiimous Darling Downs, with a general altitude of 1,600 feet above the
sea, which form one of the first grazing countries in the world. The Australian
Conlillera, which runs parallel to the east coast for 1,800 miles, separates these down&
from the Moreton and Logan districts, rich in coal — to be worked in the near future —
and with a good soil, well watered. In the "Wide Bay and Burnett districts, in addition
to their pastoral and agricultural capabilities, there exist the gold and copper-fields of
Gympie, Kilkivan, and INIount Perry. The regions desci"ibed are drained by the Brisbane
(p. 217) and the Mary, and further north — in the country of which Rockhampton is
the port — we cross the tropic, and come upon larger plains, broader rivers, and animals
more ecpiatorial in character than those we have met with in the south. This is
the country through which flow the Fitzroy and Burdekin, and which in its area is
larger than ancient France. Copper, gold, and other minerals abound; and among the
vegetation the zamias and other tropical trees and shrubs begin to appear, while " the
giant fig-tree towers like a cathedral cupola above its fellows." Still more northward —
we are following official reports — the rich sugar plantations on the Pioneer River are
reached. Then come mines again, mostly unworked, and still further north, until the sea
at Cape York stops our travels; but the peninsula is also rich in mineral wealth. The
Great Barrier coral reef runs along the coast for 1,200 miles, and beyond it — in "Western
Queensland — the opal, red chrysolite, and aquamarine are found in some abundance. All
the western country is being fast filled up with sheep and cattle, and railways are
rapidly redncing its distance from the coast.
QUEENSLAND: PKODUCTS AND IXDU«TKIES.
Products and Industries.
Ill Queensland also flourish^ under cultivation, most of the products of temperate and
tropical countries, though chiefly of the latter. Oranges and pine-apples are staples and
excellent, and grapes are grown in profusion, though the vintages leave much to be
desired, albeit the colonists think otherwise; but gooseberries, apples, and currants are
unknown, in the elevated uplands, except as horticultural curiosities. Wheat has also
been grown in some localities, but not in such quantities and of such quality as to
pay the grower. Neither are oats cultivated, except for cutting as fodder in a half ripe
condition or for making into hay. Cotton of excellent quality is grown in the southern
parts of the settled districts, but as yet only in small patches. The i>lant, a perennial,
owing to the absence of severe frosts, at one time, when cotton-rates ruled high, promised
to be extensively cultivated, but when prices fell the high colonial wages made picking so
expensive, that at present the cotton crop may be almost left out of consideration
in summing up the products of the Queensland farmers' labour. Sugar is the great
prospective industry, especially in the districts not subject to frosts, such as at Port
Mackay, on the Herbert, and other northern river flats. In Wide Bay, 2,000 acres brought
•3,000 tons of sugar, and at Mackay the cane often averages two tons to the acre. In IbZS
there were 9,000 acres in crop and 5,000 to crush at Mackay, and 4,000 acres to the
south of Brisbane. There are sugar-planters in the colony, with large capital invested in
the business ; but farmers often do well by simply growing the cane and .selling the
juice to local manufacturers, who pay for the quality according to the test of the
saccharometer. Such small growers can accordingly afford to dispense with expensive
machinery and still more expensive labour. Indeed, labour in Queensland, as in the other
Australian colonies, is the great drawback of the agriculturists. To partially remedy this
want, Polynesians from the South Sea Islands have been imported to work on the sugar
estates, though it is affirmed that the health of Europeans — contrary to the case elsewhere
— will bear labour in the sugar-fields. However, white labour is too dear and too
independent for the sugar-planter's purpose, and thus, in spite of no little scandal
connected with the "blackbird trade" (p. 54), and rather high-handed acts on the
plantations, Queensland grows much sugar, and is likely to grow still more by aid of these
islanders, who thus gain good wages, and an introduction, in not the worse fashion, to the
blessings of that civilisation to which most of them are strangers.
But as yet, not a great deal of sugar is exported. In 1876 there were 13,090 acres
under cultivation, and seventy mills and twelve distilleries employed in the manufacture of the
cane produce. Doubtless the business will increase, but meantime, the Customs duties which
one colony enacts against the produce of another hamjier the industry by limiting the market
for the product of it. The Australian colonies are at present towards each other, so far
as regards the admission of taxation of each other's articles, just as if they were foreign
countries. " A minister in one colony," we are told by an eminent writer, " speaks in
his Parliament of another as a ' friendly colony ' in the spirit in which one minister at
home calls this or that nation a 'friendly country' or .an 'allied country,' laying stress on
the alliance when we know that we are on the brink of war with the country in questitm.
0 1,3 THE COrNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
AVith these mutual rivalries, and almost antipathies, this British law [the law allowing a
colony, for instance, like New South Wales to decide whether she will admit sugar free or
whether she will raise a Customs duty upon its import, but not allowing her to take
(Queensland sugar free, and refuse to take sugar free from other sugar-growing countries],
tending as it does to the separation of Australian interests, has no very strong immediate
effect. The colonies are determined to be separate. Australia is a term that finds no
response in the patriotic feelings of any Australian. They are A'ictorians, or Queens-
landers, or men of New South Wales; and each is not at present unwilling to have the
I)leasure of taxing the other. But this will come to an end sooner or later. The name
of Australia will be dearer, if not greater, to Australian ears than the name of Great
Britain, and then the produce of the land will pass free throughout the land." Maize,
cassava, arrowroot, tapioca, cocoa-nuts, chicory, dates, tea, rice, and mangoes are also grown,
but maize is the staple crop, being used for green fodder and grain. Tobacco is a
profitable crop, and the silk mulberry thrives so luxuriantly that silk is likelj- in time to
become an important source of wealth to the small farmers, as well as to those who
cultivate on a more extensive scale. Cattle do well in most parts of the country, but
the distance from the necessary markets discourages the non-speculative squatter from
entering on this branch of pastoral pursuits. Wool is, however, still the great bulk of
Queensland exports. The best lands near the towns are devoted to farms, but the wide
grassy plains, far away from any port or any outpost of civilisation, and therefore offering
few attractions to the "free selecter," are still monopolised by great flocks of sheep, herds
of cattle, and "mobs" of horses. At the beginning of 1877 there were in the settled
districts 186 runs, occupying 6,881,267 acres, paying an average annual rent to the
Government of three farthings an acre. In the unsettled districts ■1,004 runs took up
159,816,300 acres, at a payment of three-quarters of a farthing each. Over these runs,
in the previous year, there were grazing 7,315,074 sheep, 2,070,979 cattle, 133,625 horses,
and 53,455 pigs. The great want of the pastoral districts is water. In most parts the
stock are supplied, as in the East, by water drawn from wells, and in others, where the
rainfall is more certain, the surface moisture is collected in hollows and retained by costly
artificial dams. From these dams irrigation is beino' introduced into localities valuable
enough to warrant this excellent but expensive method of supplying the lack of regular
rainfall, though when the country gets more settled the rivers of the arid east will
Ije utilised to an extent which will make this one of the most fertile regions of Queens-
land. Meat preserving, soap-making, and currying establishments are all adding to the
squatters' profits, so that of late " boiling down " as a means of disposing of surplus stock is not
so much resorted to as at one time it was. In 1876 — a year for which we have tolerably
accurate returns — there were exported 22,918,560 lbs. of wool, valued at £1,499,576; the
tallow, 1,910 tons, realised £67,311. In 1810 — it may be menfionod as a curiosity in the
history of Australian commerce — the first wool was exjiorted from any part of the continent :
it amounted to 167 lbs. Sixty-seven years later Australia sent to England 2S1,005,452 lbs.
There is a considerable quantity of gold got in the colony, and new " rushes " are
continually being heard tull of. A great deal of the precious metal is obtained by quartz
crushing. One of these quartz districts — the famous locality of Gympie — raised in five
QUEENSLAND: MINES.
217
years £1,000,000 worth of gold, and still keeps its reputation for paying auriferous rock.
In April, 1878, a crushing of 2G tons yielded 411 ounces, and a cake of 5,800 ounces
came from 739 tons. Some of the rock has indeed been now and then found of so rich
a quality that it has been difficult to crusli, solely owing to the gold being more abundant
iu the quartz than the stone surrounding it. The alluvial dej)osits in which gold has
been found have hitherto proved very shallow, and therefore easily worked, but as easily
exhausted. Altogether, during 1876 the gold export is officially given at 374,776 ounces,
valued at £1,427,929 ; but as a large quantity is carried off unacknowledged, especially by
THE VALLEY OI' THE RIVER BRISBANE, SVEEXSLAND.
the Chinese, any return of the amount raised must be merely guess-work, and in all
likelihood under the mark. In addition to gold, Queensland, like most of the other
colonies, puts in a claim to the possession of coal, rich copper, tin, iron, silver, cinnabar,
bismuth, zinc-blende, and other ores, in addition to the deposits of precious stones
which we have already noted. The copper lodes ha-ve been worked with great profit at
the Peak Downs, from which mine £1,000,000 worth of metal, which paid £215,000 in
dividends, were sent down in five years, though the high rate of wages and the cost
entailed by the distance of the mine from a sea-port have hitherto sorely hampered the
development of these deposits. In 1876, 9,334 tons of ore made 2,102 tons of copper,
valued at £172,382. The stream tin deposits are not so rich, but lying among the
148
218 THE COUXTKIES OF TIIE WORLD.
mouutains, at an elevation of between -ZfiW) and 3,000 feet, the occupation of eoUocting^ it
in the shallow, widely-si>reaJ diggings is more lioaltliy than mining generally in
Queensland. The iron mines are still unworked, and the same may be said to be the ease
with most of the other metals mentioned. An attempt has been made to open up the
coal deposits, which extend over an area equal to at least half of that of England, and
are of various qualities; but until railways reach the deposits, or convey it at a cheap
rate to the coast, the Queensland coal is not likely to be used for other than local
purposes. The timber trade is developing, while the pearl shell fisheries, and those of
In'che-de-mer, tortoise-shell, and sponge, are assuming such proportions that before long
they will afford occupation for a large number of jjeople. In 1878 there were 38(5 miles
of railway completed; in the previous year the public revenue was £l,43G,5S:i, the cxjien-
diture i,l,382,S0(i, the public debt £7,085,350, the imports £1,008,082, and the exports
£1,361,275; the revenue for 1870 is estimated at £1,058,000. In 1878 there were in the
colony over 200,000 people, of whom a little more than one-half were in towns, one-third
in the country, and one-eighth on the gold-fields. Of these, 10,112 were Chinese and 5,108
Polynesians. The black aliorigines — or " aboriginals," as they are called — are few in
number, comparatively speaking, and are rapidly dying out. In 1859, when the colony
was established, there were in it only 21,870 civilised jieople, so that in twenty years
the population has increased at a rate equal to that of the most thriving of the
Australian colonies. Its large public debt, and consequent heavy taxation, act, however, as
hindrances to the advancement of the colony, while the alienation of its crown lands will
by-and-by cause a rapid ilecrease in the revenue, and such discontent as to lead, as the
same course has already done in Victoria, to a point very little short of revolution.
Towxs.
The towns have in like manner sprung up rapidly, and grown with a speed of which
tlie Queenslanders, who are by no means apt to conceal their merits, are deservedly proud.
Brisbane, the capital (p. 221), occupies a fine hilly site on the banks of the river of the
same name, with every accommodation for the governor and legislature, except, what is
in the eyes of many of the colonists, the all-important qualification of not being in a
central position. It is in the far south of the colony, on the Iwrder of New South "Wales,
and originated as a town when the thought of its being the capital of a political division
of Australia was not entertained. It was at first a penal settlement; and though the
river is here 1,000 feet wide, the harbour of Brisbane can no more be compared with
that of Sydney than can the scenery in the vicinity equal that which gives such charms
to Hobart Town. Yet none of the Australian capitals command anything like such a
sweep of prospect as that which can be taken in at one glance from the highest point in
the Queensland metropolis. In one direction is visible ]\Iount Lindsay, nearly 100 miles'
ride from Brisbane, and the rainy McPherson range, which rises in a wall nearly 0,000
feet high in some places; and in the opposite direction the Kilcoy and other ranges,
which shade the distant waters of the ]\Iary and Burnett Rivers on their northern slope.
To the west appear in hazy blue the ^lain range, seventy miles away, marking the site
QUEEXSLAXH: ISKISBANE, and OTIIEI! toavxs. -zid
of Darling' Downs ; while to the east the view is bounded by the cypi-ess-pine hills and
saniiy cliffs of Moreton and Stradbroke Islands, thirty miles off, which shut out from
sight the sea lying beyond. Like most Australian towns, Brisbane is built on a liberal
scale, with botanic garden and " reserves," which, when the city extends, will become
fine oases in the very heart of the wilderness of streets. The suburbs are dotted with
such beautiful villas as it is difficult to find elsewhere than in sub-tropieal Australia,
surrounded by lovely gardens, and commanding picturesque views of mountain, sea, river,
garden, farm, and forest, " in every shade of pleasing tint and sharp outline under the
clear sk\- of Australia," writes the official historian whose data we are drawing on. In
1S77 the population of the city was ;JO,8S-'3, so that at present it cannot be much less
than 33,000, though these Antipodean towns increase by such leaps and rushes that it is
difllicult to calculate their increase by any of the rules which govern older communities.
But the supremacy of Brisbane is disputed by at least two other towns. One of these
is Rockhampton, about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Fitzroy River, ou the
northern coast of the colony. It is a well-built, fine-looking, but, it is needless to add,
rather hot "city," of about 7,000 inhabitants, and being the market town and shipping
port of the vast mineral and pastoral belt on the Dawson, Mackenzie, Isaac, Comet, and
other rivers, as well as the Peak Downs County, it is likely to become a place of
considerable importance when it is the starting-point for a system of railways into the
interior. At jiresent these exist merely in embryo, in the form of a line running out
thirty miles into the country, and suddenly stojjping at nowhere. This line was built by
the Government merely to stop the clamour of the northern colonists when Parliament
built the railway t« Darling Downs and opened out a fine grazing country. But the
Rockhamjiton and Westwood Railway opens out nothing, for the teamsters bringing wool
to the jwrt do not consider it worth their while unloading at the " three pviblic-houses in
the forest," called Westwood, for so short a distance. It is, however, not altogether a
loss. It is understood that at present the traffic pays for the grease used on it, and there
are sanguine hopes that one day the wood consumed in the engines will not be a burden
on the colonial treasury. However, Rockhampton cordially hates Brisbane, and as it
cannot presume to put in a claim to be the capital, it looks forward to that early day
■when Queensland will get divided into two colonies, and it will be the metropolis of the
most northerly of them. If energy, exceeding strong language, and a heartfelt loathing
for the Brisbanites and their ways will ever bring about separation, one cannot doubt
that the occupants of the pleasant residences on the Athlestaa range — 150 feet over
the town — will accomplish that not undesirable result. The colony is too large; and if
the Australians cannot yet see their way to one strong central government there is no
reason why they should not prosper by aid of the rivalry and pride which a sense even of
semi-nationality always stimulates in a people. But Gladstone, a pretty woe-bcgone village
of a few hundred inhabitants, built on a ci-eek which opens out into Port Curtis,
loudly demands, as the most central of the coast towns, to become the capital of the
whole colony of Queensland as it exists at present. It is backed by mountains, and
accordingly has fine scenery, but it has nothing to feed it, for its position is not such
that many squatters care to ship their wool from its port. Hence its great harbour
0.)^ TllE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
has availed it but little, and Gladstone, at the period at which we write, is but a pretty
villan-e, -"JtiO miles north of Brisbane, but whose straggling streets auiid woods are not
likelv to enier<>-e for some time from their present rural state. At one time even Ipswicli
disputed with Brisbane the right of being the colonial capital. It commenced life in a
humble way by being a branch penal establishment of Sydney ; then, being at the head
of river navigation, and the sjwt where the steamers and bullock drays met and exchanged
their respective loads, Ipswich became a thriving place after the settlement of Darling
Downs. It had at one time thirty hotels, and in addition to the entertainment of
travellers, it grew fat on the boiling down of stock for the sake of their tallow. Its
electoral roll was then about equal iu number to that of Sydney, and at tiic time of
the separation of Queensland from Xew South Wales it was not without good grounds
for its ambition — that Ipswich demanded to be recognised as the capital of the new colony.
But the advent of railways and the cessation of boiling down were the ruin of Ipswich.
But as coal exists in the immediate vicinity, it lives on in hojie of more than regaining
its former grandeur and emerging from its present condition as a rather decayed town of
less than 6,000 inhabitants. What prosperity flows from Darling Downs is caught in the
first instance by Toowoomba, a thriving town of 0,000 inhabitants, which in 1854 had
but one house. Another town on the Darling Downs Railway is Warwick, a very English-
looking place, which derives its prosperity from its vineyards and flu-ms, the fine pastonil
region close at hand, and the tin mines fifty miles distant, ilaryborough, at the mouth
of the River Mary, is a village of about the same size ; and Gympie, which we have already
spoken of as the locality of rich gold mines, has at present about 4,500 people settled in
it. Townsville in 1805 imported £570 worth of goods, and drew for Customs duties
.tll2 15s. 4d. In one half year, ten years afterwards, the Custom House showed a total
of £17,411 5s. 8d. Its population is, however, only about o,000, and being situated within
the tropics it is very hot. Its prosperity is due to the extensive gold-fields and the
great area of pastoral country behind it. Bowen, eighty miles off, having a fine harbour, once
dreamed of great things, but Townsville has killed it. Cardwell is a pretty little town of
500 people, but its beauty is as yet its only dowry. Cooktown is a mushroom town of
4,000 people, which has sprung up since the Palmer River diggings became famous; and
Somerset — which the white ants have nearly eaten up-^only claims distinction as the place
of call for the beche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishers of Torres Strait.* Undoubtedly Queensland
has a great future, either as a single undivided colony or as several, albeit the heat is
great in some parts. On this subject, however, it is ])erhaps as well not to enlarge, for
heat is a sore point on which to touch the susceptibilities of the Australian. The thorough-
paced colonist is by no means pleased to hear that the country of his adoption is warm,
while to hint that his house is hot is likely to j)rovoke as great a coolness between host
• "Catalogue of the Queensland Exhibits at the Taris E.\position, 1878;" "Catalogue of Exhibits at the
Philadelphia Exhibition, 187C;" "Census of the Colony of Queensland, taken on the 1st of May, 1876;"
"Queensland Statistics and Blue Book" for the current year; Kennedy: '■ Eour Years in Queensland" (1870);
"Some Australian Capitals," by "Red Spinner" (llr. William Senior), in The Gciitltmaii's Magazine, July, 1870,
ic. For many of the ofticial papers from which these notes are condensed I am indebted to the Honourable
Arthur JIacalister, C.il.G., Agent-General for the Colony.
iH||||||||[i,!f!til1il!iiii*''^'fl^
Q
■A
222 Tlir. COI'XTRIES OF TIIK -WORLD.
and "-ucst as if liis wife's complexion or his mother's tem])er had been animadverted on in
a truthful but uncomplimentary manner.
Some Avsti!ai.iax Institutions.
It is difficult in a few words to express any opinion about a people wliicli would
at once comprehensively and yet truthfully characterise them. Accordin<^ly, I sjiall not
attempt to do so. However, it may be allowable, even at the risk of givinjj offence, tf>
say that the Australians are growing up into a ])eouliar race, just as the Americans are.
The climate seems to be favourable to fecundity. Hence large families are common, while
the dryness of the air is ecpially prejudicial to an accumulation of fat. Accordingly
the lanky character of Australian youths of the second or third generations has been so
markedly noticed, that a " Sydney corn-stalk " is a familiar designation for the native-
born lad whose inches have excelled those of his sires, born under different stars, on the
other side of the world. He has a slang of his own, generally strongly flavoured with
Americanicisms, but much of which is to tlie manner born. For instance, a dram is
called a " nobbier ; " and the idle, disreputable street Arab, who would in San Francisco be
styled a "hoodlum," is in the Australian colonies known as a "larrikin." The word is
even used nnconsciously in official documents. Thus, in one of the reports of the
Adelaide Botanic Gardens I find the director complaining more than once that "larrikins"
are injuring his young plantations ; and an only too close imitation of an English
University Commemoration indulged in by the Melbourne academic youth is referred to
by the newspapers as "disgraceful larrikinism." The typical Australian is in many respects
much like the American, though, again, in many other respects he differs widely from him.
He has the same self-reliance, and the same loud self-assertion, which, correctly or incorrectly,
we are in the habit of associating with our Transatlantic cousins, but it is a self-assertion
and a self-reliance smacking of the land whence he came. No man is more hospitable
than the well-to-do Australian. A visitor arriving well introduced will be passed on from
villa to villa, from country-house to country-house, and from run to run, sharing everywhere
the most profuse kindness, until in a few weeks he will hardly know who first started
him on the progress he is making. There is little snobbery in the country, but, as
most of the people are " self-made," the parvenu is, of course, not an unknown personage,
though the circumstances of the country and of the people prevent him — or her — becoming
quite so objectionable as he or she would be in an older condition of society. The
squattei-s or graziers are the aristocrats of the country, thongh some of the successful of them
have been butchers and drovers, possibly even of humbler or less reputable antecedents.
They are imbued with extremely territorial instincts, and will refer to the small farmer,
who "selects" under the colonial land-laws a bit of the run he leases from the Govern-
ment, or the irreverent ial gold-digger, as an English squire would speak of a poacher, or
a many -acred peer of the "city man" who builds a "snug box" overlooking his park wall.
Yet while the English squire is likely to talk of everything rather than of his rent-roll
or the balance he has at Iiis banker's, the squatter will hardly fail to tell his visitor of
what he got last summer for his wool, or what he expects to get this winter for the fat
oxen which are grazing in the pretty, but roughly-kept, paddock you can see from the verandah
AUSTllALIAN CHAKACTERISTICS. 223
surrounding the country-house which he built when he g-ot beyond the " hut " stage of
bush-struggling existence. The ladies are well educated, but though charming company
for a visitor, they are, as a rule, somewhat " loud," and inclined to exact the utmost deference
from all the male world around them, and to repay it by as little veneration as possible.
Xoljody awes them. As are the mistresses, so are the maids, who have much of the
pertness of such young persons, as exhibited in plays and on the stage generallj-.
The st|uatters' houses are furnished comfortably ; often, if the run be near a town, even
luxuriant]}'. There is generally a piano in the place, if there be any ladies, and books ;
but literary leisure is rare. There is, according to the general cuncensus of descrijition,
much loitering, half asleep, in the verandah or in the shade, but no regular hours at which
the ladies and gentlemen of the family come together for social intercourse. The squatter's
table is furnished profusely, but the meals are monotonous. The breakfast is as substantial
as the dinner, and the lunch is only a second breakfast, while it is rare to find a meal
set out without a tea-pot, tea forming the almost invariable working beverage of the
masters and men on Australian runs, and of the gold-diggers as well. There is a carriage
of some kind, as a matter of course, and horses are so cheap in Australia that they are
found in profusion everywhere for riding and driving. The master of the house is a busy
man from morning to night, and usually all the year round. He has his " run " to atteud
to, and his cares, no matter how good a manager he may have, or how docile the "hands" —
stockmen, shearers, shepherds, or boundary-riders. " He is on horseback before breakfast,
and seems never to slacken his labours till the evening dews have long fallen. The
exclusive care of a large flock of sheep, which includes breeding, feeding, doctoring,
shearing, selling, and buying-, together with the hiring, feeding, inspection, and i^ayment
of a great number of by no means subservient woitmen, taxes a man's energies to the
utmost. Cattle probably impose less labour, but a man may have his hands fairly full
who owns three or four thousand head of cattle, who breeds them by his own judgment,
and himself selects them for market. But very many squatters and graziers really manage
their properties by deputy. Serviceable men have grown up in their emplo}ment, and as
years creej) on the real work of the run is allowed to fall from their hands into those of
superintendents and overseers. Then the country gentleman, though he still talks of a
'score of ewes,' as did Justice Shallow, becomes an idle man. He comes down to
breakfast at nine, and is impatient for his dinner before six, thinking that the clock must
be losing time." Though in many respects New South Wales is more John Bullish and
old-countrilied than the more energetic, pushing, democratic Victoria, wheat-growing
Soutir Australia, forlorn Western Australia, or tropical Queensland, jet among the squatters
in all of these colonies there is growing up a compact, conservative, and, in its own
way, very aristocratic " country jiarty." Now the chief object of aversion among these
squatters are the " free selecters." As the reader will have already understood, the " runs,"
as a rule, are not the property of the graziers, or " squatters," as they are universally
called. They are the property of the Crown, and are let out on various terms, according
to the particular land-laws of the colony, to the holders, as lessees of the Government, on
the understanding that they are only to be great pastures until the small men or agricul-
turists proper choose to select a bit of them, and buy it from the Crown, or, in other
■zu
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
wortls, from the people of the eolouy. In time, however, the squatters have befjun to
consider these leased tracts as their own estates, and as in the remote districts they are
left in undisturbed possession, practically they are so. In the more settled districts,
however, there has been an outcry for arable land, and this desire the various colonial
lefjislatures have tried to meet by passing land-laws, which, however they may vary in
details, are considered, and not erroneously, by the squattei- as aimed at and likelj- to be
ruinous to his monopoly. Taking the general spirit of these laws, we may say that they
decree that any one desirous of taking up and paying for a certain amount of tillable
land may go on to any leased run and select a certain portion without any regard to the
convenience or prejudices of the lordly squatter. Such laws, though they are in principle
essential to the development of a country, are doubtless offensive in the extreme to the
VIEW IN THE BOTAKIC GARDENS, AUELAIDE.
"landed interest," and the provisions, passed at the call of a dominant democracj-,
might, one would think, be carried out in a manner less calculated to rouse intense ill-
will between the two classes of agriculturists in the colonies. These " free selections " are
but specks on a run of 20,000 or 30,000 acres : the Victorian land-laws, for instance,
specially stipulating that no person shall select and purchase move than 320 acres, the object
being to prevent the accumulation of great landed estates. But the squatter accuses the " free
selecter" of being the incarnation of everything that is bad — a lover of mutton without
being a purchaser — an eater of beef-steaks without buying the ox which provides them —
a dealer in wool which was grown on his neighbour's run — and generally with being a
thief and a rogue, as undoubtedly he is an eyesore to his wealtliier neighbour. The
object of the squatter is, therefore, to purchase his run, or as much of it as he can, in
order to keej) "free selecters " at a distance. This he finds it difficult to do, for the
price at which the land is offered is the price of good arable land, while only patches
here and there upon the run come under that designation, and the greater part of it is
g
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AUSTRALIA: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
225
generally worthless for anything but grazing purposes. Added to his difficulties; the s(iuatter
is frequently — perhaps it would not be exaggeration to say generally — in debt to the
" merchants " in the colony who act as his agents. To pay, therefore, their exorbitant rate
of interest for the money borrowed to purchase the run requires a succession of very good
A HVSH STORE IN' QUEENSLAND.
years, and is at best but a ruinously poor investment of money. However, in \ ietoria
many squatters have managed to do so. In that colony the average size of the squatters'
801 runs is, according to Mr. Hayter, 26,1)30 acres, the area of Crown lands embraced
in them amounting to 20,8Jf,615. Of the .J0,4-10,720 acres of land in the colony
11,151,120 are alienated in fee simple, and 7,055,01.5 are in process of being alienated
under deferred payments.
In ls77 there were still 12,002,587 acres available for selection. Now, for one
149
2^0 TrrE corxTRiES of the world.
man to pifivhase under his own name :20,000, or any number of acres more than 320, is —
takin"- ^■ictoria, whcrv land is scarcer than elsewhere in Australia, and therefore more
valued, as an exami>lc — accordin<j to such land-hiws, imiwssiblc. But this diliiculty is
»«t over by the system of "dummying." The real holder of the "run" purchases his
Ic'al 3-0 acres, and be gets trusty Iriends to buy for him, in their own names, the other
reciuisite 320 acre sections, until the run is protected from the incursions of the hated
" free selecters," This is, no doubt, a legal evasion of the law by men loud in their
protests against the commimistio character of Victorian legislation. ]5ut the da\' of
"dummies" is almost over, for the State is finding them out, and at present there is a
stand-up battle between the great landowners and the little ones — or rather, between the
men who have no land and those who have really more than they require. It is not
difficult to see how it will end.
The " swagmen " (p. ii:l'j) are another but minor trouble of the Australian squatter. We
have alluded to his profuse, unquestioning hospitality to distinguished, or just as often
to perfectly undistinguished, visitors who come with any kind of introduction at all. But
the squatter is taxed by another class of guests, who do not take the trouble of bringing
anything in the shape of credentials. These are the travelling-men — either moving about
from place to place seeking work, on business, more or less real, or, as is getting to be
too frequently the case, simply as " tramps," whose only business is to eat at other men's
expense, and who never do a hard day's work from one year's end to the other. These " swag-
men" come to the squuttei-'s house at nightfall. If the visitor is of the more respectable type
he is received in the settler's own house or sent to the overseer's. If he is of the ordinary
" swagman " tj-pe he goes, as a matter of course, to "the hut" or building where the
" run hands " live. There he is at home. He is — gruffly enough, it must be allowed
— served out flo\ir for his " damper," or unleavened cake, meat, and perhaps — but not
always — tea. He has his own " billy," or tin pot, with him, and the swag, or blanket
bundle, on his back contains his worldly effects. The entertainment of these tramps is
a heavy tax on squattei-s whose runs lie in the line of travel, but he has no alter-
native but to feed them, however much he may grumble. A squatter will frequently
sj)end £300 a year in this involuntary entertainment; and there are tales of unhapjiy
graziers who have had to disburse £1,0(10 per annum in the shape of damper and mutton,
with the addition of brandy and water or tea, at the hut, the overseer's house, or at his
own residence, to the unbidden guests whom colonial usage quartered on them. It may be
suggested that the squatter could refuse the unmistakable tramp, or could make him do some
work before partaking of his une^rdial hospitality. Doubtless he could, but public opinion
would be decidedly against him, for the squatters are in the minority, and the army
of swagmen a mighty tine. He would speedily be known, and get the name of being-
stingy. This he might Ijear with profitable equanimity, but he would also find his
fences burned, his ])astures fired during the season of drought, his cattle slaughtered,
his sheep stolen, and his horses houghed. All this he is aware would be his lot. So the
squatter submits to the swagmen's black-mail, preferring the lesser to the greater evil.*
•For the Jotails of squattini:!: life soc "The Ansti-ilian Grazier's Guide" (Silver, 1870), McPhail's " Squatter's
Directory," and various ntluv wi.rk> already quoted.
AUSTRALIA: GENERAL CILVRACTERISTICS. 227
Of the youug -Vvistraliaus of the sterner sex I have not as yet said much, except
that they are founding- a new race. But it is questionable if that race is likely to be
an improvement on the one which has gone before it. As yet, the leading men in " the
colonies" are mostly of "old country" birth and early training-, and for a generation to
come they will so leaven the mass that the real character of the new breed will not be
easily seen. The "old country j)eople " who elect to make their homes in a colony are
not — as they sometimes flatter themselves they are — the pick of the land they left.
They have energy, otherwise they would not cross the sea ; if they succeed they have
usually something more than energy. But the scapegraces, the ne'er-do-wells, and the
failures generally, also seek homes there, and if there are no long-suffering relatives or
friends to bring them away, they have to remain. It is, in a word, not with the
backbone of England that the colonial-born youth has to contend. Yet ]\Ir. TroUope
tells us that even colonists, not apt to allow that their cygnets are goslings, acknow-
ledge that in the feeble struggle the young colonial hardly holds his own with the
j'outh of the mother country. He is not apt to run into vices — to gamble, drink, or
:go to the dogs after any of the old-fashioned methods. " But he is often listless,
unenergetic, vain, and boastful." Above all, he is boastful. However, he is quick
•enough at learning, and when he leaves school his apologist pleads for him that he is
" very often sujjcrior in general information to a boy from Harrow or Winchester," which
is but an indifferent compliment. He is a man sooner than the youth of the Old "World,
iind this early maturity may have something to do with the fact of liis manhood hardly
keeping the promise of his earlier years, just as the Old World fruits which have been
naturalised in this climate are earlier ripe, but not so richly flavoured as those which attain
the fulness more slowly in the less kindly sunshine of the northern hemisphere. Colonial
Jiterature is getting to be profuse, and some of it is far from despicable, while some of
the colonial litterateurs have been more than able to hold their own when transferred to
the lettered soil of England. The Australian newspapers are excellent ; and if the Aus-
tralian legislators are at present only expanded vestrymen, it must be remembered that
the material from which the antipodean M.P.'s can be selected is limited, and that the
whole population of some of these colonies, having all the machinery of government and
iwo houses of legislature, is far under the number of second or third-rate English towns,
and much fewer than some of the London parishes administered by the despised local
rulers referred to.
The future of Australia cannot, I think, be over-estimated. It may be that some
day the Australians will think it not good statescraft to cut each other's throats politi-
cally; and I cannot doubt that when the day for separation from England comes — as
come it will — the colonies will consider that union is strength. When they desire to
swim by themselves, the slender thread which at present binds them to the mother country
will be unloosened by friendly, if regretful, hands. At present they are very loyal, just
as "His jMajesty's plantations in North America" were very loyal, but we do not know
how soon this feeling mny, in the minds of a people so independent and self-sufficient
as the Australians, change into an opposite one.
oos
CIIAFrER XIV.
The Malay Islands : Thkiu General Geogeaphy.
Looking at the map we observe north and west of Australia an extensive group of islands,
large and small — an archipelago — lying off the northern end of the continent we have just
left, along the shores of Asia, and between these points. From the prevalent race inliabiting
them (p. 2:20) they are known as tlie Malay Islands — or sometimes the East Indies. At first
sight they strike the student as the remnants of a continent shattered in a thousand pieces,
and the chances seem to show that in their character they will approximate either to the
Malay peninsula — off which they lie on one side — or to Australia — which some of them so
nearlv api)roach on the other. This we shall find to be the case. But at the same time, on
further examination, the first impression will require to be so far modified, that we shall
conclude our examination of them by making it apjiarent that the islands lying nearest
Australia were either united to that continental island, or separated from it at a period
when those nearest Asia proper were still part of the Malay peninsula; or, in all probability,
were not elevated above the surface of the sea. In other words, the zoo-geography of the
Malay Islands teaches us that they were never parts of a single continental land mass.
The Islands in Their Physical Aspects.
Before, however, sliowing on what grounds naturalists have come to this conclusion,
it may be well to sketch, in outline, the general characteristics of this great and important
Archipelago. In extent it lies for more than 4,000 miles from east to west, and is nearly
1,400 miles in breadth from north to south. Some of the islands in it are so large tliat
for weeks at a time the voyager may sail along their coasts and yet see no termination
to the primeval forest on the lee, and, were he to depend on bis own knowledge, might
coincide in the belief of the inhabitants that they are vast continents. The Archipelago,
though containing no more terra Jinn a that is comprised in Western Europe from Hungary
to S])ain, stretches over an expanse equal to that of Europe "from the extreme west
far into Central Asia, or would cover the widest part of South America, and extend
far beyond the land into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. It includes three islands
larger than Great Britain; and in one of them — Borneo — the whole of the British Isles
might be set down, and would be surrounded by a sea of forests. New Guinea, though
less compact in shape, is probably* larger than Borneo; Java, Luzeon, and Celebes are
each about the size of Ireland. Eighteen more islands are, on the average, as large as
Jamaica; more than a htmdred are as large as the Isle of Wight; while the isles and
islets of smaller size are innumerable."! Australia, we have seen, is a land of heat and
little moisture; while the Asiatic shore, on the other side of the Archipelago, is subject
* a ^» now known to be larger (see p. 238). +AVaUatc: "The Malay Archipelago" (6th Ed.), p. 3.
THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: ITS PHYSICAL ASPECTS.
229
to tropical rains. The Malay Islands, thus lying on the equator between these two
regions, partake, as to their climate, in the characteristics of both. They are not blessed
with the glorious atmosphere of the Polynesian lands, which we formerly visited, nor even
with the dry, healthy air of the plains of Australia. On the contrary, their atmo-
MAI.AV < MILDHKN.
sphere is as hot and humid as that of the Amazons, or of the West Coast of Africa,
though in few places as pestilential as in that " White Man's Grave." With but few
exceptions, the islands are, topographically at least, one geographical whole ; that is to
say, they are mostly covei-ed with a sombre vegetation, luxuriant forests clothing them
from the shore to the summits of tlie highest mountains, and the climate of all of
230 'i'HE COUXTKIES OF Till:; WOliLD.
them is uniform and vory similar. Timor is, perhaps, tbe only exception to this rule.
This larye island, and the smaller ones around it, are iuHuenued by the dry south-east
monsoon, which blows across the northern parts of Australia from March to November.
Tbe Malay Islands are not only remarkable for the luxuriance and variety of their
vegetation, the irorgeousness of their birds, and the size and number of the gay-coloured
insects which Hit among their glades, but also in so far that the Archipelago is one of
the most noted region of active volcanoes on the globe. The great volcanic band of
Western America again makes its appearance here, after running along the coast from Chili
to Alaska, thence to the Kurile, Japan, Looehoo, and Philippine Islands. In the jMalay
group this volcanic band appears on the north-eastern tip of Celebes, whence, suddenly'
shifting 200 miles eastward, it flares up in the Banda volcanoes, and, going westward,
traverses the islands until it seems to die out on Barren Island, in the Bay of Bengal.
On few only of the smaller islands in the line of the volcanic belt are there no active
volcanoes ; but it may be said in general terms that extinct craters are found everywhere,
and that earthquakes and volcanic movements are frequent and disastrous in their
consequences. In 177^ forty villages were destroyed in Java by the eruption of
I'apandayang, when the whole mountain was blown in pieces and a large lake left in its
place. In 181o the eruption of Tomboro, in Sumbawa, resulted in the loss of 12,000
lives. "The ashes darkened the air, and fell thickly upon the earth and sea for 300
miles around." Some of these volcanoes have recently burst out afresh after long
periods of quiescence. For instance, the Island of Makian, in the Aloluccas, was rent
open in ICIG. In the process of time this rent had become clothed with vegetation, and
contained twelve populous villages, when in 18(52, after 21.5 years of perfect quiescence,
it again burst forth in eruption, destroying the greater part of the inhabitants and
darkening the air forty miles distant with the clouds of ashes vented (Wallace). Celebes,
New Guinea, Borneo, and on the mainland the Malay Peninsula, form striking exceptions,
for in none of these great islands and districts — with the exception of the extreme north-
eastern point of the flrst — have active volcanoes been discovered. Neither are there
evidences of their existence in former times, and earthquakes are equally unknown.
Here, however, the similarity of the islands ends, for a keener analysis of their animal
life shows that, though seemingly alike, they belong to two very different groups, judged
by the character of their inhabitants. It is true that the vegetation is on all of them
very much alike, especially in the lower forms, though — as I have pointed out elsewhere*
— the pine tree order obeys the same laws as we shall see the animals do. With the
exception of a few tracts, due to ancient cultivation or accidental fires, Sumatra, .New
(luinea, Borneo, the iVloluecas, and the uncultivated parts of Java and Celebes, are all
clotliod with forests. Timor, wliich we have already seen is different in its climate from
the rest of the country, also differs in this respect ; it and the smaller neighbouring
islands contain no s4ich forests as exist on the other islands, and in a lesser degree this
character extends to Flores, Sumbawa, Lombok, and Bali. The eucalypti, so characteristic
of Australia (p. 102), are the common trees in Timor; but sandal-woods, acacias, and
• Robert Brown: "Die Geographisclie VciljrLitung- dur Coufuieu und Giictacccn" (Petennann's Gioijraphiichc
Mittlnilimr/eii, Heft I., 1872, with maii).
Tlir. MAI.AV .\l;(HII'i;(..\fiO: ITS ANIMALS. 2.51
other trees ure fuunil in ^roat al'iindaiiff, tlmtij^li never in siicli cltimps a^ to deserve the
name of forests — only scattered over the country in single individuals or in small patches.
In tlie moister Idealities there is a considerable underf^ntwth beneath them; but on the
more barnii hills the only vegetation which clothes the interstices between the eucalvi>ti
and the saudal-woods is a coarse and scanty <rrass. In the islands between Timor and
Java Jlr. \ValIace notes tliat there is often a more thickly wooded country, abounding
in thorny and prickly trees, which, however, seldom reach any hei<:fht, and during the
dry season almost ci>m|>letely lose their leaves, allowing the ground beneath them to be
parched up, and contrasting strangely with the damp, gloomy, ever-verdant forests of the
other islands. This, we have seen, may be due to the inlluenee of the hot drv monsoon
blowing for two-thirds of the year — from March to November — o\er this island from the
northern part of Australia, for the districts under the influence of the south-east winds
blowing from the Pacific, and over the damp forests of New (Juinca, are covered with
verdure from their shores to their summits. " Farther west, again, as the same dry winds
blow over a wider and wider extent of ocean, they have time to absorb fresh moisture;
ami we accordingly find the island of Java possessing a less and less arid climate, till
in the extreme west, near Batavia, rain occurs, more or less, all the year round, and the
mountains are everywhere clothed with forests of unexampled luxuriance."
The Islands — Zoologically.
So much for their physical aspects — according to the observations of the best English
■ jl)server who has as yet studied these islands. But Mr. "Wallace — for Jlr. Earl's observations
were too crude and imperfect to have any share in this interesting discovery — by a careful
examination of the animal life of the islands has enabled us to come to some positive
conclusions regarding their original history. The group of islands nearest Asia he find.s
separated from each other by a shallow sea, showing that they have been broken up in
lomparativi'ly recent times. Volcanoes, it has been remarked, are almost invariably found not,
far from the sea, and this fact may be due indirectly to the immense mass of matter which
they vomit. Pouring out contintiallj-, for a week at a time, millions of tons of lava,
ashes, and cinders, the ground in the vicinity must necessarily be undermined, and
therefore more easily fall a prey to the ravages of the sea than solid land. Acconlingly,
the tendency of the waves, which are always attacking a coast line no matter how hartl —
and the outline of a maritime country is greatly owing to the hardness and softness
of the rocks exposed to the sea — is to eat into the land towards the base of such volcanoes.
This disintegrated matter, as well as that tossed out into the sea by volcanoes, must
keep the straits between the i.slands, even after their separation, shallow; and even were
this not the case, we know that a deep sea between two land masses is always a sign of
the two having l)een long separated. Again, the group near Australia are also lying in a
shallow .sea, while the intervening space is occupied by a deep trough, which seems to have
been of long continuance. Accordingly, we can divide the Malay Islands into two grejit
groups. The first is the Austro-Malayan group, comprising New fiuinea, Ceram, Gilolo,
Timor, Florcs, Sumbawa, the Sulla Islands, the great island of Celel)e>, and the numerous
2.J2 THE COUNTRIES OF THE AVORLD.
smaller ones in the vicinity. The second group, or Indo-Malayan, includes Bali, Java,
Sumatra, Borneo; and, for convenience sake, the islands in the vicinity of the Malay Penin-
sula and the intervening small ones may be also included under this head. We have called •
the Eastern, or Austro-Malayan group, islands in a shallow sea. This sea is, however, more
than twice the depth of that surrounding the Jndo-Malayan group, for in most parts of
the latter ships can anchor. The probabilities are, therefore, that the islands lying nearest
Australia are the oldest in the Malay Archipelago. The jiecularity about these two groups
is that the first is to all intents and purposes a part of Australia. The animals resemble
those of Australia more than those of any other part of the world. Australia, we have
seen, possesses no apes nor monkeys, no cats, tigers, wolves, bears, or hyenas, no deer or
antelopes, sheep or oxen, except what have been introduced. The elephant, the horse,
the squirrel, and the rabbit were equally strangers to it when the European first arrived.
Its native mammals are marsupials and monotremes — kangaroos and opossums, wombats and
the duck-billed water-mole. Its birds are about equally peculiar to itself. The woodpecker
and the pheasant families are unknown throughout its great extent, though they exist
iu every other part of the world. But, on the other hand, it has the mound-making
brush turkeys the lyre birds (p. 20), the honeysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-
tongued lories, which are found nowhere else in the globe. The Austro-Malayau Islands
share in these striking peculiarities uf animal life. The forms of life in New Guinea
or Celebes, for example, may not be identical with those in Queensland, but they
belong to the same groups, and are more closely allied to them than to those of any other
part of the world. They thus form, with Australia, one zoological province. They have
none of the quadrupeds, and few of the birds of the other, or Indo-!Mala}'an, group. This
again on the other hand in its animal life is essentially a part of the neighbouring continent.
Hence, elephants, tigers, tapirs, wild cattle, monkeys, as well as pythons, and other Asiatic
reptiles — all found in one or other of the islands — are animals of southern Asia, and
could not have possibly passed from island to island, or from the mainland to the nearest
off-lying islands : the irresistible conclusion therefore is that they were scattered over
the now broken up territory when it constituted one land mass, either connected with the
continent or separated from it by channels not so wide as those which exist at the present
day. The great contrast between the two divisions of the Archipelago, Mr. Wallace
notices, is nowhere so abruptly seen as on passing from the island of Bali to that of
Lombok where the two regions are in closest proximity. In Bali we have the Asiatic
birds — barbets, fruit-thrushes, and woodpeckers. In Lombok, on the other side of a
strait, only fifteen miles broad, there are cockatoos, honeysuckere, and brush turke3's.
We thus pass in two hours from one region of the earth to another differing as widely
in their animal life as does Europe and America. The contrast between the more widely
separated islands of the two groups is still more remarkable. In Java and Borneo, for instance,
the forests are alive with many kinds of monkeys, wild cat, deer, civets, otters, and squirrels.
In Celebes and the Moluccas, we find none of them — scarcely a land quadruped, indeed —
except the prehensile-tailed Ciiscns, or Eastern opossum — a species of deer and a wild pig,
which are met with, being of recent introduction. Of the -'J-JO species of land birds
described from Java and Borneo, ten only are found in Celebes, while lUU of them are common
THE MALAY AKCHIPELAGO : ITS ANIMALS
•ZA3
to Jiiva and Borneo, thinif^-b the Stniit of Macassai-, wliich divides Borneo froni Celebes, is
lUiuch narrower than the Java Sea which lies between Java and Borneo. So wide is the
THE IROX-WOOD TREE (Eu»fd«rori(l<"> Zuageri) OF NEW Ol'INEA.
difference between the two groups of Malay Islands that a traveller may go to sleep in
Australia and wake up in Asia, or, in sailing from Lombok to Bali, may pass from one
([uarter of the world to another without losing sight of either, and yet, until he examines
the animals in the woods, be unconscious that in such a short time so remarkable a transition
150
o;)l THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
hns bcun maJo. In one group we have woodpeckers, trogons, fruit-thrushes, leaf-thruslio-:,.
and barbels meeting the eye. In the other we see not one <>f these, their jilaee l)eing-
taken bv lioneysuekers and lories. Another peeuliaritj- about these Malay Islands is that,
contrary to what miglit have been expected, physical surroundings seem to have had little
or no effect on the animal life. The climate of the two groups of islands may be exactly
the same, and yet their animals are different. Throughout many of them run a line of
volcanoes : yet those which are undisturbed by the volcano and the earthquake are
frequently less akin in their inhabitants than othere lying close by, and visited by lava
eruptions and continual disturbances of the land. Borneo is, to all appearances, the
very counterpart of New Guinea, but its animal life is totally different. The ^loluccas
resemble the Philippines in all save their animals, and though the east end of Java and Bali
have tracts nearly as dry and a soil quite as arid as Timor, they are the zoological
autiiwdes of the other. Yet, though to all appearance the dry open plains and stony deserts
of Australia, lying under a temperate climate, ai-e as the poles asunder from the damp
luxuriant forests of New Guinea, a census of their winged and four-footed inhabitants shows
that they are near geographical relations which have not long ago severed partnership.*
There is also evidence that though the islands have been separated from the continent
at — geologically speaking — not a veiy distant period, yet that all the islands were not
separated at the same date. Java, for instance, has more species peculiar to itself than
Borneo and Sumatra, and Borneo more than Sumatra, which in its fauna, or a.ssemblage-
of animal inhabitants, more resembles the mainland than any of the other islands.
Accordingly, Java is believed to have been cut off from the continent at an earlier date
than Borneo, and that Sumatra was the last separated. Curiously enough, Java contains
several animals — a rhinoceros, for example — which exist also in Burmah and Bengal, but are
not found in Sumatra or Borneo! Even among the islands themselves a shallow sea always
indicates a recent land connection. Thus we find the Aru islands, Mysol and Waigou,
as well as Jobie, agree with New Guinea in their mammalia and l)irds much more closely
than they do with the Moluccas, from which they are separated by a much deeper sea.
"In fact the lOfl-fathom line round New Guinea marks out accurately the range of the
true jiaradise birds." It has also been discovered that a strait of the sea, which a binl
could easily fly over, forms, except to a few migratory species, as effectual a barrier as to
quadrupeds which can neither fly nor swim long distances. Savage man cannot, however,
be expected to conform exactly to the distribution of the lower life by which he is surrounded.
He can take longer voyages in even the rudest of canoes ; and he is often unwillingly com-
pelled to change his home by being driven to great distances by the wind, or wafted by
currents after he has passed out of sight of laud, or lost the means of going in the directinn
he wishes to take. Yet it is found that the two races which inhabit the Malay Islands
fall also under the division which we have been describing. The Malays inhabit the Asiatic
Islands : the Papuans the Australian ones. Only on drawing the line which separates the
two races it runs somewhat eastward of that which separates the zoological regions ; so
* Hcc also 'Wallace: "Ocographical Distribution of Animals" (1870), and "The Comparative Antiquity of
Continents indicated by the Distribution of Living and Extinct Animals" (Proccedingt nf the Royn! Gfoprnphienl
iSociiti/, 1S77, p. 305), for a move complete examination of tliis interesting subject.
THE MALAV AKeUlPELAGO : ITS rOLITICAL UELATIOXS. 2.Jj
llio )>iobiilnlities are tliat tbe siime causes have infliioneed the distribution uf inankind
Avhiih have determined the range of tlie other animal forms. The Malays are, however,
inueh the most intelligent of the two raees, and have tluis, through their maritime enterprise,
overrun mueh of the neighlwuring region, and have also formed permanent colonies in
many "f the Paeilic Islands. Between the Pa|)uans and the Alalays there are various
intermediate raees, but these ijuestions of race-distribution do not concern us.*
Tin; IsLAXD.s — Politically.
Politieally these islands are of some importance. ^lany of them, like New (luinea, are
as yet given over to savagedom ; but others of the !Malay group proper are inider native
rulers more or less civilised and independent. The English have obtained a recognised
footing at Singapoi-e, Penang, and on the mainland of the Malay Peninsula at Malacca and
Wcllesley Provinces. We have also a small colony at Labuan, an island off the coast of
Borneo; and (lie Rajahate of Sarawak, also in Borneo, though an independent kingdom,
may Ijc said to he an English protectorate. The Kajah being an Englishman, the
>tate is naturally administered according to English ideas and views. The northern
portion of Borneo has also been established into a Maharajate, under English auspices, though
not formally recognised as a protectorate. In New Guinea are several English
missionaries, and if the larger portion of this great island does not belong to hs
either by possession or discovery, its close proximity to Australia has caused it for long
— spite of the Dutch settlement — to be recognised as a British possession either in esse
or i/i jjosse. Excluding (ho Philippines, colonies of theirs for three centuries, the
Spaniards are getting a footing on the Sooloo Islands, and may before long annex them;
and (he Portuguese have a languishing settlement on Timor, the last place which
they have kept in ilalaysia — once their stronghold. The Dutch are, however, the
virtual masters of the East Indian archipelago. Hero they have long had settlements,
and by dint of good management, and not too much philanthropy, have constituted their
colonies a mine of wealth to the mother country, instead of a burden on it. At present
they are sole masters of Java and Madura, the West Coast of Sumatra, Benkulen,
Lampongs, Palembang, Riauw, Banca, Billiton, the West Coast of Borneo, and the south
and eastern districts of the same island, Celebes, Menado, the Moluccas, part of Timor,
JSmnba, Bali, and Lombok ; and apparently unchallenged they have long establishetl
themselves and maintained a nominal sway on the west coast of New (jiuinea — in all
upwards of :J9,()U0 square miles, containing a population estimated at nearly 25,(I0<I,000.
All these people are free, though under Government tutelage, and the despotic rule of
their chiefs, where the direct rule of the Netherlands' officials has not reached them, actual
>lavery having been abolished in Java in ] Mid, and throughout the Netherlands' colonies in
1S0:3.
Geographically, the Malay Archipelago may be taken as including the Malay Peninsula
• lioscnbcrg : " Dir Malayisiho Ardiiptl" (1879), and the various contrit>utions to Malayan and Papuan
<thnolo;ry liy AVallaco, 5liklmho-JIaklay, litciari, D'Allitrtis, Jlcyer, Stone, Comrie, Moresby, Kc?ane, and in earlier
times l>y Crawfurd, Earl, and Ibc numerous savants engaged on the great Dutch works on thtM; islands.
236 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
as far as Tauassereim and the Nikobar Islands on the west, the Philippines on the
north, and the Solomon Islands— beyond new Guinea— on the east. It will, however, be
more convenient if we consider them as not quite so extensive. Accordingly, we shall
leave the Philippines and the Nikobars to be noticed by-and-by, while the Solomons
have already (p. 50) been touched at. The remaining ones we may, with Mr. Wallace,
conveniently arrange in the following sub-divisions :— lu the Austro-Malaysian reg-ion wo
find the Papuan group, comprising New Guinea, with the Aru Islands, Mysol, Salwatty,
Waigou, and others ; the Moliiccais, or Spice Island, comprising Bourn, Coram, Batchian,
Gilolo, and Morty, in addition to the smaller islands of Ternate, Tidore, Makian, the
Kaida Isles, Amboyna, Banda, Goram, Matabello, and the Ke Islands ; Celehes, including
the Xulla Islands and Bouton, and the Timor group, comprising Timor, Flores, Sumbawa,
and Lombok. The fiido-Malai/ ones include, in addition to the Malay Peninsula and
Singapore, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra. In another work, to which this must be
considered as a supplement and a companion,* much space has been devoted to the
races of this region. In accordance, therefore, with the plan of this treatise, only a
brief sketch of these groups will be given, it being altogether impossible, even were it
advisable, to give a separate paragraph to each of the several hundreds of islets and
islands, small and great, which darken the map of the Malay Archipelago. Nor xmder
ordinary circumstances need the reader regret that the necessity of hurraing to regions yet
unvisited compels us to stay but a short time among these charming island-continents,
for few parts of the world have been so well described by English- writing travellers as
the Malay and Papuan groups. Dutch, Russian, German, Italian, American, and English
geographers and naturalists t have studied and written regarding them in works easily accessible,
and in none are they described more ably or attractively than in the charming treatise of
our countryman, Alfred Russel Wallace, whose notes I have so frequently drawn upon,
and to whom I must here, once for all, acknowledge my indebtedness.
CHAPTER XV.
The Malay IsLA^■Ds : Austro-Malaysia.
Though discovered in 1511 — earlier even than Australia — it is only within recent years
that Papua or New Guinea has attracted much attention, and then mainly owing to the
visits which it has received from explorers from the neighbouring shores, and the
* "Races of Mankind," Vol. II. pp. 84-151.
t I'.iilcniorc : "Travels in the East -Indian Archipelago" (186S) ; Miillcr : " Bcschreibimg dor Insel-Java " (18G0);
Wullings : " Nederlandsch Indie " (1870); Goevemeur: " Nederlandsch Indie'' (1870); Bleeker: " Xieuwe bijdragen
tot de kennis der hevolkingstatistiek van Java" (1870); Money: "Java, or How to Manage a Colony" (18G1) ;
Riitte: " Moko-Moko " ('870), &c. &.Q.
VIKW ON THE nODINGA RIVER. NKW GCIN'E.U
.);3S THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
missionaries ami golJ-diggors who have been attracted thither by the accounts received
from those surveyors and naturalists. Though the interior of the island is still to a
"■reat extent unexplored, and the coast line is not fully traced, yet, from the various
sources of information indicated, we know tolerably well the margin of the island, and the
interior as far as its middle, through the voyage which Signor D'Albertis made up the Fly
Kiver fur nearly 500 miles.* These explorations have consequently altered our views
regarding both the character and extent of the country. We now know that it, and not
Borneo, is— next to Australia and Greenland, though these are hardly islands proper— the
largest insular land mass on the globe. Its greatest length is little short of 1,.J00 miles,
a distance "as great as the whole length of Australia from Adelaide to Port Darwin, or
of Europe from London to Constantinople."
New Glinea — General Sketch.
Its greatest breadth is 110 miles, and, omitting the great iieninsulus which form its
two extremities, the "lentral main is about 700 miles long, with an average breadth of
:]-lQ miles, a country about the size of tlie Austrian Empire, and, with the exception of
the course of one large river, an absolute blank on our maps." The north-western and south-
western peninsulas appear to be best known, but both seem to be mountainous throughout. The
Arfak mountains, beyond Dorey Harbour, are from 8,000 to 10,000 feet high, while the Owen
Stanley Range has several peaks which reach an elevation of from lO,000 to 13,000 feet. The
Charles Louis mountain appears to be snow-clad. The banks of tlie Fly River are low, and
only on one occasion during D'Albertis' vo\age were high mountains seen to the north-west.
The south-west coast is for 700 miles low and swamjn-, with no high land anywhere visible.
Hence this — coupled with the fact mentioned — would lead us to suppose that there is probably
" a continuous range of lofty mountains towards the north, while the South consists of wide
alluvial tracts and of slightly elevated plains. The part of the island under this somewhat
resemUes Sumatra turned round, but with higher mountains, which are probably volcanic"
(D'Albertis), "and with considerably greater width of land." Regarding the interior we can
only speculate. The Fly River is not of great width or depth, but it is believed that large
rivers exist towards the west, and that a large one flows northward into the sea at the eastern
extremity of Geelvink Bay. Nearly the whole country is covered with a luxuriant forest
vegetation, matured by the hot uniform climate and the abundant rainfall (Plate XXX^'III.,
and p. 237). The only bare placesare on the coast nearest Australia, where the usual evergreen
mantle gives place to a sparser vesture of eucalypti and acr.eias. On the Arfak mountains
Beccari found a sub-alpine or temperate flora country of araucarias, rhododendrons, vacciniums,
umbellifera?, and the Antarctic winter's bark (Vol. III., p. 2G3). Its terrestrial mammals are
singularly few, and with the exception of the wild pig all belong to the marsupial, or the still
lower monotremes of Australia. f Among these are the tree-climbing kangaroos, which hop
* rtoi'ttdiiif/s of tlu lioyal Gvogrnplical SocUf;/, 1S79. p. 4.
t It is needless to refer to tlie zoological wonders of the mythical " Ciiptuin Lawson," whose "travels"
in New Guinea are now known to be as apocrj-phal as those of " John Bradley " in Burmah — if indeed these two
writers of geographical fiction arc not the same personages under different pseudonyms.
THE MALAY AKC'IIIPELAGO : NEW GUIXEA. 2;ji»
about among' tlie larg-o liraiulics of tlic troes on tlie leaves of which tliey feed. The birds,
like the mainmals, are ol" the Austrahan type, thougli it jwssesscs many of which Au.'-tralia
has no representatives. Among^ these are the celebrated birds of paradise — a distinct
family containing more than twenty-five species, all confined to this island and the lands
in the immiiliate vicinity. It is of interest to note that witli the exception of one
very ix-cuiiar species discovered by Mr. \\'alluee in tlie Moluccas, all the birds of paradise
are found within tlic Kill I'atlioni line aroiiiul New (liiinea, and therefore on lands which
have been probably coniieete<l with it within a comparatively recent date (p. 234). Most of
these are found on the mountains of the north-west peninsula, and doubtless more yet
remain to be discovered. It will ever remain a mystery why these gi^rgeously-plumaged
birds were creatitl alone in this part of the world, though, as Mr. Wallace suggests, it is
jirobably connected with the absence of the higher type of mammalia, and with the jn-o-
tection afforded by the luxuriant tropical forests. Nowhere in the world are parrots an<l
pigeons so numerous and lovely as in New Guinea. Many of the fruit-doves are strikingly
beautiful, and the great crowned pigeons rival in size the largest game birds. Parrots of
many species, including the large black and white cockatoo, lories, and the little crested
green parroquets, no larger than our blue tits, are very abundant, while kingfishers of
several species are almost equally numerous, and of brilliant hues. Insects are also rerv
plentiful and adorned with gaudj- colours, and the number yet to be collected is no
doubt great. The same may be said of the birds. Though collectors have never
resided more than a few months at a time on the island, and then only at one
or two places, we already know of HiO species of land birds — a greater number than the
whole avi-fauna of the West Indies, Madagascar, or Borneo. Even Australia has onlv
485 land birds — .j2S in all — (p. 1(J(>), though its extent is much greater, and its climate
and physical features infinitely more varietl.*
AVith the exception of the Polynesian immigrants in the South-eastern Peninsula,
and here and there at diffei'ent points of the coast small settlements from the
neighbouring islands, the prodominating people of the.se islands are the Papuans
— a woolly-haired race — inhabiting in the east a group of islands of which New
(luinea is the centre, extending ^\estward as far as Flores, and eastward to the
Fijis (pp. 210, 211). Their character has been variously described; but, on the
whole, it is that of a race whose suspicion is easily excited, but who, under firm
and considerate treatment, might be trusted.f Already, however, the missionaries and
gold-hunters' experience of this has not been favourable, and if the island is ever to
be colonised, doubtless its early chronicles will contain some bloody chapters. For the
present, however, the hopes of the " prosjx^'tors," who had hoped to find rich gold-fields in
this iiiiotlti {f/rcx npiim, have been damped. Gold, no doubt, exists, and probably
in considerable quantities ; but the spot where the deposits lie has not yet — happily —
been reached, and the climate must always act as a deterrent to Europeans toiling in
the feverish mangrove forest-swamps, and sluggish streams which form a considerable
part of this tropical island. The latest news which we have is contained in the following.
• Wallace : Coiitemporanj JReciew, 1879, pp. 421-420.
t Coraric: Joxriinl of the Axlliropological Inaliluti; 1877. l>l>- 102-11'.'.
240
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
pai-afjraph r — "The jjold prospectors have for the present given up all hope of iinding
rich gold-tielJs iu New Guinea. Worn by privation, fatigues, and constant discourage-
ment, nearly the last batch of the enterprising fellows who sought this El Dorado with
such high hopes has been lauded at Cooktown (p. 220), and it seems doubtful whether
any will be found sufficiently sanguine to remain behind for further prospecting at the
end of the rains. But though unsuccessful in the prime object of their explorations,
their energy and enterprise cannot be considered entirely wasted. A country of great
VIEW OF TUL Ml^slUM STATIO.N, PORT MORESBY, NEW GllNEA.
agricultural capabilities, peopled by a most interesting race, of thrifty, industrious habits,
and a kindliness of disposition entirely at variance with our expectations [the disposition
of the Papuans differing much on various parts of the coast], has been brought within
the ken of civilisation. We look forward with much interest to Mr. Chalmers's
account of his exploration of the Cloudy Mountain region, and his genial reception by
the industrious inhabitants, whose cultivation is carried on on the same principles as in
the vine-growing regions of the Rhine. We still hope many valuable industries may
take root iu this little-known land that may afford at some future day profitable
opportunities for capital, enterprise, and energy."* As the Italians propose
* llrishaiie Courier, December -ith, 1S78. Sec also Turns, November JTth, 1S76.
Tlir. J[ALAV ARCHIPELAGO: N'EW GUINEA; TORRES STRAIT.
241
founding'- a colony on the island, provided the Eii^'lish Government is agree-
able— and other similar associations of adventurers are spoken of — the capabilities
of this long-known but little-explored country of the Papuans may be tested.
Leaving out of account the mineral riches of the island — which, for the sake of the
Papuans on one hand and the white sharers in the "gold rush" on the other, had better
be left indefinitely undeveloped — New (Juinea may in future yield nut oil, palm oil, iron
wood (p. 2-13), sandal-wood, "mahogany" {.ingopltora) , tobacco, yams, sweet potatoes —
VIEW or KLOAl; \
which are cultivated by the natives — cedar, cljony, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, mace, arrow-
root, sago, sugar-cane, beche-de-mer, pearl-shell, and turtle-shell; while cotton, coffee, and
other tropical products could be cultivated. As the Australian colonists are alive to the
value of the island, there is every likelihood that, in spite of the failures hitherto. New
Guinea will become — cither as a separate British colony or as a territory of Queensland—
a countrj' which will contribute something to the wealth of the world.*
Torres Strait divides New Guinea from Australia, and is at its narrowest point about
• For a discussion of its capabilities see Moresby: "Discoveries ia New Guinea" (1876), pp. 308-327; also
D'.\llKTti3 : Loe.cU. and Proeeeiliiiris of the Royal Geographical Sociclij, vol. xx., p. 343; Macfarlane : same vol.,
p. 2-)3 ; Stone : Joiniial nf Ihe Raijal Geographical Socifti/, vol. .xlvi., p. 34 ; Goldie : Proceedings of the Jloijal
Geographical Society, vol. x.xii., p. 219, iStc.
151
242 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
ei"-lilv miles wide, and nowhere exceeds twelve fathoms in depth. Coral reefs, sandbanks,
and well-wooded islands strew the strait; and it is not improbable that at some distant
period, through the ageney of the eoral polype, the island will again be united to
Australia from whieh, by the depression of the land, it has been separated. On some
of the islands pearl-shell fishing stations have been established. The pearl oysters are
found on the submerged coral reefs, and in the narrow ruts and channels which intersect
them, and are obtained by aid of native Australian or Papuan divers, who were, until
recently, fre<]uently kidnajiped by the traders, and carried bj- force to the pearl islands in
the strait. It is not, however, pearls, but pearl-shells, which are sought by these divers, who
are in the employ of Sydney capitalists. The shells are valued at from £1JJ0 to £180 per
ton at Sydney, and, of course, command a higher price in Europe and the United States.
The oyster weighs from three to six pounds, and in some cases will even scale as high as
ten pounds. The divers frequently bring up one under each arm. They are opened at once,
the fish used as food, and the pearls, if any, fall to the share of the crew ; but the
pearls are few, small, and of poor quality.* On some of these islands the fishing of the
trepang, or beche-de-mer, is pursued. This ugly-looking holuthuria, or "sea cucumber," is found
in great abundance on the coral reefs after the tide goes out. It is then collected, and dried on
thin iron plates in a smoke drying-room, and sorted for the Chinese market. The
beche-de-mer is divided into three qualities. The best, Admiral Moresby tells us, is called
red fish, and is worth at Sydney £110 per ton; the second, or black fish, £120; and
the worst, or teal fish, £80 ; and as these sea-slugs, or sea-sausages — as the Germans
call them — are plentiful, the trade is a lucrative one. On some of these islands — as well
as on the neighbouring coast at Cape York — are found the mound-builders (Megapodius
Oouldli), which do not sit on their eggs, but bury them in mounds of sand and rubbish;
leaving them to be hatched by the sun. These mounds are composed of dead leaves,
sticks, stones, rotten wood, and any kind of rubbish, and are built uj) until they reach the
height of 6 feet high and 12 feet across. A number of birds unite in building a mound.
Then they must use it conjointly, for in the middle will often be found as many as fifty of
their brick-red eggs. On Booby Island is an " ocean post-office " — a tin box under a
rough "shanty" — in whieh, in days when mail steamers and telegraphs were rarer than
now, captains used to deposit letters to be taken off by the first ship which called, or
information which they considered might be of value to the next visitor. It is now-
little utilised.
The Jiu Islands belong to the Dutch, and are nominally under the government
of the Moluccas, but there is no regular settlement on them, the principal
inhabitants, with the excejition of a few Malay officials, being the black, mop-
headed natives. At Dobbo, during the trading season, there is a great concourse of
Chinese and Bugis, or natives of the Celebes, living in temporary erections, which
form one wide street, off which alleys branch, but are merely thatched sheds, a small
portion of which, near the entrance, is used as a dwelling, " while the rest is parted
•off, and often divided by one or two floors, in order better to slew away merchandise
• Mon'.>1>y : "Discoveries in New Guinea,'' p. 31.
THE >[Ar,AV AKCniPELAGO: THK ARU ISLANDS; THE MOLUCCAS. 21.3
and native produce." During the season Dobbo is a busy place, tliuuj;h for tliu rest
of the year it is all but desertel, and the houses are mostly dismantled. The place where
the settlement is built is not attractive, unless for the luxuriant grove of cocoa-nut
trees which extends for a mile alonjj the beach, and the fjreat forest which — as everywhere
else on these islands — lies behind. Here we see the beautiful casuarina trees, cocoa-nuts,
and palms, intertwined with climbing plants, which hang Letween the trees in great,
strong festoons of flowers. Among the foliage fly birds of paradise, and other gay-
colouretl .«pecies, found so jdentifully here; while the Ciiscmi, many beautiful lories, a
cnssowary, and a ground wallaby may be mentioned as among the other inhabitants of
these flat islands. The birds of paradise — God's birds, as the natives call them — are,
however, the most remarkable of its riches, and for long their skins have formed
articles of commerce with the Dutch, Chinese, and other traders.
Mysol, Salwatty, and ^^':li^•ou are otlur islands of considerable size, lying
between New (luinea and Ceram, or oil' the north-west peninsula of the former.
Sniwiilli/ is the home of the Sc/cnciilrx nlha, a remarkable bird of paradise, wliith
also extends over to the neighbouring coast of New Guinea. In the former island
it is shot by blunt arrows, and in the latter by placing snares on the trees frequented
by it. Waigon is a still larger island, and the chief one of a small group, also made
glorious by the presence of the paradise birds. Muka, the chief settlement, is a
poor place of a few huts, partly on land, partly in the water, scattered ineguhuly
over a space of about half-a-inile in a shallow bay. The people are not natives of
the island — which has no indigenes, but a mixed race, partly from Gilolo, partly from
New Guinea ; but their language is entirely Papuan. They live in an abject state
of poverty, not caring to work hard, as the sago palm and the abundant fish at
their doors supply them with all the food they need; while a little trepang, or tortoise-
shell, sold to the traders, enable them to purchase all the clothing that the inhabitants of
a country lying so near the trojjics refjuire.
The Moi.vcc.vn Gkoip.
The Mi^iIhccuh, or Spice Islands, centre round Gilolo. Most of them arc mountainous,
the peaks reaching to 7,000 to 8,000 feet, and lie in the line of the great volcanic
band already described. Here the Dutch have several settlements, the soil being fertile,
and capable of raising rich crops of nutmegs, cloves, &c., and the sago palm, which
is indigenous, yields large quantities of the peculiar starch from which it gets its name.
Sago, obtained from the heart of the palm trunk, forms the staple food of the Malay and
Papuan people. There are also fine woods in the forests, and, in addition to valuable pearl-
shell and trepang fisheries, gold, sliarks'-fins, the edible swallows'-nests, and birds of
paradise skins, form articles of export. Ceram, or Siranr/, is the chjef island for sago, which
is prepared in great quantities by the villagers of "Warns- Warns (p. 2n) ; but, with a
few exceptions, all the natives are collected on the coast for the convenience of trade,
the interior being mostlv forest-covered mountains, and inaccessible. Some of the natives —
•24-J.
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKLU.
who lumibcr in all 195,000— have become nominally Christianised, but most of them are
Mohaminedaus, the Moslems bearing a better reputation among the Dutch officials
than their half-Christianised and altogether roguish neighbours, who chiefly affect the
south-west coast nearest Amboyna. The Kakian Union — a secret society joined indiscri-
minately by Pagans, Christians, and Mohammedans — gives the Dutch Government much
anxiety, and more than once its plots Iiave put the authorities in considerable jeopardy.*
VIEW OF THE ROADSTEAD AKD VILLAGE OF WAKl S-WAUVS, CEKAM.
JBouro is another fine mountainous island, though not considered by the Dutch a place
from which much wealth can be extracted. The natives are a simple race, little acquainted
with civilisation, though, as in most parts of their possessions, the Dutch have paid some
attention to their education. They consist of two races — now amalgamated — the Malay of
the Celebes type, and the so-called Alfuros of Ceram. On Bafc/tiaii, Malays and
Galelas — people from the north of Gilolo — have now a settlement and extensive rice-
iields. It contains a great variety of surface and soil, and is well watered by many
• For a full .iccomt of this political organisation, see Tijdsrhrift ran Ned. Jiid., Vol. V.
THK MALAY AKCIIIPJCLAGO : THE MOLUCCAS.
^45
streams, some ul' tlioiii iiaviifahlc I'ur some distance from the coast. Tliere are no savage
inhabitants, the people beinf>; chiefly Malays ruled by their own Sultan, under the
Dutch Government. " It possesses gold, copper, and coal, hot springs and geysers,
sedimentary and volcanic rocks and coralline limestone, alluvial plains, abrupt hills, and
lofty mountains, a moist climate, and a grand and luxuriant forest vegetation." It
may be also added that, in addition to all these advantages, as a place of residence,
DUTCH HOl'SE IN THE ISLAND OF TEKNATE.
Batchian has several volcanoes, and frequent earthquakes so arrange matters as to keep
the inhabitants from sinking into a state of utter somnolence.
Gilolo, or Ilalmahcira, as the Malays and Dutch call it, is, however, the largest
island of the group. It contains a few villages near the coast, but most of the interior
is forest clad. At one time it was the chief residence of the Sultan of Ternate, and the
principal civilised inhabitants are still Ternate men, the natives being " Alfuros," a
general term for any indigenes, who inhabit the eastern coast, or the interior of the
northern peninsula. They are evidently Papuans, who, however, live just on the extreme
240 '^111^ COUXTIUES OF THE "WORLD.
eastern conllnes of tlieir race, and at the place where tlie ^falays meet them. The
island seems at one lime to have contained more inhabitants, it being thinly inhabited,
with the exception ol' those Alfuros, by ISIalay tribes allied to those of Ternate and
Tidore. It contains a number of animals peculiar to itself, and therefore would appear
to be an ancient island. But it seems in very recent timas to have been modified by
volcanic upheaval and subsidence.
^[ol■ll/ is close to its north-eastern extremity, but differs very considerably from its
larsfer neighbour in its zoology, and is very sandy and coralline.
Among the smaller of the Moluccas may be mentioned Ternate, Tidore, Makian,
Kaioa, Amboyna, Banda, Goram, and Matabello. Tctnale is one of a row of conical
islands skirting the coast of Gililo ; Tidore, over 4,000 feet high, being the loftiest of these
island mountains, though Ternate is not much short of that elevation. The town of
Ternate is a pleasant one, stretching along the base of a volcano, over which wreaths of
smoke often play, and which frequently gives evidence of its slumbering violence in the
form of earthquakes. Behind the town is a forest, where durians, mangoes, lansats,
and mangusteens — the very mention of which recalls to the traveller pleasant memories
— can be gathered in loads. Above the forest, stretching up the mountain for two or three
thousand feet, are belts of clearings and cultivated ground, and above all is again the virgin
forest (p. 24.J). Near the shore is the fort built by the Portuguese when thej' held the
island, and in the middle of the town the large half-iuined palace of the Sultan, who is
now a pensioner of the Dutch Government, though allowed, for their convenience, to retain
his sovereignty over the natives of this island and the northern part of Gilolo. At one
time Sultans of Ternate and Tidore,. enriched by the monopoly of the opium trade which
they held in their own hands, were celebrated for their wealth and the barbaric splendour
of their State. After the Dutch had aided the natives to drive the Portuguese out of the
islands, they rewarded themselves by obtaining, through treaty, the control of the trade;
and, in order the better to regulate it, they concentrated the cultivation of cloves and
nutmegs on certain spots, at the same time destroying the plantations elsewhere. In return
they paid the native rulers a fixed subsidy, relieving them of the oppressions and attacks
of tlieir harsh rulers, the Portuguese, and gave them exclusive control over their own subjects.
IJenee, at the present date, Banda is the chosen home of the nutmeg (and its covering, the mace)
trade and cultivation, and in Amboyna the clove flourishes, though not so well as it might
do in a better selected spot. Ternate, judging from the numerous stone and brick buildings,
gateways, and arches, seems in earlier days to have been a place of greater importance and
wealth than at the ))resent time. In addition to a few Chinese, Arabs, and Papuans, the
town is inhabited by the Mal.iys, the Dutch, and the Orang Sirani, or " Nazarenes," Christian
descendants of the Portuguese, and a varietj- of mongrels, who combine in their own persons
something of all these races. The Kaion Txhnuls are belted by flat swampy tracts along the
shore, and are inhabited by mixed Malay and Papuan races, who are ^Mohammedans, and
subject to Ternate. Papaws, pears, apples, rice, maize, and a little cotton are grown, and
the men are skilful boat builders.
Aiiihojiiia is an island of much more importance. It consists of two peninsulas connectedi
by a narrow sandy isthmus, though the island itself is rather mountainous. The town is a
THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: lllK MOLUCCAS. 217
■\veil-lniilt, pleasant one, with broad well-shaded streets, from which there hraneh off into
the country sandy roads and lanes bordered by hedges oi' (lowering shrubs, througii which are
seen the cosy (iititeii pluafseii, or villas, of the well-to-do merchants and ofiiciuls. Society
iu Amboyna is as pleasant as it is in any Dutch town in the Xetherland East Indies.
There is of course a xuciftal, or club-house, where, in the cool of the evening, the
J'>uroj)eans gather to listen to the band playing, to smoke, and to drink gin and bitters,
aiid in which they dance unweariedly at stated intervals. Yet life in Amboyna must
be often full of languor from much doing of nothing. The arrival of a foreign war
shii>, the advent of the monthly mail steamer from Singajwrc and Hatavia, or an
earthquake, are among the few events which break the monotony of residents' lives, or
give them something to talk about, other than the daily incidents of their almost
eventless lives. Fruit excepted, everything — even the shells for which the neighbouring
sea is famous, if they are at all out of the common run — is extravagantly dear. But
the common cowries, cones, and olives are cheap enough — the fact that they are sold
in the Loudon streets for a penny or twopence each Ijeing of this proof positive. Fishes are
here also numerous, Dr. Bleeker having published descriptions of 780 species found at
Amboyna, a number almost equal to those inhabiting all the seas and rivers of Europe.
But, though many of them are gay in colours like most tropical fishes, they are fairer
to the eye than grateful to the palate. As in the other Dutch tropical colonies, nearly
all business is transacted between seven and twelve o'clock in the morning, the afternoon
being given over to repose, and the evening to visiting. During the heat of the day,
and even at dinner, a loose cotton dress is worn, and after sunset, hats are reserved
solely for visits of ceremony.
The Biiiida group is made up of tea or twelve small volcanic islands, having an
area of 700 miles. Mostly thickly-wooded, but with fine plantations of nutmegs, cocoa-
nuts, bananas, and other tropical productions, they are described as exceedingly lovely.
The nutmeg plantations are on Banda Lantoir, or Great Banda — which is too unhealthy
for the seat of Government — but the trade is no longer a strict monopoly, though
nutmegs and mace still form the almost sole exports from these perfumed isles. The
l)lautations, or perken, form one coutinouus forest, screened from the wind by kanari
trees {Caiiarinin). Up to 1860 they were worked by slaves and eonvict>, but Malay and
Chinese coolies have now taken their place. Last year they yielded about 700,000 lbs.
weight of nutmegs, with mace in proportion.'**' The chief town is on Banda Neira, but it is
not of the importance of Amboyna, nor is society so polished. There is a garrison of some
200 Javanese soldiers, and the European officers who have charge of the Peaiians (convicts),
while the people, according to the recent visitor whose notes I quote, gamble much, and
lead a seemingly pleasant, indolent life, undisturbed by events of the outer world. A
mimthly mail brings news, beer, schnaps, and lettei-s from fatherland ; and what more can
a man want in a climate with an average temperature of over 85*^ Fahr. ?"
(loram is one of a small group of isles which form, as it were, a western tail
to Ceram, which gives its name to the whole of the chain ; Mmiui'-iiU-o i^, however, the
largest of them. It is about fifteen miles long, but is a mere upraised coral reef.
• Linden: "Banda en Zijne bcwoncre" (1873).
2i8 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
Coram is of iiuich the same character, though higher, and not altogether composed of
coral rock. The people are a Malay race of trailers, i)assing in their praus, made by
the Ke Islanders, long circuits, buying and selling trepang, the medicinal mussoi bark,
wild nutmegs, and tortoiseshell. They are, however, a lazy race, living very poorly
and much given to opium smoking. They make sail cloth, coarse calico, and pandanus
leaf boxes, prettily ornamented with shell work, but they are over-kinged, for in this
island, only eight or ten miles long, twelve rajalis, powerless for harm or good except
through the Dutch fJovernment, e.xist in a state of extreme poverty.
The natives of the Matubello Isles are almost entirely occupied in making cocoa-
nut oil, the coral of which they are composed being very favourable to the growth of the
cocoa-nut ])alm, which accordingly abounds here, and bears fruit all the year round. The
villages Mr. Wallace describes as situated on high and rugged coral peaks, only accessible
by steep narrow paths, with ladders and bridges over yawning chasms, and lilthy with
rotrten husks and oil refuse. The people are " wretched, ugly, dirty savages," unclothed
and unwashed, but actually wealthy, as the massive gold earrings of the women, and
the dozens of expensive little bronze cannon lying on the ground about every village
testify. The chief men will on ceremonious occasions clothe themselves in silk and
satin robes, but the imwholesome diet of refuse cocoa-nut, sweet potatoes, and sago cake
causes frequent eruptions and scurfy skin diseases among all classes of the people.
The AC Islands, thongh the people are Papuans, must be classed zoologically and
geographically with the iVIoluccas. They are, for the most part, well wooded, and this fact
has been seized on by the Ke people to push their boat-building business. Their " praus,"
in great demand by all the neighbouring islands, are not hollowed out of a single tree,
but are formed of planks running from end to end, "accurately fitted together without a
nail or a particle of iron being used, the planks being dowelled together with wooden pegs,
as a cooper fastens the bead of a cask, and the whole afterwards strengthened by timbers,
lashed with split rattan to solid cleats left for the purpose in each plank." Sago-
making* is also followed, but cultivation there is little or none. Nor indeed do the
mountainous character of the islands, and their dense forests, afford much room or supply
many temptations to the islanders to follow other pursuits than those the}' have chosen.
The ^Moluccas, though extending over ten degrees of latitude by eight of longitude,
contain but ten land mammals, and of these two — namely, a monkey and a civet cat,
animals not belonging to this region — are believed to have been introduced by wandering ]\Ialay
traders. There are, however, twenty-five species of bats. The excessive poverty of mammals
contrasts with the rich display of birds. At present the islands of the group have yielded
20.5 species — and the entire avifauna is doubtless not yet known — the species being to a great
extent also those of New Guinea. Especially are the islands rich in parrots and kingfishers,
twenty-two species of the one family and sixteen of the other being found. The mound-
building brush turkeys, or Miir/npofUi, are among the other remarkable birds of these
islands, one of these ['Megapoilins Wnllacei), discovered bj- the distinguished naturalist
after whom it is named, being peculiar to Gilolo, Ternate, and Bouro. The great helmeted
cassowary, long the only species known, is an inhabitant of Ceram alone; while the beetles,
* This industry is dcscrihcil in " Kacos of JFnnkind," Vol. II.. pp. 13-1-135.
THE MALAY AUrllll'KI.AfJO: TIIH MOLUCCAS.
249
butterflies, and otlior insects of the Mohiccas arc li'<^ion, and of tlie most pforgeous Imes
and ciuious description. Like the birds, they have a decided aihnity to those of New
MALK AM> i K.MALh AKGls I'MKA^ANI it'i'i~r
Guinea. " Owing," writes Mr. Wallace, " to the great preponderance among biixls of
parrots, pigeons, kingfishers, and sunbirds, almost all of gay or delicate colours, and many
adorned with the most gorgeous plumage, and to the numbers of very large and showy
152
250 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOELD.
butterflies which are almost everywhere to be met with, the forests of the Moluccas
offer to the naturalist a very striking example of the luxuriance of life in the tropics.
Yet the almost entire absence of mammalia, and of such widespread groups of birds as
woodpeckers, thrushes, jays, tits, and i)heasants, must convince him that he is in a part
of the world which has in reality but little in common with the great Asiatic coutineut,
allhouirh an unbroken chain of islands seems to link them to it."
Celebes.
Celebes is an island containing about 73,000 square miles, and a population estimated
at 2,000,000. Owing to its singular form — which has been likened to a star-fish with
the rays torn off from one side — no part of the island is more than fifty miles
distant from the sea, though its length from north to south is 700 miles, and its breadth
extends through seven degrees of longitude. Though the island is not yet thoroughlj-
explored, it is known to be mountainous — four ranges of mountains diverging south,
south-east, north, and north-east from the central space — and from its elevation, and the
abundant sea-breezes which reach it, healthy. One of its mountains — Lampoo-Batang —
is 7,000 feet in height, and many others are not much short of this elevation ; but,
except on the extreme north-east point, there are no active volcanoes on the island. No
island of the Archipelago has more varied scenery or a more fruitful soil. There are not
any large rivers or plains, but at intervals, both along the coast and in the interior, are
fine grassy stretches of level ground. Beautiful lakes occur frequently ; and the wild
gorges, chasms, and precipices which are found in many of the districts, render the scenery
of Celebes as splendid as that of other parts of the Archipelago are tame fi-om the absence
of those concomitants. Though cultivation has long existed, yet much of the country,
especially about the Gulf of Tolo, is still clothed with primeval forests and thickets,
" traversed here and there by scarcely perceptible paths, or broken with a few clearings
and villages." The animal life of Celebes is very remarkable. Of fourteen species of mammals
found on it, eleven are got almost nowhere else. Of these, two are the curious babiroussa, or
hog-deer, and the wild cow, or " tapi-nten," which combines in its person some characteristics
of the ox, buffalo, and antelope. Then there are five squirrels which extend no fiirther
east, and other two are eastern opossums which have in this island their western limits.
Of the 128 land birds, it is an unique fact in the geographical distribution of the order,
that eighty are found in this island alone. The insects show an equally remarkable isolation,
and the same may be said of the reptiles. Among the domestic animals swine and goats
are common ; and the cattle, though tended with little care, are good. The horses stand in
such high repute that at one time over 700 were j'carly exported to Java. Vegetation
is, as might be expected, extremely rich ; but forest growth is rarer than in other islands
of the Archipelago. Rice, maize, millet, coffee, the cocoa-nut tree, the sago palm, the obi,
or native potato, bread-fruit, tamarinds, lemons, oranges, mangusteens, durians, wild jiluras,
Spanish pepper, beans, melons, and sugar-cane, are common in most parts of the island.
The shaddock flourishes in the lower-lying plains ; the bamboo and rattan grow wild in
the woods, which also yield sandal-wood, ebony, sapan, and teak. Indigo, cotton, and
THE MALAY AIJCIIirELACiO : CELEBES. 251
tobacco are also grown, ami amonfi^ other industries may be mentioned tlie t\vistin<j of
rojjes from the fibres of the fjcmute palm {.V'/y/'c/v'.y .im'r/iarij'fr) , the pn-paration of sug'ar,
and a beverage called sagueir, from the juice of the same tree, as well as intoxicating
drinks from a variety of other plants.
There are a variety of races in the island ; but the best known, and the most
truthful, intelligent, and honest are the Bugis of the jMacassar peninsula, a character
which indeed all of the inhabitants, the Papuans excepted, deserve. They are not a war-
like people, and are only too anxious to live at peace with their neighbours, did piratical
incursions from the other islands permit of this. The Dutch possess a number of settle-
ments ia Celebes, and have, with a view probably to future contingencies, divided up
tlie island into a number of residencies. In these residencies, however, the native rajahs
still maintain their authority, and in some instances — as, for example, in that of the King
of Boni — their rulers are men of considerable consequence and importance. In some parts
of the island, gold, salt, and coal of poor quality are found. At one time the native
chiefs were compelled to bring every year a specified quantity of gold to the Dutch
officials, but of late the yield has so fallen off that, in spite of the labours of the
minei-s, sitting all day in nitrous water, washing the deep gravels in which the metal
is scattered, the authorities have perforce had to abate the demands, so little has been
obtained.
^Macassar (p. 253), on tho west coast of the peninsula of the same name — a town of from
l.j,UlKJ to :JO,UUU inhabitants — is the chief place in the island. It impresses the visitor —
even after he has seen most of the other Dutch towns in the East Indies — as one of the
prettiest, cleanest, and best conducted of them all. The chief street runs along the sea-
shore for a distance of more than a mile, gradually merging into native houses, and is
usually throngetl by a crowd of Bugis and Alacassar men. The old Dutch town consists
of two streets of private houses, having at the southern end the fort, church, and, close
by, the houses of the governor and principal officials. Still farther along the beach is another
long, straggling street of native houses and country villas of the JIacassar merchants. The
streets are described by Mr. "Wallace as kept clear of refuse, and covered drains carry
off the sewage into large open sewers, into which the tide is periodically admitted at
high water, so that twice a day Macassar is swept clear of the materials which in other
tropical towns breed fevers and an infinitude of diseases. The Dutch rule in Celebes is
certainly a very favourable type of their rule. By means of their plantations of coffee,
ncc, and other crops, they have afforded employment to the natives, and in their schools
and missions the natives of many of the districts have learned the arts, the language,
and even the manners of civilisation. A native chief, who a few yeai-s ago would have
received the visitor on the edge of a kris, and added his skull to the collection hanging
in his hut, will now meet him in an elegant drawing-room, and entertain him at a well-
furnished dinner-table, clad in correct evening costume, which, however inconvenient
in the Celebesian climate, is certainly an improvement on the bark waist-belt which
was at once his father's entire wardrolje and insignia of rank. ^Vith the exception of
Mftnado, the settlements on Celebes have not yet been a financial success to the Dutch,
though they have had a footing on the island for more than ~70 years. In time.
£5)J THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
however, the great resources of the country cannot fail to yield returns commensurate
with its crude wealth.*
The Sitlla, or Xiilla Idamh, Bouton, Jloctia, Kabeina, IFuwoni, and other smaller patches
lying close to Celebes, may be merely mentioned, as in many of their characteristics they
agree with their great neighbour.
The Timor Group.
The chief island of this group is Timor itself, which has an area of 8,820 square
miles, and a iiopulation estimated at 400,0<*U. A mountain chain, wooded to the
summit, and culminating in the Alas, 11,800 feet in height, runs through its entire
length, and contains magnetic iron ore, porphyry, syenite, copper, fine malachite, suljjhur,
naphtha, and even gold — which metal, indeed, is found in most of the numerous, though
small, rivers. The nature of the climate we have already indicated. Accordinglj', the
island is not throughout fertile ; but the lands near the sea are excellently suited for
growing rice, maize, beans, tobacco, sugar-cane, potatoes, cotton, and the usual tropical
fruits. The loutar, or Palmyra palm [Boras.s'i-i fiaheU'iformis) , owing to the variety of
uses to which it can be put, is one of the chief forest trees ; but there are other timbers,
well suited for masts and shipbuilding, to be obtained in abundance. The wild nutmeg,
cinnamon, and tamarind are found, and in places bamboo thickets render the forests all
but impenetrable. Indigo is one of the most common crops, and among the wild
plants are numerous poisonous and medicinal species. The chief Dutch settlement is
Koepang (Coupang), on the south-west. Three-fourths of the island owns the rule
of Holland ; the remainder, on the north-east, belongs, nominally at least, to the
Portuguese, whose seat of government is a miserable tumble-down town called Dilli,
which was all but destroyed by an earthquake in 1857. Koepang is a red-tiled,
exceedingly Dutch-looking place, built on a rugged surface of coral rock, surrounded
by a scanty vegetation, banked by a semicircle of wooded hills. The streets are
irregularly laid out, and the only buildings of consequence are the governor's house
and the Protestant church. The population consists of jNIalays, Chinese, Dutch,
and a preponderance of native Timorese, who are much more closely allied to the
Papuans of the Aru Islands and New Guinea than to tlie Malays, whose mild,
deferential manner contrasts markedly with the loud talk, unrestrained laughter, and
general self-assertion characteristic of the Timorese and the race to which they are
most closely allied. Altogether, there may be about 3,500 people in the town, including
100 Europeans and 500 Chinese, who have a temple devoted to their religious rites.
"Whaling and Australian ships often call here for supplies, on their way to or from Java
and Singapore, and this trade is likely to increase when the settlements in the Cape
York Peninsula emerge from their present extremely embryonic condition. Dilli is a
much less attractive place. The houses are built of mud, and thatched. Even the
* Veth: " Een Ncderlansch reiziger op Zuid Selebes " (187.5); Riedel: " He landsehap Bocool Noord Selebes "
(1872); papers in the ZeUschrift fib- Bthiiolugiv (1871), iuid Tijrischrift roor Inditche Taa! Land at Volkendiiiidf (1874) ;
and Ihe works of Valentyn, Rcinwardt, llillies, Stavorinus, Ramts, Crawfurd, Van dcr Halt, Stulenvoll, Van der
Bosch, Wallace, Bickniore, and others.
THE -MALAYAN AUCIliriXAGO : TIMOR.
2'oi
fort is only a mud enclosure, and the custoni-lniuse iind church arc reared of the same
liunilile material, without any attempt at decoration. The governor's house makes
ynater pretensions; but even it is, at hest, only a whitewashed bungalow of a very
ordinary deserijition. However, to keep up the Lusitanian characteristics, this wretched
encampment of Portugal is ridden to death by oflicials, black and white official dresses
and yoigcous uniforms being the objects which chiefly strike the eye in the streets of
\1L\\ IN ill>: JtiWN ^>V MAt A>~AK. i il.i.l.L^.
Dilli. To add to its discomforts, the town is surrounded by swamps and mnd flats,
which often impart a fatal fever to the new comer on the first niufht of bis stay, and
the malaria against which even long residents do not consider themselves proof.
Timor, however, is not an unprofitable island, for sandal-wood, ivory, horses, tortoise-
shell, edible swallows'-nests, &c., are exported, and on a bank thirty miles south-east from
Koepang there is a pearl fishery. Though the Dutch and Portuguese rule the island, yet
the actual government is through the numerous native rajabs, who have divided it into
several small kingdoms. Much more, however, could be made of the island than at present,
especially in the section owned by the Portuguese. In Dilli, for certain, one-half of the
254. THE COrXTEIES OP THE WORLD.
Europeans are obronically ill from fever ; yet, though this kind o£ misery has been going on
for three centuries, it seems never to have occurred to any one to build a house on the range
of hills, only a short way off, and which are so cool that at an elevation of from 3,000
to a,50U feet wlieat and potatoes can be grown. Still lower down, coffee would thrive;
but to this day there is no road to the hills, nor has any attempt at cultivation been made.
Though minerals of many kinds are found, none which would repay the cost of working-
have been discovered. Pieces of virgin copper have been found, and plenty of copper ore, but
of such poor quality that only the best would pay to smelt, even in England, where, of course,
lalx)ur and the cost of mining and smelting are much less than in Timor. The interior is a
barren country. Gold is found but sparingly, and the fine spring of petroleum is so far in
the interior that until the country is better opened up it will be as useless as if it never
existed. The Portuguese Government is a miserable one. No one cares about the island —
no one has any pride in it — as is proved by the fact that, after it has been occupied for 300
yeai-s, there is not a mile of road made beyond the town, and not a European resident
in the interior. The officials rob the natives as much as they can ; yet, though there
have been rebellions, and may be more, no care has been taken to fortify the town against
the attacks of the natives, and once, at least, so skilfully did the insurgents circumvent
their mastere, or rather so clumsily did the " military authorities " mismanage matters,
that the place was in such danger from starvation as to be compelled to solicit provisions
from the Dutch Governor at Amboyna. There are a few half-breeds in the town
who profess Christianity, but so cordially are their would-be rulers, whether Dutch or
Portuguese, despised by the natives, that missionary efforts have been but little successful
in Timor. At Dilli, at least, morality is at a frightfully low ebb, and if crime does not
figure in the Government returns in a corresponding proportion, it is merely because
the demoralisation of the Europeans has caused them to cease to look upon as crimes
offences which in any decent community would entail infamy and punishment on the
perpetrators.
At the west end of Timor is an irregular chain of islands, which are continued by
way of Serwatty, Babber, Timor Laut, Larat, and the Little and Great Key, on to
Aru Islands, and from the north side by Ombay, Rutar, Lombata, Adenara, Solor,
Flores, Comodo, Sumbawa, and Lombok ; the strait between the latter and Bali forming
the boundary between the two great divisions of the Malay Islands. Wetter is a
considerable island on the north-east, while Semao, Eotte, Savu, and Chandana, a sandal-
wood island, run almost parallel to the eastern chain mentioned. Timor Laut, or the
Tenimber Islands,* are of some importance, from their small horned cattle, goats, swine,
fowls, and numerous birds — among the latter the beautiful blue-streaked lory {Fais reticulata)
and the citron-crested cockatoo (Cacaina citrhio-crutat(i). The natives are of a low grade
of civilisation, and are dreaded for their treachery by the ships which visit them to trade
in tortoiseshell and beche-de-mer. The islands between Timor and Flores, and parallel to
them, are of much the same nature. Flores itself is about 200 miles in length and thirty-five
in breadth. Like the rest of the group, it is hilly and volcanic, and produces cotton, sandal-
wood, and beeswax, wiiich is sold chiefly to Singapore traders. Sumbawa and Lombok
• Vtth : Joiinni! of the lioijiil Gcnyrnphical Soeirti/, vol. xlviii. (IS78).
THE .MALAV AULTIU'KLAGO : TIMOli : BALI. 255
arc very similar. Rice and coffee are tlieir sUipIes — tlie latter grown on the hills and the
former on the plains. From Lonibok, a.s from 15ali, arc exiwrteil also ponies and ducks,
the latter being very cheap, and familiarly kuuwa to the seamen of the rice ships as "15aly
soldiers."
The numher of birds inhabiting the Timor groii]) is 188, no less than eighty-two of which
are conrmed to these islands ; but the fact that there is not a single genus i)cculiar to it, or
one which is in these islands rciiresented by any large number of peculiar species, shows that
the fauna is distinctly derivative from Java on one side and Australia on the other. With
tiie exception of the bats, the mammals of these islands are exceedingly few, the land species
being only seven in number, and not one of them is Australian, or even closely allied to
any Australian form ; thus leading us to the belief that though in its general fauna
Timor belongs to the Australian continent, it was never united to it; otherwise some of
the kangaroo group would have been sure to have been found in it. In a word, it has
the chief characteristic of an oceanic island : that is, the occurrence of animals which,
though found nowhere else, are yet related to those of the nearest laud.*
CHAPTER XVI.
The Mal.\y Islvnds: Indo-Malaysia.
AVk cross the Lombok Strait from the Island of Lombok to that of Bali, and are at
iUcc in a new world. Of late it has been noticed that a few cockatoos have reached
the end of the latter island, thus showing that there is beginning to be a slight
intermingling of the animals of the two regions. But to all intents and purposes the
Lfi-oups which ^fr. AVallace has sketched out are widely different. The Malay vegetation
-preads over all the moister and more equable parts of India ; and, according to Sir
Joseph Hooker, many plants found in Ceylon, the Himalajas, and the Khasia Mountains
are identical with those of Java and the Malay Peninsula. Among the most marked of
these are the rattans — climbing palms of the genus Citlniiins — which, from the use they
were once put to, are familiarly known to seamen as "Penang lawyers," and an immense
variety of orchids, arads, the ginger order, and ferns. In this region are also found the
pitcher plants, the mangustecn and the durian — two delicious fruits, which will hardly
grow out of the Archipelago. In this region there are known to live 170 species of mammals.
Of these twenty-four are monkejs ; the most remarkable and the chief are the orang-utan
(p. ~-j(p), the great man-like ajie of Sumatra and Borneo, the curious siamang of Sumatra
and Malacca, the long-nosed monkey of Borneo, and various species of lemurs. The tiger,
leopard, tiger-cat, civet, otter, and a glutton may be noticed among the flesh devourers;
* Wiilliicc: "Malay Anhipclagci, " p. 210. In tliis wurk will bo foiuid a very full account of Lijii:V..jk and
Bcvinj of the other islands, wliiili wu can only mention.
2J0
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
and of the thirty-tlirce species eight are also fouml iu India and Burmah. Of the tweut^-.two
hoofe<l animals, seven extend into Burmah and India; the elephant of Sumatra, Borneo, and
Malacca is also identical willi that of Ceylon and India. " Iu all ntlier groups," writes
the historian of the Archipelago, " the same general phenomena occur. A few species are
identical with those of India, a much larger number are closely allied or representative
forms, while there are always a small number of i^eculiar genera, consisting of animals
unlike those found in any other part of the world. There are about fifty bats, oF which
A FAMILY OF ORAXG-UT.\XS (Simio salyrus) OF BORNEO.
less than one-fourth are Indian species; thirty-four rodents (squirrels, rats, &c.), of which six
or eight only are Indian ; and ten Insectivora, with one exception, peculiar to the ^lalay
region. The squirrels are very abundant and characteristic, only two species out of
twenty-five extending into Siam and Burmah. The tupaias are curious insect-caters which
closely resemble squirrels, and are almost confined to the Malay Islands, as are the small
feather-tailed Ptilocerus Lovii of Borneo and the curious long-snouted and naked-tailed
Gi/munrits liafflesii." In the Malay Peninsula, now a part of Continental Asia, there are forty-
eight species of laud mammals common to it and the neighbouring islands. Again, to take
only one instance, Java, though distant 250 miles from Borneo, has twenty-two species of land
mammals in common with it, thus proving clearly that at one time they must have been
39
IHK MOSylK l)F SUEUAliAl.IA. liATAVIA, JAVA.
INDO-MALAYSIA: ITS ANl.MAI.S.
257
connected, us, with scarcely an exception, these species could not traverse an even much
narrower water passage. Probably the separation took place in a very recent geological
period. The birds of the islands bear a close resemblance to those of India, though very few
of tlioiii arc identical with those of that country; yet wc have seen that even narrow
.•ElUccI..
l.onK.rii«I leo of (ir
.\ II R t r !t I I x
MAr OF TIIK MALAY AllCllirELAOO, ETf.
water straits prevent the passage of laud birds from island to island. On the little
island of Banca, fifteen miles from the eastern extremity of Sumatra, and celebrated
for its tin mines, there are several species of animals entirely different from those of
the adjacent coast, and some, perhaps, even peculiar to it, rendering probable what,
from geological appearances had been long suspected, that Banca, though lying so close
to Sumatra, had not been recently separated from it, but is actually older than the
153
258 THE COUNTKIES OF THE WOULD.
great land mass so near it. Again, the islands of Java and Sumatra, tbousjli lying so
close together, hear evidence in their animal life of having been long separated, while, on
the other hand, Borneo and Sumatra show a much closer similarity in their denizens. There
are inanv peculiarities about tlie distribution of life in these islands. I shall notice one
only. It is that in Java there is a species of rhinoceros distinct from that in Borneo and
Sumatra, but which also occurs iu Burmah, and even in Bengal. Several other animals
— birds, for example — which are found in Java and parts of Southern Asia, we miss
from Borneo and Sumatra. Such a curious phenomenon we can only understand on
Mr. Wallace's hypothesis of Borneo, subsequent to the separation of Java, having become
entirely submerged, and being, on its re-elevation, for some time "connected with the
Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, but not with Java or Siam."
Borneo.
Until later discoveries awarded the palm to New Guinea, Borneo was believed to be
the largest known island. Its area is about 300,000 square miles, its greatest length 8.j()
miles, its greatest breadth about 700 miles, and its population probably between 1,000,00(1
and 2,000,000. The island is distinctly equatorial, the "line" dividing it into two
portions nearly equal in surface. The shores, often dotted with small islands, are usually
low, and bordered by extensive level plains, forest covered, and intersected by large
rivers, navigable for a long way inland. The interior is more elevated, and the scenery
often fine and even grand ; but excejit that there are several mountain ranges and large
lakes — such as that of Kimbalu, thirty-five miles by thirty, with thickly-peopled banks — very
little is accurately known regarding the central portion of this rich, fertile, and important
island. The finest crops are grown almost without cultivation; maize, rice, sago, yams, cotton,
sugar, pepper, and other spices, betel, tobacco, cassia, gutta-percha, camphor, &c., are
among a few of the products; but abundance of gold, iron, platina, tin, antimony, and
copper are known to exist in many places; and, among the Malay Islands, Borneo,
as yet, is the only one in which diamonds have been discovered. The annual yield of gold
is said to be about £350,000, nearly £1,200 worth having been exported in 1870 from
Bruni alone; and the number of diamonds found can never be accurately ascertained, as
the successful finds are usually concealed, lest ulterior consequences may befall the
fortunate discoverer. At Landak, in the Chinese (now Dutch) territory of Pontianak, about
300 3ears ago, there was found a diamond weighing 307 carats, and of late years
some very large ones have turned up in the quartzose gravel and conglomerate. There
are also beds of tertiary coal, only partially worked ; and among the sea products may
be noted the famous swallows'-nests (formed by the Collocnlia esculenta of a glutinous
secretion), which command such enormous prices from the Chinese epicures, and the
trepang, or bixhc-de-mer, which is also collected and dried here for the same people with
such peculiar dietetic tastes. The orang-utan inhabits the swampy forests in great numbers,
and the woods abound with many other forms of life ; among others, tapirs, elephants,
rhinoceros, tigers, bears, wild oxen, the Argus pheasant (p. 219), peacocks, and fiamingoes;
while the rivers, swamps, and lagoons swarm with fish, as well as crocodiles and
IXD0-5ULAYSIA ; BORNEO. 25'J
other reptiles. Here also the wide-spread duriun^ " the fruit of the East," and the
maii;;osteeii attaiu their greatest development, and the pitcher plants {Xi-penl/ien) are found
in their maximum abundance ami variety. The plants are not only many in number
and peculiar, but the Bornean llora is interesting in this respect, that on the summit
of Kimbalu, 1;},()'JS I'eet high,* there were discovered by Mr. Low some Australian
species not found elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago.
The ixjpulation is chietly composed of tlie JliUays known as Dyaks, a peaceful, honest,
and highly intelligent race in the interior; but near tlie coast, even until recently, there
were hordes of lierce pirates and murderers, whose incursions were the terror of the
traders, and even of the captains of European vessels who might be becalmed among
these islands. But, in addition, there are great numbers of other Malay tribes, par-
ticularly Bugis from the Celebes, Kyans, Xcgrittos, and a large number of Chinese, who
in wealth and aggressiveness are pre-eminent over all the other immigrants who have
llockod thither. Their secret societies, or " Ilueys," and trade guilds, known as the Kunsi,
have more than once given great trouble to the authorities, and on one occasion in the
early history of Sarawak precipitated a revolution, which for a time enabled the leadere
to overpower the regular authorities.
Politically, two-thirds of Borneo — the western and south-eastern sides — belong to
Holland, and is administered by Residents, with the aid of the native Sultans. In 1871
the population of this territory was given at 335,677 natives and 1-31 Europeans in the
western divisions, and at 8-t7,8-16 natives and 3^0 Europeans in the south-eastern — making
a total of l,183,t)74. But the Malay race multiplies slowly, though there is no reason to
believe that it is decreasing, the early estimates, which put the popuhition of the island
down at three or four millions, being obviously exaggerations.
Borneo ])roj)er, or Bruni, is an independent country, governed by its own Sultan f
(Abdul Municin), who, though nominally absolute, is controlled in his power by his
subordinate chiefs, each one of wliom aims at being, and generally manages to be, his
own master. However, Bruni is remarkable as being one of the few Malay kingdoms
which still maintain even the semblance of independence. The country is governed after a
wretched fashion, being divided up among the ruling powers, who oppress and i)lunder
the common people whenever they have an opportunity, and if anything is left it is
\isually seized l>y one of that cheap form of nobility entitled to call himself a "paft-
geran," and who is about as poor, as proud, and as plentiful as the Teutonic " Freihcrr,"
his nearest European representative. The country is, however, gradually getting
broken up into a number of suffragan governments, which are each exercising an amouut
of independence inconsistent with the rule of the Sultan being long maintained. The
capital, built on the Limbary River, contains about l.j,000 inhabitants, one-half of
whom are dependent on the nobles, and in their names pillage to an incretlible extent.
Not content with robbing in behalf of their masters, they exact an additional amount
in order to enrich themselves, and if goods or money are not forthcoming, the children
• According to Belcher, but Ix>w nml St. .Tohn made it only 9,500 feet,
t The " Iiing do per Tiian" — tliat is, "Hi' who governs."
260
THE COUNTRIES OF TIIE WORLD.
are seizal and carried off into slavery. The city — as is the rule in the Kast — is more
lovelv without than \\itiiin, and though of late j-ears it has suffered, owing to the
attractions of Kuching, it is still a place of some importance, especially in the sago and
camphor trade. A visitor describes Bruni as perhaps "the last place ou the face of the
earth;" and it is, perhaps, not accusing the world of too great geographical ignorance
to say that there are not a dozen peoj)le in England who ever heard of it, though it is
the capital of a kingdom. The whole city is built on piles — in the usual Malay fashion
— over the river or creek, which here expands into broad shallows. Tliis system is very
convenient for the lazy inhabitants, who simply raise the flimsy bamboo lloor and shoot all
rubbish into the river beneath. It is also handy for those ladies who wish a flirtation
without the risk of absenting themselves. The suitor paddles up under the house, when the
BOKNEAN BLACKSMITHS.
signal of a white rag hung out informs him that the coast is clear: occasionally, also,
elopements are effected by the same means. All locomotion in Bruni is effected by means
of canoes — the gondolas of the city — and there is a market held, in which the shops are
goods-laden praus and canoes. There is not a path outside the city in any direction. On
every side is trackless jungle. How the people all manage to live is a mystery, for a little rice
will suffice a Malay for a whole week. One might be driven to suppose that, like the Scilly
Islanders, they subsist by washing each other's clothes ; but the general dinginess of the
cotton garments forbids this hypothesis. The Chinese are the chief traders in the city,
and though roguish, and often worse, they are infinitely the best class of the inhabitants,
energetic, reasonable, liberal in their household arrangements, and altogether different
personages from their countrymen at home. Many of them are intermarrying with the
natives, and as a result of these marriages a new race is arising in Borneo, and other of
the Malay islands, though there are grounds for believing that at an earlier date there
Illllil' "
2(j-Z TIIE COI'NTKIES OF TllK \V(.)l;LD.
were Chinese colonies as far south as the Malay Archipelago. But so bad is the government
that even the patient Celestials find it difiicult to live in Bruni. Crime, if committed by the
relations or followers of a high noble, is unpunished, as no one will act against him from i\'ai-
of the enmity of his chief. Not long ago a noted thief lived quite unpunished in the
city, and was even received in "good society," though his character was perfectly well known.
AVhen in want of funds he made visits of inspection to the different shops, where he was
treated with a kind of " familiar deference," though for days afterwards the Chinese lived
in a state of nervous suspense until the cokjj came off. But this robber was a follower
of the Prime Minister. Until comparatively recently money was unknown as a general
medium of exchange. Ordinary transactions were carried on in pieces of grey shirtings
valued at l~s. Gd., of nankeen at lOd., and bits of iron snipped off a rod, each of which
circulated as the equivalent of one farthing. But for long both the iron and the nankeen
have ceased to be current, English and Chinese coin having taken their places. Grey shirting,
however, is still a legal tender, though the pieces have now fallen to less than one-half their
old value. Gun-metal is also often used, for the Borneans are famous for the manufacture of
brass guns, and of late Bruni has attempted to rival Soloo in the manufacture of krises, the
famous Malay sword-knives, but in both places they prefer to employ in their work the
iron which is taken off English cotton goods bales as the toughest and the best (p. 260).*
Sarawak is a district on the west coast of the island, comprising nearly 28,000 square
miles, and a population of about 222,000, comprised of various races, though chiefly of the
Dyaks and Chinese. It was granted in 1839, by the then Sultan of Borneo, to Sir
James Brooke, an Englishman, who at his own cost was instrumental in putting down
piracy on the shores of the island. From being a typical Malay state, the exertions of
the late rajah and his nephew, the present one, Sarawak and its capital, Kuching — a town
of 20,000 inhabitants, on the Sarawak River, sixteen miles from the sea — have become
the seat of an incipient civilisation and considerable commerce, and is visited by Malays
from far and near, almost incredulous that so well-ordered a government can exist
anywhere in the island otherwise so ill-governed — especially in those parts under the
control of the Sultan. The Sea Dyaks, once the terror of the Archipelago, are now
among some of the most loyal and best behaved of Sarawak subjects, and are relied
upon as a local militia in case of trouble and danger. It was they who, though
in early times so sternly dealt with by the rajah, flocked to the defence of Sir James Brooke
when the rebellion of the Chinese forced him in 1S.j7 to flee from his capital, and who pursued
the mutineers through the forest, until the miserable remnant of them found shelter within
the Dutch territory. The Chinese are, however, now a well-conducted community, and
will never again dream of such a rash experiment as that which ended for them so
disastrously twenty-two years ago.f Tiie government of Sarawak — which is a mild
* Spencer St. .Tohn : "Life in the Forests of the Far East," Vol. I., p. 89, and Vol. II., p. 278 ; Keppol : " Voyage
of the Dido" (184G) ; Roorda van Eysinga: " Verschill. rcizcn en lotgovallcn," A'ol. IV. ; Earl : "Eastern Seas"
(1837) ; Marryat : "Borneo" (1848) ; H.St. John: "The Indian Archipelago " (18.53); Schwancr : "Borneo" (18.5.5);
Veth : " Borneo's 'Westcrfardccling" (1854-1856) ; Boyle : " Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo " (18Go) ; Guide
Coras Cosmos (1874); and for Dutch contributions, Veth : "Woordenhoek van Nedcrlandsche Indie" (1869), &c.
t Of late years the Dutch have also hcen compelled to suppress their aspirations after an independent
repuhlic hy force of amis, and to impose a poll-tax, in the hope of checking the Slongol immigitition.
IND0-1IALAY.SIA : UOKXEO. 2G3
despotism, well suited to tlie charncter and iiulinations of the people ruled — pro(ilin<j,
lioweverj by their costly experieneo in the past, has made the offence of being a leader
of a secret society among the Chinese a capital one. Tiie supreme power is in the hands
of the rajah and his European ofUcers, aided by a legislative council, composed of two
I'luropeans and five native Malay chiefs. At intervals a national assembly, comiiosed of
between llfty and sixty representative natives and Europeans, discuss, confirm, or reject
any important modification of native customs, or change in the law. The government
of the various districts and out-stations, forts and rivers, is entrusted mostly to European
otiicers, who are termed Residents, and subordinates, or assistant Residents. There are also
courts of law where justice is administered, chiefly upon the basis of the English code,
though with special enactments made to meet the particular circumstances of the people
and country. Slavery, for instance, is still permitted, though its evils have been narrowed
down to the point at which its continuance can do little harm, and so strictly are the
laws framed in regard to the treatment of the bondmen and Ixindwomen that every
facility is given for them to obtain their freedom. There is a permanent military force — the
" Sarawak Rangers " — mainly recruited from the Dyaks, and numbering about 200
men. In addition, about 25,000 warriors could at a very short warning be collected from
the native tribes. The naval force consists of a gun-boat, a small screw steamer, and two
heavy river steam launches. At Kuching, the "Astaua," or residence of the rajah, the
court-house, the forts, barracks, and prison are the chief buildings. Roads are being cut
in different directions through the forest, but at present the numerous streams and rivers
intersecting the country form the principal routes of comraunicati(jn. In addition to two
trading steamers, the tonnage of Sarawak consists of schooners and small coasting craft,
which collect raw sago, sago flour, pearl sago, antimony, quicksilver, gold, coal, timber,
gutta-percha, india-rubber, cocoa-nuts, rice, dammar, gum, diamonds, canes, and dye-woods from
the dill'erent settlements up the rivers and along the coasts. Pepper and gambier are now
being largely cultivated, and other branches of agricultural industry are being largely attended
to by the natives. Altogether the territorj' exports about £250,000 worth of goods, and
imports a little less than that amount. In 1877 — I have not been able to obtain any
returns for 187S — the revenue was £37,110, and the expenditure £33,933. The taxes are
jrincipally derived from farms, such as opium, arrack, pawnbroking, and even gambling. The
royalty on minerals— chiefl\- antimony — is also an important item in the Sarawak Raj. There
is also an exemption tax of two dollars per head levied on all the Malays who do not serve in
the militia, and a capitation tax of three dollars per family for the Dyaks, bachelors paying
iiie-half, and militiamen less. Customs, land, and township lots form the other sources
of income, lliere is also a public debt, which consists of the considerable sums which were
advanced from his private fortune by the late rajah, Sir James Brooke, and which now
form a mortgage or first charge upon the public assets of Sarawak.
Tlic country is capable of great development. At present it is little more than
a great dense forest, interseete<l in every direction by rivers and streams, and varied
by the moimtain ranges which traverse it in various directions. Its timWrs are tine,
and all but inexhaustible : and its minerals, though already valuable, are not worked
to half the extent they will be ly-and-liy. The coal mines arc capable of yielding
2G4
THE COUNTKIEW OK THE WuKLU.
abundiint fuel, but are scarcely touched. Ciuuibar is mined in various places, and
considerable quantities of ijuieksilver mij^ht be obtained from it. Antimony is worked at
oreat profit. Oold is washed chiefly by the Chinese; though Mr. Consul-General Ussher
BOKNKAX "SN'EAPONS, ETC.
considers that neither this metal nor diamonds would pay Europeans to search for them. The
same may be said of the copper, manganese, and plumbago mines : they exist, but as
yet the " indications " of ore are not great enough to warrant their being opened out.
The aspect of the country, especially in the south, is beautiful, and the landscapes in the
154
2 JO THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
neio-hlxmrhood of tlie ^fatarii;- ami Santuljoiig van^'cs, and in the vicinity of Kuebing,
are i)articulaily striking' and romantic. The climate is wet, 18:!" inches of rain having-
fallen in ISTi!. Nevertheless, it appears to Ijc fairly healthy for I'luropeans, numbers of
whom live at Kuebing-. In the mountains the atmosphere is comparatively cool, but
on the coast the average temperature is higher than at Labuan, and may be averaged
at 85^' Fall. The Government of Sarawak is not faultless, but we must remember
the material the two Brookes have had to deal with. The cuuntry, under its present
dynasty, is not yet forty years old, and yet a comparison of its institutions and even-
handed justice with the rapacity, disorder, and oppression of Bruni is not flattering to the
larn-er kingduni. It is, indeed, not too much to say that if there is anj' hope for the ^lalay.-
ever to arise from the sensuality, greed, and indolence which are year after year more and more
characterising them, especially in Borneo, it is to be found in the extension of the kingdom of
Sarawak under its present rulers. The Raleigh-like tale of the young English adventurer
who cai-ved out a kingdom for himself, and brought good government and justice to a
race for ages strangers to either, will long fiirm a prominent chapter in nineteenth century
romance. But wben the cost of ruling a country is being weighed, politico-economists
ought not to forget that in Sarawak they maj- see a king reigning over 28,000 square miles of
territory, with a popidatiou of over 200,000 souls, keeping up a respectable military force,
garrisoning and maintaining fourteen forts, i^aying a competent staff of European officers and
native authorities, and maintaining tliree gun-boats to protect commerce and agriculture and
guarantee safety to his subjects — all on less than ±40,0')0 i^er annnm. Sarawak stands on
good terms with ber neighbours, and though the rajah is, de jure el de facto, a foreign prince,
be clings to his English nationality, and consider " British interests" as paramount within his
dominions.* But that eventually Sarawak will be also British ground we think there can
be but little doubt.
Tnder the political divisions of Borneo I have not included the new Mahnralijate of
SaOa/:, which has come into notice within the last few months, because its existence is
very iirecarious, and its recognition by any civilised power about equally shadowy. The
territory so called consists of a tract in the northern end of the island, part of which
had been previously ceded to the American Trading Company of Borneo. The present
concession is, however, made to a British company by the Sultans of Borneo and of Sooloo,
the latter of whom also claims some sovereignty of a nominal description over part of the
ceded territory. By these treaties, a countrv, extending from Kimanis on the north-west
coast to the Siboco River on the east, possessing fine harbours and navigable rivers,
rich in agricultural soil and mineral wealth, is made over to the new company, a certain
Baron de Ovevbeck, who seems to have been the negotiator, having been proclaimed
Maharajah of Sabak by the Sultan of Borneo, and Datu Bandara and Rajah of
Sandakon by the Sultan of Sooloo. It does not appear that as yet much has come out
of this last ^lalayan imitation of the East India Company and Sir James Brooke com-
•T'sshor: "Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls" (1878}, pji. 1-19; Munily : " Narrative of Recent
Events in Borneo" (1848); Jacob: "Life of the Rajali Brooke" (1877): Brooke: "Ten Years in
f^arawnk" (ISO.V ; Low: "Sarawak-Its Inhabitants, &c." (1848), lic.
INDO-JULAYSIA: JAVA. 2G7
1)iiR'<l, ami prudtMit men will wait before Jeeidiiifj on the nature of its jirospeels.*
'i'lien- is, liowe\ei-, an actual Urilisli colony, that ot" Labuan, on tlic little island of the
same name, eij^ht miles from the coast of Borneo. It wa.s ceded in 1^I7 to the liritisli
(iovernment by the Snltan of IJrnni, but thonfjli the island possesses an area of thirty mile.«,
and a Malay population of between 1,(100 and 5,000, its importance is but slij^ht. It
ha.s, however, capabilities. In the tirst place, it has a bishop; so Labuan is an example
to all the neighbouring; rcj^inn. 'I'lu^n its ])osition is j^ood, and ils forests are nia|^niliccnt.
Coal of a yood tpiality is found, but the seams are little worked ; and, like all the
neij^jhbouring regions, it exports to Sing-apore sago, beeswax, edible binls'-nest, camphor,
hides, rattans, and tortoiseshell, trepang, and mothcr-of-pcarl shells, collected either on
its own territory, or on ihose of Borneo and the Sooloo Archipelago, to the value of about
LtiO,(lOO per aninuu. In 1S77 the revenue was £7,1'.I0, and the exiH.'uditure £:iOO more:
which is about all that need be said regarding Labuan.
Java.
In imjiortance, Java, thougli not so large as Borneo, is infinitely greater. It has a
length of tJ^iO miles, and a breadth ranging from (JO to 12G miles, the whole area
being 51,35G square miles, containing a poj)ulation of over 18,000,000, or more than
four times what it possessetl when, after an occupation of live years, the British
(iovernment, in ISUI, returned the island to the Dutch authorities. A chain of mountains,
•ntaining volcanic peaks, reaching the height of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, run the whole
length of the island. In all there are thirty-eight volcanoes, many of them active. But though
the interior is thus rough and broken, along the coast there exist, especially at the
mouths of the nnmerous small rivers which take their rise in this central range, rich
alluvial flats, well suited for the growth of rice, though, like most rice grounds, very
nidiealthy. However, Europeans can find among the mountains a cool climate, and as
railways have now intersected much of the island, it is easy to leave the lowlands behind
and reach the breezy uplands when business is over. A journey from the coast to the
mountains leads the traveller through vegetation the most gorgeous (pp. 273, 276), for
in perhaps none of the Malay Islands has Nature been more bountiful than here. On
the slo|)es of the mountains there have been extensive clearances for coffee plantations,
which contrast pleasantly with the dense forests which yet cover much of the island. In
llie warm, damp lowlands may be often seen the strange Riiffleua, one of the most gigantic of
llowers,t growing parasitic chiefly on the bark of a species of Cittni. We now know
several species of the genus, but the best known is the one figured (p. 20S), which was
discovered in 1818 in Sumatra, by Dr. Arnold, physician to Sir Stamford Rattles, who,
during the English occupation, governed Java, and sub.seqncntly the settlement of Bencoolen
in Sumatra. It will sometimes attain a width of a yard, but the blossoms do not last
long after expanding; they soon decay and become fetid. Another still more famous
Javanese tree is the notorious upas, or chettik, which was long rumoured to kill everybody
• Pro(etdinj$ of the Royal Genjraphieal SoeUlij (1879), p. 21 : and Firld, S<'i>teinl)«.T iSth, 1878.
t It forms with Briiyinaiitiii, and a few other genera the order ItnJKfiiacea.
:i<;.s
.111-: corNTi;ii:s of tih; would.
who went uiider it> sliailo. A Dutch surgeon, \vli<i is uiulerstood to liave lived towards
llie close of last century, is usually credited with heinsj;- tiie original inventor of the
apocryphal history of this disagreeable vegetahle. The tree was described as growing in
a desert tract with no other jjlant near it for a distance ol' ten or twelve miles. Criminals
loiidenined to die s^-ot the option of either suffering the extremity of the law, or going
to the upas tree and collecting some of the poison. But not more than two out of every
twenty survival their dangerous expedition. The "surgeon"' claimed to have derived
his knowledge from those who had been lucky enough to escape with life over a desert
strewn with the whitened bones of their less fortunate predecessors. " There are no fish
\I:.\':ilJ>/. IHL I. i .AMK PAUASiiie Il.ANT Ol JAVA AMI M MATKA.
in the waters, nor has any rat, mouse, or any other vermin been seen there; and when
any birds fly so near this tree that the effluvia reaches them, they fall a victim to the
effects of the poison." Out of a population of 1,600 pei-sons who were compelled on
account of civil dissensions to reside within a few miles of this tree, only 300 remained
in less than two months. It is, however, unnecessary to quote the " Dutch surgeon "
further, for it is understood that " Dr. Foersch " is a literary myth. The account iirst
appeared in the Lfiiuhm Muguzine, but no man, so far as I am aware, has been able
to discover the original of the talc, and it is generally understood that the whole was
the work of George Steevens, an unscrupulous antiquary, who was never happier than
when entrapping his contemporaries in the meshes of some ingenious hoax. However,
the story was too attractive not to seize the imagination. Erasmus Darwin embalmed it
in his stately verses, poets of a less scientific type followed his example, while paintere
innumerable vied with each other in picturing the scene of so much desolation. In reality
INDOMAI.AYSIA : JAVA.
«!)',»
tlie life is a spurge (Aiiliarln fo.rictiriu), which, when pierced, exndcs a milky juiuc,
containing', as is usually the case with such plants, an a<ri<l poison. But, so far finni
heing as pestilent as described, the tree has liecii eultivatetl in our Iwtanic gardens,
and is known to grow in the Java wcmkIs along with dthcr vegetation, which it does not
TICK VI'AS TREE (iliiKarit toiiearia) OF JAVA.
injure, and on its branches birds and lizards have often been seen to perch. It is,
however, f:iir tn say that the soil on which it grows is often cavernous, and iii " the
valley of death" exhales carbonic acid and sulphurous vapoui-s, which are fatal to animal
life, and that from the same causes operating in the streams, many of the latter are
destitute of lishes. The juice is also used as an arrow poison, and often causes disagreealile
irritation, or worse, to those who climb the tree, or wear a garment made of the inner
bark. This irritating character is, however, common to the juice of the order to which
270 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKT.D.
flie upas belongs. The tree is not eonfineJ to Java, for a traveller describes it as
tlourisliing in a valley near the town of Briini, iu Borneo, surrounded by hills covered
with dense vegetation. It is, however, curious, as proving that the ancient tales about
it are based on some foundation of fact, that the natives are afraid to go under its
shade, and declare that birds who alight on its branches often fall off dead.
On the higher elevations, Mr. Wallace notes that the ravines and nimuitain gorges
exhibit many beautiful "bits" of tropical scenery, the tree-fern, with its feathery crown
tiftv feet in height, and palm and ginger tree, begonias and melastomas, lycopods and
orchids, hanging iu all their tiorid Ijeauty from the branches of the strange trees over-
hano-in"- the wooded precipices. Still higher up, at about -3,000 feet, horsetails [Eqnisetum)
beo-in to appear; at greater elevations still raspberries can be plucked, and, at 7,000
feet, the cool .nountains support several species of Ridus. Next cypresses appear, fruit-
trees decrease in size and in the number of species, while lichens and mosses become
nunierotis. At S,000 feet the vegetation with which we are familiar in Europe makes
its appearance, many of the plants which flourish at this elevation being identical with
those of Britain. South-east of Batavia, at 9,000 feet up Mount Pangerango, grows the
Imperial Cowslip {Prii/udu imjicrialls), said to be found here alone. On the tojis of still
hi<^her peaks grow bushes, lichens, and mosses, and flowers of species identical in many
cases with those found in Europe. Java has thus many climates : in the lowlands are
cultivated coffee, sugar, and rice in large quantities; and on certain soils, indigo, spices,
tobacco, tea, and cochineal. Most visitors to Java leave it with the impression that, take
it all in all, it is the finest and most interesting tropical island in the world, though
not the first in size, being in area only about equal to England. But no tract of sea-sur-
rounded soil within the tropics equals it in fertility and populousness. Mr. Wallace describes
the whole surface as magnificently varied with mountain and forest scenery, most of the
volcanoes being also in constant activity. Yet, though all the phenomena of subterranean
fires are exhibited by them, they never emit the lava streams so fiimiliar as the concomi-
tants of volcanic eruptions in the rest of the world. The moisture and heat cause the
country to be clothed with forests, in which live a great variety of animals — especially
birds and insects — of the most beautiful and interesting forms, and many of them peculiar
to the island.
The history of Java is a curious one.* Up to the year 14-78, the Hindoo religion,
now confined in the Malay Islands solely to Bali, flourished here; and those pro-
fessing it attained, as is evident from the remains of magnificent temples, overgrown
by the jungle, a stage of civilisation which their Malay conquerors never reached. In
that year ^lohammedanism replaced the Brahminical faith, and is still the ruling
religion of the island (Plate XXXIX), for the Dutch interfere in no way with the
belief of the natives.
The Netherlanders got a footing iu the countrj^ first in ir)77, in which year they
found the King at war with the Portuguese. As the price of assisting him against
his enemies, the new-comers received permission to build a factory, and in due time,
imitating their rivals in the Bay of Bengal, managed little by little to obtain possession
' Ixaffles: "History of Java" 18.30.
1M)(»-.MAI.AVS1.\; JAVA Zl \
aiiil control of the whole isliiiul. In 1"^11, when Holland was incorjiorated with Frame,
(treat I'ritain seized it, but after the fall of Napoleon surrendered it ajjain to the Duteli,
who still hold it, though they did not become sole masters of the island without a long
and sanguinary struggle terminating in IH.UI. Even yet two States are nominally ruled
by native I'rinees, whose power is more ornamental than real. In Java, we find exhibited
to perfection the culture system, which has been jireviously noted (p. iHi) as pre-
vailing in Celebes, Baiida, and other Dutch East Indian possessions. The native nobility
arc kept favourable to the Dutch rule by being retained to assist in the Government
imdor the name of " Regents." Each of these Uegents — usually selected from the
Princes' families — governs a district about the size of a small English county. The
Kegent is, in reality, governed in his turn by the Dutch Resident, or Assistant Resident,
who is considered his "elder brother,'' but expects his "recommendation" to be obeye<l
more implicitly than the suggestions of eUler brothers usually are. The Resident is assisted
by the '• K<introleur," who acts as an inspector of all the smaller native rulers, hears
complaints against them, and superintends the Government plantations, and the famous —
i«r infamous — "culture system." This w;»s originally introduced by General van den Bosch,
whose i)lan was, nevertheless, not " what his name might imj)ly." It was " brutally
practical," for it was based on the principle of so utilising the labour of the natives as
\>> make it produce not only a sufficiency of food for their own consumption, but also
the largest possible quantity of produce for sale in the European markets. Accordingl\-,
the island — with the neighbouring one of Madura — is divided into twenty-three resi-
dences, the rulers of which exercise, as has already been indicated, control through the
native officials, whose interest it is, therefore, to keep on terms with the Dutch
(lovernment, for on their advancing the interests of the Government depends their
own tenure of office. These native officials receive salaries or percentages on the
produce delivered into the Government stores. At present, forced labour is only exacted
lor the pmduction of sugar and coffee, though formerly, in addition, indigo, j)epper,
tea, tobacco, and other crops were raised in this wa}-. Furthermore, in 1S90 the forced
rultivation of sugar-cane is to be entirely abolished. No system has been more attacked.
Novels ha\'e been written exposing its iniquities, and travellers whose ideas were
furuicd on the strictest principles of political philosophy have execrated it in volumes
too numerous to catalogue. There cannot be a doubt that, thcoreticall}-, the " culture
system " is indefensible. Yet, nevertheless, Java is a well-governed, orderly State,
where the moralist may study with advantage the problem of how to make the best
of a colony, with the greatest amount of profit to the mother-countrj-, and the minimum
iif misery to those who ccaitribute the revenue. That it has been profitable admits of
no dispute. Aided by the Netherlands Trading Company, Java, which prior to 1'^3'i was
a loss to Holland, is now a source of profit. Since the year 183^, the island has con-
tributinl to the Netherlands over £30,<i0(),000, with a corresponding addition to its own
revenue. Increase of population is generally admitted to be a sign of national pro>peritj.
\ ieweil from this standpoint also, Java must l>e ])rospering ; for while in l>«ii the
census showed a jiopiilation of 5,.'j00,000, and at the beginning of the century only
••3,.jO0,O0(i, in the year Is.JO it was found to be over 9,.J0(I,0U0, and in l>^75
272
JIIE COUNTHLES OK THE WUHF.D.
1^,335,7 /S,* including ^S,2:J0 Europeans, l!1j,;}S-l. Chineso, 9,0^7 Arabs, and 1:J,8'J!)
Hindoos and other nationalities. This shows the population to be twice as dense as that of
Beno-al, and much denser even than that of Britain.
On the whole, after studying Felix Batel, "Max Havelar," and M. de Beauvoir on the
one side, and Mr. Money and Mr. Wallace on the other, I am inclined to agree with Sir
David "Wedderburn that, though the system may not be perfect, it is really about the
best which under the circumstances could have been devised. In Java, a vast majority of
the inhabitants are subject to Mohammedan law, interpreted by the priests and founded
on the Koran. Accordingly, as it is necessary to withdraw Christians frt>ni the jurisdiclidii
JAVANESE CAKTS.
of the Moslem tribunals, it may be said generally that any one, even a black man,
professing Christianity, has the privileges of a European. There is, however, in
Netherlandish India no privileged religion — Europeans, Mussulmans, Buddhists, Hindoos, are
alike in this respect before the law. There is also, in addition to the varied nationalities —
civilised, semi-civilised, and savage — a new race, the offspring of Javanese mothers and
Chinese fathers, arising on the island. They are said to be superior to either of them,
and to bear a certain resemblance to the Japanese (p. 277). There is also kept up an army
of about 30,000 men for use in the Indian Netherlands, but of these the great majority are
natives of the islands. In the Netherlands there exists no idea of governing the country
solely for the benefit of the natives. The Dutch, for example, do not look upon a Javanese
as a political equal. They discourage the use of Dutch and other European languages, and
have made no organised effort to introduce schools or a national system of education among
* Writing iu 1S78, Sir David Weddrrburn [Foitiiii/htli/ licview, No. cx.\.\., III. New Series, p. 100) puts the
number at " over 'J 1,000,000."
■vS-^-v,! M^i
155
274 TUE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
them. But, on the other huiul, they guaranteed, in " exchange for the wealth which the natives
cive their country, peace, prosperity, and religious toleration, with security of person and
property. And, after paying for the maintenance of all these blessings, they consider
themselves entitled to appropriate to their own use the surplus revenue." It is, of course,
a question whether the "batig slot," or ftivourable balance paid by the Javanese to
Hollandei-s, does not inflict a greater injury on the receiver than on the giver, by paralysing
the enterprise and energy of the latter. The worst feature in the Dutch East Indian Govern-
ment is, according to Max Havelar — and he is confirmed by others— the extremely optimist
character of the reports beloved of the Colonial Minister at the Hague. The best official
is the one who troubles " the office " with fewest complaints against the native officials.
Hence the Blue-books are all coulenr Je rose ; and, though the officials do their best to keep
their oath not to oppress the natives, yet with such a system prevalent it need not surprise
any one that the rapacity and tyranny of the native rulers are often winked at. Of four
native princes who still maintain a semblance of authority in the " Vorstenlanden," or Lands
of the Princes, the greatest is the Soesoehoenan, or Soerakarta, wlio represents the old
Mohammedan Emperors of Java. He is treated with the greatest possible respect, though
a Dutch fort garrisoned by European troops commands his capital and palace. The second
King, or Sultan, who lives at Djokjokarta, * is treated in a similar fashion, though both
of these potentates have, like the other two minor ones, a considerable contingent of native
troops under their control. The Javanese are, as a rule, well treated. Ill-usage by Europeans
is all but unknown, and when detected severely punished. Yet they are still expected to
show respect amounting to servility in the presence of the Dutch officials, especially in the
districts remote from railways and cities. On the approach of a superior, we learn from
Sir D. Wedderburn, the natives are compelled to remove their hats, to dismount if on
horseback, and if on foot to sit down on the ground ; those who wish to be particularly
respectful will even turn their backs upon the great man, as if afraid to look such a
superior person in the face. When the golden umbrella of the Dutch President passes
along a crowdetl street, the people sink down before the badge of office heralding the
presence of the highest official in the province, and rise again behind it, " like a field of
ripe corn in a breeze." In Java, we find appearing the more typical animal life of the
mainland. "Wild bulls and tigers wander through the jungle, alarming the archicologist
intent on studying the sculptures and climber - overgrown temples which lie scattered
through these wilds. Among the birds is a peacock of a different species from that
found in India, though almost equally gorgeous. This beautiful bird is, however, not
found in Sumatra or Borneo; while, on the other band, the Argus (p. ;M9), fire-backed,
and ocellated pheasants of those islands, are equally unknown in Java.
In 1876, the revenue of Java and the small island of Madura which for administra-
tive purposes is conjoined with it, was £11,71-6,5^4; the surplus, after paying expenses,
being £904',205. The revenue was derived from taxes on houses and estates, customs
duties, rents from crown lands, the Government monopolies of salt and opium, ))ersonal
imports, and a number of other taxes in addition to the revenue derived from the sale of
* "Races of Mankind," Vol. II., ].ii. H8, 149.
INUU-MAl-AYSIA: SUMATUA. 2(5
colonial produce', which amounted to two-thirds of the iucome enumerated. The exports
of Java were, in ISll, i.[\ ,i)'J7 ,7'M, exulusivo of si)eeic ; and the imports, 17,52'.I,0S:J,
which may be taken as a fair avera;fe. The trade is almost entirely with the Netherlands.
'I'he commerce is carried on in hdialf of tiie country through the Netherlands Trading
Company, which advanced the nioiiey to start the "culture system," its dividend prior to
that fresh departure having been paid out of the king's private pui-sc. There are now a
numln-r of railways in the island, and altogether, the j)rosperity of Java is such that
any I'car of a rising of the mild natives may be put aside, often as such a revolt has been
prophesied both in Holland and India — though it ought to be added mainly by those who
had never seen the country or the people. There are a number of towns in the island,
but the chief of them, and the capital, is Batavia, which had, in 1S75, !)9,10!) inhabitants.
It does not differ greatly from the other Dutch Kast Indian towns. The business part
of the city is near the harbour, but the chief hotels, and the residences of the officials
and luiropean merchants, are in a suburb two miles oil, but so laid out as to cover an
extent of ground very inconvenient to those who have to walk over the coarse pebbles, or
who, still more unfortunate, have to hire at a high rate carriages to convey them over tin-
ground. For in IJatavia, as in the tropics generally, everybody drives. Buitzenborg, forty
miles inland, and about 1,U0U feet above the sea, is celebrated for its line climate
and beautiful botanic gardens, backed by the great volcano of Gunung-Salak, silent since
109'.), when it vented viit volumes of mud. Java would, however, require — as it has obtained
—volumes to describe it even in outline. It is undoubtedly the finest of those islands
which a Dutch author has styled "a girdle of emeralds strung along the equator."
Foreigners visit it only to leave it with regret, and " iio/re Java bien-ainw" has always a
good wonl from its visitors. "Swiss mountaineers are at one with the Lowlanders of
Holland ufKin this subject, and even islanders from Britain can hardly express dissent."
Sl.MATUA.
Sumatra, though the second largest of the Sundas— the group to which it and Java
belong — is of intinitely less imiwrtance than the island which we have described. From
north-west to south-oast it is about 1,070 miles long, and averages 180 miles in breadth. Its
area is altogether 130,000 square miles, and its population between 5,000,000 and 7,000,000.
The interior is travei-sed b}- a range of mountains which approach nearer to the west than
to the east side. Hence the principal part of the open land on the island is on the east
coast. Here extend great level tracts, watered by several rivers which flow from the
background of mountains to the sea. The mountains culminate in Indrapuni, 12,1-10 feet
high, and form not only a backbone to the island, but also a barrier between the healthy
and unhealthy districts. The former arc on the east ; the latter on the west coast,
the extensive swamps in this part of the country rendering the climate there exceedingly
baneful, though, as a rule, Sumatra is neither very hot nor very pestilent. The fertile
soil yields all kinds of tropical products, but the staple is black pepper, of which
immense quantities are exported annually. The elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, a black bear,
deer, a wild boar, and several species of monkey, the chief of which is the orang-utan.
27{)
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
frequent the woods ; and among birds may be mentioned the Argus pheasant, and numerous
jmrrots and liornbills ; while in the swampy rivers crocodiles are numerous, and boa-cou-
strictors infest the low grounds. The chief town is Palembang, UK) miles uj) the river of
the same name. At the place where the city is built, the river is as wide as the Thames
at Greenwich, and for three or four miles along its curve the houses are built. But a
great many of the houses are erected on piles projecting into the stream, and within these
again are moored bamboo raits on which still humbler superstructures are reared. Most of
these river-front houses are occupied by shops, so that marketing in Palembang is easily
and expeditiously accomplished from a boat. A true Malay loves, above all things, to
travel by water, and to build a house on piles, if by any possibility this can be done.
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A lOKKST VIEW I.S' JAV.\.
Accordingly., in Palembang, in addition to Chinese and Arabs, who are the chief traders,
and a handful of Dutch civil and military officials, nearly all the population belong to the
amphibious race. A Sumatran Malay village is very picturesque. The houses are strewn
within an enclosing fence, without any regard to regularity, and plentifully shaded bj' tall
cocoa-nut trees. The dwellings themselves are raised on posts, and are usually built of
bamboo or of carved planks, with high-pitched roofs and overhanging eaves. Living is
very simple in these out-of-the-way places. The natives are not poor, for their wives and
children are laden with silver armlets from wrist to elbow, and carry round their necks, or
suspended from their cars, enough of silver coins to put a family into affluent circum-
stances ; yet a pot of rice boiled dry, and eaten with salt or red popper, forms their daily
food throughout the greater jiart of the year. They do not seem to care for anything better.
For though fowls could be reared in any quantities few are seen about the villages, and the
fruits grown are usually some poor bananas. The Malays are very fond of animals. Hence
IMJO-JIALAVSIA : SUMATRA.
277
A HA6KET MEKCIIANT OF IIATAVIA.
tame squirrels — not kept in cages, but eucoumged (o form colonics in the trees in the vicinity
of the villages — are common, ami monkeys may be commonly seen gambolling in the trees
27S THE COUXTUIES OF THE WOKLD.
overliaii'^ing the houses in the less f'rc(iuenteJ loailities. The oniny-utuu was first discovered
in Sumatra, but it is Httle known to the inhabitants, and therefore cannot be common in
the frequented districts ; it is probably confined to the north-west. The ilying lemur
{(j\i/fi>j}///nvits) is, however, common, and, like the cimciis (p. 23-2) of the ^Moluccas, lives
principally on leaves. It is not the zoology, but, next to the vegetation, the mineral
products of Sumatra, which constitute its riches. Gold and tin are mined, and iron, copper,
sulphur, saltpetre, and arsenic are also found. The natives manufacture coarse cotton stuffs
and silks, and also do a little in the way of filagree plaiting, net, and basket making, and
for"-ing of weapons. In addition to black pepper, there are also exported rice, maize,
cocoa-nuts, sago, sugar, cotton, tobacco, cami>hor, coral, and other products. The greater
part of the island acknowledges the supremacy of the Dutch, but several native
sovereignties still stubbornly hold their own. Among these is Atchcen, against which, for
the last five or six years, the Dutch have persistently fought, without, however, having
until very recently made much impression on the Ateheenese and their determined
Sultan. The Hollanders established themselves first in Sumatra in 1590, but in spite
of the uuhealthiness of the west coast, two of their chief settlements— Boncoolen and
I'endau"- — are situated on that shore. Off the east coast lie a chain of islands, the
chief of which are Pulo Si Maloe, Pulo Nias, the Mautawi Isles, and Engano; while,,
off the south-western end, Banca and Biliton are of considerable size.
The Straits Settlements.
Separating Sumatra from the Malay peninsula is the Strait of Malacca. The peninsula
itself is a long, club-like stretch of land, inhaliited chiefly by Malays, and to a great extent
governed by native rajahs, some of whom owe a quasi allegiance to England, but most of
them, when not independent, are claimed Ijy the King of Siam as his suffragans. The English
have, however, long had a footing here, and under the name of the Straits Settlements
possess four colonies, or semi-colonies, in this quarter. The chief of these is Singapore,
consisting of an island situated at the end of the peninsula, and separated from the
mainland by a strait about three-quarters of a mile broad. The length of the island is
only about 27 miles, and its breadth If; though within the area of i'Zi square mile*
is a population of 99,500. The surface of the island is hilly^, but none of these hills — of
which there are a multitude — is over 500 feet in height, and the summits of many of
them, notwithstanding the labours of the Chinese wood-cutters, are covered with dense
forests, through which an inconvenient multitude of tigers roam, in spite of the pitfalls
dug for their reception.
In addition to the chief island, there are a number of smaller ones belonging to the
colony, but the town of Singapore (p. 281-) not only forms the capital of the colony
of the same name, but the seat of government for the whole of the four settlements
in the Straits. It is to a visitor a most interesting place, as its 56,000 inhabitants
comprise specimens of almost every maritime nation of Asia, eager to pick up some of the
trade whicli has centred here since the English took possession of it in 1S19. The
Government officials, the garrison, and the principal merchants, are English; the fishermen
IM>ii..MA|,AVASI.\ : lllK STUAITS SKTTI.KMKNTS. 279
jiiul tlic bulk of llio piiimlatioii are Miiliiys, who are also the i)olifeincii of lliu town ; ami
(lie little sliopkeepers ur iiierehaiits, as well as tlie clerks, are Portuguese. The Klirigs
of Western India, and the Arabs also, try their hand at small huxtering; the grooms and
washermen are Bengalees; and IVom India is also sent the small but highly resj)eeted
contingent of Parsecs, who, as usual, are merclianls and bankers. Through the sultry
streets ride and walk this motley tlirong, each man with characteristic individuality wearing
the costume of liis own nation, mingled with Javanese sailors and servants, traders from
Celebes, Bali, and the other Malay Islands, sleepy-eyed Chinese — who here prosper as they
prosper scarcely anywhere else — and seamen from the various war-shi]ps in the harbour. Tiie
harbour itself is a study. Alongside of men-of-war from Europe and .Vnierica may be
found liundreds of Malay praus and Chinese junks — vessels all sizes, from the vessel of
several hundred tons' burden to the little tishing-boats and passenger sampans. The town
itself is well fitted to minister to the wants and religious feelings of this motley population,
for amid h:indsome buildings in the Western fashion can be found " Moliammcd;in mosipies,
Hindoo temi)les, Chinese poor-houses, good EuT'ijicau houses, massive warehouses, queer old
Kling and Chinese bazaars, and long suburbs of Chinese and Malay cottages." In the
bazaars small articles can lie bought as cheap or cheajwr than in Europe; and, while not
incajjablc of talking a great deal less than he first asked, the Kling, or Chinese shopkeei)er,
is invariably good-natured, and if one can judge from the houses and equipages of the
latter, seem to prosper exceedingly. In the bazaar are tailors at a table, shoemaker.*, and
barbers busy at work shaving heads and cleaning ears. In the outskirts of the town are
scores of carpenters and blacksmiths. The first seem to devote their talents to the
construction of cofTnis, and decorated clothes-boxes ; the latter, to a great extent, to the
manufacture of flint-lock guns, with barrels bored out of a solid bar of iron. In the streets
are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup, and agar-agar — a jelly made out of sea-weed* —
whose cries are as unintelligible as those of London. Some of the shopless shopkeepers
carry a portable cooking apparatus on a pole, balanced by a table on the other hand.
SX the slightest indication of a liungry pedestrian wanting a meal, the table is planted
in a quiet corner, and a meal of rice, shell-lish, and vegetables — costing two or three half-
l)ence — is served. t Coolies and boatmen wanting to be hired are met everywhere, and so
low are wages that even the few European servants in the town have coolies to wait
upon them, the Tjondon coachman finding it necessary to his comfort and hea'th when he
drives out to have a Malay sit beside him with an umbrella, to shelter him from the
torrid sun. The city is rapidly progressing, more especially in its Eui'ojwan features, such as
docks, bridges, and good Government offices. Of late yeai-s, however, the number of Chinese
and Malay vessels in the harbour has decreased, steam driving from the sea many of the
smaller traders. For the same reason, the number of square-rigged sailing vessels visiting
Singapore is fewer than in former times. Commercial Square is the chief business centre
of the town, and is made iq) of buildings both old and new. Here are the ]>rincipal shops,
• Oracilaria liehcutiilen. For long it was 1)clicvc(l that the edible swallows' nest.'* (p. 2-'>8) wore comi>oscd
of a BpiM-ies of sea-wee<l. It i.s, however, now generally considered that their substance is a poeiiliar secretion
derived frf>ni the birds theniselves.
t \V:illnef : •• .M;il;iy Archipel.iio," pp. 20-2.'j
r>SO
THE COUNTKIES OV THK WC>RLU.
stores, bankin<r houses, and merebants' offices, aiul iu this cosinopohtau quarter Europoau and
Chinese pursue their business side by side. The old merchants, however, lament these days of
steam and telegraplis. In the era of sailing vessels they might hear about once in six months
from home. They had abundance of leisure, not a great deal of care, and a chance of much
iirofit. They lived aViove their offices, a small but happy community ; and a few successful
sliipments of produce from the Spice Islands often enabled the fortunate trader to retire
with a handsome fortune. Now grandeur has taken tlie i>lace of comfort, and such is the
continual communication by mail and telegraph, that even Sundaj- is not a day sacred
from work to the unhappy clerks and their employers, the exigencies of " the mail " too
often infringing on their once ample idleness. In addition to its older connections,
Singapore now does a considerable business with Australia. Hence, Australian horses are
A JAVAXESE I'AI.AXQUIX.
common in the island, though in beauty they cannot for a moment compare with the
symmetrically moulded Sumatran ponies, which compete with them in the market, and
may be seen any evening harnessed to " buggies," or ridden along the esplanade and Beach
Road, the favourite promenade and drive along the sea-shore. A carriage is almost an
essential of life in the tropics, and judging from the number every evening on the Braeli
Road, nearly every foreign resident of any consequence in Singapore shares that com-
fortable belief. The merchants in Singapore, indeed, live in an ostentatiously expensive
fashion. Their houses and carriages are the finest that they can afford, or — if all reports
are true — very much finer ; but as Europeans enjoy living in the island, and often make
it their home for the greater portion of their life, their desire to be comfortable is not to
be wondered at. Their houses are doubtless elegant, and Nature has supplied lavishly
what art has failed in effecting. ^lany of them are approached by lovely avenues of
fruit trees arching overhead, and around the mansion itself is the same profusion of
vegetation, almost concealing, until the visitor is close at hand, the red-tile roof which
INDO .MALAYSIA : THK STKAITS SETrLEMENTS.
2S1
forms the usual mark of a Europwiu dwelliiiy;. "If it be early moniiiifj," writes Mr.
Tiioinson, whose notes we are drawiii}; upon, " there is an unspeakable eliarm about the
s]«it. The air is cool, even bracing; and here, with the shade of a group of forest trees
wliicli the :iNc iiad purjwsely spared, we see the rich blossoms of orchids depending from
the boughs, and breaihe an atinosphen; saturated with the j)erfume which these strangely
beaut il'iil jilants dilVuse. Snngless birds twitter or croak among the foliage above, or else
beiieatli tile -ilinibs, wliieii the eonvnlviiliis has decked with a hundred variegated flowers.
Here and there the slender stem of the aloe, arising from an armoury of sjwtted leaves,
lifts its cone of white bells on high, or the deep orange i)ine-ai>[)Ie jx'eps out from a
green belt of lieshy foliage, and breathes its riix; fragrance around." * The chief drawljack
to life in Singapore is the intense heat, which to a European constitution is very trying,
JAVANKSE MUSICIANS.
and among other disorders causes the prickly heat, perhaps one of the minor tropical
diseases, but nevertheless a sufficiently troublesome one.
Pfiintip, Pulo-Penang,* or Prince of ^^'ales Island, about 13A miles long and 5-10 broad,
with an area of 107 square miles, is another settlement off the west coast of the Malay
Peninsula, at the northern entrance or extremity of the Strait. It is of older date than
SingaiMire, fur as early as 17SG it was ceded to the Government of India by the Rajah
of tiuwlah, a neighbouring Malay government, or rather by Captain Light, who married
the Rajah's daughter, and received the island as her dowry. In 1871, its population was
01,7'.I7. In ]iicturesqueness it surpasses Singapore. It is also healthier, and at the capital
(Georgetown^, on Strawberry Hill, 2,000 fc.et above the sea, has for long existed a sort of
sanitorium for the rest of the Straits Settlements. A belt of bright yellow sand runs,
fringed by cocoa-nuts, along the beach ; while behind rise up wooded hills, in which
• "The Straits of Mnlnooa, Indo-China, and China" (1875), p. 68.
t Thnl is, "Bctcl-nut Island."
156
2S2 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
nestle c-liarmiiif bungalows, undisturbed by any noise save the rustling' of the foliage,
the hum of insects, or the ripple of water falling over rocks into natural basins of granite
beneath. " The residents may bathe beneath canopies of palms and tree ferns : while so
balmv is the climate amid these hill dwellings, that the lightest costumes may be at all
times worn." Areca, cocoa-nuts, and a variety of fruit trees are cultivated on the lower
spurs of the Penang hills, while at the summit European flowers will grow. The alluvial
plain aroiuid the settleiiK'nt was, a few years ago, an impenetrable jungle, but is now-
described as "a perfect garden of cultivation," though, so rapid is the growth of vege-
tation, that continual care must be taken, otherwise the cleared soil would soon again
relapse into the jungle it was when Captain Light landed here ninety-three years ago.
The o-allant captain was, however, a gentleman fertile in resources. He found it necessary
to get enough of the forest cleared to lay the foundation of the town, and accordingly
hit upon the brilliant expedient of loading his guns with silver coins, and firing them
into the thick bush, so that the Malays might be tempted to make clearings in their
search after dollars. So, at least, runs the tale.* In Penang there is almost as great a
variety of races as in Singapore, but with this exception, that the Malays appear, at least
to the visitor landing for the first time, to be in the minority. Mr. Thomson describes
one or two sitting under trees selling various articles; but the busy workaday world
seems to be composed of Chinese and Klings. They constitute the class of gharry, or
cab-driver, and many of them are boatmen also. At Georgetown there is a Kling bazaar,
where all sorts of commodities may be bought, and at prices very little over what
they cost in the countries they are imported from. Here are also numbers of Chinese
traders — smart, roguish, and useful. So useful, indeed, are they, that the Europeans
could not do without them, yet they are troublesome members of society, and thi-ough
their guilds and secret societies often give great anxiety to the community.
Province Welledei/, on the mainland opposite Penang, under the jurisdiction of whos3
Lieutenant-Governor it is, consists of a strip about thirty-five miles, and with an average
breadth of eight miles, including ten miles of newly-acquired territory to the south of the
Krean River, and a large district called the Bindings. The Province was ceded by the Rajah
of Kedah in 1798. Compared with the neighbouring territory, it is in a state of high cultiva-
tion ; the climate is healthy, and well adapted for the cultivation of spices, sugar-cane, and
tapioca. In 1871, its population was 71,4-33, mostly engaged in agriculture and trade, though
a number of the Malays occupy themselves in fishing and killing turtle, which are
found in great abundance on some of the islands in the Strait. Most of the hard work
on the plantations is, however, done by Chinese labourers, or by Klings from the coast of
Coromandel. It is they who rear and prepare the rice, sugar, and tapioca, which are exported
in large quantities from this interesting jirovince. Sugar seems the product most generally
cultivated, and over the whole province extend the sugar plantations of the Europeans, chieHy
Scotsmen, generally bachelors, and invariably of a hospitable and somewhat jovial type.
Malacca is one of the oldest European settlements in the East, for, as early as
]j11, Alberquerque the Portuguese captured it. Up to 1041, when the Dutch drove
them out, his countrymen held possession of it. In 1795 the British seized it; in
* Cameron: "Our Troiiical Tossessions in MaLiyan India"' 1805.
INhn-MALAYsrA : (irKHAII, PKltAK, AND .lOIIOnE. 2S;5
1SI8 tlitn- ivstoroJ it to the Duteli, who held it until I'^.il, whop, tliu J^m.^I In ii;i
Company received it in oxc'han;^u i'or their settlement at Heneoulen, on the west e.msl
oi' Sumatra. It is situated on the western side of the Peninsula, between Sinjjaporc ami
Penang, ahout 1~0 miles from the I'ornier and 210 from the latter, and consi.sts of a
strip of territory about -1- miles in lenj^th and from S to 2IA in breadth. In lS71,
the population was 77,750, of whom .'>s,lMll) were Malays, and I'i.l.jO C'iiinese, the
latter embracing among them some of the wealthiest and most intelligent merchants,
(jutta-percha, gambler, india-rubber, pepper, horns, hides, canes, sugar, rice, sago, tapioca,
spices, dye-stuffsj coffee, tobacco, gums, tin, tea, &c., are exported. The eld town of
Malacca is one of the most ])icturesque in the East. The houses are crowded along
the banks of a small river, and occupied either as shops or as dwelling-houses by the
Chinese, and the descendants of the old Portuguese colonists. The English and the
richer Portuguese merchants have their villas in the suburbs, but it is round the sleepy
old town, with its massive Government House and the ruins of a cathedral, that the
interest of the visitor chielly circles. At one time it was almost as important a centre
for trade as Sing-.ipore is now, but its glory has long ago departed, and its commerce
is now confinal to a few petty products of the forest, and to the fruit which the trees
planted by the Portuguese yield.
Of the native sovereignties of the ^lalay Peninsula little need be said in this place,
as most probably by-and-by wo shall have occasion to again come in contact with some
of these on our way from Siam.
Qiiftfii/i* or Kedah, is a partially- independent rajate under suzerainty to the King
of Siam, though anxious to put itself under British protection. The Rajah of I'cni/.-
(p. 280), and his all but independent suffragan, the Tunku-^Iantrie, or Headman of Lufoot are,
however, under our a;gis, in so far that we are bound to protect them in the event of
domestic disturbances. In Perak, Lamot, and the Rajate of Salangore, in additnn to iron,
gold, and saltix'tro there are very rich tin mines at present entirely in the hands of the
Chinese, though the metal itself is exjwrted through the agency of the Penang merchants.
The Rajah of Johore is the potentate with whom the Singapore people are best
accpiainted, as his territory lies on the mainland immediately opposite the town and island.
The old town of Johore was once of considerable importance, but it has most sadly
fallen into decay, physically and commercially, though still doing some trade in opium,
indigo, pepper, and the usual tropical products. Nutmeg and its covering (mace) used to
be great articles of export, but latterly, Mrs. Brassey tells us, the growth has failed, and
instead of groves there are now in Johore only solitary trees. The pepper ganlens are,
however, still prosperous; and camphor is prepared from wild forest trees to some extent.
The opium trade is a monopoly shared in Singapore between the English (iovcrnment
and the Rajah of Johore. The only other native St^ites which need be mentioned are the
nine Rajates adjoining Malacca, and known as the confederation of the '• Xigri Sinibilan."
• .'^hiTanl Osbom: -(iiKJah, or .stniy Ltavos from a .loumal in Mal.iy.in Water" (18.57); MiXair: "Snrong
and Kris' (1878); MoU: "The Oricnt-il Island " (1S69) ; IV.Vlmeida : Journal of The Royal Gtogvophical Sofitty,
1876, p. .3.37.
iSl
THE COUNTRIKS OF THE WORLD.
The Straits Settlements — under a Governor with Lieutenant-Governors at ^laUuca and
Penan"' — conijirises altoy:etlier about I,11U square miles, and a population nunihering ia
ls71 something like .:J10,0U0. But there can scarcely be a doubt that the area will,
in time, be increased. Indeed, of late years, the involuntary process of annexation has
\11.\V cu IHE UOADSTEAD, SINGAFOKE.
been going on, and since the Perak disturbances more rapidly than before. Singapore is
indeed fitted by its natural position to be the entrepot of the Eastern world of India,
Cochin-China, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, and the Eastern Archipelago, from Sumatra to
New Guinea and the Philippines. In themselves, the Straits Settlements are rich in
products, some of which wc have enumerated, and in process of time the yield could
be greatly inci-eased, in spite of the close proximity of the wealthy Dutch Islands, for
the restrictions which the culture system and the Dutch Port Regulations generally
impose upon commerce, will tend more and more to attract vessels to Singapore ia
preference to the rest of Malaysia.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Philippine Group of Islands.
Ix order to continue our jcnuiiey northward, we must retrace c]ur route alreadv voyaged
over. Crossing from Singapore to Sarawak, and thence along the eastern shores of Borneo,
via Labuan and the new ]\Iaharajato of Sabak, we approach the Philippine Islands, old, rich
THE I'lllMl-riXES: THE SULOO ISLANDS.
285
l)ut decay i 11 ".f, colonics of Simiii, ami which fjcoiji-aphiciilly may be considered outliers of
the ^lalay {jioup. But though Palawan, one of the Philippines proi)er, lies comparatively
close to Horneo, the connect in-j links between it and the islands we are about to pay a
short visit to are the Sulii Islands, which, however, in order not to confound them wilh
the Sula or XuUa <;roup alrcatly noticed, we may spell, as is fivquently done, Soloo.
The Soixjo Islands.
These Iieatilit'iil isles lie — in tlic .Mindoro or Soloo Sea — off the north-west coast of
Borneo, in the form of a rude chain connecting that island with the Philippines. No
more picturesque spots of land exist in all Australasia. Some of them are still under their
native rulers, but the beit have succumbed to the Spaniards from the Philippines, who for
three centuries have been their enemies, while in later years the English and the Duteli
have, not very successfully, attempted to gain a footing in those lovely isles. For instance,
at Bulaiubavijan there was once a British settlement attempted by the officials of the East
VIEW O.V THE l-EKAK lilVEIt, MALAY lE-MNSlLA.
India Company. At present the island seems all but uninhabited, save by cattle, deer, i>igs,
and, it is said, a species of rhinoceros. It is, however, admirably suitetl for a settlement,
which could command the Chinese seas, and is diversified by extensive open plains, and
by a few low eminences backed by some cleared hills. Baiiguey has live jK'aked hills.
'28G THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
with inhabitants and plenty of good water. Mold U'a/i looks fine from the sea, but on
landing-, the grass-covered hills are found to consist of soft crumbly sandstone, with tufts
of coarse herbage growing within interstices, the whole surrounded by a narmw circle of
jungle along the shingly beach. "Water is, however, plentiful, and the barrenness of the
country is relieved by the clumps of "wild jessamine" which grow here and there, and give
a delightful perfume to the air. Cayar/an Siihi is described by Mr. St. John as a "gem
in the ocean," and picturesque from every point of view. It has three peaks wooded, but
varied bv grassy glades, and numerous groves of cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit trees, which
partly reveal, partly conceal, scattered houses and villages. Round every house, indeed,
flourish cocoa-nuts and plantains, in addition to little vegetable gardens, while in the settled
part of the island are found occasional extensive tracks of long coarse grass, on which heixls
of bullocks feed. The island was once a dependence of Soloo, but it is now independent,
and was, when last heard of, governed by half-breed Arabs of the tyrannical Malay type.
The next island, easily distinguished from sea by its two peaks, is Suloo jn-oper, or Sugh,
as it is sometimes called. It is an extremely fertile country, not badly cultivated, and
the seat of the Sultan's government. From the sea the country looks peculiar. It is very
hilly, and some of the eminences rise to :i,UUO feet above the sea level, while others are low
and wooded to their very summit. Others, again, present alternate patches of rice cultivation,
pasture land, groves of cocoa-nuts, palms, gardens, and detached clumps of forest trees.
Bullocks, fowls, ducks, vegetables, and fruits can be easily obtained here, and in good
hands the island might become capable of great development, as a place for the production
of tropical crops. Tiilyan is a small island, with hills to the north and low land to the
south. Basilan has high hills and wooded lowlands. Tonquil and Baliguini were once
pirate haunts, while MiKjindanan is very hilly and wooded, except in the vicinity of the
Spanish settlement of Samboaugan, which for some distance has been cleared of trees.
The town itself presents no features markedly different from other tropical Spanish " cities "
with a jNIalay flavour. There are the usual long, low, dark fort and white-washed houses,
the inevitable cocoa-nut groves, the luxuriant forest on either side, and behind, seven
miles away, hills partly cleared and partly wooded. There are, however, good roads across
the plain, and a long series of well-cultivated rice-fields, interspersed with cocoa-nut groves,
" now swelling into extensive plantations, then a few round a detached cottage," and every
few steps a patch of bananas, with their great bunches of golden fruit, " the whole being
intersected with running streams, which refresh and fertilise the ground." The people are
mostly mixed Malays and Spaniards; almost the only pure-blooded residents are the chief
government officials. Society in the Soloo Islands is modelled on a sort of feudal system.
There are a great number of small nobles, who live in semi-independent state, surrounded
by their slaves and retainers. A visitor* describes the hunting parties which are some-
times given by the Sultan as extremely interesting. Several hundred horsemen assemble,
only to scatter across the plain, to surround likely spots, and when a pig breaks
covert the scene is most picturesque, the gail^'-attired equestrian galloping about in the
wildest excitement, the scarves and sarongs — a kind of short petticoat — flying in the
wnul, as they dash hither and thither at full speed, spear in hand, eager to give steel
• The Fiiht, September 28th, 1878.
Till:; l'aiUl'1'INE.S: THE SPAMSIl l.sLAXUti. 2S7
to the jp^me, the air meantime resoundinj:^ with yells and shrieks of the most frantie kind.
The Sultan is an hospitahle monareh, and his dinner serviee is (luito as remarkable as
himself. The i)lates eonsist of enormous oyster shells, with lar^e pearls imbedded in
tliein, the estimated value of each beinj^ over .ill). The "palace" is an airy, well-built
wooden house of a roomy deserijition, situated near the centre of the island, in the centre
of a pleasant grove of manjjoes, durians, and other fruit trees, and with pretty park-like
scenery around. The war between the Soloo people and the Spaniards has continue«.l to
ill' prosecuted languidly, with occasional outbureta of horrid cruelty, though with a residt
which in the end cannot be doubtful. The Soloo Islands are, indeed, charming spots.
There are no mountains worthy of the name, but hills, valleys, green plains, clumps
of forest, a fertile soil, a jjleasant climate, and a courteous people ; altogether they
are worthy of a better fate than seems likely to befall them at the hands of their
avaricious invaders, whose own rich I'hilippines have never been developed to a hundredth
])art of their capabilities. At one time they were simply a nest of pirates ; at this
day a turbulent aristocracy render good government a difficult matter : indeed, the
Sultan's rule is wretched in the extreme. The laws — Mr. St. .lohn described in 18(J:3 —
as little respected, and ancient customs are falling into disuse, particularly one resembling
a voluntary poor rate, which consisted in the people devoting live per cent, of their
yearly profits to the support of the poor. Tribute the Sultan can only collect from
the people in the immediate vicinity of his palace, and religion is sharing in the
general decay ; the mosques are little better than tumble-down Ijarns, and among a
people who drink wine freely, and do not even eschew pork, the Koran cannot be held
in great regard.
o'
Tin: SpAXisii Philippines.
Si.K hundred and fifty nautical miles south-east of Hong Kong lie the Philippines
proper, at present under the undisputed rule of Spain. But though owning the sway of
His Catholic ^lajesty there is little in common between the mother country and her East
Indian Colonies — commercial or political. Once on a time, so patriotic were the rhili]i|iiue
Spaniaixls, that when the mail arrived from Madrid the church bells were rung and Te
iteidiit sung in honour of a journey so stujxjndous, for until Portugal fell to Spain, the
route round Africa to the Philippines was not open to Spanish vessels. How long it took
to coniniunicate with Europe may be judged from the fact that in lGU-'3 two .\ugustinc
monks, though travelling on special business of the king, and taking the direct line through
Goa, Turkey, and Italy, occupied three yeare in traversing the distance between Manilla and
^ladrid. The islands were discovered l)y Magellan on the lOth of March, l.'»21 — St.
Lazarus' Day — hence the name which the great navigator applied to them. But this
designation never stuck, and for long the Spaniards calletl them the Western Islands —
Has del Poniente — and the Portuguese the Eastern Isles — Has del Orientc. Philip II.,
whose name the first coloniser of the group gave them, wished to call them New Castile,
but the courtiers were too much even for their monarch, and accordingly, to all time, the
grouj) of islands now to be noticed will bear the title of the Philippines. At that time
288 TllK COUNTRIES OF THK WOKLD.
the islands were iliviiled amony a number of petty chiefs, eitlier pagans or superficially
proselytes to Mohammedanism. But their political ties were loose, and they easily fjave
in allegiance to the conijuercrs, though some of them, the Mohammedan State of ]\lia-
danaos and the Soloo grou]), long stubbornly contested, and, with move or less success,
maintained their independence.
\Mien the clocks strike midnight in Madrid, it is only forty -one minutes nineteen seconds
past throe in the afternoon at Manilla. Accordingly, when Magellan, who discovered the
Piiilippines — and was killed on the islands — was following the sun in its ai>])arent daily path
around the world, every successive degree he compassed on his eastern course added four
minutes to the length of his day ; so that when he reached the Philippines the difference amounted
to several hours. This fact he did not, however, appear to be aware of, and Elcanu, the captain
of the only vessel of the squadron which returned, seemed equally unconscious that when he
returned to the longitude of his departure he was a day behind the port time. The error,
as Herr Jagor has remarked,* remained also unnoticed in the islands themselves, for up
to 184i it was still there the last day of the old year while the rest of the world was
celebrating the new one. This anomaly was, however, so striking, that with the ap-
proval of the Archbishop it was resolved for once to pass over New Year's Eve altogether.
About the same time the Portuguese in Macao effected a similar rectification in tlieir
time. However, having reached Macao on an easterly course, they had made a mistake
of a day the other way. In fact, navigators who do not wish to return to England
a day ahead of the calendar must, on coming — say from Australia — -make one daj' out
of two on passing the meridian of 180," and thus passing from east into west longitude.
This circumstance greatly troubled the early mariners when they became aware of it,
not so much from an astronomical jioint of view as from their religious horror of
having observed the wrong Saints' days, and eaten meat at seasons when they ought
to have fasted. But the anomaly is not yet ended, for among the South Sea Islands
the mode of reckoning time depends to this day on the accident of whether the navi-
gator who first introduced the Christian calendar reached these converts from the west
or the east. The effect of the change on the Philippines was, that after ISH they
were no longer in the distant west, as they had been up to that date considered, but
in the far east. But the error had another consequence. For, when in 1493 Pope
Alexander VI. divided the world between the Spaniards and Portuguese, the former claimed
the Philippines as being in the western hemisphere, and indeed, so imperfectly could the
line of longitude be drawn, owing to the rudeness of the wooden quadrants or astrolabes,
and the surveyor's ignorance of the variation of the compass, that the islands were
likely to have remained a subject of contention between the two Powers, had not they
settled the matter by a treaty, by which the Philippines, at that time of little value,
were ceded to Spain, and the Moluccas, to which Charles V. liiul also put in a claim,
were made over to Portugal for the sum of 350,000 ducats.
The Moluccas have long ago slipped from the decrepit, hands of Lusitania, but the
Philippines still remain fiefs of the once mighty empire which owned the greater part of
America, and many other colonies between the New World and the Old one. Excluding
• "Travels in tho Philippines" (English translation, 1875), pp. 1, 2.
THK PHILIPriNES: TlIK SPANISH ISLANDS.
iS9
the iudopendent isles, the Spanish Philii)iiincs arc said to be more than 1,^00 iu
number, with an area of 05,000 square miles, and u population of (),ltJ;3,(W^,* of
wliom 5,501,350 arc classed as nominally " Christians." Luzon in the north, and Min-
danao in the south, are the largest islands of the group, but belween these extremes
lie the Bissayas, under which name are included Samar, Mindoro, I'anay, Leyte,
Nen-ros, Cebu, Masbate, and a vast number of smaller i)atches, regarding which, not-
withstanding the long time the group has been occupied, very little is known with any
de'Tce of accuracy. South-west of the Hissayas is the long narrow island of Palawan,
which, though consisting mainly of a mountain-chain, is nevertheless well watered and
very fertile, the const-lying lands yielding rich crops of all tropical prwlucc, while the
forest alxmnds in ebony, logwood, gum, and other trees common in the neighbouring
Archipelago. North of Luzon are the small Batanee, or Bashee, and Babuyan islets, the
last-mentioned of which is unpeopled. A humid atmosphere and a warm climate combine
to give the Philippines a luxuriant vegetation. Blossoms and fruits may W seen
hanging on the trees at the same time, and notwithstanding a disregard for ages of
the agricultural axiom of the necessity for " rotation of crops," the fertile soil has not
yet been exhausted. All the troi)ical and sub-trojiical fruit-trees have been introduced
and prosper luxuriantly, but bananas, plantains, pineapples, sugar-cane, cotton, tobacco,
indigo, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, rice, wheat, maize, and the usual tropical crops, add to
the riches of these favoured islands; while the natural forest, which covers a great portion
of the country, abounds in ebonj-, ii-on-wood, sapan-wood, and other trees highly valued
• According to a ccnaua — actual and c«tunatc<l — made m 1878 (L'Econom'uU fran^au August 3rJ, 1S78).
157
200 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOULD.
by tlie cabinet maker, but which are as yet not exported to the extent they might be.
Iron and coal are plentiful, copper has been worked in Luzon, and gold-dust is used
as a circulating medium in Mindanao. Cinnabar (the ore of quicksilver), limestone, marble,
and vast deposits of native sulphur are also among the mineral riches of the Philippines,
The sulphur its islanders could dispense with, for its presence is due to the many
active volcanoes scattered throughout the islands. Two of these — Mayon in Luzon, and
Buhayan in Mindanao — often cause great desolation in the surrounding country, though
the highest mountain peak in the islands is not over 7,000 feet. Earthquakes are
frequent and destructive. In 1863 Manilla, the capital, was nearly destroyed by one
which caused several of the smaller islands to disappear, and a severe series of shocks in
1875 caused immense loss of life and property throughout the group. The larger
islands contain great lakes, and owing to the deep indentation of the coast-line inland
seas capable of accommodating the merchant navies of half the world. There are also
many navigable rivers, in addition to narrow river-like creeks, which penetrate the
land for long distances. Indeed, one of the characteristics of the Philippines is the fact
that from the mountains run numerous small streams which rapidly widen out into
estuaries, up which light draught vessels can sail to the foot of the mountains, there
to load their cargoes. Mai-shy gi-ounds are frequent, and in Mindanao especially there
are many lakes, which during the rainy season expand into sheets of water far ex-
ceeding the normal size of the original collection of water. Often, also, on the north
of Luzon, and west of Mindanao (p. 289), violent hurricanes are experienced, and during the
changes of the monsoon, storms of wind, rain, aad lightning prevail. There are, how-
ever, ordinarily, only two seasons in the Philippines — the wet and dry, though, owing
to the ruggediiess of the country, duo to its mountain ranges, there are numerous local
variations in the meteorological condition of the islands. For several months in the year
tlie heat is moderate, and the climate very pleasant even to Europeans, but after j\Iay
tlie temperature rises so rapidly that, except for a short period after the heavy tropical
showers, it becomes oppressive. In autumn it moderates, and by the time December
is reached, the Philippines again enjoy a compai*atively cool atmosphere. The sea around
the coast, as well as the creeks and lakes, abound with fish of numerous species ; but in the
whole Archipelago there is scarcely a wild beast to be found. A few wild eats haunt the
forests, in which also wander oxen, buffaloes, deer, squirrels, and a great variety of monkeys ;
and sheep, geats, and swine are found in abundance, both domesticated and in some parts
f)f the country cither wholly or altogether wild. Numerous reptiles, however, infest the
dam]) jungle, and in the rivers and lakes crocodiles abound. The insect life of these
jungles is also as exuberant as on any of the neighbouring islands. The birds are
numerous : the specimens in museums show that they are lovely, and report speaks
well of their melody. The sea-shore caverns are frequented by the swallow, whose edible
nests are eagerly sought for to sell to the rich Chinese epicures, and by immense flocks of
huge vampire-like bats. Buffaloes are used for tillage and draught ; and the horse,
originally introduced by the Spaniards, has now boeome a peculiar undersized beast, for
which the Philippines are noted. Fowls, especially ducks, tens of thousands of which
are hatched artificially, are plentiful. The principal exports are sugar, tobacco, cigars.
nil; riiii.ii'riNi:.s: tiik si'anisu isi.anhs. oyi
iiiilijjo, Muiiillu liL'ini>, culVce, rice, tlyc-wixuls, liides, H;..lil-ilu.st, buc-s'-wax, mutlier-<)l'-i.i.-arl
shells, coral, aiiibor, anil tortoisi'sli.-lj. The natives build canoes, ami even bhijm of eon-
siileiable size ; and are skilful at weaving silk, cotton, and heinp fabrics. The web,
however, for which the IMiilippines is the most celebrated, is the " piiia," a fine muslin-
like cloth, used for shawls and hand kerchiefs, the thread employed in which is <lerived
from the libre of the pineai)iple. Some of these " pinas " will sell for two ounces of yold,
anil a still finer fabric— the " piuilian "— is so costly that a shawl of it made for the
Uurrn of Spain cost 500 dollars. Anion;,' the other minor manufactures of the Philip-
puns may be mentioned silver and gold chains, and filagree work, horn utensils, fine
lulls, and ci,y:ar cases of various vegetable fibres, and mats of different colouis,
.unaniented witli siivir and gold ornaments. Spanish policy being in commercial matters
the worse policy possible, Sual, Iloilo, Cebu, and Manilla are the only iwrts oj)cn to
foreign vessels, and deferential duties still exist. Hence, foreign vessels trade comparativclv
little with the Philippines, in the way of bringing goods to them, though the chief
■ xports from the islands are to Great Britain and America. The seat of Government is
:it Manilla, but acting- lieutenant-governors also reside at Zamboanga, in Mindanao, and
Iloilo, in Panay, and minor oliicials in the dilTerent provinces and prefectures. "The Hay
of .Manilla is large enough to allow the united navies of Europe to ride at anchor,
and it has the reputation of being one of the finest in the world." Ilerr Jagor, how-
ever, from whom I iiuote these words, considers that if the traveller arrives on the
coast, near the capital, during the dry season, he will be apt to think that the country
falls short of the vivid description which he has read. The circular bay, 120 miles in
< ireumference, the waters of which wash the shores of four provinceSj is backed by
a monotonously flat table-land. The scanty vcgctalion in the foreground is, during
il\(' rainless season, dried up; while the dull uniformity of the landscape is only
liiokiu liy the IjIiic hills of San Mateo. Hut during the wet .season the numerous
liankless canals soon overflow, and change the country into a shallow lake, which is,
however, soon after to be one verdant rice-field. The town of Manilla (p. 293) is built
on both sides of the river Pasig, and looks, with its crumbling wall, ramparts, and towers,
the mediaeval city wiiich in reality it is. The streets are, however, though often ruinou.--,
owing to the frequent earthquakes, and though sleepy enough, are, many of them, for the
most part airy, fine, and in the business districts brisker than usually obtains
in these somnolent, dead, or decaying Spanish towns within the tropics. Biuoudo
is j)roj)erlv the commercial capital, and here the greater number of the merchants reside.
Here are also the cigar factories, which give e'mployment to many thousands of men
and women, and tobacco being a strict Government monopoly constitutes an important jMirtion
not only of the trade, but of the Government of Manilla. The noise which greets the
ear on entering one of these cigar factories is deafening. Hundreds of women are
seated on the floor, each armed with a small wooden mallet, which is employed t<>
hammer the leaves of tobacco, placed on wooden blocks, in order to jxilish them for the
outside of tlie cigars. In another room, !Mr. Spry describes them being rolled into the
])roper shape, finishetl off, and iirepared for the market. So imjwrtant is this trade,
that it is superintended by the military administration; and during the season great
292 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
care has to be exercised to prevent the employes pilfering- the best leaves of the crop
for their own use. The tobacco monopoly is one of the worst abuses under which the
Philippines groan. The Government, in order to nurture this source of revenue, without
any regard to justice or the welfare of the people, appropriate from the peasantry any
fields which they may think fitted for the growth of the plant, and then force the
wretched population to raise, on this virtually confiscated ground, a crop which is no-
toriously exhausting to the soil and troublesome to the farmer. For the tobacco itself
the smallest price possible is paid. Indeed, when they do pay, the oHicials fix their own
arbitrary value on it, and at best allow the much-wronged peasant to remain, often
for years, out of his money. By-and-by, the fields under this vicious system of
culture refuse to yield the old return. The peasant then receives them back again
— only to find that they are useless to him — and the unscrupulous officials set to work
to find other ground suitable for the culture of this staple of the Philippines. Yet the
profits of this trade are not nearly so great as might be imagined, or as they might be
under a system less vicious. Spanish Government accounts are documents issued so
irregularly, and when published so notoriously "cooked," that it would not do to place
implicit confidence in the returns before us. Yet, from what I can learn from various
sources, official and otherwise, the net returns from the tobacco monopoly cannot at the
present time be much over a quarter of a million pounds sterling, though the demand
for " Manillas " is much greater than the Government can meet.
Manilla has over 200,000 inhabitants, but of these only a small proportion are
Spaniards, the great bulk being Indians, half-castes, Chinese, and Creoles of more or less
pure Castilian blood. Between commercial Binondo and official Manilla there is very little
intercourse. They are situated (p. &9;3) on opposite banks of the River Pasig, but the
inhabitants of the two quarters of the cities rarely cross the bridges which span the stream
dividing them. In the city proper, " pride, envy, place hunting, and caste hatred "
are, according to Herr Jagor, the order of the day. The Castilian of Old Spain, as every-
where in the colonies (Vol. II., p. 243), considers himself a being superior to the Creole,
or native Spaniard, who, on the other hand, taunts him with the reproach of only coming
to the Philippines to fill his pockets at the cost of better men than himself. The half-
caste, again, cordially hate all whites without distinction ; while the Chinese, who swarm
in these islands, are content to let the world wag as it may so long as they are allowed
to amass money in their own sure plodding fashion. This of late they have been allowed
to do, but in former times they were persecuted in every possible way by the bigoted
exclusive Spaniards, and were even massacred at the bidding of the jn-iests, in whose eyes
these irreclaimable " heathens " were an abomination, and by the Government, who dreaded
tiieir industry, and the strong bond of union which existed among them. In 1603,
as man^- as 23,000 Chinese were massacred; but yet, in 1630, the number of these Asiatic
ants had increased to 40,000, when they revolted, and were reduced to 7,000. In 1709
most of them were expelled, but again they crept in, and in 1757 a second clearance of
them was made liy a mandate of banishment for the Celestials. Repeated edicts to the
same effect were issued, but in 1762 they had increased to such numbers that it was
necessary for his Catholic Majesty to issue a command "that all the Chinese in the
Tin; riiii.iri'iNios: tiik si'anisii islands.
J93
Pliilippine Islands slioiiKl he hanj,a'il/' wliicli onlcr, wc are tolil, was " very generallv
caiiiL-d dut." In 1 S I '.) Hiey woie accused of ixjisouing tl>e wells, and "thus brinf,'inp in
the cholera," when aj,'ain, witli (lie greater number of the Europeans in Manilla, they fell
victims to the ijjnorant frenzy of the populace. Nothing, however, avails against the
eaijerness of the Chinese to Hock to the islands, and now the ofReials attenii)t to mitigate
their ardour by means of heavy and oppressive taxes levied on them ; and, in order to
allow the Government odicials the more easily to levy these taxes, the unfortunate Mongols
arc comiK'lled to kocp their Ixioks in S]>aiiisli. Needless to say, out of this struggle the
tr MVMII.A, I I /UN. lllIMfl'INi; ISLANDS.
adroit Chinaman comes victorious, and would prosper were he taxed and oppressetl a
hundred times more than lie is. As farmers, traders, shopkeepers — in every opening which
they can find — tiie nimble, hard-working, quick-witted, unaggressive " Sangleys " make a
comfortable livelihood, lay by a little money, and in many cases grow wealthy. As
junk-men, artisans, gaixleners, and fishermen, they also hold their own, and are likely
in time, if they are left alone, to form important communities, which may displace the
]ircsent sickly, reactionary, anachronistic Government, which vegetates in the country only
to the country's ruin. It is now, as it was in the days of Murillo Velarde, two hundred
years ago : — " The Spaniards who settle here look upon these islands as a tavern rather
than a permanent home. If they marry, it is by the merest chance. Where can a family
be found that has been settled here for several generations ? The father amasses wealth,
iai THE COUNTIUKS OF THE WORLD.
the sou spends il, the g-randsou is a bey^ui-. The largest capitals arc not more stable
than the waves of the ocean, across the crests of which they were gathered." This is —
and ever has been — the case in all the Spanish colonies, for the policy of the Madrid
authorities has always been to sow discord between the different races in the distant
dependencies of the empire, hoping thereby to avoid the dangers to the mother country's
sway which it is imagined their union might provoke.
In Binondo, the foreigners are not very social amongst themselves, while the Spaniards
stand aloof from thorn, looking upon the strangers as mere intruders, whose profits are
simply robberies of their gains. Living is exceedingly costly, and domestic comforts small
in proportion to the expense which they entail. There are few amusements. There is a
theatre, at which Spanish and occasionally Tagalose plays (translations) are acted.
There are uo clubs, no public library, and few books of any sort. The newspapers
are feeble to attenuation, and though of late there has been a little more liberty of
the press, the items of intelligence which formerly came fortnightly from liong Kong
were so sifted by priestly censors, that little beyond the chronicles of the Spanish
and French courts were vouchsafed to the Manillans. Though nobody of any consequence
walks in Manilla, and light carriages are abundant, a visitor remarks with surprise the
few people he meets riding or driving in the suburbs. The fashionable people have no
taste for outdoor life. The beauties of Nature are nothing to them ; their only object in
driving in the evening along the dusty streets to a scanty promenade on the beach is to
solemnly walk up and down listening to a band of music, and to display their toilets. There
is a " botanic garden," but it is only so in name, the plants being scarcely existent, and
few people ever take the trouble to visit it. In brief — pompous religious festivals, cock-
fighting, and gambling form the few and not incongruous amusements of Manilla.
Mindanao is a high island, but the village of Zamboanga, or Samboangan, though
picturesque enough from the sea, is rather insignificant when it is examined a little more
closely. There is, of course, a plaza, a convent, and a great barn-looking church, with
tawdry ornamentation; pretentious but not over clean houses, and many brown people clad
in a light costume, of which the embroidered " pina " shirt strikes the eye as being the
most remarkable. The trade is little, and the sho2)keepers are chiefly Chinese. Mindanao
is a remarkably rich island, on which some years ago England had a claim. But the claim
was not enforced, and accordingly for ages to come, it may be, it will lie like the rest of
the Philippines with its fine soil uncultivated, and its riches undeveloped, and running to
waste.
Iloilo, in Panay, is a still more unpromising place. A dilapidated fort, a number of
jMalay houses reared on piles, a few trading establishments and civilised residences built on
swampy ground, does not prepossess the stranger in its favour, while the prevalence of
fever is apt, spite of fervent protestations to the contrary, to confirm his belief in the
xmhealthiness of this town, which may be said to owe its existence, as a place for the
shipment of sugar, hemp, &c., to Nicholas Loney, an English surgeon, who first saw its
capabilities, and subsequently profited by his prescience. There are a number of other
less important places, but the traveller who has seen one of these colonial towns really
requires to see no more ; they bear such a family likeness to each other that, with the
TlIK ISLAND (IK FORMOSA. -".lo
cIianLjc of tlio siirroundiii}^ scenery, any one niij,'-lit kH for the jmiiniit of any oilier.
Ccbii, on (lie rieli island of the sanie name, is, lor example, an active business plate of
about •!.'), (KID iiiliabitants, who export hemp, siigjir, tobacco, cotton, and fair coal found in
the vicinity. ]5ut as the natives will not work, the labour question is here, as elsewiiere,
a burninn^ one. At one time ("aini;ruiii, on Camiguin Island, was a town of 10,000
inhabitants, but a volcano which has been active since 1S71 has gnidually encroached on
tin; place, until it is now entirely deserted, and on this island, onco one of the (incst of
the group, only a few inhabit;in1:s remain.
Yet, notwithstandinf^ the characteristic Spanish haired of foreigners, in this Siinnish
colony few Spaniards reside, the chief mercantile houses being Knglish and American.
Among the native population, liic half-castes, or "Mestizos" — particularly those born of
Chinese and Tagal parents — are the richest and most enterprising, but knowing the
aboriginal population better than any one else, they use them most unscrni)ulously to
serve their own ends. Of the aborigines, the Tiigals and IJisayas are the most numerous.
The}' are mostly Roman Catholics, but a considerable number are Jlohammedans. The
"Alfooras," who live in the mountain regions, are probably the aborigines who were
driven back when the Malays first settled on the coast. They are mostly idolaters in a low
stage of civilisation. The Tagals and Bisayas live on rice, sweet potatoes (Cumoli), fish,
flesh, and fruit; are very temperate, gentle and hospitable, though fond of cock-fighting
— like all the Malays — and of dancing, like most semi-civilised people.
The Philippines arc not only rich in themselves, but from their position, even were
they poor in natural wealth, ought to be capable of attracting a great portion of the
commerce of the East. The commerce with China, which was at one time great, has now to
a great extent departed, but they ought still to carry on traffic with the western shores
of America, as they used to do when Acapulco — that city of the past — was their
great entrejiot ; and they might fairly compete with the Dutch East Indies, and the
Straits Settlements, for some of the tratle of the Australasian colonics.
FonJtosA.
Sailing northward from the Philippines past — among othere — the Bashee, or Balance
I.slcs, discovered by Dani]>ier in 1087, and on which the Spaniards have an outlying
dependency foundetl as far back as 1783, we reached Formosa, or Taiwan, a large island
belonging to the Chinese Empire, included in the viceroyalty of Fokien and Chekian.
The central mountains can, on a clear day, be distinctly discerned from the opposite coast of
China, eighty or ninety miles distant. But from whatever reason, it was not tmtil 1130
that a eunuch of the Court of Emperor Sucn-te visited it, and a.s he is the first of
civilised men who is known to have set foot on the island, to him may be ascribwl the
honour of the discovery of Formosa. It was not, however, for more than one hundre<l
years afterwards that a colony was established in the island ; and still later — in
lfi~n — the Japanese formed a settlement on it, which step was soon ffdiowed by the
Dutch. The Japanese, however, soon left the island, but the Dutch remained, and
built forts which stand to this day, though one of them, which was erected on an island
296
THE COUNTKIES OF THE WORLD.
iu tho river, has by the rising of the coast become fixed in the heart of tlie straggling
city of Taiwanfoo. ]\reantime, the river lias dwindled away, and the island has become
connected with the banks. AMiile the struggles between the Chinese and the Tartars were
hot on the mainland, the Dutch spread their settlements over different ])arts of the island,
and took possession of the Pescadores, a small group lying between Formosa and the
mainland, not without having now and tlien to run rivalry with the Spanish priests, who
endeavoured to establish themselves also on the coveted spot. In T061, a Chinese merchant,
t
o
158
29S THE COUXTKIES OF THE WOULD.
privateer, or pirate — lie was, iudeeil, all three combined — named Koksinga, drove out the
Hollanders, and became King of Formosa; but in the reign of his g-randson the Emperor
of China recovered the sovereignty, and as a prefecture of the Yiceroyalty of Fokieu it
remains to this day. The island is about 1:20 miles long, and from 20 to 80 miles in
breadth, and its area is about equal to the half of Ireland. The names it obtained
from the Portuguese and Spaniards — Isla Formosa and Isla Hermosa— express their appre-
ciation of the " beautiful island." "When the Uutcli had possession of the country, it was
divided among a number of !Malay tribes, speaking different dialects, and each ruled by its
own chief. But in time the Chinese emigrants from Amo}-, Chinchew, and Swatow, with
a small number of Cantonese, possessed themselves of nearly the entire western side up to
the foot of the range of mountains which runs througli the whole length of tlie island,
dividing it nearly in halves. The Chinese territory also extends around the northern end,
and on the east side down to Sawo. The rest of the island is still enjoyed by the savages,
but the east coast is so steep and precipitous, and possessed of so few harbours, that the Celes-
tials have made no efforts to dispossess them, though a few fishermen live among them, and
make a quiet livelihood, as the savages are too proud to stoop from the chase to such
menial, work as pulling boats. Accordinglv, most of them live in the rugged country in
the interior. But they have dwindled away of late years before the advance of the
industrious colonists, who clear the ground and extirpate the beasts of chase which form the
chief food and commerce of the aborigines (p. ^OU). No woman is allowed to become a mother
before thirty-six, and the system of head-taking which prevails among the Dj-aks* still
further contributes to the decrease of the wild tribes. Between the civilised portion of the
island and the aboriginal territory there exists a strip of neutral ground, where the two races
meet to traffic, but which neither is allowed to cross. The Formosans somewhat resemble
the Tagals of the Philipj)ines, but the late Consul Swinhoe was of opinion that in the
interior there exist a tribe of Negritos who, like the "Alfooras" of so many of the Malay
Islands, had been driven into the wilds when the Malay tribes took possession of the
coast. t There are, however, several tribes of the latter people; and, in addition to Chinese
mongrels, a number of the descendants of the Dutch settlers and Chinese mothers, but
who have long ago lost almost any resemblance to their forefathers. The interior
is for the most jiart rugged. Mount Morrison (p. 297) reaching a height of 12,850 feet,
and there are said to be other peaks which attain an almost equal elevation. One-third of
the island — comprising the greater part of the western side — is level, but the rest consists of
mountainous or undulating country, covered with dense forests, which contain considerable
riches in the shape of gums, timbers, and other arboreal products. The Pacific gulf stream
— called by the Japanese Kni-o-slwo — flows up the east coast, and to it Formosa is indebted
for the six months' almost incessant rain which prevails during the winter. The warm
vapours saturate the north-east monsoon, and induce incessant precipitation over the island,
and for twelve miles seaward. The temperature is high but equable. In the summer it
rarely rises alx)ve 100", and iu the winter seldom falls below 10^. In the autumn after-
noons there is usually great sultriness, accompanied by loud claps of thunder and much
• "Rices of Jliinkind," Vol. 11., p. 113; Bechtinger : " Hot eilaiul Formosa " (1871).
t Swinhoe : " Notes on the Ethnology of Formosa " (1863) ; Gueriu and Bernard : Bull, ilc la Soc. cle Geog. (18G8).
THK ISLAND or FOnMOSA. 2l!9
lightning, as tlie masses of storm-clouds rull noi-lliwunl along' the mountain chain. The
coast is very stormy, being often visited by tyi>hi)ons and heavy gules ; but, on the whole,
tiie country is heulthy, and likely in time to have a much greater population than it
at ])rcsent possesses, namely, aliout Ji, 000, 000 Chinese, and a few thousand aborigines.
(Between Kelung and Tamsui there are the great coal and sulphur mines, for which the
island is celebrated, and there are several volcanoes occasionally active to a moderate extent.
The island, though divided in two by the tropical line, is not entirely tropical as to
its vegi'tatimi. There are, for instance, no cocoa-nuts, and no parrots, but there are arcca
])alms, rattans, sugar-cane, tea, rice, bamboos, bananas, peaches, mangoes, &c., and the
forests of camphor trees in the interior supply Formosa with its most lucrative article
of commerce. In the hills also abound the Aral'ui papi/rij'era, the thin slices of the
pith of which constitute the famous rice paper of the Chinese. Barley and wheat are
grown during tiie winter months ; the flour produced from the latter is more highly
valued, on account of its whiteness, than that produced from grain grown in the south
of China. There arc also petroleuni wells, but for the present these sources of wealth
attract little attention. The imports of Formosa are chielly Chinese goods from the
ports of Xingpo, Foochow, Chinchew, and Amoy, or foreign goods, for which of late,
there has been considerable demand, received directly or through the same channels.
Opium is, however, the great article in demand, nearly all of the Chinese being
smokei-s of the drug, and many of the aborigines have also learned to use it,
though it is not often they can obtain more than the refuse of the pipe abandoned by
the Sinetic smoker. Missionaries from England and Canada have settled in the island ;
and though it is doubtful whether the Chinese will continue masters of it — the Japanese
having shown some suspicious signs of a desire to annex it — it cannot be doubted that
in the hands of some enterprising power great days await the " Fair Island." Its
zoology is very interesting. Among the mammals are a peculiar monkey, the sun bear,
the Formosan leopard, the Formosan wild cat, and a number of others, some nf which
are peculiar to the island, and others common to it and the mainland. There are
numbers of reptiles, tortoises, turtles, lizards, and snakes. One of the latter — Bioigann
temi/ascialus — also common at Amoy, in China, frequently lurks in cellare and under
houses, where it feeds on rats : its bite is very deadly. Among the binls, Swinhoe's
pheasant [Enplocamus Stciii/ioii) is perhaps the most beautiful and remarkable.* We may
add, in concluding this brief outline, that of late British trade with Formosa has
greatly increased, and with the establishment of British consuls on the island, the
ancient habit of the natives murdering and eating shipwrecked seamen, as well as the
inveterate wrecking propensities of the Chinese themselves, has dimini.sheil, or altogether
disappearcHl. Taiwan-foo, the capital, a city of less than 100,000 inhabitants, is situated on a
• Swinhon : Journal of Ihe Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXXI V., p. 6 ; I'rocadingt of the Royal Ocoyraphical
Sociflij, 1SG6; "Iliis," April, 1863; J'roeeedingi of the Zooloijical Society of London, DctcmlKr .ith, 1802; Anuali
and Magazine of Xatiiral History, Scptembor, 1803; Thomson: "SfmiU of Malacia," p. 300; hax: The " Eastern
Seas," (1875) p. 56; Mayors: "Treaty Ports of China," (1874); BicmntEki : "Zt«chr. fur AUgcm. Erdk.," 1857,
18.i9; Bridge: fortnightly Rerieir, 1870; Alien: Proccedingi of the Royal Geographical Society, 1877; Bullock:
Tbid, 1877; St. Martin: Bull, de la See. dc Geog., 1868; " Encyelopoedia Britannicn," 9th Ed. (1879); "ThoChincao
Rppositor)-," 1833-37, &c.
200
TUE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
small river about three miles from the coast. Its chief exports are sugar and rattan canes ; but
its harbour is unfitted for the reception of European vessels. Ta-Kau-Kan (p. 301) is another
treaty port, and the head-quarters of the customs staff for the west coast. Tamsui is the
head-quarters of the consular and customs establishment of the north of Formosa, and twelve
miles up the river is situated the city of Bauka, or Meng-Ka, the largest town in the north
of the island, containing 30,000 inhabitants. All the merchants interested in the exports
A NATIVE HVT IN FOU.MOSA.
of tea or camphor, or in tlie import of opium or piece goods, reside in Banka, though the
foreign traders' stronghold is at Tamsui, and they have found it necessary to establish a
subsidiary settlement about a mile from Banka, where they have their hongs — that is,
combined dwelling-house and offices — and godowns, or warehouses, in which tea and camphor
are stored, ready to be sent off in cargo boats, for shipment to Tamsui. Kelung is the
most northerly of the treaty or open ports. It is, however, small, but suitable for ship-
ping the bituminous steaming coal taken from the neighbouring pits.*
* Jlorri.son : Geoff rnpliicnl Miigazinc, October, November, and Dfconilior, 187". See also Gordon : Journal of the
Soyal Geographical Society, 1819 ; Consular Reports; and rickering : Metseiiger of Presbi/t. Church of England, 1878.
801
CIIAFrKU will.
The Japanese Empire: The Also Colnthy.
Formosa, though considered, in accordance with Chinese policy, an integral part of the
Celestial Kinj)ire, is in reality a mere colony of it, the aborigines of which ar.- a Malay
»-KAr-KAN, ON TIU: WFSTHHN COAST HP lOltMOSA.
race, who doubtless arc themselves only colonist conquerors of an older date. It has,
therefore, been considered more convenient to treat it as a separate island, and not
merely as one of the prefectures of the great country which we shall soon have
to visit. Rut even in Formosa we come upon traces of the Japane.^e, a race not so
numerous, but in many respects more enterprising, and, from a European point of view,
more interesting than even the Chinese, whose rivals they are likely, in time, to become.
We have already spoken of the old Japanese settlement in Formosa, but there are evi-
dences that long before the subjects of the Mikado and Tycoon formally sate themselves
g02 TIIE COUXTEIES OF THE WORLD.
down on the " Isla Formosa " adventurous or unfortunate wanderers of their naticu had
reached thus far south ; for the little island of Samasana, lying off the eastern shore of
this island, is peopled by a race of Japanese origin, allied to the Loochooans, but according
to ^Ir. Swinhoe more immediately to the natives of the nearer Madjicosima group. They
bavc no boats of awy kind, and subsist by cultivating sweet potatoes and rice, and feeding
pigs. They are described as timid, but mild and hospitable. The small island of Bold
Tobago, off the south-east side of Formosa, is again peopled by a mild race of Malays, of
whom little is known, save what Mr. Swinhoe has collected about them, namely, that
they have no boats or canoes, and depend upon the produce of the soil, which they
rudely cultivate, on fish for subsistence, and that they live in log-huts, and dress very
scantily. In 187i the Japanese again nearly planted a firm footing on Formosa.
Failing to obtain redress for the murder of some Loochoo fishermen, they landed a
considerable force on the island, but eventually withdrew on the payment of indemnity
by the Chinese. The Chinese thus escaped a war at the cost of some money, and a
little damage to that intangible entity called national honour. But the tame manner
in which the Pekin authorities acquiesced in the demands of Japan had another and
more serious consequence, for it was taken by the Japanese as a virtual acknowledgment of
their claims to the Loochoo Islands.
The Loochoos and other Outlying I.sl.\nds.
The Liu Kiu, or Loochoo Islands, extend between 20 and 30 degrees of latitude in a
north-eastern direction, from the northern end of Formosa to Japan. They comprise over
•"3110 little isles, and are divided into three large groups, called Shan-nan, Tshung-shan, and
Slian-pei,* which groups form the three provinces of the kingdom, and correspond to three
little monarchies which in early times existed in the islands. These three sovereignties
in 1430 merged into one. In l-l-ul they had their first intercourse with Japan, but
in 1600 they had a rupture with the ]\Iikado, and sent tribute to China instead. In the
end, after various changes and wars, the Loochoo king settled down to be a suffragan
of both empires : that is, he accepted his crown from Japan, but paid tribute to China
every two years and to Japan once every year. His people ■write in Chinese characters,
but their ordinary vernacular is closely allied to the Japanese spoken in the district of
Satsuma, a fief of which principality they anciently were, and their habits and dress
also resemble those of the latter people. When the junk conveying the tribute to China
arrived the vessel was dismantled, and the crew kept in confinement until the next year's
presents made their appearance, the suspicious Chinese being afraid that if they did not
retain hostages the Loochooans might fail to remember their allegiance. In 1681 the
tribute was settled as follows, and the list of articles give a fair idea of the riches of the
country: — 12,600 catties f of sulphur, 3,000 pearl shells, and 30,000 catties of copper.
However, in the spring of 1879 the Japanese peremptorily ordered the Loochooans to
abandon the Chinese calendar, to adopt the Japanese code of laws, and henceforward cease
paying tribute to China. The Loochooans naturally objected, and were backed up in
• Usuidly -n-ritton, Sannan, Cliinsan, and Sanbok. t A "catty"' is IJ lb. avoiriUipois.
Till'; JAl'ANESE EMl'IUK: TlIK LOOCHOO ISLANDS. ;i03
llieir representations In' tliu Chinese. IJiit their remonstrances had little effeel, Cor the
Jai)anese have formally annexed the islands, sent the kin^ as a State pensioner to Tokio,
and replaced him liy a Japanese governor and a stall' of Japanese ollieials. There the
matter rests, but it may possibly yet lead to war between the two empires. As for the
islands themselves, they are represented as earel'ully cultivated and well ordered, and
iuhabitwl by a peaceful people, engaged in mining, lishing, farming, and cattle rearing,
^fany years ago Captain Basil Hall gave a most attractive account of their hospitality
and courtesy, and though, doubtless, much of their politeness to him was inslig;ite<l by a
fear of reprisals had they displayed a contrary disposition, there can bo no doubt of the
opinion formed by him being substantially correct. Indeed, so sensible are the Looehooans
of their reputation for polish, that they style their islands " the country that observes
propriety."
The partitions in the houses are made in the form of sliding panels, which can be drawn
aside, and a whole floor thus turned into one large room when required. Every house has a,
Courtyard surrounded with a hedge of trained banyan-trees, and the roads about the capital —
called Seheudi — are bordered with fences of flowering evergreens. The soil, though not of the
fertility of some of the islands we have visited, supports good crops of sweet potatoes, maize,
millet, sugar-cane, tobacco, and rice. The finer country houses are placed in park-like enclosures,
and in the towns the better class ones are tiled; the poorer dwellings are thatched. Horses
a'ld bullocks of a small size are common, but the islands do little trade, Napa-kiang, to
which the junks come, being too small for foreign vessels. At this place there are many
Chinese; and i'rom the account given by Basil Hall and Bax, their latest visitors, it
would appear as if the Looehooans share with that people their unwillingness to hold
any intercourse with foreigners. The officials deputed to attend on the captain of the
Jhrarf were monotonous in their protestations about the poverty of their country : how it
yielded neither copper, silver, gold, uor coal, and only food enough for the inhabitants
themselves, which proves that caution is a Loochooan characteristic, even though this must be
cultivated at the sacrifice of a little truthfulness. In the latest Japanese census (1871) the
population is given at 107,073. A missionary resided on them for five years, but the people
for once diverged from their ordinary politeness in their efforts to get rid of him. Ship-
wreckal seamen are, however, treated with great kindness, in accordance with the mantime
laws of China. Captain Bax saw no soldiers, and there seem to be no arms on the island ;
but as there were two ruined forts, and the Looehooans have been known to have
engaged in wars, there were in all likelihood at one time an army also. Finally, it may-
be addetl that there seem no great extremes of poverty or wealth among the Loochipoans:
they ajjpear to be one of the few happy peoples still prospering on the face of the earth.*
Whether, as the buffers between two empires, they will continue to share their ancient lot
remains yet to be seen.
The Bonin, or Archbishop Ides (already casually touched at jiago 46), though
included in the Japanese Empire, were made known to the world at large in 1827 by-
Captain Beechey, of H.M.S. Btonsom, and were then uninhabited. In l"^;iO a
• rrocccdingt of the Jloi/al Geographical Socitli/, 1S79, pp. 210, 291.
804
THE COUNTKIES OF THE WORLD.
motley company of whaling seamen took possession of them, and, claiming English
protection, set to work, under rather disheartening circamstances, to cultivate in the
cleared bush of Peel Island sweet potatoes, maize, onions, yams, pumjjkiiis, melons,
lemons, tobacco, and sugar-cane, and to breed pigs, goats, and fowls for the supply of
passing ships. The islands are healthy and fertile, though the timber which grows on
them is not large enough for shipbuilding. There is abundance of fish and turtle in the
surrounding sea, and a few edible animals haunt the woods and mountains. The islands
are, however, visited every year by typhoons and earthquakes, and the numerous uprooted
trees bear evidence of the violence of the storms. Of the original colony, formed out of
very discoi-dant elements. Dr. Kuschenberger* gives an interesting account. It was not, in
VIEW FROM SHIMOXOSEKI, JAPAN.
his da)', a well-ordered or a moral community, but it seems to have increased, for the
population is now put down at seventy-five, f Of late the Russians have put in a claim
to the group, though on what ground it would puzzle even a geographical casuist to
imagine. The Japanese, no doubt, were the original discoverers, and for this reason
include the islands among the outliers of their empire. They first lighted upon them in
1675, but even then there were no inhabitants on the isles : hence the junkmen call them
Bnttiti Sima, or the islands without people. J
The Japanese Island.s.
Japan proper, or Nipon, " the land of the rising sun," whose name was for ages a
shadowy abstraction to the Western world, but has of late years come prominently before
• "Voyage Round the World" (18.38), Vol. II., pp. 295-313.
+ " Hydrographic Xotice,'' No. 51 (Washington, 1877).
X "Chinese Repository," 1835.
Tin; j.vi'AXK.si-: njiru:!:: ,i.\1'an I'lioi-Kit. .iii.'i
it, comprehends four Inrge islands, viz., Nipon, Sliikokoii, Kiusliiii, and Yezo. Tlio whole
empire, exeiusive of the Lonehoo and Bonins, may contain alwut 150,001) sciuare miles,
two-thirds of it mountains; but as the number of small isK-ts, in addition to tiie four
large ones, is about 3,800, it is ditlicult, without an aoeurate survey, to arrive at any
determinate idea of the superllces of the empire. Afost of the islands are volcanic in
character, and earth(pi:ikes still disturb them so frtspiently that tiic natives calculate on
VIEW Ol UESMIMA, JAIAN.
one of their cities being, on an average, destroyed every seven years. They are, however,
as a rule, very fertile and highly cultivated. There are many picturesque valleys and
inland seas, and so broken is the coast that fine harbours abound ever}'wbere, and, like
all volcanic countries, the scenery is varietl, a few miles displaying alternations of " savage
hideousness, appalling destructiveness, and almost heavenly beauty."
The mineral wialth of the country is great. Cop{)er, iron, gold, c<«al, petroleum,
silver, quicksilver, and lead abound in most of the islands.* The former for ages formed
one of the principal sources of wealth to the Government when they trade<l with the
• '• IJcporta of Embiissy and Legation" (187-»). p. HS", with map showing the mineral districtA.
159
30G THE COUXTIUES OF THK WOKLD.
uiiiuial Dutch ships alone. The cuuutry is, as a rule, of moderate elevation, but on a
promontory of Kiusliiu the volcanic mountain of Wuuseutake rises to the line of perpetual
snow, and one of tin." most familiar siyhts from Tokio is the great snow-capped Fusi
Yama, 12,-L50 feet in height, an extinct volcano, and sometimes styled, owing to the
veneration in which it is held, the " Parnassus of Japan." It is a favourite subject for
Japanese artists, and appears in some form on almost every bit of Japanese ware intended
for the home market. There are scattered over the country numerous lakes, springs, and
rivers, but as the latter are usually choked with sand, they are not of much value, except
for purposes of irrigation. The climate varies according to latitude; and, as a rule, it is
very fine — not too sultry in summer nor too cold in v/inter. The average greatest cold is
about "20" Fahrenheit, while even the hottest days are tempered by cool winds.
Agriculture forms the chief occupation of the inhabitants, and in growing tea,
■cotton, rice, maize, wheat, buckwheat, millet, &c., they excel. "Wild animals, owing
to the careful cultivation and dense population of the country, are almost extinct.
However, in the north of Nipon and in Yczo a few wolves, boars, and foxes still
survive ; deer, in the thickly settled country, are protected by law ; oxen and cows
are used as beasts of burden ; and among the common people dogs are still held in
superstitious veneration. Pheasants and numerous other wild fowl are jilentiful, but
noxious reptiles are almost unknown. The plants of the country are many, and forests
iu the wilder islands and parts incapable of cultivation are luxuriant. Timber cultivation
is, however, highly appreciated, and an old law provides that no man shall cut down a
tree until he jjlants another to take its place. Chestnuts, oaks, pines, beech, maple, the
lacquer-tree, the camphor-ti'ee, the pajjcr mulberry — extensively used in making the enormous
quantity of jiaper consumed in manufactures by the Japanese — the vegetable wax-tree,
bamboos (p. 29G), the sago palms, and a number of other useful or valuable trees flourish,
the vegetation of the tropics and the frigid and temperate zones being strangely intermingled
in Japan. "The tree fern, bamboo, banana, and palm grow side by side with the pine,
the oak, and the beech, and coniferaj in a great variety. The camellia, the paulownca,
and the chrysanthemum are conspicuous among the indigenous plants. Nymphseas and
parnassia fill the lakes and morasses."' The tobacco-plant, the tea-shrub, the potato, rice,
wheat, barley, and maize are all cultivated, and silkworm? reared often within a tew
miles of each other. It may be added that the flora in many respects bears a likeness
to that of North America, as has been demonstrated by the researches of Professor Asa
Gray.*
Statistics, etc.
As described in a former work,t the supreme power in the State is now in the
"hands of the " Mikado," or " Tenno," who, instead of secluding himself, as was at one
* The; botany of Japan lias, from the days of Thunbcrg and Siebold, liecn the theme of a variety of
■works. A list of the plants, tolerably complete, will be found in the Appendix by Sir William Hooker to
Hodgson's "Residence at Xagasaki and Hakodate" (1861), but more full}- in the great work of Kranchet and
Savatier (1874).
t "Races of JIankind," Vol. IV., pp 2G8-283.
TIIK JAl'AXKSK EMriWK; fiOVKHXMKNT, ;J(I7
time the case, niinjijles fively among' liis ludjilc, :iii<l (Irc-scs in liuiniic-an ciistiimc, ilosi-ly
approximating to lliat worn by liis liretlircn in tlio West. Tlie present emperor, the li'-inl
Mikado of tiie line, is Mutsuliito, who was IjDrn in I s."i2, and suceee<led his father in 1HU7.
lie is childless, and aecoixling-ly, in the event of his dying without direct descendants, his
successor must be eli-oted from among the members of four Imjierial families from time-
immemorial designated for this lofty choice; tliough even had he children, it does not
follow that his son would succeed liim. In addition to various other departments of
state presided over, as in ordinary AVestern (Jovernments, by secretaries or ministers, there
is a Genroin, or Senate, comprising the princes of the blood imj>erial, the mediatised princes,
who surrendered their feudal power into the hands of the emperor and former great
dignitaries of the country, ami tlic Tn'khin'iii, or Council of State, formed of the superior
judges and other persons nominated bj' the Mikado. The empire is dividwl into thirtv-
(ive kfii, or rural districts, and three fon, or federal districts, viz., Tokio, Osaka, and Kioto.
The island of Yezo and the Kurilcs, which are inhabited chielly by the aboriginal
.\inos, and considered as Japanese colonies, are administered by a governor, who is directly
responsible to the Council of State; and doubtless a similar organisation will be estab-
lished for the Louchoos, as it seems to be the firm intention of the Japanese to
retain these islands. The latest census of the islands, exclusive of Yezo, the Kuriles,
Ilioukiou (the Japanese name for the Liu Kiu, or Loochoos, as we have con-upted the Chinese
designation i)f the group), and the Honins, gives the population at 33,312,1(5:1, or, inclusive
of the whole empire, 3o, 023,37'.'. Of the inhabitants, the males were nearly half a million
in excess over the females. The population was made up of the following classes : —
29 members of the Imperial family ; 2,883 Kozokou, or cx-Daimios, the feudal princes
among whom the country was formerU' divided up; 1,823,1.53 Samourai, or two-sworded
men ; 7,2 10 Sotaou (Samourai of a lower rank) ; 8,801 priests of Shinto, one of the
religious faiths of the country;* 198,363 Bonzes, or Buddhist priests; 7,080 Buddhist
monks, or other religiemes ; the remainder were "men of the people." In 1877 the number
of foreigners resident in Yokohama was 2,5.jl, nearly one-half of whom were Chinese,
and the majority of the remainder English and Americans, though nearly every European
nationality is represented. At Nagasaki there were 80-i foreigners, of whom the
English made up about one-eighth ; at Osaka there were II foreigners, including lf>
Englishmen; and at Hakodate, out of 81 residents there, 23 were English and It) Chinese.
The population of the more important cities is as follows : — Tokio, formerly called Yedo
(in 1872), 595,905 people, or with its suburbs, 813,500; Koumamotou, 300,000; Kioto
(Miako), 238,003 (in 1^72); Osaka (1877), 281,119; Kagosima, 200,000; Yokohama
(1872), 01,5.53; Kanasawa, 00,000; Nagasaki (1870), 47,112; and Niigata H'^Ti'V
.33,772.
The revenue for 1878-79 was estimated at 53,275,920 yen, or £10,055,185, and the
expenditure at precisely the same amount. The national debt amounts to £75,050,070, an
increase in one year of the public liabilities to the amount of £2,101-,935. Another
• '• In its higher forms Shinto is simply a cultured nnd intelloctunl atheism ; in its lower forms it is Mind
obedience to govcmracntiil and priestly dictates"' (tiriffia). Buddhism, an importation from China, is the second
religion professed, hut of late the Government has been in search of a new one.
308
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WOKLD.
IAN-MAKING IX JAPAN.
unwelcome feature in Japanese national life is the gradual but steady depreciation of the
paper currency, which is now at a discount of l-'3 per cent, compared with the silver, a
result of the over-issue of this inconvertible money, of which 11.3,000,000 yen are now in
circulation, it forniiun' almost the only
currency in the country. The revenue is
derived from customs, land tax, minings
tax, taxes on official salaries, family and
good service pensions, and produce of the
Hokkaido, or colonies (Yezo and the Ku-
riles), chiefly consisting of timber, fisheries,
furs, and agricultural produce ; * the tribute
from the Loochoo Islands, the tax on alco-
holic liquors and tobacco, stamps, receipts
from mines, telegraphs, and railways ; the
mint, paper money bureau, factories. Govern-
ment propert}^ &c. On the other hand the
revenue is expended on the redemption of
domestic debt, foreign debt, civil list of
Imperial family, pensions for good services,
and to priests, council of state, senate, general assembly, the various departments of the
ministry, the colonization commission, the land tax reform bureau, the cost of founding
and working industrial undertakings, police in cities and prefectures, police bureau in
Tokio "temples of the gods," buildings in cities and prefectures, embankment of rivers,
diplomatic and consular services, loans made by Government, Scc.f
^lilitary service is obligatory on all
Japanese subjects, though, as exemption
can be purchased for ^70 dollars, and
iu such a variety of other ways can the
first duty of a citizen be evaded, that the
law is at present more a theory than an
actuality. The first section of this army
is the Yobigoitne, or active army, in which
the duration of service is three years. It
is composed of all the young men over
twenty years of age capable of bearing
arms. The next division is the Koh'igonne,
or I'eserve, formed out of the soldiers who
have finished their term of service in the
active army. The term on this is fixed
at five years, and the members are called out for exercise for a short period (icoasionally. A
* Pumpclly: " Across America and Asia " (1803), Griffis: "The Mikado's Empire" (1S7G) ; and the mimeroua
books and papers referred to in the appendix and throughout its pages,
t " Kcpoi-ts of Emha.ssy and Legation" (1879). p. 102.
JAPANESE MAKING CAILING-CAKDS.
rilK .).\l-ANKSK KJII'IUK: STATISTICS.
■M'J
JArANESE AIITIFICIAL FXOWEU-MAKEIt.
iliird .section ul' (he military orf^iiiiisatioii of llie country is Kukoumiiigomif, a K])ecic3 of
'' landwehr," or national }^uanl, in which i>u<>;ht to be enrolletl every Jaitanese from the
age of seventeen to forty, witliout any
exceptions. It is, however, nevrr to U-
called out unless the enemy is on the
frontier; then the reserve is incor|K)ratetl
witli the regular army. Advancement to
the grade ofollicer is theoretically dcerecil
to depend on merit and education. This
army has happily never yet been put to
the test, but it is doubtless superior to
the olil military caste of Samourai, or two-
sworded miMi, who were aholislied when
the new army law was passetl in 1872.
The standing army will thus consist of
about ."JljOSO men in peace times, and of
llj,:i5() in war, hut, of course, the number
of men in arms will be vastly increased
when the whole of the available fighting
strength of the country is musteretl. The
navy is the most powerful possessed by any Eastern nation. In 1879 it consisted of sixteen
ships, including three ironclads, manned by upwards of 2,500 seamen, marines, and officei-s.
The imports in 1876 were valued
at 2."5/JCl,G7S yen, and the exports at
•■5,7 It), 819 yen more. Of the imports,
nearly one-half came from Great Britain,
and of the exports, we and our colonies
took about one-third.*
These iigures are exceeding "dry"
in themselves, but they are eloquent in
their corollaries. Twenty-five years ago
Japan was a closed-up empire. She refused
to have anything to do with the world and
its ways — she was a law unto herself.
Every year a single ship came from Hol-
land, and was permitted — with indignity
unbearablet to any but Malavan-II<d-
landers — to carry away copper bai-s and
• Bi'hm and WagniT : " Uiu Bcvolkorunj!; (lir
KrdtV V. (1878); "Almanach de CJotha " (1879);
Jiipan Vailij Herald, Tokio Timet, Echo dii Japan,
.ind other Japan Dcwgpapers; and a number of privato mcmoninda, oblaimd from oOicial and othfr soiirrcn.
+ Tho envoys were carried tliroiigh the ( ountry, like prisoners, to pay their tribute for the pri>-ili>K«> of
trading. But fii-st they had to kick the Bible and spit on the CroM ; and, what to such people wan, no doubt.
%^
ROrE>MAKrNO IS JAPAN.
310 THE COUXTRIES OF THK WORLD.
Other surplus riches of the country. With the rest of the Western world Dai Xipon
declined all intercourse. But when this intercourse was forced upon her by an
admiral, whose eloquence was aided by an ironclad, she suddenly woke out of the
sleep of ages, and the only fear for Japan nowadays is that she will rush too fast
alono- the path which she has chosen. Jajianese youth are in every European
univereity, though already there are good colleges in Japan itself. Japanese doctors
graduate, Japanese barristers are " called " in the Inns of Court, and in every depart-
ment of intellectual life the Niponese promise to hold their own with the Westerns, to
whom they were utter strangei-s only a few years ago. Even Japan is not the Japan it
once was. Its seaports are Europeanised, and its shops filled with lacquer and otlior work,
made solely for the "barbarian" markets. It is now, indeed, difficult to get anything
real, for so cleverly have old china and the curiosities formerlj^ so common been imitated
that it requires a keen-eyed collector to detect the sham. Indeed, the once famous art
workmen (pp. 308, 309) of Japan are fast losing their old taste. It is getting corrupted,
modernised, vulgarised, and, in time, a real bit of Japanese lacquer or porcelain will be
confined to European and American collections, or to the houses of the Daimios, or nobles,
who can afford, in these days of their adversity, to keep remnants of the p.nst so easil}'
converted into coin. It was for long enough that anything was European for it to be
immediately adopted. But since the Western tour of the Prime Minister in 1873, when
that eminent functionary was not so well received as his merits deserved, there has been
less eagerness to imitate the mere veneer of European civilisation, and a greater desire
to lay deep the foundations of sound education and of culture suited to the genius
of the people. Schools were alwaj's plentiful in Japan : now they are more systematically
regulated ; and it is to be hoped, as Mr. E. J. Heed, M.V., has pointed out, that the
years wasted in teaching children to read and write the Chinese characters will be saved
by the adoption of the Roman letters. Indeed, the necessity of learning French and
English has to a great extent forced this reform on the people. Thanks to the efforts
of the young empress, female education is not neglected, while throughout the country an
excellent system of common schools permeates every village and town ; and as the soil and
the neighbouring sea produces such abundance of cheap food, there is a good future before
Japan, if only the State does not shipwreck itself by going deeper and deeper into debt,
or by attempting — as their rulers have recently shown themselves inclined to do — to rival
their European models in aggressive wars, or invasions undertaken, with but a slender
ci-(>nis belli to excuse them. The Japanese, though possibly more quick-witted than the
Chinese, is neither so energetic nor so industrious. He is lethargic, has no idea of saving
money for a rainy day, and if by chance he earns a few pence more than are necessary
for his daily wants, he spends them on amusement. The artizan idles at his work, for
he can live so cheaply that hard work is unnecessary; and when old age begins to
creep upon liim he ceases to work at all, for then it becomes the duty of his sons to
support him in idle ease. If the poor man has no male child, then he adopts one, so that
the bread-winner shall not fail him by the time he arrives at the moderate age of fifty.
much worse, were, among other indignities, made to sing and dance, " pretend to be drunk, and play all sorts of
pranks for the amusement of the whole court, as well as for the Jlikado and Empress, hidden behind a grating."
THE JAPANESE EMPIRE: TOWNS. .HI
Altoyetlier, his lot is enviable coiniaralile with that of people in the same rank of life
ill the laijje cities of Euioiie and America, and better even than that of the humbler
classes in the great hives of life in the far East.
Some J.ipankse Towns and Traits.
Vokuliania is now a tlioi-ouLjIily Europeanised town, and nut a moral '■no by any
means. The lives letl on the " Bluff " at Yokahama are not wilculated to impress the
Japanese very favourably with the amenities of Western civilisation. But Yedo — now called
Tokio, since the Mikado took up his residence there — is more like what old Japan
was. It is connected witli the seaport by a line of railway, built in lH7i at a
great cost to the country, though as yet the tralFic is not sufficient to make it a
commercial success. The same may be said of the other Japanese railways. They take
routes which do not enable the produce of the country to be brought into the towns, and
hence — though, ad in the case of the Kobe and Osaka line, they run into the mining
districts — their usefulness and value to the country at large is greatly diminished. When
the visitor reaches Tokio he feels that he is really in Japan, for, with the exception of the
difjloinatic corps, few, if any, foreigners reside in the capital. But a recent writer, well
acquainted with the capital, notes that even Tokio is so changed that the visitor who
knew it in ISliS would hardly recognise it in 1879. "Such a one would be surjirised to
see dotted about among the Oriental edifices and exotic trees, tall factory chimneys, and
goods of all sorts, presenting an extraordinary medley of European machinery and Japanese
aims and ends. He would behold with astonishment foreign residents and emploi/ei admitted
to the royal presence to offer new year salutations, and introduced by a chamberlain in
a frock coat decorated with gold lace. Still more surprised would he be to see old men
in overcoats and top-boots walking about, girt with two swords, and armed with the
inevitable umbrella of the country. On all sides he would hear new names and see new
institutions, and yet he would speedil}' discover old functions surviving under fresh titles,
the same hearts beating beneath the strange garments, and the people virtually pretty
much the same as they were when he left them."* But the narrow streets, with the
castellated i/asfigis, or residences of the Daimios, the magnificent temple of Sheba, with
its doors a.id railings of splendid Corean bronze, where are buried most of the long line
of Tycoons f (Shoguns), or military rulers, who for so long divided the authority with the
Mikados, their masters, and the crowd of jinrikishas, or wheeled chairs, drawn by a man in
the shafts, remind the visitor that it will be long before all the Old World characteristics of
the capital of the Mikado disappear. At Kobe (Hiogo) the foreign settlement is all spick and
span, " with a handsome parade, and grass and trees planted boulevard fashion along the edge
of the sea. It is all remarkably clean, but quite uninteresting." Kioto — the ancient capital —
Mrs. Brassey describes as a thoroughly Ja|>anese town, which c-ontains probably not a single
European. Its theatres and jugglers are famous throughout the empire, and in its suburl«
are numberless tea-houses and other places of entertainment. Japanese towns being built
• "Cassclfs Family Magazine " (1879), p. 169.
■^ This is not a Japanese wonl : it is a corruption of the Chinese " Tai-Kun."
312 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
of wood, fires are frequent, and as the revolution wliich tlie country bas undergone in the
last ten years has resulted in once important places sinkinjj into insignitieance, many cities
anciently famous are gradually falling into decay, and in a few years will be nothing more
than villages. Indeed, by-and-by the treaty or open ports will be about the only ones which
will retain any of their old magnificence, though it is almost certain, unless there comes a
reaction — and now that the Satsuma rebellion, just finished, has crushed out the last
resistance of the old Conservative vested interest, this is not likely — in all probability the
whole country will be thrown open to trade. At Yokohama is the Government arsenal, in
which :J,000 Japanese workmen are emploj'edj under the superintendence of French officers,
and where there are fine docks for repairing vessels. Osaka, twenty miles from Kobe, is
pleasantly situated on a fruitful plain near a navigable river spanned by upwards of a
hundred bridges, many of them, according to Mr. Spry, of great beauty. It contains
many fine temples, but otherwise the city is not imposing for the magnificence of its
public buildings. Nagasaki is now only noted as being close to Deshima, or Decima
(p. 30.5), the place to which the Dutch were forced in early days to trade. But the
Japanese towns are so numerous and so much alike, that in a brief sketch, such as this
must necessarily be, it is needless to describe them in further detail. The shops form a
uever-ending source of attraction to Europeans. For miles in tlie large cities one may
walk through rows of these wonderful store-houses of Japanese art and ingenuity.
" Wherever we go, the city," jNIr. Spry remarks of Tokio, " is full of life and excitement,
with a swarming population. The street vendor, with his ambulatory stock over his
shoulder on a bamboo pole, or pitched down at the corner of a street, is surrounded with
a varied assortment of odds and ends. The acrobat and conjiu-or amuse extensive audiences
collected around them. The story-teller, with his wondrous tales (after the style of the
familiar 'Arabian Nights"), delights an attractive crowd. Hundreds of officials — army,
navy, and civil service — all in European costume, are decorated with gold lace, gilt buttons,
and other insignia of rank ; even the police and soldiers are after our ow-n familiar models.
Jinrikisha men, coolies, and porters, dragging carts laden with goods, all help to swell
the tide of human life" (pp. 313, 317). Shimonoseki (p. 304), at the entrance to the
" Inland Sea," is a town of om street running for two miles at the base of a range of
low steep hills. It is becoming a place of some commercial importance, and is historically
notorious as the spot where, in 1853, the combined squadrons of England, 1' ranee, Holland,
and the United States bombarded the batteries of the Choshiu class.
So rapidly is the country advancing that it is almost a waste of labour to write an
elaborate description of its more evanescent features. In a few years guide books get anti-
quated, and on probably no country in the world has there been more written than on Japan,
within the twenty years during which it has opened itself to the commerce, science, and
literature of the world at lare-e. It is better to dismiss it with the statistics which we have
supplied, though, from its importance in the family of nations, it would otherwise have deserved
volumes at our hands, had not, happily, those volumes been written by those whose qualifica-
tions for their tasks it would be presumptuous on our part to challenge by trying to rival them.
In conversing with several intelligent Japanese, and with American, English, and
other foreigners long resident in Japan, the writer has found two beliefs entertained.
160
814 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
One is, that in a few years Japan will Ije entirely Europeanised or Americanised, and that
the old life will have entirely departed. Another view, more generally embraced, is that
after learning everything that can be taught by the Europeans she will do without
them. This, indeed, she is doing already. A European in a high position is engaged for
so many years, and well paid for his labour and knowledge ; but as soon as his term is out he
is dismissed: hence Nipon is not the country for a young man wishing to " make a career."
Some will even go so far as to say that a reaction will come on, and that by-and-by,
Japan having mentally imbibed everything that she cares to copy from the Western world,
■will shut her ports more closely against strangers than ever she closed them before. If
so, the signs of the coming change will soon be apparent, for already the Japanese have
learned from us all that they need, and have trained up young men capable of tilling the
places of the discarded foreigners. The exports are not great, and they take from us
little which they really require, or which they could not manufacture quite as well, if not
tetter, themselves. It is, however, possible that they will compromise by becoming "pro-
tectionists,^' like some of their allies on this side the woi-ld.*
The Aino Couxtky.
"When the Japanese came to the islands they now occupy — probably from some part
of Southern Asia — they found the country thinly occupied by the Ainos, an aboriginal race
with great heads of hair, profuse beards and moustaches, and in some cases with unusually
thick coats of hair on their bodies, though it is an exaggeration to style them "hairy men."
The proof that they lived even in Nipon t is the finding of flint, arrow, and spear-heads,
hammers, chisels, scrapers, and other remnants of the stone stage in the islands, where
none of the people now live, though their tools are identical with those either now or
lately used in Yezo and other Aino strongholds. There are also mounds containing great
quantities of bones of the natives slain in combat with the invaders, and many of the
geograjihical names in Nijion are of Aino origin. Mr. Griffis, contrary to the assertion
of most other writers, considers that the Aino language is not widely apart from the
Japanese — differing not more widely'', indeed, than do certain Chinese dialects from each
other. Ainos and Japanese at present speak in a sort of mongrel lingua franca, but they
have little difficulty in learning to speak the language of each other. The most ancient
t^pecimens of the Japanese tongue are found to show as great a likeness to the Aino
as to modern Japanese. Aino, moreover, is said to approximate to certain of the Altai
dialects. It is therefore probable that the present Japanese result from the intermarriage
* Adams: "History of Japan" (187-t)", Mounsey : " Satsuma Rebellion " (1879); " Kinse Shiiiuku," Trans.
liy E. Satow (Yokohama, 1873); House: "Kagoshima" (Tokio, 1875); "Reports of General Capron and his
Foreign Assistants " (Tokio, 1875); Fraissinet : " Le Japon, Histoii-e et Description, ma'urs, coutumcs et Religion "
(18G6) ; Heine: "Japan" (1873); Humbert: "Japan"' (1877); Mossman : "New Japan" (1875); Siehold:
"Nippon" (1834-37); Bousquet: "La Japon Contemporain " (1877); Guimet: "Promenades Japonaises " (1877);
T.A.P. : "Our Neighbom-hood " (1878), &c. &c.
t In accordance with the almost universal usage of all geographers, I use the word Nipon, Nippon, or Niphon,
to designate the main island. Dai Nippon, or Nihon— that is. Great Japan — is, however, the name of the whoK'
empire. In the military geography of Japan (Heiyo Nippon Chiri Yoshi, 1872), the main island is called Hondo.
THE JAPANESE EMPIRE: THE COLONIES. 315
of the original invaders witli tlie Ebisu, or barharians. The latter were, however, not
conquered in a day ; it required centuries of iif^liting before they became as Ihorouglily
subdued and cowed as they now are. For ajjes tiie distinction between tlie conquered and
tiie conqueror, as between tlie Saxon and the Norman, was kejiL up; liut at leny;tli,
according to the thoughtful writer whom I iiave mentioned, tlie fusion of races was
complete, and the homogeneous Japanese people ajipearetl. But by this lime the less
tamed or undiluted Ainos had retreated to Yczo, shut off by Tsugaru Straits from NijKjn,
to Saghalin, and to some of the neighbouring Kurile islands, where they still live,
thoroughly cowed wluii under subjection to the Japanese, who, though heartily despising
them, are, nevertheh'ss, doing what they can to civilise them by a jiroeess of miscegenation.
The Yezo Colonization Department have taken fifty Japanese girls, daughters of ofiieials,
and educatcnl them to become the wives of Ainos, a scheme as wild, Mr. Watson remarks,*
if carried out, as to take fifty girls fnmi a I>ondon boarding-school and wed them to
l-lrse-speaking Celts in Coniiemam: or rather, a little worse, for the Aino is a heathen
savage, a hunter and fisher, though good-natured, brave, faithful, peaceful, gentle, in-
differently honest, and very stupid. " An infusion of foreign blood," writes Mr. Griflis,
"the long effects of the daily hot baths, and the w;iriii clim;itc of Southern J;ipaii, of
Chinese civilisation, of agricultural instead of the hunter's method of life, have wrought
the change between the Aino and the Japanese. It seems equally certain that almost
all that the Japanese possess, which is not of Chinese, Corean, or Tartar origin, has
descended from the Aino, or has been developed on an Aino model. The Ainos of Yezo hold
jwlitically the same relation to the Japanese as the North American Indians do to the
white people of the United States ; but ethnically they are, with probability, bordering
very closely on certainty, as to the Saxons to the English." f
!')':(>, which is their chief district, is a mountain mass somewhat larger than Ire-
land, though the inhabitants are few,]: the pure Ainos here and on the islands adjoining
not numbering more than 10,000. For long the Japanese looked upon the Hokkaido, or
colonies — as these islands are considered — in a contemptuous fashion. But the occupation
of Saghalin by the Russians, on the plea of its being uninhabited land, and its eventual
surrender, alarmed the Tokio authorities, lest a similar plea might be ailvanced for the
annexation of Yezo. Accordingly, considerable efforts have been made to develop its
resources. The seat of government is at Saporo, distant about liO miles from Hakodate,
one of the treaty ports, where reside various foreigners and their consuls, though the
superior attraction of Endermo must eventually lead to its superseding Hakodate,
should the trade of the island ever become of any great importance. Tlie forest* of the
island constitute its chief source of wealth, but as yet these forests are imperfectly
developed, and timber is imported from Oregon, British Columbia, and AVasbington territory,
which could be obtained ."j,Ol)() miles nearer home. Even when the logs are cut and floated
down the rivers, contrai-y to the old laws in force in the more settled parts of the island,
'Journal of the Roijal Gtographicul Society, Vol. XI.IV. (1878), p. 131.
t "The Mikado's Empirf " (1876), p. 35; sec al*j " I{ac. •» of Mankind," Vol. IV., p. 283.
X For Yczo and the Kuriles the latest censu.s claims a jmpulution of H4,069.
316 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
no efforts are made to replant the valuable crop of which the soil has been robbed. In
the Ishikari and other rivers salmon are caught in enormous quantities, and disposed of
so cheaply as " scarcely to have a price, according to our idea of the word." It could be
sold in London, the size of those which now cost 9d., for about 2^d. per tin. The
Government draw their revenue from the fishermen by receiving one salmon in so many
cauo-ht ; but to ensure the due proportion of tribute being delivered, there is employed
so many superintendents and tax collectors that, to use the language of one of the
American engineers engaged in investigating the resources of the island, " there is an official
for every fish caught." Great quantities of edible seaweed is likewise dried, and exported,
chietly from Hakodate, for the Chinese market. But Yezo has other riches beside trees, tangle,
and fish. Silver, lead, manganese, iron-pyrites, iron, sand, copper, zinc, rock-oil, gypsum, and
sulphur — the latter in great abundance — have been discovered to exist in different places.
The coal is, however, the most important of the island wealth, for though not of the finest
quality, its accessibility and general request will lead to its giving great returns to the
Government or to the private individuals to whom the Government might grant the right
of working the mines.* However, until the island is opened out to foreign colonization, not
much can be done to make it a source of revenue to Japan and prosperity to her people.
The climate, though delightful for Europeans, is too severe for the Southern constitution,
but as it produces hemp, rice, and maize, it cannot, according to Northern ideas, be
very inclement. Yet the Japanese dread it so much that on the approach of winter
thousands of fishermen, labourers, and others, quit it for their homes in the more southern
islands. The scenery of the interior of Yezo is wild, but, owing to the dense forests,
occasionally somewhat monotonous ; and the coast is for the most part bordered by high
cliffs. Saporo, the site of which eiglit years ago was covered with a dense jungle, is now
a rising town, through which runs a rapid mountain stream, furnishing through a canal
ample water supply for the tovm and for irrigation purposes. Of its public institutions,
established by the " Kaitakushi," or Colonization Department, the Agricultural College
is the most remarkable. Here a good general and scientific education can be obtained,
though, by a recent law, all scientific education is to be given in English, while students
who study French must enter the medical schools, and those wdio select German must
choose jurisprudence. The object of this arbitrary law is to prevent that frittering
away of their time on a multiplicity of subjects, which is one of the characteristics of the
young Jajianese, captivated with the novelty of the treasures of learning thrown open to
him within the last few years. In addition to the college, saw mills, furniture factories,
silk factories, a brewery, and a tannery are in active operation. Horses, sheep, cattle,
and swine are being extensively bred, though the distance from the nearest markets
operates prejudicially^ against the latest departure in Japanese " colonization."
The island of Saghalln, which was in 1875 formally ceded to Russia, though still
partially inhabited by Japanese, is another portion of the Aino country. The whole of it is
within easy reach of the continent, from which possibly the Ainos came, or to which they
went, while the southern end of it is only separated from Yezo by the narrow Strait of
• Blakiston : Journal of the Moyal Geographical Society, Vol. XLII. (1872), p. 12'.'.
TllK AIN<I rOT'NTIJY : SACIIMIN
;ii7
La Perouse. At one iioint — Ninito— :i little north of the lifty-seoond parall.-l, the opposite
Asiatic shore is only live miles distant. Here the water is so shallow that junks caunot cross
it at low tide, ami after long prevalent winds the j^rouiid is left dry, and the natives can,
according to the statements made to Air. Griliis, walk dryshod into Asia. During three
or four of the winter months tlie strait is frozen over, so that in a single hour communication
between the island and tlie mainland is effected hy means ,,{ dog-slwlges. Thus the Ainos,
A PTKLtl l.N lOKlO
even without canoes, conld easily enter Sa<;halin at this spot, and, as a matter of fact,
communication with tlie continent is continually taking place, many of the Ainos having
been attracted to the Amoor, Alexandrovsk, and the intervening settlements since the
Russians established themselves on the coast * It is, however, probable that the savages
originally came from the north, tempted by the richer fisheries and the warmer climate
of the south. On a sniall district on the mainland the Aino tongue is sjioken ; in Yezo
there are at least two dialects of it, and several in Saghalin.f
• Bax; '•The Eastern .Sens" (1875), p. 178.
+ Aston : Proettdiiigt of the Royal GfOfiaphieal Socitty (1879), p. .598.
31S THE COUNTKIES OF THE WOULD.
To return to the island itself. Up to the year 1857 it was pourtrayed on English
maps as a peninsula, and on Jujianese charts the sea intervening between it and the
mainland is actually rei)resented by a shoal, which, as we have seen, it sometimes is.
In 1807 the Russians took jjossession of the island, but afterwards abandoned it. The
Japanese did not make their appearance until 1780, though thoy never passed the winter
there ; while the Chinese, whom the majjs made owners of the northern part, had no more
connection with the island than consisted in occasional visits of their traders from the Amoor
for the purpose of buying furs. Soon after the Crimean War the Russians, however,
began to reconstruct their forts in the southern part of the country, and in 1853 they
opened the coal mines at Dooi, or Joucpiiere Bay, and gradually treated Saghalin as if it
was their own. This the Japanese did not actually resent; they merely followed their
example. Wherever the Russians settled so did the Japanese, and if Russian colonists
appeared at any point, by an almost mechanical movement Japanese colonists were sure to
settle not far off.
These rivalries are now at an end, and the island is one of the Siberian penal colonies.
Its length is 514 miles, its greatest breadth 78, its least breadth 17, and its superfices
1,065 square miles, or about equal to the Province of St. Petersburg. It may be described
as consisting of one long mountain range and its subsidiary spurs, sometimes attaining
the height of 2,000 feet or more, though never covered with perpetual snow, as might be
expected from the severe climate of the locality. The highest peaks are either bare or
covered with brushwood, but the majority of the mountains are covered from top to bottom
with forests, chiefly of maple. The rivers are not of great importance, and the largest of
them are only navigable for boats. The lakes are, in some cases, of considerable size, and
have the peculiarity of communicating with the sea by means of small, though deep, channels.
Coal exists in various parts of the island, and though it is only a lignite, is of a
rather better quality than ordinary, and brings a higher price than either Australian or
Japanese coal. The timber, hunting grounds, and fisheries form the other sources of
wealth, though, judging from what is found in Yezo, it seems very unlikely that the
mountains of Saghalin are deficient in metals. However, a country in which the sable,
otter, fox, and bear are the fur animals, or on the shores of which Arctic Avhales and
fur seals disport, can never yield much to agriculture. The hottest month has a mean
temperature not higher than 62"-37, and the coldest ll" Fahr. The harshness of its
climate is intensified by its extreme dampness, its fogs, and by the abundance of rain
in summer and snow in winter. Hence, the population of 10,000 or 17,000 souls
receive their corn from Russia and their rice from Japan. Nevertheless, cattle might
be bred, provided the pastures were cleared — for there are few natural meadows — but
the mosquitoes and other insect pests which abound will greatlj- interfere with the com-
fortable feeding of stock. Potatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages can be grown, hut as the
mountainous character of the ground will make roads costly to construct, the island will
most likely long remain in its present desolate condition.
The population consists of Russians — chiefly convicts and their guards — Japanese,
Giliacks, Ainos, Orokaps, and some persons of European and American extraction. The
Japanese have, since the Russians took jiossession of the island, decreased in number.
ITTK AIX(J CUrNTItY: TIIK KUItlLP^i. 319
The Chinese work chiefly at the coal iiiines, which are leased hy an American comi)aiiy,
and have not their families witli tlicm. The Giliacks are luintcrs, (ishermcn, and traders
amonj^ the Ainos, wlio inliahit the southern part of the island to the number of ;i,UOlt.
The Orokaps are a tribe similar to the Tungoose, and live in the mountains, hunting the
forest animals, or, when unsuccessful in the chase, occupying themselves in fishing.
Altogether it is doubtful whether there are twelve jtersons to a mile in the whole island.
Furs and tish are the only exports ; the latter all go to the Japanese, while the former is
divided among the Russians, Japanese, and Americans. The total amount of furs exported
has been estimated at 21,000 otters, 1,300 sables, and (5,000 foxes, but the number of
hear, deer, and seal-skins has not been ascertained. It is, however, known that thirty-five
roubles expended in articles of barter will bring to the shrewd trader furs worth, in
St. Petersburg, from (ilH) to 700 roubles, though all this is not j)rofit, as the transit of
the goods and furs is a heavy item in the expenses. It may be added that the Russian
engineers who have examined Saghalin pronounce it in its present condition of little use
as "a base for offensive operations against a foreign enemy, not only in the event of
preparing a descent, but as a starting-point for our cruisers." * The authorities are at
present (1^70) encouraging the immigration of Chinese both to the island and to the con-
tiguous mainland, and a naval station is rumoural to be forming somewhere in the vicinity.
The KniUes stretch between Yezo and Kamtchatka, " like the ruins of a causeway,"
])rolongcd by the stepping-stones of the Aleutian Isles on to Alaska, and thus to the
American continent. The iidiabitants are chiefly Ainos, but of the twenty-two islands
the Russians until recently claimed nineteen, containing an area of about 3,81-3 scjuare
miles, and a population of 200 to 300 : the remainder (or Great Kuriles) have always been
Japanese. The people are very poor, so poor, indeed, that for many years past no tribute
has lieen collected from them. The islands are all volcanic, some of them are picturesque and
elevated, but of sterile soil, and surrounded by hidden rocks and shoals, so that the cautious
mariner gives them a wide berth, and, indeed, almost the only visitors to them are the fur
traders eng:iged in bartering the pelts of foxes, wolves, seals, and beavers, which, owing to the
discreet management of the Russians, still maintain their foothold on these lonely Asiatic
.sea spots. From Paramushir Isle it is but a step over the Kurile Strait to the Peninsula of
Kamtchatka, which, with Saghalin, Yezo, and the Kuriles, shuts out from the North Pacific the
Sea of Okhotsk, which f(.rms the s<mthera boundary of Eastern Siberia, just as the Sea of
Kamtchatka and Behring Strait lave its shores facing America. In dreary Kamtchatka,
perhaps the most dismal part of all the Russian possessions in Asia, we are still in the Aino
land, for though the Kamtchatkdals have changed their names, their tongue tells their orisj^in.
Indeed, from Kamtchatka perhaps came some of those sea nomads from whom the North
American Indians originated. We know that the people from Asia carry on extensive
intercourse with those on the opposite side of Behring Strait.f In the winter they cross
on the ice, and in the summer hold a sort of fair on the Isle of Ilir, and in other intermediate
commercial meeting-places.
• Veniukof : Joiii'i'i, ,j i,n lioi/al Gtoymphical Society, Vol. XLII. (1872), p. 388.
t " Races of SInnkind," Vol. I., p. 3.
320 TUE COUXTRIES OF Till'. WORLD.
That they may have migrated by this route from iVsia there seems no reason
whatever to doubt, but it is also just possible, if not probable, that more southern
people contributed their (piota to the colonization of America. Captain Bax notes
that three canoes, containing twelve men belonging to the Pelew Isles, were cast
away in 1874, and after being sixty-four days at sea, and travelling 1,300 miles, arrived
all safe at Keluiig in Formosa, and were afterwards taken back, via Hong Kong, to
their homes. They had lived on the fish they caught, and the rain supplied them with
water to drink. This proves, in a very striking manner, how easily emigration may take
place from the most unlikely localities. Finally, we know, as I have pointed out elsewhere,
that many Japanese junks have been cast away in storms, and that some of them have
succeeded in landing on the American shores, borne on the Kuro Siwo current, or Black Stream
of Japan, which flows up past Formosa (p. 298), Japan, the Kuriie, and Aleutian Islands,
Alaska, Oregon, and California, and thence bends westward to the Sandwich Islands. It is
by this current that fir-trees from Oregon make their appearance in Hawaii. No doubt in
twenty centuries thousands of junks have been carried along in this current helpless
because of their broken rudders or torn sails; but between 178:2 and 1876 we have certified
lists of forty-nine such instances. Nineteen of these stranded or their crews landed on
the Aleutian Islands, ten in Alaska or British America, three on the coast of the United
States further to the south, and two on the Sandwich Islands. Of the junks some had
been eighteen months adrift, a few were waterlogged, full of live fish, or black with age.
Numerous other junks have been picked up in the Pacific with crews in them dead and
alive, and there are also traditional stories of these Japanese and Chinese wanderers having
landed ; but numerical data are wanting.* Hence Japan, the Kuriles, and Kamtchatka
may not only be contiguous to America geographically, but nearly allied to her most
ancient settlers by blood ties also. However, in passing from the vicinity of the New
World again to the Old, we reach a laud which has now but little in common with that
which we have almost landed on. People, animals, products — and above all, institutions
and modes of thought — are in Continental Asia and Continental America as widely apart
as daylight is from darkness !
* Brooks: Proceeiliiu/s of the California Academy of Seiences, 1875; Griffis: "Mikado's Empire," pp. 579-60;
AlcQck: " Capital of the Tycoon," vol. ii., pp. 45-50, for some reference to this subject.
Cassell, Pettee, Galpin S: Co., Belle Saovaoe Works, London, E.G.
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