Chapter V: A Little About New South Wales

Sunny Sydney—Public Buildings—Educational Establishments—Sanitary State—Its Climate—Bathurst—The Blue Mountains—Romish Aggression—Botany Bay—Old Days—A Wonderful Change—New South Wales Scenery.

IF you feel disposed to have a look at Sydney, respected reader, do not go there when an election is on. Last night, till eleven, the street in which I have found a temporary residence was filled with an excited crowd, hooting and cheering, as from time to time great placards were posted up as to the result of the day’s elections. Wherever I have been, the talk has been of Free Trade or Protection. The farmers want Protection; the towns are averse to it. High railway charges deprive the farmer of his Sydney market, and he is undersold by the foreigner. The Free Traders are obliged to hedge to satisfy the workman. He can’t stand the Chinese, and more than one Free Trade candidate has had to promise to vote for prohibitory duties on articles of Chinese manufacture. Another one declared that he was against Protection, but would be quite ready to tax foreign goods for fiscal purposes—that is, for protection for the New South Wales manufacturer. The Free Traders have won, but they will go to Parliament with diminished force. There is a good deal of nonsense talked here as well as in England. One M.P. complained recently ‘about the absence of his name _appearing_ in the Sydney morning papers.’ Said another, as he banged the balcony bar with his fist, ‘Don’t you think, gentlemen, that there was some grave _misapprehension_ of the public money during the time that the Parkes party was in power.’ Another had the hardihood to venture on the use of a French term, as he dilated on what he called ‘the scandalis doin’s of the Parkes _rejamey_.’ But a certain candidate who shall be nameless heads the list (or, as they say out here, the ‘bunch’) of blundering orators when he remarked that ‘If the days of miracles were as common as in the days of Ananias, they might expect to see three of the finest pillars of salt that ever were on view.’ One lesson we may learn—that is, the advantage of having the elections all over on the same day, and that is how it is done in Victoria. Here the struggle continues for three weeks, and a good deal of bad feeling is engendered in consequence.

In spite of the dust and the heat—to change my theme—there is much to admire in Sydney, and I have had a fine look at the town from the lofty tower of the new Post Office, a tower some 260 feet above the level of George Street, where it stands. Afar off are the Heads, into which the great steamers come and go. At your feet lies the city, with its fine public buildings, all of yellow sandstone; its narrow streets, its busy crowds. Far as the eye can reach in every direction spread pretty suburbs, and there the foliage begins to mingle with the gray roofs and white chimneys of the suburban houses, and you realize the fact how great is the population outside the city itself. The harbour is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever; how Cook could have missed it seems a mystery. Over that harbour the fine river steamers—of American fashion, far superior to anything we have on the Thames—ferry backwards and forwards all day long. On a Saturday it is alive with yachts—little cockle-shells, with two great sails, that soon upset. I saw one capsize in a sudden squall as I was crossing to Manly Beach—the Brighton of Sydney, as they call it here, but it is no more like our Brighton than a rustic maiden resembles a society beauty. All along the harbour are fairy villas, green foliage, miniature bays, rivers, and all that can give life and warmth to the landscape in the shape of holiday-makers. That harbour, with its Botanical Gardens on one side, alone would compensate for a good deal, and reconcile one even to the crowds of Sydney who fill up the streets at night and prevent all enjoyment. Sunday is quite a relief. It is a day of rest indeed, far more so than in England. In the morning, instead of going to the noble cathedral, I turned into the Congregational Church in Pitt Street, but the minister was away, and so I fancy were his people, as the place was but half full; but I am told on a Sunday night there is a very fine congregation. Four or five hundred young men were met in the fine building known as the Y.M.C.A., where they listened with much interest to the address delivered by the Secretary, Mr. Walker, and at a temperance hall near there was a service fairly attended; while close by, the New Church were meeting for public worship. In the evening there was a good deal of open-air preaching. In one quarter I heard so much from a young man about the ‘’oly hangels’ that I was compelled to retreat. Christian effort is not out of place anywhere in Australia, and apparently in Sydney least of all. The churches have quite as much to contend against there as at home. Crime and pauperism and vice, strange as it may seem, are quite as plentiful in this land of gold and milk and honey as at home. Alas! you may change the climate, but the man remains the same.

One of the blots of Sydney is the street tramcar, drawn by a snorting engine, which makes night and day hideous. As a nuisance and a means of getting rid of the surplus population it seems an admirable contrivance. The cabs are not bad, and the drivers quite as civil as those at home, which, however, is not saying much; but the omnibuses are very old and shaky, and at times the noise they make is so great that conversation is quite out of the question. The Chinese are everywhere, and when they are driven away it is hard to see how the townspeople will get their fruit or their vegetables—as the Anglo-Saxons, whether native or Australian, seem to hold gardening in contempt, whereas the heathen Chinee will get hold of a bit of waste land which no one would ever think of tilling, and straightway it rejoices and blossoms as the rose. Many of them are tradesmen, and have shops in the best streets in the place. For cabinet-making of all kinds they have quite a talent, but they have few friends, although, as a tradesman in Sydney remarked to me, ‘They are a good deal better than the people who find fault with them.’

Sydney, like Melbourne and Adelaide, rejoices in a university based on the model of University College, London, and established by the State in 1850. Its buildings are magnificent, and a portion of them are set apart for the School of Medicine attached. The prospects of the university are excellent, and it cannot fail to exert a most beneficial influence on the future of Australia. The Australian Museum, which is the oldest institution of the kind in Australia, occupies a conspicuous site in Sydney, facing one of the principal parks; it is open on Sundays. One of the most popular institutions of the town is the Free Public Library, which, in 1877, had a lending branch attached to it to meet the wants of country residents. The National Art Gallery, established in 1880, is also open on Sundays. It contains an excellent collection of paintings and statuary, comprising some of the most famous works of the best modern artists of the old world, and includes several very valuable gifts from private persons. The extent of streets and lanes within the boundaries of the city is 105 miles, and they are mostly in good order, many of them being laid with wood blocks. Its new Town Hall, opened since I left, is the finest on the continent. The great difficulty in Sydney, and all over New South Wales, seems to be house accommodation. The poor have a hard time of it as regards sleeping apartments, and one does not envy the occupiers of the little corrugated iron-roofed shanties in which, as a rule, the workman hides his diminished head. In all our great towns the artisans have better homes than they have in Sydney and the other Australian towns. Then there is the drought to make everything in the shape of agricultural produce or garden stuff dear, with the exception of meat, which is about half the price that it is at home. Eggs are scarce, milk is fourpence a quart, and, as far as I can learn, other provisions are very little cheaper than in London. In sanitary arrangements the colonies are far behind the old country. In his retiring address, the President of the Victorian Branch of the Medical Association, Dr. Rowan, denounces the ‘infamous’ acts committed by land syndicates, who, in laying out their townships, acted as if they considered drainage a prejudice, sunlight a delusion, and ventilation a weakness to be treated with derision. If ever, said he, a city rendered itself liable to be plague-stricken, it was Melbourne. I don’t know whether a similar remark applies to Sydney, but I do know that there the rate of infant mortality is alarmingly high. In Australia, as in the old country, they have not yet learned what to do with their sewage. In Sydney they laid out a million of money, and then discovered that they had simply poured all their filth into the harbour; but Sydney has now seen the error of its ways, and at enormous expense constructed a tunnel many miles long to take the sewage right away to the sea. At Melbourne the smell from the Yarra river is overpowering. In Adelaide they have solved the difficulty, and have a sewage farm that pays well; but Adelaide is a small place when compared with Sydney or Melbourne. A good deal remains to be done if the health of the great colonial towns is to be preserved. Equally important is the water question. What is wanted are tanks that shall conserve the rainwater when it falls. I have ridden miles and miles and seen great rivers nothing but beds of sand, and creeks, where the winter torrents flow, nothing but great fissures in the parched plains, in which the cattle hide themselves from the blazing sun. New South Wales can never prosper till it has a proper water supply. To provide this should be the first duty of the Government. I suppose it is because people make their money quickly that the Government grant so many holidays. It is a great nuisance this to merchants and traders. You rush off to the bank, and find it shut up, and on the door a notice to the effect that it is Bank-holiday. The mass of the people work on all the same. A Bank-holiday in no way concerns them, and consequently a Bank-holiday here has little likeness to the similar function at home—when all our big cities empty their living crowds to be a wonder and a terror to all the country round. The public offices are always being closed on some pretence or another. Sometimes it is an agricultural show, sometimes it is a race; any excuse does. And the bankers’ clerks, as regards hours, are much better off than their brethren at home; in all parts of Australia the banks are closed at three.

It is a fair land, this new Australian continent, and well worthy to be inhabited by the energetic Anglo-Saxon race. The whole mountain system of New South Wales lies below the limit of perpetual snow. The grandeur of the scenery is not to be compared with that of the Alps or the Rocky Mountains. On the contrary, from the plains, the mountains look rather insignificant; but once on them, and looking into the gorges below, clothed with verdure, or on the broad plains far beyond, you are struck with the magnificent scale on which Nature has worked in these solitudes. Over all is a mantle of blue haze, which makes the whole effect most striking, and has given to the range of hills visible from Sydney the appropriate name of the Blue Mountains. However, there is nothing equalling the view you get as you enter Sydney through Port Jackson. It is needless to say a word of Sydney harbour. It holds the first place amongst the harbours of the world for convenience of entrance, depth of water, and natural shipping facilities. The area of water surface of the harbour proper is 15 square miles, and the shore line is reckoned to extend 165 miles. Along it are the homes of many of the well-to-do of Sydney, which is the metropolis of New South Wales, and the mother city of the Australians. The city and its suburbs occupy 100 square miles, and accommodate about 350,000 people. I am agreeably disappointed with Sydney. Its shops and public buildings and hotels are handsomer, and its streets broader, than I had anticipated. I was frightened, I own, by what Mr. Froude has written about its mosquitoes. Perhaps mosquitoes do not like me; I am not sorry. Coming to Sydney by sea you feel, on the whole, that Eden cannot be far off.

Nor is the climate so bad as some people fancy. In Naples, where so many English go, the summer is warmer and the winter much colder than at Sydney. The famed resorts on the Mediterranean seaboard, it is now confessed, bear no comparison with the Pacific slope of New South Wales, either for natural salubrity or the comparative mildness of the summer and winter; while the epidemics and pestilences which have devastated the regions of ancient civilization have never made their appearance on Australian shores. The Hawkesbury formation over which the city of Sydney is built provides it with an inexhaustive supply of sandstone of the highest quality for building purposes. The beauty of Sydney street architecture owes much to it, as it is a material admirably adapted for architectural effect, being of a pleasant colour, fine grain, and easily worked.

Sydney is not only the metropolis, but the chief shipping port of the colony, its trade being larger than that of any city in the southern hemisphere. All the necessary tools and appliances for the repairing of ships are found in dockyards. The new graving dock, now being completed by the Government, will be the largest single dock in the world, and capable of receiving vessels drawing 32 feet of water. For natural facilities for shipping Sydney stands unrivalled. The water deepens abruptly from the shores, so that the largest vessels may be berthed alongside the wharves and quays. The Sydneyites love their harbour, and well may they do so, for none fairer is to be found under the sun. ‘What do you think of our harbour?’ is the first question asked a stranger. A tale is told of the captain of an English man-of-war which was at anchor here, that he was so tired of the question being constantly put that he had a blackboard hung over the side of his ship, on which he had chalked up, with a view to save trouble and prevent further inquiries: ‘We admire your harbour very much.’

It is a curious fact how little the cry of the ‘three acres and a cow’ seems to affect the people. They will flock to large towns. In England they all go to London. It is the same in America. Land is to be had in abundance, but, nevertheless, the town offers greater inducements than the country. In New South Wales, as in Victoria, this is everywhere the case. The increase of the population of Sydney during the seventeen years which closed with 1887 has been 67 per cent., and that of the suburbs 280 per cent., while that of the country districts amounted to 90 per cent. As usual in a dense city crowd, there are a good many black sheep. A leading police official stated recently that he believed fully 70 per cent. of the inhabitants of the city were directly or indirectly affected by the gambling clubs that obtained amongst them. Public-houses, tobacconists’ shops, and clubs were in a vast number of cases but gambling houses in disguise. In Sydney there is consequently a good deal of poverty, and last winter relief works were established for the benefit of some three thousand unemployed; yet the skilled artisan gets good wages, and as I write the plasterers are out on strike for an advance of 1s. per day as wages, the present rate being 10s.—not bad when one remembers Sydney enjoys free-trade prices, and that there is no protracted winter to interfere with building operations. These unemployed had as rations ten pounds of flour, ten pounds of meat, two pounds of sugar and a quarter of a pound of tea, with a minimum wage of 3s. per day, and that day, it must be remembered, is but eight hours’ work. The result of this kindness was that Sydney, as long as the work lasted, was filled with idle loafers and vagabonds from all the country round. Charity seems to do a deal of mischief abroad as well as at home.

Of the original inhabitants of the country you see few traces, either in New South Wales or in Victoria. It is in Queensland and South Australia that they most abound. They have been badly treated by the whites, and in many cases they took a horrible revenge. They now give little trouble, and work peacefully for their former enemies. Amongst their good qualities are a love of religious mystery, a stoical contempt for pain, and a deep reverence for their departed friends and ancestors. The only unpleasant characteristic of the present inhabitants of New South Wales is the broad line of demarcation between Churchmen and Dissenters. Often the Church of England man in the colonies looks upon all Dissenters with aversion. The other day I heard of a little girl who was forbidden to play with the intelligent and pretty daughter of a wealthy colonist on the plea that she was a Dissenter, and consequently not a fitting associate for the daughter of a Church of England lady. Let me give another illustration. I have just heard of a clergyman who told a mother that it would be better to have her child baptized by a Roman priest than by a Dissenting minister!

I am staying in a gentleman’s house. No sooner had the _Orizaba_ dropped anchor than it was boarded by a gentleman, who kindly took me off, and away to the railway station, and personally conducted me over the Blue Mountains by the celebrated Zigzag Railway, which deserves all that can be said in its favour. It is a wonderful achievement in the way of engineering, as it climbs the Blue Mountains, that favourite health resort of Sydney, on one side, and descends on the other. In one place you catch sight of the track three times; you see the line you have left, you see that on which you travel, and you see, lower down, that on which, in another moment, you will be travelling. It is wonderful, but not quite up to the trip over the Alleghanies, and I enjoyed it, though the heat was great, and the rocks and valleys seemed as much burnt up as those of Aden itself.

In due time we reached Bathurst, where I was met by a joyous party of youngsters, who bundled me into a carriage drawn by a couple of handsome horses, and in a little while I found myself seated in the charming country residence of the Hon. E. Webb, a member of the Upper House, who came from Saltash, and who has certainly gained here both fame and fortune. Bathurst, I take it, may be considered a fair specimen of an Australian county town, and the Bathurst people are certainly more devoted to its welfare than are people at home to that of the localities in which they reside. The place is laid out with an eye to the future, and the streets are a great deal broader than our Portland Place. The houses and shops are rather mixed, some of them being built of brick, lofty and commodious, while others are wooden shanties which would not be tolerated at home. The public buildings are fine. The town is governed by a mayor and corporation. It has a very handsome court-house, a magnificent hospital, which is not in debt, and has—how unlike our English ones!—£3,000 to its credit in the treasurer’s hands. Its churches of all kinds are good; and even the little churches in which the Baptists and Independents meet are clean and comfortable. Out here one would have thought the Baptists and Independents might have worshipped together; but no, they must meet in separate bodies, as at home. The Presbyterians have a fine church, which must have cost a good deal of money, but when I looked in on Sunday evening the worshippers were a mere handful. Surely some of these churches might unite, and be all the stronger for so doing.

The only drawback here is the heat, which does terrible mischief. We are 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the people call it cool because the thermometer is something under a hundred in the shade. The clouds come up, but they bring no rain. At night we have a cool breeze, but, unfortunately, just as one feels comfortable, and that life is worth living, everyone goes to bed. Soon after my arrival I had a country drive. There had been a bush fire, and my host sent me and one of his nephews to see what amount of mischief had been done. Away we dashed merrily, drawn by a pair of young horses that scarcely turned a hair, along the sandy road, over the rolling downs. Leaving Bathurst behind, we were soon in what in England we should call a waste, howling wilderness, and yet a few days of rain would make all that plain a monster park, where the sheep could graze, and everyone would rejoice. For miles we saw no living thing, and no sign of civilization save the fences—of rails, very high, as the cattle have a bad habit of jumping them. We met a young lady riding into Bathurst, holding the horse’s reins in one hand and her parasol in the other, a waggon drawn by ten oxen coming into the town with wood, and a cart or two—that was all. We passed over a fine bridge, but the bed of the river was dry. Far ahead of us was a cloud of smoke from a bush-fire, a calamity of constant occurrence in such warm weather. Soon we were in a forest ourselves, ghastly with the withered grass and the stumps of old trees not yet decayed, with the white trunks and grotesque branches twisted in all directions, but leafless, and gum-trees that are ring-barked—the common mode of destroying trees in this part of the country. Now and then I saw an unfortunate cow, vainly seeking green grass, or cool water, or the grateful shade, and half-starved all the while; or a hare, as big again as that of England, and breeding much more rapidly in this precocious clime. Presently a couple of magpies passed us, and they are much larger than at home. But life of any kind is rare, and we got on to the hillside where the fire had been, and saw everything black and charred, trees fallen down, fences only a black line of charcoal. One could fancy that everything living had fallen a prey to the devouring flame. Up in the bush, on a hill on our left, there were kangaroos, but they unfortunately did not put in an appearance; and if I saw three emus in the course of my ride, candour compels me to own that they were tame, in a gentleman’s grounds, and not in their native state. The great pests of this part of the world are the flies. I don’t mind them on the table, if they do make the white sugar apparently a heap of black, or if they do darken the snow-white tablecloth; it is only when they proceed to attack the company around that I think they carry their jokes too far. They are a special torment to the bald-headed, but they disdain not the fairest of the fair. The New South Wales flies are smaller than those of the mother country, and twice as mischievous. To them there is nothing sacred; and as to the forty winks grateful to many of us after luncheon or dinner, they are quite out of the question.

The English fruit-grower complains of the wet and cold, the Australian of the heat and drought. The Ex-Mayor of Sydney tells me he has lost £10,000 worth of sheep this season in consequence of the heat; and the charming daughter of my host, who resides with her husband at a station a hundred and fifty miles further north—and in Australia the further you go north the hotter it becomes—has been driven away from her husband, and has to come here with her children because they have no water nearer than eight miles. As I write I see the signs of a water famine everywhere, in the dusty road, in the parched fields, in the distant hills far away. The only exception is the garden, consisting of many acres beautifully laid out and well shaded with trees of all kinds. Mr. Webb, my host, has a tank which conveys the water everywhere, and even the lawn-tennis ground beyond, to which the young men and maidens seem as devoted as they are at home, abounds with verdure. The mansion, for such it is, rises out of a garden of roses and dahlias, and luxurious flowers, blooming and bright to look on; while behind are apple and plum and pear and greengage and mulberry trees laden with luscious fruit to any amount. Some of the flowers, the stocks, for instance, take far brighter colours than they do at home; the greengages, too, are finer than ours, owing to the same reason—the abundance of sun, a sun which makes the Australian hornet, with its blue gauze wings, as black as a coal-heaver.

As to the servants in this house, I dare not say what wages they are getting. All I know is, that if I were a lady-help, or even a servant of all-work, it would not be long ere I booked my passage for New South Wales. The coachman has a hundred a year and his house, and the gardener not much less. It is needless to add that I find it good to be here: it is hard that I must take up my bed and walk. Here no iron horse screams as he urges on his wild career, no noisy screw perpetually churns up the troubled sea; I hear no hoarse watchman, as the hour strikes, proclaiming in the midnight air, ‘All’s well’: here no newsboy makes the land hideous with his noise, nor does the gin-drinking tramp interfere with my peaceful digestion. Most weary seems the sea—

‘Weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of foam.’

Yes, like the mild-eyed, melancholy Lotos Eaters, I feel it is sweet to sit me down upon the yellow sand and

‘Dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave.’

But I am back in Sydney, and seek to study its ways. We hold the Church of Rome, in all ages and in all countries, to be the foe of freedom, civil and religious, the great obstacle in the way of progress, and the worst enemy of God and man; it is but natural that its growth in New South Wales and all Australia gives one alarm. It fights with an immense advantage over its opponents by reason of its wealth, its effective organization, and its Irish allies, who are banded together for its support in every colony, and, I may add, in every land. The only priest I have as yet met with was a model of good-temper and good-humour, and had an enormous advantage in every way over his ritualistic ally, who does his work unconsciously, and burns his fingers by pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for him. In New South Wales it is understood that the Romanists are discontented with the existing Education Act, which is undenominational, and they have supported the Protectionists, not out of love for them, but with the hope to get some of the public money for their schools, or, at any rate, modifications, in the school system which may be favourable to themselves. As it is, they do not fare badly. The other day it was discovered that a school teacher had, in spite of his duty to be neutral, gone out of his way to teach Romanist doctrines to his pupils. A fuss was made about it, but he was only removed to another school, that was all. Again, at a place called Waratah, it has been decided that there shall be no intramural burials. The principal of the monastery there writes to the Municipal Council for the privilege to bury members of the monastery in their own grounds. The Council are divided, and the Mayor gives the casting vote in favour of the monastery, that is, in favour of breaking the laws of his borough. Now, it is very evident that if any Protestant parson, any Baptist or Wesleyan or Presbyterian, had pleaded for anything of the kind, that is, for power to break the sanitary laws of the borough, and to have a private burying-ground of their own, they would have pleaded in vain. In Victoria, four or five years ago, there was such an uprising that there has since been no Catholic party in the House of any size whatever. It is well to note here that in the eyes of the State, all over Australia, religions are on an equality. Under Sir Richard Bourke all religions received State aid; but in 1862 this was put a stop to, and all that the State now does is to pension off the survivors under the old _régime_. In this way last year, in New South Wales, was divided between the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterians and the Methodists, about £10,000, the Church of England, as was to be expected, taking the lion’s share. When the sparseness of the population is considered, the church attendance will appear very large; and, though apparently less than found in the colony of Victoria, it is, proportionately, much larger than in England. In the Bush, the Church of England parsons seem to be somewhat remiss in the performance of their duties. A lady residing in the interior tells me that she went to the Church of England preaching station frequently, but the parson never turned up, and she had to return unblessed.

Yesterday I took the tramcar—a Government institution, by-the-bye—and had a look at Botany Bay, a place of many evil memories, and whose associations reach very far, even now that it has no terrors for the criminal or reprobate. In reality, Botany Bay was not the penal settlement; that was at Sydney; but the popular mind believed all the convicts were sent to Botany Bay, and hence my use of the term. In a recently published correspondence, a distinguished Victorian judge asserts: ‘An uneasy and uninformed feeling of suspicious dislike of England and her Government, which is not without a justifying cause, undoubtedly exists, and is growing, in these communities. Its extent is not ascertainable, but it may safely be affirmed that it will depend largely upon the relations which yet remain to be acknowledged and to be established between the Imperial and Colonial Governments of her Majesty in the immediate future, whether this feeling will not soon expand among native Australians into one of profound and general alienation.’ I think the judge is right, and that this feeling is growing stronger, finding expression, not in the old-established papers of the colony, such as _The Melbourne Argus_ or _The Sydney Morning Herald_, papers of great wealth and influence, but among their younger and less fortunate rivals. ‘It was England,’ writes one of them, ‘that first seamed the white shoulder of Australia with the livid mark of the lash. It is the people who wielded that instrument of degradation, and their descendants, who wish to draw the bonds of Empire closer to-day. The Imperial connection is, therefore, a shameful one.’ Poor Captain Cook had a good deal to answer for when, in an evil moment, he first dropped his anchor in Botany Bay. It was quite a mistake to send out our criminals there; they should have been allowed, says young Australia, to die of gaol-fever at home. But, says young Australia, England in her wickedness did more—it colonized a continent where the English spirit of the time was to be perpetuated by the transmitted influence of the gaolers of these convicts long after a new Liberalism had entered into British politics, and long after the narrow spirit of a hundred years ago, with convictism itself, had passed away. The contention of a growing class in Australia is that the enduring effect of the convict system on the public spirit of the older Australian colonies is traceable, not so much to the convicts themselves, as to their gaolers. These are the mercenary wretches to be gibbeted for the scorn of every honest man. These are the gods whom the Australians ignorantly worship, whose spirit is still strong to deprive the horny-handed of his rights; who were the founders of the vile system which actually gives property an influence in making laws, and in determining the political character of the country; men who made colossal fortunes by the illegitimate sale of rum. The chief constable of Sydney had actually a license to sell rum; and, as Dr. Laing puts it, ‘the chief gaoler, though not exactly permitted to convert the gaol into a grog shop, had a licensed house in which he sold rum publicly on his own behalf right opposite the gaol door.’ The convicts, it is admitted, for the sake of argument, were some of them bad; but as to their gaolers—the gallant men of the New South Wales Corps, for instance—they were all rascals; and they were the founders of Australia, and their spirit lives and dominates in the political institutions of the country to this day. It seems to me that this is a foul libel on the country, though it is the indictment put forth by an Australian writer in an Australian newspaper. Australians are not much given to the study of history, and perhaps it is well. History is of little avail when it is treated in this way. Australia was not all Botany Bay, and its leaders are men whose fathers, by their character and enterprise and industry, distinguished themselves in the fair land to which they had come penetrated with English ideas, with English habits, with the English Bible, with Milton, and Shakespeare, and Burns; and it is to them, rather than to Botany Bay, that Australia owes its greatness and its power, its present flourishing state, its capabilities—when its mines are developed, when its vast continent has been opened up by settlement, and a general system of irrigation—of a greater future. It is true, I read in some of the weekly papers, that Australia is tyrannized over by wealthy imbeciles, while the high-souled horny-handed is left out in the cold; that the present state of things is infamous, and must be put an end to. So far as I can see, the horny-handed is master of the situation. I admit that he is not a bad fellow. I wish that he were a little more civil, a little more patriotic, and that his women-folk were not so egregiously over-dressed. For his own sake, also, I own that I wish his better-half knew how to cook a steak and boil a potato. What I maintain—and what his admirers will not admit—is that the capitalist, the successful working-man, who has improved himself out of his original poverty, who has acquired wealth, and all the good it brings with it, is at any rate his equal. To talk of the taint of Botany Bay is the silliest of bunkum in the world. There is no trace of it now. Young Australia knows nothing of transportation. In Australia you face a new world, a world as new to the writers filled with tales of the horrors of transportation and gaoler officialism, and the cringing subservience which it engendered, as was Botany Bay to Captain Cook, whose monument I see placed in the park opposite the Sydney Museum. It could not but be so, when the gold discoveries overran the country with a population at the rate of 90,000 arrivals in a year—a mixed population if you like, but mostly free, and many of them as manly a set of fellows as any to be met with anywhere. It is an ill bird that defiles its own nest, and the Australian who endeavours to make political capital by dwelling on the blunders of the old country in its efforts to colonize, and thereby creates an antagonistic feeling to England, does injustice alike to his own colony and the Fatherland.

But, after all, I have said little of Botany Bay itself, which remains much the same in its natural features as when Cook landed there a century ago. The tramway plants you on the shore—all white sand and dead seaweed. Afar you see the narrow entrance into the Pacific, along which Cook cautiously steered his ship, and opposite, on the wooded shore on the other side, is a small black monument to denote where the great circumnavigator landed. It is a peaceful spot: woods are all round, the jerry-builder has neglected the spot altogether, and the Sydneyite comes here, with his wife and family, for an occasional mouthful of sea air. On one side of you is a pier, and in another spot I see an intimation that boats are to be had for hire, but no boat disturbs the tranquil bay as I wander alone by the sad sea-shore. To me, meditating, there comes a vision of the old world, when George III. was living. I see the black man watching sullenly the new arrivals, frightened by neither their appearance nor their bullets—which they fire just to awaken the native, who returns a shower of arrows. It is curious how the black has disappeared, how firmly the white man has planted himself in his seat, and with what bitterness he has come to regard as an interloper the heathen Chinee—who seems to muster pretty strongly in the busy, half-built territory that stretches from the bay to the capital. As I get into the train I am sandwiched between two celestials, so I dream visions. Is the world for the future to be given up to the Mongolian? Is the Caucasian played out? Not exactly, I fancy; at any rate, as far as Australia is concerned.

In South Wales nothing is more remarkable than the elevation—social, political, and religious—of the people, within little more than a single generation. In 1845 Dr. Darwin published his last edition of ‘The Voyage of the _Beagle_.’ In the course of his voyage he landed at Sydney, and writes: ‘On the whole, from what I have heard more than from what I saw, I was disappointed with the state of society. The whole community is rancorously divided into parties on almost every subject. Among those who from their station in life ought to be the best, many live in such open profligacy that respectable people cannot live with them. There is much jealousy between the children of the rich emancipist and the free settlers, the former being pleased to consider honest men as interlopers.’ Darwin also refers to the mischief done to the children by the degraded class of servants by whom they are surrounded. In the New South Wales of to-day, not only do you see nothing of this, but quite the reverse. It forms the grandest illustration the world has yet seen of the tendency of human society to elevate and reform itself.

I would also say something of the country. New South Wales is not dependent solely on its harbour nor its Blue Mountains for beauty. I heard everywhere much of the beauty of the Hunter River district, and the richness of its soil, but I regret I was unable to visit it. I did go, however, to the Hawkesbury River, not a long ride by rail from Sydney—the Rhine of New South Wales, as Mr. Trollope terms it. It is not the Rhine, no more than is the Hudson River of New York. Both are charming rivers for a day’s outing, but they are not the Rhine with its old castles, its vine-clad hills, its legendary lore. There is but one Rhine in the world, as there is but one Thames. However, on the Hawkesbury you have lovely scenery, tranquil waters, wooded hills, a beauteous solitude, an air of repose, which make one realize how divine is Nature and all her works. It was good to be there. It was with regret that I tore myself away.