A. J. Sargent

“ Our path lies for many miles through a dense forest of beech. From the roots, and far up the trunks, the trees are covered with mosses, lichens, and small ferns. On the ground are more thick mosses and myriads of ferns great and small. Everything is moist and green in this part of the island, where the perpetual westerly winds bring heavy rain all the year round to the mountain slopes. In fact, we shall be lucky if we finish our walk without meeting with a downpour. ”

“ In Brunei, as all over Borneo, the bamboo, the palm and the creeping rattan provide the builder with material free of charge for posts, flooring, roofs and lashings—for the houses are tied, not nailed together. There is fish in abundance in the river, and we pass a 48 fleet of market boats, with women in large sun hats, bringing the catch for sale in the town; while in the forest all round there is fruit to be had for the picking. Nature has supplied the Malay with most of his necessaries at his very door. ”

“ THE MALAY REGION We now leave Ceylon, cross the eastern arm of the Indian Ocean, and turn southward through the Straits of Malacca. We shall find ourselves in a new world, among people very different from those that we have met in the earlier part of our voyage. The key to the understanding of the whole region is Singapore, a century ago an unimportant island, though even then a few far-seeing people realized its magnificent possibilities. ”

“ On the west side of Darling Harbour is the suburb of Pyrmont, on another peninsula; and at the base of these peninsulas Sydney is spreading and broadening out beyond the railway station. But even here, in the new suburb, are many parks and open spaces reserved for public use; while nothing can destroy the beauty of the older portion of the city, divided up by inlets, and with glimpses down many of its sloping streets of the blue water and the hills beyond. It is not surprising that the early settlers found this spot far more attractive than the open beach of Botany Bay. ”

“ The walls are necessary, as the island is exposed to every wind that blows, and above all to the gregale, the boisterous north-east storm wind. Even more unpleasant is the Sirocco, a warm damp wind which blows in late summer and early autumn from the Sahara. The summer is hot, and usually without a cloud; and though heavy rains fall in the winter, they quickly soak into the porous rock. Though it seems so bare and rocky and the soil is thin, yet Malta is well cultivated and produces splendid crops on its little farms. ”

“ Whatever the exact origin of the Maltese may be, in speaking of Malta and Gibraltar together we are certainly linking the very old with the very new. Gibraltar has no real native people and no continuous history; even from the point of view of naval strategy it is essentially modern. Malta was a naval base in the days when trade and civilization were confined to the Mediterranean; the opening of the Suez Canal has merely added to its former importance. Gibraltar only comes into history when western civilization has spread to the outer seas and the broad Atlantic. ”

“ All around us are snow-clad peaks, with great glaciers flowing down the valleys between and ending in long moraines—masses of rock and debris with chalk-white streams flowing out from beneath them as in the picture before us. ”

“ The whole city has an air of dignity and age which we should hardly expect to find in a small and isolated island. Even the great forts suggest mediæval history and romance, armour and swords, rather than bayonets and quick-firing guns. They are very different from the batteries of Gibraltar. In fact, Valetta is far more than a mere fortress; it has a history, a people and a language all its own. The upper classes have been affected by contact with the Latin races of Southern Europe, while there is a strong Arab strain in the mass of the people ”

“ On our right is a broad bay, the North Harbour, with the village of Manly at its head; on the other side of Manly, across a narrow isthmus, is the open ocean, with its long rollers thundering always in surf upon the beach. ”

“ We often come on a whole valley, looking like a huge quarry, turned upside 42 down and desolated in the search for tin. Everywhere we notice the busy Chinese coolie, in his curious sun hat, and in the distance we may catch sight of the barracks where he lives. The ore is dug out and washed, and then for the most part sent to Singapore to be smelted and reduced to the shape in which it reaches our own country. Nearly half the world’s supply of tin comes from this narrow strip of country; and we may say that Malaya has been built up on tin, though now rubber is rapidly overtaking it in value. ”

“ We are at Tamworth on the Liverpool Plains, not far from the northern end of the wheat-belt; but this belt can be traced from Queensland right round to South Australia, and from end to end the scenery is the same. There are the same open sunny plains, dotted with homesteads and small agricultural towns, and covered with the waving grain. Everywhere is the hum of machinery, reaping, binding, and threshing; for labour here is costly and as little as possible is done by hand. ”

“ The whole peninsula is merely the fragment of an extinct volcano. In the white town, with its straight streets, we meet Arabs, Somalis, Indians, Negroes, Greeks, Jews and British soldiers; their presence here, on a barren rock between the desert and the sea, can be understood only in the light of the past history of Aden.
Here, from the remotest antiquity, was without doubt a great port of exchange for the products of India, Arabia, Africa and the Mediterranean, by way of Egypt and the Nile. ”

“ In Australia, as we have seen, the real obstacles to settlement were the climate and the character of the country; the aborigines were pushed back into the wilder districts or simply crushed out of existence by the civilisation of the white man. Not so the Maori: he has been a very important element in the life of New Zealand, whether as friend or enemy of the white invader, from the time of the earliest settlers—the whalers of Cook Strait, and the traders, boat-builders, and missionaries of the Bay of Islands which lies on the east coast of the long northern peninsula. ”

“ Let us now see something of the natives and their occupations. It is market day in Port Edward; the streets are alive with crowds, buying, selling and haggling, 56 and crowding round the food stalls with their piles of strange delicacies in bowls and saucers. In one corner they are bargaining for pigs, in another are piled loads of fuel, scrub oak and fir, brought in from the country round on the backs of donkeys and mules. There is no coal, and the peasant has stripped the country of most of its woods, here as in other parts of China. ”

“ If we remember the latitude of South Island we might expect to find it rather warm; but we must take account of other things than latitude. It is true that there are occasional hot winds blowing down from the mountains over the Canterbury Plains, but the island as a whole is cool. The great mass of highland, with its winter covering of snow, the perpetual moist winds and the cool currents of the ocean all help to modify the heat of the sun’s rays, and to give us a climate not in the least enervating for English settlers. ”

“ On the land side the Rock was impregnable; the guns of that day were useless against its defences; Gibraltar was ours to hold so long as we could command the sea.
At the peace of Utrecht, which ended the war of the Spanish Succession, we retained Gibraltar, and the people of England, impressed by the siege and the splendid defence of the Rock, resolved to keep it. It was only natural that Spain should wish to recover a fortress which was geographically part of her territory and of little value to us at the time. ”

“ But we shall not see swarms of bathers on the beaches as in our own country, for there are sharks in Sydney Harbour; the only safe bathing is in the surf outside. As we approach our landing-place the houses are more closely packed together, and islands are dotted here and there in the channel. We may be reminded to some degree of parts of the Clyde, or of one of the larger inlets on the west coast of Scotland; though here we find not only the most beautiful scenery but a great seaport and busy city in the very midst of it. ”

“ The Chinese are at last beginning to move; a new channel has been cut for traffic on the Hwangpu; the bed of the river has been dredged and its course straightened, and an embankment built to keep out the silt from the main river. But the size of the vessels engaged in trade increases every year and the future of Shanghai is in the balance; it remains to be seen whether modern engineering will win the day against the vast forces wielded by the Yangtse. Any decline in the activity of Shanghai would be likely to result in more business for Hongkong. ”

“ At the wharf half the population seems to be gathered to meet us. Some are clothed, native fashion, in the famous Polynesian mats or in the bark-cloth called tapa, or even in cotton; others are in European dress. The town with its white houses and verandas looks quite civilised. The inhabitants remind us of the New Zealand Maoris, though their colour is somewhat lighter; in fact, both peoples belong to the same great family, the Polynesians, or light-brown people of the Pacific, which is spread over many of the island groups which lie to the north-east and east of Tonga. ”

“ In our voyage from the Gulf of Aden to Colombo we have made a great circuit of the Indian Ocean, yet from beginning to end we have never lost touch with Indian trade and Indian people. The islands and ports which we have visited are only to be understood as parts of a larger whole, united not divided by the sea. ”

“ The lines running to the north and north-west carry us into an entirely new type of country, and before following them up we must look carefully at the build of the island on the other side of the mountain backbone. Here our experience of South Island will help us little. Instead of a gentle uniform slope to the ocean, we find a confused and bewildering structure. The mountain ranges in the long northern neck and in the Coromandel Peninsula, with its continuing islands, run from north-west to south-east, almost at right angles to our main dividing range. ”

“ Here is a lake in the garden 13 with the magnificent Victoria Regia water-lily growing in it. Everywhere in Singapore the architecture and the people of the East and West are blended in a strange mixture.
In the hilly country, outside the city, there is nothing of very special interest for us. As we are close to the Equator and have heat all the year round, with a heavy rainfall, almost any tropical product can be grown on the island; the Chinese make a speciality of the cultivation of pineapples, which are tinned and exported. ”

“ At Auckland we left behind us hills and fiords; on our right as we enter this group is the small but high volcanic island of Eua, the only one in the whole group which contains a river; the main island, Tonga Tabu, or Holy Tonga, lies on our left, and has a very different aspect. A low mass, green with what prove to be coconut palms, rises out of white surf and spray breaking over reefs of coral rock. We round a low headland and thread our way through winding channels among the reefs; on one side is the low mainland, on the other a string of green islets capping the reefs. ”

“ The mountain ridges which we have scaled are merely the steep broken edges of a great highland block which falls gently southwards to a broad plateau, without hills or streams, a monotony of stones, red earth, dust and dense thorn scrub. In the dry season we may travel for a week or ten days together and find not a drop of water. On the caravan 18 routes are a few wells, such as we see here, but many of these dry up, and we have to dig for a few mouthfuls of warm, dirty water in the liquid mud at the bottom. ”

“ If we follow the great plain northwards from Christchurch, we shall find that it narrows gradually and comes to an end at last, against the seaward range of the Kaikoura Mountains. Our road north is stopped, but we can follow the railway north-westward to Springfield; thence we go by coach, over the Alps through Arthur’s Pass and down the Otira Gorge, until we strike the short railway which will take us to Greymouth and the west coast. This is the only coach road over the Alps, and we can learn much in the course of our exciting forty mile run. ”

“ We may realize how far Cyprus is off the main line of traffic by the difficulty of getting back to our route; as it may take us a week to reach Egypt, travelling by slow steamer and touching at ports on the Syrian coast on our way.
We are bound for the Suez Canal and are approaching Port Said at last. The coast ahead looks flat and desolate: on our right a long line of sand and mud banks separates the shallow lake Menzaleh from the open sea; on our left are more mud banks, and beyond them waste marsh and desert. ”

“ We shall not attempt to travel further south than Macquarie Harbour, as there is little beyond but wild forest and hill country, backed by the bare plateau and [64] full in the path of the westerly gales from the Southern Ocean. It is without roads or railways and has scarcely a human settlement. So we return to Launceston and follow the railway southward to Hobart. The coast of the south-east corner is very different from that of the rest of the island. It is a drowned coast, with deep fiords, many islands, and irregular peninsulas barely connected by narrow necks with the mainland. ”

“ We must look for modern progress not in the ruined cities but in the new plantation districts of the hill country. The railway will again carry us in comfort through the slopes of the planting country to Niuwara Eliya, up in the clouds, six thousand feet above the sea, the health resort of the planters and European residents. ”

“ As a result of the settlement we find in the south-east, south and south-west, butter, wool, meat and timber produced in large quantities; while in the centre we have nothing but the scenery and some forest as yet untouched.
If we think of the products which are most valuable to New Zealand at the present day, we shall find that with the exception of timber they have been introduced from abroad by the white settlers and were unknown to the Maoris. But the marshland, dear to the Maori heart, produces one plant which was necessary to the natives in the past and is still very useful to us. ”