Alexander Sutherland

“ Thus it became common for new arrivals to regard themselves, on their first landing, as already men of fortune, and, presuming on their anticipated wealth, they often lived in an expensive and extravagant style, very different from the prudent and abstemious life which can alone secure to the young colonist the success he hopes for. In Sydney the most profuse habits prevailed, and in Melbourne it seemed as if prosperity had turned the heads of the inhabitants. ”

“ In some tents the miners sit round boxes or stools, while, by the light of flaming oil-cans, they gamble for match boxes filled with gold-dust; in others they gather to drink the liquors illicitly sold by the “sly grog shops”. Many of the diggers betake themselves to the brilliantly-lighted theatres, and make the fragile walls tremble with their rough and hearty roars of applause: everywhere are heard the sounds of laughter and good humour. ”

“ In the early days of the colonies their destinies were, to a great extent, moulded by the Governors who had charge of them. Whether for good or for evil, the influence of the Governor was decisive; and it was, therefore, a matter of great good fortune to Sydney that, during the long administration of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, this influence was almost wholly on the side of good. Not that Macquarie had no faults. He was a man full of vanity and self-conceit; a man who, instead of sober despatches to his superiors in England, wrote flowery accounts of himself and his wonderful doings ”

“ In the following February, Marsden returned to Sydney, thinking the mission in a fair way of success. But all was not to be so harmonious as he dreamt; the liberated convicts, who formed the bulk of the crews of sealing and whaling vessels, treated the natives with coarseness and arrogance; the Maoris were quick to revenge themselves, and the murders, thefts, and quarrels along all the shore did more harm than the handful of missionaries could do good. Three or four times they wished to leave, and as often did Marsden return and persuade them to stay. Their lives at least were safe ”

“ The gloomy anticipations with which the gold discoveries had been regarded by the squatters and employers of labour were by no means realised; for though men were for a time scarce, and wages exceedingly high, yet, when the real nature of a gold-digger’s life and the meagreness of the average earnings became apparent, the great majority of the miners returned to their ordinary employments and the colony resumed its former career of steady progress, though with this difference, that the population was greater, and business consequently brisker than it had ever been before. ”

“ Those who were well enough to work began to clear the land for cultivation; but so soon as everything was ready for the ploughing to begin, the amazing fact was discovered that no one knew anything of agriculture; and had it not been that Governor Phillip had with him a servant who had been for a time on a farm, their labour would have been of little avail. As it was, the cultivation was of the rudest kind; one man, even if he had been a highly experienced person, could do very little to instruct so many. ”

“ Thousands upon thousands of holes covered the earth, where men emerged and disappeared like ants, each bearing a bag of sand which he either threw on a wheelbarrow or slung over his shoulder, and then carried forward, running nimbly along the thin paths among a multitude of holes, till he reached the little creek where he delivered the sand to one of the men who stood shoulder to shoulder, in long rows, for miles on either bank, all washing the sand and clay into the shallow current, whose waters were turned to a tint of dirty yellow. ”

“ Indeed, more than half of the recently explored regions are suitable for sheep and cattle, but there are other great districts which are miserable and forbidding. However, thanks to the heroic men whose names have been mentioned, and to such others as the Jardine Brothers, Ernest Favenc, Gosse, and the Baron von Mueller, almost the whole of Australia is now explored. Only a small part of South Australia and the central part of West Australia remain unknown. We all of us owe a great debt of gratitude to the men who endured so much to make known to the world the capabilities of our continent. ”

“ In Sydney the Council entrusted the framing of the new Constitution to a committee, which decided to adopt the English system of government by two Houses—the one to represent the people as a whole, the other to watch over the interests of those who, by their superior wealth, might be supposed to have more than an ordinary stake in the welfare of the country. ”

“ The white men burnt the native villages, and carried off crowds of men and women; while, in revenge, the islanders often surprised a vessel and massacred its crew; and in such cases the innocent suffered for the guilty. The sailors often had the baseness to disguise themselves as missionaries, in order the more easily to effect their purpose; and when the true missionaries, suspecting nothing, approached the natives on their errand of good will, they were speared or clubbed to death by the unfortunate islanders. ”

“ Farming was profitable, and the exports of wheat began to assume large dimensions. The best breeds of sheep were brought into the island, and Van Diemen’s Land wool, which at first had been despised in England, and used only for stuffing mattresses, grew into favour, and was bought by the manufacturers at high prices. Thus many of the settlers became wealthy, and the estates from which their wealth was derived began to have a correspondingly high value, so as to give the colony an assured prosperity which was certainly remarkable in the sixteenth year from its foundation. ”

“ Melbourne and Geelong were silent and deserted; for all classes were alike infected with the same excitement—lawyers, doctors, clerks, merchants, labourers, mechanics, all were to be found struggling through the miry ruts that served for a highway to Bendigo. The sailors left the ships in the bay with scarcely a man to take care of them; even the very policemen deserted, and the warders in the gaols resigned in a body. The price of labour now became excessive, for no man was willing to stay away from the diggings unless tempted by the offer of four or five times the ordinary wage. ”

“ Captain Cook.—For more than a hundred years New Zealand had no white men as visitors. It was in 1769 that Captain Cook, on his way home from Tahiti, steering to the south-west in the hope of discovering new lands, saw the distant hills of New Zealand. Two days later he landed on the east coast of the North Island, a little north of Hawke Bay. There lay the little ship the Endeavour at anchor, with its bulging sides afloat on a quiet bay, in front a fertile but steeply sloping shore with a pah on the crown of a hill, and a few neat little houses by the side of a rapid stream. ”

“ The young squatters of New South Wales, attracted by the high prices given for sheep in the early days of Adelaide, had been daring enough, in spite of the blacks and of the toilsome journey, to drive their flocks overland; and the new-comers soon gave quite a wool-growing tone to the community. ”

“ Many dropped down, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, and had to be abandoned to their fate. Of those who contrived to approach within thirty miles of Sydney, the greater part were murdered by the same tribe of blacks from whom Bass and Flinders had apprehended danger. Clarke and one or two others reached Port Jackson; their clothes in tatters, their bodies wasted almost to the bones, and in such a state that, when a boat was brought to carry them over the bay to Sydney, they had to be lifted on board like infants. ”

“ Wakefield, the author of this little book, you cannot long have free servants in this country; if a free man arrives in the colony, though he may for a short time work for you as a servant, yet he is sure to save a little money, and as land is here so excessively cheap, he soon becomes a landed proprietor. He settles down on his farm, and, though he may have a [Pg 68] year or two of heavy toil, yet he is almost certain to become both happy and prosperous. Thus, the colony is an excellent place for a poor man, but it is a wretched abode for a man of means and of culture. ”

“ Every one wished to settle down in the city, and as it was expected that, with the growth of population, the value of town allotments would rapidly increase, the idea became prevalent that to buy land in the city and keep it for sale in future years would be a profitable investment. But there were so many who entertained the same astute design that, when they all came to put it in practice, there was little gain to any one; and the only result was that Adelaide was turned into a scene of reckless speculation and gambling in land. ”

“ Governor Young adroitly turned the discovery of gold to the advantage of his own colony by establishing an escort between Bendigo and Adelaide; and, as this was remarkably well equipped, many of the diggers sent their gold by this route rather than to Melbourne, thus giving to South Australia some of the advantages of a gold-producing country. The crowds of people rushing to the goldfields had carried with them nearly all the coins of the colony; and the banks, although they had plenty of rough gold, were yet unable, from scarcity of coined money, to meet the demands upon them. ”

“ The Maoris.—So far as we know, the original inhabitants of New Zealand were a dark-skinned race called Maoris, a people lithe and handsome of body, though generally plain of features: open, frank and happy in youth, grave and often melancholy in their older years.
They numbered forty thousand in the North Island, where the warmth of the climate suited them, but in the South Island there were only two thousand. They were divided into tribes, who fought fiercely with one another; cooked and ate the bodies of the slain, and carried off the vanquished to be slaves. ”

“ These colonies were not inclined to suffer long in this manner; and, to defend themselves, they refused admission to any person who came from West Australia, unless he could show that he had never been a convict. Thus the colony at Swan River was branded, and held to be contaminated; no free immigrants sought its shores, and many of its best inhabitants departed.
This stigma continued to rest on West Australia until the year 1868, when the transportation of criminals from Great Britain altogether ceased, and the colony no longer received its periodical supply of convicts. ”

“ But, happily, these expectations proved fallacious; for, in 1852, when the great stream of people from Europe began to flow into the colony, every profession and every trade sprang into new and vigorous life. The vast crowds on the goldfields required to be fed, so the farmers found ample market for their corn, and the squatters for their beef and mutton. The miners required to be clothed, and the tailor and shoemaker must be had, whatever might be the prices they charged. Mechanics and artisans of every class found their labours in demand, and handsomely paid for. ”

“ But the fine black soil of the district, in places grassy, in places with patches of fine timber, proved very attractive to the settlers, and soon there came half a dozen ships with more colonists direct from England. The natives were friendly to white men, and gave them a cordial welcome. Down the river came their canoes laden with pigs, potatoes, melons, and gourds for sale in the market of the little town. All was good-will until the Maoris found that the white men had come not merely to settle among them, but to appropriate all the best of the land. ”

“ The shopkeepers in Perth became rich, and the farmer squatters of the surrounding districts found a ready market for their produce. Yet this success was only partial; and there was nothing which might be said to constitute general prosperity. In the little town of Fremantle, the few and scattered houses had still a rural aspect, and the streets echoed to the sound of no commercial bustle. In Perth the main street was still a grassy walk, shaded by avenues of trees, and even in the business quarter the houses stood each in the midst of its spacious garden. ”

“ Governor King.—Governor Hunter, who left Sydney in the year 1800, was succeeded by Captain King, the young officer who has been already mentioned as the founder of the settlement at Norfolk Island. He was a man of much ability, and was both active and industrious; yet so overwhelming at this time were the difficulties of Governorship in New South Wales, that his term of office was little more than a distressing failure. The colony consisted chiefly of convicts, who were—many of them—the most depraved and hardened villains to be met with in the history of crime. ”

“ In 1848 Kennedy was sent to explore Cape York Peninsula. He was landed with a party of twelve men at Rockingham Bay, and, striking inland to the north-west, travelled towards Cape York, where a small schooner was to wait for him. The difficulties met by the explorers were immense; for, in these tropical regions, dense jungles of prickly shrubs impeded their course and lacerated their flesh, while vast swamps often made their journey tedious and unexpectedly long. ”

“ Now, said Wakefield, on account of the immense natural resources of these colonies, their splendid soil, their magnificent pasture lands, their vast wealth in minerals, and their widespread forests of valuable timber, which stand ready for the axe, a gentleman possessed of only £20,000 will obtain as large an income from it as could be procured from £100,000 in England; yet he will be able to enjoy his learned and cultured leisure, just as he does at home, because all the work will be done for him by the servants he employs. ”

“ Soon after, a ship arrived with a number of fresh convicts, but no provisions; in great haste the Sirius was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Supply to Batavia; these vessels brought back as much as they could get, but it was all used in a month or two. Starvation now lay before the settlement; every one, including the officers and the Governor himself, was put on the lowest rations which could keep the life in a man’s body, and yet there was not enough of food, even at this miserable rate, to last for any length of time. ”

“ Rauparaha was at length overcome, and with difficulty escaped across the strait to the South Island, while Te Whero Whero massacred and enslaved all over the North Island, cooking as many as 200 bodies after a single fight. And yet the evil was in a way its own cure, for, through strenuous endeavours, by this time every tribe had a certain proportion of its men well armed with muskets; and thus no single tribe ever afterwards got the same cruel ascendancy that was obtained first by the Ngapuhi and then by the Waikato tribe. ”

“ Governor Grey.—The colonists of South Australia had, in 1841, received a sharp but salutary lesson, and we have seen that they profited by it. They had discovered that the land was their only source of wealth, and many, who had sufficient means to purchase farms or stations, went out into the country, determined to endure a year or two of hardship in hopes of prosperity to come. Nor had they very long to wait; in 1844 they were able to export corn to the extent of £40,000, and in that year the colony possessed 355,000 sheep and 22,000 cattle. ”