Edward Shann

“ But we who know The strange capricious land they trod — At times a stricken, parching sod, At times with raging floods beset — Through which they found their lonely way, Are quite content that you should say It was not much!' A hundred years later men are again girding their strength to attack the settlement of the timbered lands in that corner of Australia. The climate and environment promise the victors, when they come, a land worthy of the physique and spirit its conquest evokes. They are setting out from the bases the Bussells made for them, Augusta and 'Cattle Chosen'. ”

“ There came in his stead a man with a theory, the theory that the blacks were being wronged, and that their wrongs could be righted by civilizing them and giving them equal treatment. No doubt the blacks were being wronged. Their freedom to kill any beast they could find, and to avenge blood by shedding more blood, was being taken from them. How else could colonization proceed? But Governor Hutt had no heart for the task of imposing government upon the natives, and smashing, by the inhibition of fear, the cult of retaliation as a sacred duty. ”

“ We both felt that fullness of enjoyment which silence can alone express. Captain Toby was good-natured and attentive in all our vagaries, whether of silence or sauciness. Everyone is so, such is the estimation in which the dear, dear boys are held.'
While 'Captain Toby' voyaged south in the 'Ellen' to announce at Augusta the arrival of their sisters and Lenox at the Swan, Mrs. Bussell in England was learning, from another source, of the high esteem in which John and his brothers stood. ”

“ It came, however, not as the blacks knew war, in blood-feuds between families or tribal battles in which blood was shed but little life lost, but as a conflict of economies and morales, a struggle for exclusive mastery of the land. It could end in one way only. Then, and not till then, could trial be made of the black man's competence for the restraints and tasks of civilization. ”

“ We have taken two thousand acres of our Grant on the Blackwood. The place we have fixed upon to commence is a peninsula of forty acres, between two and three hundred yards across the neck, which we have fenced with a post and rail of split mahogany.... It will be advisable for some of us to go to the Vasse where we have taken 3,700 acres, the remainder of our grant. What a pity we did not know of that country before! What a quantity of labour it would have saved us, no trees to get up, the land rich, bearing nothing but grass! ”

“ If water there our search reward, Our weary limbs will rest; The turf shall be the genial board, The chase supplies a feast. Down with our knapsacks on the sod Beside yon shelt'ring tree, Our guns lean charged with ample load If danger aught there be. See how these murky woods throughout Our jolly fire glares: Full readily the way-worn rout An evening meal prepares. We'll fill our cups, and sing our song Before we sink to sleep, Our dogs shall then the drear night long Their faithful vigils keep. No lurking savage shall assail. ”

“ If it be found expedient to place the soldier without the pale of British law, if the provost-martial can hang, without trial, upon the first tree, a marauding countryman, why should the constable with search-warrant be required to search the premises of the savage? But what are they? To be within bounds, they may be said to be comprised within a circle of 50 miles, and to consist of forest and plain, hill and dale. What settler can afford to search this tract of country? ”

“ The song, the laugh and the joke went round, and about daybreak we reached Dalton Island, which belongs to Captain Molloy. Mr. Green commenced fishing for our breakfast. Captain Molloy's men were employed in making poor Bess eatable, for the old pig had drowned herself, and I can hardly say how deeply she has been regretted. Everything was done to recover her; she was rubbed, caressed and entreated to come to life, for she had known all the ups and downs with them ever since they had been in the colony, and was therefore to have died a natural death. ”

“ With regard to myself, to sum things up, I believe I am an old young man. I have seen much of high, low, rich and poor, sage and savage; for most of their pleasurable pursuits I must own I have little taste remaining, and it is but a short experience that has given me the surfeit, but so it is, — and as I review the scenes that I have witnessed, and that no doubt are daily renewed and as often enjoyed, not omitting at all those from which I derive pleasure myself, I feel tempted to explain with the Vandal king as he followed the triumph of his conqueror 'Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity'. ”

“ At favoured spots agriculture increases the supplies of fodder, and supplements animal food with grains and fruits, while the production of a surplus enables the community to supplement its subsistence farming by purchasing the surplus products of other lands enjoying other advantages. That, roughly, is the formula of economic growth in any colony beginning in a wild land. A glance at the phases of the village life at Augusta and Büsselton may, for Australian students at least, lighten the dark places of Celtic and Saxon economy. ”

“ But the selfishness of mankind is not the only obstacle to our maintaining our just rights. Fanaticism — blind and inconsistent fanaticism — has found its way into our counsels, — blind because it will not see that rigorous measures from the beginning are most merciful as well to savage as to European, and inconsistent because while it admits the legality of acquiring property by emigration, it prohibits the means of properly defending it. ”

“ I am convinced that no one would have known me as the same person that left Augusta three mornings before.
At daybreak next morning I got up, dressed with all despatch and met them at breakfast much refreshed, but with a certain 'Je ne sais quoi'. Phœbe saluted me with 'I be so glad to see 'ee, Miss Bessie, that can hardly wag. I be ill with joy — as bad to be ill with joy as sorrow. You look tired though. Too much for 'ee.'
She gave me some delicious tea out of her little black teapot, after which I churned the butter, and then slept nearly the whole day. ”

“ If I were to tell you that you have blighted my prospects, reduced me to the verge of despair, plunged me in sorrow from which I could never hope to emerge, my asseverations would be as absurd as you would be silly if you believed them. My happiness depends upon no mortal. ”

“ The scenery around us is decidedly monotonous, although if it were possible to remove a part selected almost at random and place it in a cultivated country it would not only afford a pleasing variety but would be pronounced a grand and beautiful object. The river, in short, winds through a forest of impressive timber, varying very little, except that as it is distant from the sea it is larger and of a finer growth. ”

“ The frayed nerves that prolonged contact with a small, haphazard company may produce, even in a comfortable liner, were invariably tried to snapping-point on the tedious sailing with its ill-balanced rations, badly found. Ships free of the 'terror that walketh by night' were rare indeed. Cabin passengers, as were Captain and Mrs. Molloy on the 'Warrior', lived in the stern cabins under the poop-deck, and enjoyed the freshest air. ”

“ The fishing net sent us from England proved an instrument in the hands of Providence to save not only ourselves but many of our fellow colonists from absolute starvation. Our subsistence has been grass and fish, for the latter of which night and day I have of late been toiling. ”

“ The settlers, in turn, expected, from the representations known to have been made by Mr. Eliot against his further punishment, that at any moment he would reappear, confirmed in insolence by such vacillation. John Bussell received instructions not to arrest the other culprits. The little group at the Vasse, numbering only eighty whites in all, thirty-six men, sixteen women and twenty-eight children, felt itself isolated indeed, both by distance and by the preoccupation of the Perth authorities with the natives' interests. ”

“ Not till now — and perhaps not even now, too late to save many valuable lives, lives in which were centred all the hopes and all the joys of those left to lament their loss, — is the tardy process of the law laid aside. ”

“ The improvements, which, in a wild country like ours, the work of his hands is daily making are in themselves almost a recompense for his labour.... It is now somewhat more than a year since we first pitched our tent upon the spot. I need not tell you we were houseless, that no garden smiled or had ever smiled upon the scene. An almost impenetrable undergrowth supplied the place of esculent herbage, and trees, which had been blown over by the storm or prostrated by the slower, though not less sure, work of the white ant, obstructed our path at every turn. ”

“ Mary Bussell, new to the pioneers' ordeal, and betrothed to one in the homeland, gave way to doubts. From the Swan River she wrote to Capel: 'You can have no conception of the progress that has been made here, and I am sorry to say dear John has at last expressed regret that he was induced to go so far from headquarters. This has more than trebled his difficulties and outlay, which at this time is entirely lost, since from fire and other losses he can only be considered a settler of a twelvemonth. This he says for himself. They have no stock of any kind. ”

“ They were 'now running on delightfully', like the journal itself, 'seven knots an hour, with a bright sky and a delicious air, This they tell me is the Swan River climate. In four days we shall see the land which is to be henceforth the abode of all our interests, hopes and affections. Dear, happy England already seems like the land of shadows, beautiful and beloved, but abandoned for ever.'
The first person on board, on the morning of their arrival, was 'Captain Toby, of the colonial schooner 'Ellen', with news that all the brothers were well.' He says they are grown such rough creatures. ”

“ He must also have the land he intends to cultivate fenced in, and even then it will not produce until it has been turned up a full year. During the whole of this time, until indeed he can raise sufficient corn and stock upon his own estate to supply his household in food, he is dependent upon a precarious market for all the requisites of life. But I trust this statement will not deter those possessed of a regular income, however small, from colonization.' He had portrayed too vividly the two great obstacles to settlement, timber and lack of capital. ”

“ By Christmas of 1836 the farmyard at 'Cattle Chosen' already boasted thirteen head of horned cattle, eight goats, four horses, besides geese, turkeys, fowls, ducks, and pigs. 'Animals that feed on the produce of the land itself, without the labour of man', wrote John Bussell, 'are in a new state of things the only profitable stock.' His followers outside the family, the Chapmans, George Layman and Dawson, had shared in the rising comforts by obtaining dairy cows also. ”

“ But when the work must be done while the workman hung in a bowling, his tools out of order, the grindstone smashed, the stem vertical, the point to be worked upon below the convenient reach of his arms, while the ship was plunging up and down, so as to immerse the unfortunate wretch every five minutes overhead and ears, the difficulty appeared so great as to preclude all hope of success. ”

“ But joking apart, your coming out is the very thing you would like. You are fond of fishing, our river abounds in fish. You are fond of gardening, here is abundance of land. Do you wish to keep cattle? ”

“ Your pastoralist, the man of exceptional foresight, is inevitably a patriarch, a leader round whose herd and example followers and dependants gather, and receive either in kind or through some form of currency, their share of the regular supply in return for aid in guarding its sources. The herds grow, new pastures are found, and new patriarchs arise. The first group dissolves and the community multiplies in the land. ”

“ The extraordinary scarcity of money in the young community is shown by the rate of interest paid for a loan. In a letter of January 1836, John mentions offhand that the Chapmans had purchased their cows with £50, lent by the Bussells in the form of bills on the Pelican Office, at 25 per cent. interest, and upon the collateral security of a house let to the Government for a store at Augusta. Certainly it was a dubious security, as Augusta was being deserted, and no doubt the markets for butter made the loan a sound one for the Chapmans. ”

“ We left Perth,* however, on the day appointed, and the ceremony took place at Fremantle, at the home of our kind friends the Bulls. The Governor came down to act as father. Mr. Mackie and Andrew Stirling were the only additions to the family party. We all assembled to dinner as if nothing were going to happen. Mary and myself, both dressed alike in white muslin, looked perhaps a little bridal. Perhaps, too, the challenges by the gentlemen that Miss Bussell and Miss Fanny should drink wine with them had a consciousness in their tone that we were Miss Bussell and Miss Fanny for the last time. ”

“ Charles, a little earlier, foresaw that the means of subsistence, in such a fertile spot, would soon press upon the available population. In a musing mood he gave John the drift of his 'lucubrations' (January '37) . 'It appears that, if our farm advances in the ratio in which it has hitherto done, and if the population remains as stationary as it has for some years past, the home market will in a few years be barely sufficient for the Consumption of our produce alone, in the article of cheese. ”

“ In reply, I can only say that although I am one of four whose lives are threatened by the natives for having shot one of them while in the act of feloniously entering my house at midnight (and stabbing in the dark they seldom miss their victim) , and although my person must necessarily be much exposed in tending my own cattle, for labour is scarce, and mercenaries will not undertake the dangerous office, I feel that my life is in the hand of a just and wise God, and if it please him that I fall a saôrifice — 'His will be done'. ”

“ To-day she is ten weeks old, strong and healthful. She has no nourishment but what she receives from me.'
John Bussell's essays towards matrimony involved him in many adventures, both mental and bodily. He had formed the intention, even before leaving England, of returning to make Miss Sophie Hayward his wife. She was an orphan whose father had been a West Indian planter. They had been boy and girl sweethearts, but with the postponement of success in the colony, doubts beset Miss Hayward, and the correspondence between them seems to have passed through many lights and shades of understanding. ”

“ If the bottom of the stream is not gravelly or strong, they take the trouble to make a place for them so that the wool should not be in the slightest degree soiled. About three or four days afterwards they shear them in a large floored shed which I will describe when I come home, and the table, which is very curious, on which the fleeces are placed, to be folded up. For washing the sheep the men are paid by the day, the shearing is 3s. 6d. a score. It used to be 2s. 6d. before the gold diggings, when labour rose to an exorbitant price all over the colony. ”