Warren Bert Kimberly

“ How that miraculous intervention of luck changes destiny and life! A few moments before, and the lean-pursed prospector, with a swag on his own or a camel's back, a fading supply of edibles of ghostly luxury, ruin facing him if the hunted metal escapes his gaze, revolves a thousand turbulent thoughts in a restless mind, and then "Eureka," joy, splendour, and prominence! The transformation that discovery works in the fortunate prospector has all the gilded gorgeousness of a caliph's dream. ”

“ JOHN HOWARD TAYLOR, M.L.C.
WHEN the gold era of Western Australia was inaugurated in the eighties, men from various shores came thronging in to develop her promising resources. The spectacle of their subsequent work was stirringly impressive. There, over far distant deserts, where had reigned the sombre silence and death-like hush of centuries, where far in the shimmering, heated horizon was one unchanging stretch of desolate waste, slumbering idly beneath a torrid sun, the hardy band of bold adventurers forced their way. ”

“ Clare was directed to a watered track which had been used in former days, and which ran through, perhaps, the longest-wooded stretch in Western Australia—Tootalgin forest. If he had had a depressing journey before, he was destined to experience another even more abandoned. For eight successive days he tramped through the dispiriting bush, seeing no human being, and not even the proverbial "gohanna," merely meeting a few white ants, companions which count for very little, except that, like himself, they were alive. ”

“ THOMAS NEWMAN.
THE grandiloquent mind which loves the soaring heights of Miltonic grandeur gets dizzy and faint at times, and asks for one draught of homely, honest narrative to quench a parched thirst and to restore vitality. A simple thought, pure and tender, clothed in quiet, unpretentious diction, touches chords of deeper emotion than the majestic tones of verbose oratory.
On the gold fields, where science must find expression in language concrete and abstruse, it is a welcome change to review the annals of one whose life teems with no ordinary human interest. ”

“ Each married man has a separate fire, and the unmarried gather round still another one, the brightest of all, and there the chief merriment is centred. The great receding shadows of the trees, the play of light on their faces, and the constant moaning of the wind among the leaves, make a spectacle and an impression to be remembered by the European. One young fellow relates the instances of a journey, of a battle or duel; another describes the exciting chase of a kangaroo, or the cunning spearing of one while it browsed on the good pasture. ”

“ Spurned, loathed, and forced back beyond the outposts of civilisation, their death-sentence has been passed, and will soon, silently, sternly, irremediably, be executed.
While death has closed the eyes of those tribes which inhabited the fertile regions, there are others who have not yet felt the influence of the resistless invader. In the desolate wilderness, where the white sees nought but arid sand and stunted growth, destitution and waste, and feels parched by the heat of a scorching sun, they have their fondly loved birthplace. ”

“ Nature, with her inexorable wisdom, frequently hides away her choicest treasures in store-houses far away in inhospitable wilds, lifeless and dreary, on which only a few of the bravest and best men dare encroach.
The roadways of the great centres of civilisation all over the world are lined with the skeletons of those who dared and died, heroes in the great march of progress who at the bugle-sound on judgment-day will rise and proudly take their place in the grand army of the dead. ”

“ But as civilisation advanced and public institutions and laws for the government of peoples multiplied, the attainments and duties of the lawyer increased in unison. To-day it is almost impossible for one person to master all the legal enactments of his country. He must have a comprehensive and powerful mind who can even be termed a clever lawyer. But with his law books around him, his ingenious mind grappling with imagination to help his forensic skill before judges and juries, his gifts of repartee, his cleverness in cross-examination, the lawyer is a power and a rock to stay drifts. ”

“ It was the substantial encouragement of the Roman Church which brought out the genius of the great mediæval masters, and made painting almost a divine art. Knowledge is indeed power—knowledge should conduce to a more ideal state of existence: and the contributions of the Church to all kinds of knowledge cannot be weighed.
Down through the dim, dark ages, amid the rise and fall of nations, the progress of society; through upheavals which drew into oblivion monarchies; through prosperity, famine, and death; through ignorance and lust; through the upward rise to a more enlightened people ”

“ So mournful are these that the white listener is thrilled to the very soul, and the black children give way to involuntary tears. The dark, naked people carry their dead comrade to the appointed place, amid tears and dirges, and lay him on the ground. While some wail and chant and cry bitterly, others proceed to dig the grave with the digging-stick and the hands. The sorcerer of the tribe searchingly watches the tossed up sand, and if by chance a worm is moved from its earthy home he keenly observes the direction in which it crawls, for there, possibly, the hated sorcerer lives. ”

“ The wind rustles the leaves of the trees, and soughs in a ceaseless moan. The kangaroo and the opossum need fear him no longer. Leaning over his inert body is his mother, or his wives are there; the children are gathered round, and the men stand back and gloomily wait. He complains of pain, and indistinctly mutters as stray recollections of his recent active life pass through his mind. When he bounded after the kangaroo or lazily rested under the trees, he feared the dreaded power of the sorcerer, but now he feels his time has come he is resigned. ”

“ Bishop Gibney's work will leave a lasting mark on the history of Western Australia. A simple, earnest man; he toils eagerly, at all hours, for his fellows. Of kindly disposition and generous nature, he has widespread popularity, and is loved, not only by his own people, but by all who know his goodness throughout the colony. He watches over his flock as carefully and zealously as the shepherd tends his sheep, and he leads them to the good pasture land, where their souls may fatten. ”

“ How often have men of world-wide fame turned from the rural bliss of simplicity, with all its natural reactions on the human mind, to the halls of science and learning! History always repeats itself, and Wilson, like many another historic nature, forsook communion with nature on solitary fields for that scientific mill which grinds shapeless matter into a uniform mass which may sweeten the mental palate. ”

“ WILLIAM DALGETY MOORE, EX-M.L.C.
IN the fierce race for wealth the gold-seeker goes not alone. Men's minds are full of the golden messages which constantly rush through the world from the lean deserts of this colony. In every gathering of men, in Parliament, in clubs, in business houses, at street corners, on the seas, and even in the jarrah forests, gold is the all-absorbing topic of conversation. ”

“ Such a country must have a great, a magnificent future. Under wise laws and good government, combined with the judicious expenditure of capital, tens of thousands of acres will yet be reclaimed from the deserts; the pot holes of to-day will be the bonanza, fortune-creating mines of the morrow, and many a solitude in the huge wilderness will yet re-echo to the clamour and hum of a busy city. ”

“ Sometimes the aborigines receive a much-prized gift from the ocean in the stranding of a whale. It is a great accession of wealth, and they make merry. The native is no longer selfish, and lighting a large fire, the smoke ascends to the sky and tells the joyful message to every native round about. The wealthy black "rubs himself with blubber, anoints his wives," cuts into the flesh of the whale, and choosing the choicest bits, broils or cooks or spits them, and eats his full. Then other natives come trooping in and eat and sing and dance and hold corroborees. ”

“ In health we pay little attention to the medical profession, but let the smallest sign of disease enter our system and we manifest a wonderful amount of interest in the careers of those to whom we look for relief. Health is too often cast aside as foolishly as the spendthrift throws away his patrimony. And the physician's science to the invalid, as the usurer's gold to the spendthrift, may bring temporary relief, but the inexorable laws of nature demand payment in full for the overdraft of youth, and frequently result in the moral and bodily ruin of the poor debtor. ”

“ NO amount of centripetal force can counteract some energetic tendencies to fly forth tangentially from the customary habitudes of one continually-revolving circle. Its dull monotony and sickening familiar paths are as displeasing to the mind as the sight of some dreary landscape which you have gazed at only too often from your jolting seat in a railway carriage, is to the æsthetic, novelty-craving eye. ”

“ THOMAS GILBERT PEARCE.
TO be able to look back on a life well spent is without doubt the greatest pleasure man can enjoy. The life may not have been an unruffled stream of prosperity—few lives are—but the sharp edges of adversity cannot deaden the joy that must arise from the contemplation of a career conducted on the strict lines of duty and endeavour. In all countries, both in the new and old worlds, there are men whose only object in life is to obtain riches, and who sacrifice everything to the selfish passion. ”

“ The sudden transference of one who is obscure to this cherished niche in history may cause him to so glory in his new-found greatness that his popularity will diminish, and he will he coldly viewed except for that one brilliant ray of human sunshine. But there are men of quiet deeds and homely goodwill, unselfish spirit, and constant personal sacrifice, who unconsciously rise in glorified gradations to the apex of their country's affection. ”

“ In the foremost ranks of this progressive army is the surveyor who precedes the engineer and opens out the paths into the interior. Accompanied by a handful of assistants, and armed with his theodolite, the surveyor maps out the roadways through the almost inaccessible bush, and paves the way for that now necessary adjunct to civilisation—the railway. His work takes him far out of the beaten track into the wilds, where for months and years he sedulously and quietly works, with no other encouragement than the knowledge that he is doing his duty. ”

“ Eyre was an illustrious member of a line of brave explorers, who knowingly took life in their hands as courageously, and under less inspiring conditions, as did ever bold British warrior. He continued the bloodless fight of the gloomy Australian deserts and wildernesses, and by the force of physical endurance and mental hardihood, surmounted sullen, lifeless obstacles which would have daunted less determined men. It would be a dereliction of duty due to the dead not to place him among the world's most determined explorers. ”

“ For three years he performed the unwelcome role of commercial traveller for the firm, and, after considerable business experience reaped during that valuable period, he embarked on a little enterprise of his own. It is, perhaps, one of the proudest moments of a man's life when, after serving another, he feels himself the untrammelled, supreme captain of his own affairs. When a land boom forces itself in any city, a natural infection leads every business man to set up an agency. ”

“ FREDERICK WILLIAM MOORHEAD, B.A., LL.B.
HAPPY is it for the Australian colonies that they have men in their midst of high old world training in professions. These men possess the best educations which famous universities can give—educations embracing the aggregation of the knowledge of the past, imparting the necessary, allowing the unworthy to sink into deserved oblivion. Socrates, in his Athenian garden, taught the eager young, who drank deep of the inspiring, intellectual draughts of consummate wisdom, which flowed like heavenly nectar from between his lips. ”

“ The natives are so fond of singing that they chant on any and every occasion. Grey says:—"To a sulky old native, his song is what a quid of tobacco is to a sailor; is he angry, he sings,—is he glad, he sings,—is he hungry, he sings,—if he is not so full as to be in a state of stupor, he sings more lustily than ever!" Their songs, which may be rude and discordant enough to Europeans, are sweeter than the carolling of the nightingale to them. Singing is their fruitful resource at every turn of life, and the responsive native mind is affected intensely by wild chants and dirges. ”

“ The dark cell was occasionally as much feared as the cat-o'-nine-tails. Night and day were much alike. The convict could hold as many monologues as he wished with the dim four walls of his cell. The braggart, whose life was dominated by a brutal nature, whose ordinary conduct suggested little of the coward, whimpered and prayed for a little light. The cat-o'-nine-tails and the dark cell made him as temporarily willing and obedient as a dog. The diet of bread and water usually accompanied the latter punishment.
The sight of chained men appealed to every person. ”

“ Price encountered the full force of the gale, which blew with unabated fury for two days, and carried devastation to the pearling fleets. The masts of his vessels were snapped as though they had been matchwood. The chain cables parted, and Mr. Price's little fleet drifted at the pleasure of the hurricane. He was in the schooner at the time, which, mastless, and beyond his control, was driven out nearly 200 miles from land. Every moment almost they expected the vessel to founder or to strike some unknown rocks, and no more dangerous position could well be imagined. ”

“ No one there can produce a more brilliant record of scientific, literary, and scholarly results.
Over deserts, countries, and continents he has travelled in his enthusiasm for discoveries and for all kinds of information, general and particular. With his abilities and breadth of knowledge he is quite qualified and capable of furnishing true data concerning the goldfields. His ardour for knowledge has been such that he could step from the weary desolate life of the explorer into the science rooms of a university. ”