Australian Pictures Part 9

The northern blacks are the southern blacks, but are 'much more so.'

They are finer and fiercer men; more given to slaughter, building better houses, more intractable. The engraving on the next page depicts an encampment of blacks on the sh.o.r.e, at the mouth of Wreck Creek, Rockingham Bay, Queensland. The figure to the right of the picture is engaged painting a shield. The curiously-shaped huts of the North Australian blacks form characteristic objects in the engraving.

The engraving on page 166 of a corroboree in the far north is from a photograph by Mr. P. Foelsche, at Port Essington. The males group themselves as shown in our ill.u.s.tration, and stamp the ground with both feet simultaneously, making a peculiar sound, and keeping tune with a guttural exclamation. The first who sounds a false note or misses a beat leaves the group amidst the ridicule of the bystanders, and this process is continued until the number of performers is reduced to a pair, who divide the honours. These northern tribes are guilty of revolting acts of cannibalism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NATIVE ENCAMPMENT IN QUEENSLAND.]

No keener observers of nature in the world are to be found than the Australian blacks. Their gaze is microscopic rather than extensive. They have no appreciation of natural beauty and taste; but their attention is directed to the broken twig, the crushed gra.s.s, the displaced stone, the light impression--to anything and everything that may reveal the proximity of a foe or the presence of food. No such trackers exist anywhere. Celebrity has recently been thrust upon them. In 1880 a gang of marauders took to the bush in Victoria. They committed many daring crimes, and the police were unable to check or to capture them, though the best men in the force were employed, and tens of thousands of pounds were spent.

The idea of employing black trackers was mooted, and some of the Victorian aborigines were first tried. But civilisation dulls the instinct. Trackers were obtained from the far north, who did their work well. The criminals were surprised and brought to bay. Three were killed in the conflict, and the leader, who was captured severely wounded, was hanged in Melbourne Gaol. It was acknowledged on all hands that the presence of the trackers paralysed the gang, and a few blacks have been kept about Melbourne ever since.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NATIVE TRACKER.]

So soon as the black has been dispossessed, and has ceased to be dangerous, the heart of the white man relents towards him, and he proceeds to look after the remnants of the tribes. Philanthropists, lay and clerical, find liberal support from the state and from individuals.

Thus Government stations and mission stations are called into existence in Victoria, in South Australia, in New South Wales, and in Western Australia, where the blacks have homes provided for them and food, and where strenuous efforts are made to improve their morals and to Christianise them. They are taught to grow hops and to look after cattle and to repair their fences, but it is all essential that reserves and streams should be at hand in which they can hunt and wander. Under these favourable circ.u.mstances the full-blooded black is dying out; and, as there is a movement to distribute all half-castes amongst the general population, the time will come when these inst.i.tutions will be closed, owing to a lack of inmates. The visitor should not miss the opportunity of inspecting one of the establishments, most of which are easily reached. Ill.u.s.trations are given here of the Lake Tyers station, which is under the charge of the Rev. J. Bulmer. A railway journey of a hundred miles to the town named Sale, and steamer thence to the entrance of the Gippsland lakes, brings the visitor to the spot, and he is sure of a hospitable reception. The upper view represents the mission church, a handsome building, constructed of wood, and erected by the Rev. Mr.

Bulmer. Service is held morning and evening. Other sketches show the school building, in which the aboriginal children are taught by Mr.

Morriss, state school teacher; and a native camp, occupied by natives who decline the accommodation of the huts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH, SCHOOLHOUSE, AND ENCAMPMENT AT LAKE TYERS.]

There are many missions to the blacks. How far is the race capable of Christianity? On such an issue only one who has closely studied the natives can p.r.o.nounce an opinion. If there is any one person who is more ent.i.tled to be heard on the subject than another, it is the Rev. F. A.

Hagenauer, who has had nearly a thirty years' experience with the Australian black. Mr. Hagenauer came to Australia in 1858 as a Moravian missionary to the aborigines, and has been engaged in his self-denying labours ever since. Recently he has a.s.sociated with the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, and he has acted--without any stipend from the state--as manager of the Government aboriginal station, Ramahyuck. The following letter speaks for itself:--

ABORIGINAL MISSION STATION, RAMAHYUCK, GIPPSLAND, _January 30, 1886_.

DEAR SIR,--I gladly comply with your desire, to furnish you with some reliable information as to my views and experiences among the aborigines in reference to their capability of understanding and receiving Christianity as a power to change the hearts and lives of these people.

The beneficial influence of true Christianity, through the progress of education and civilisation, has worked a wonderful change in the lives, manners and customs of the blacks. Any one not acquainted with their former cruel and most abominable habits, but knowing them only as now settled in peaceable communities, would scarcely believe that the description of heathen life which the apostle Paul gives in the Epistle to the Romans was a correct picture of their mode of life. Given to the continual licentiousness of their carnal minds, they were slaves to their l.u.s.ts and pa.s.sions, which, working with their superst.i.tious and cruel nature, made them ever ready, and their feet swift, to shed blood. Without a settled home, they wandered about from place to place in a most miserable and depraved condition, adding to their native vices drunkenness and other evils, which they had learned from white people. The different tribes, either from superst.i.tions or family quarrels, or from violation of tribal territory and the sacred surroundings of their dead, were at continual warfare; and their fear of revenge by secret enemies was sometimes terrible to behold. Their howling noises for many days and weeks before and after the deaths of their friends and relatives, which told but too plainly that they were without hope in this world, were most pitiful to hear, and the disgusting scenes in connection with their nocturnal corroborees cannot be fully described. Added to this came the tormenting custom to which some of them were subjected at their peculiar native festivities, and especially the barbarous treatment of females by their tribal lords. It is not necessary to refer to the many atrocities and crimes committed by them in days gone by, for it is well known that they gave trouble to the earlier settlers, and were a terror to lonely women and children in the bush; nor need I say anything about their loathsome diseases, which were prevalent among them in consequence of their immoral lives and habits. Having lived for so many years among them as a close observer, I can testify that the above statements give only a faint picture of what actually took place, for there is not one hour of the night or day in which I did not witness one or other of their cruel customs.

In the midst of their quarrels and b.l.o.o.d.y fights, at their ghastly corroborees, and during the time of their most pitiful cries around their sick and dead ones, we have been able to bring to them the Gospel of life and peace, and many times did they throw down their weapons and stop their nocturnal dances in order to listen to the Word of G.o.d and the joyful news of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the beginning of 1860 a remarkable awakening amongst the blacks began with earnest cries to G.o.d for mercy, and sincere tears of repentance, which was followed by a striking change in their lives, manners and habits. The wonderful regenerating power of the Gospel among the lowest of mankind worked like leaven in their hearts, and, through patient labour and the constraining love of Jesus, we were soon privileged to see a small Christian church arise and a civilised community settled around us. To the glory of G.o.d it can be said that a comparatively large number of the remnant of this rapidly decreasing race has been brought to the knowledge of the truth, and a good many honoured the Lord by their humble Christian life for many years, and a still greater number died in full a.s.surance of eternal happiness through faith in Jesus Christ.

The old manners and customs of the blacks have changed even among the remaining heathen under the influence of the Word of G.o.d. The war-paints and weapons for fights are seen no more, the awful heathen corroborees have ceased, the females are treated with kindness, and the lamentable cries, accompanied with bodily injuries, when death occurred, have given place to Christian sorrow and quiet tears for their departed friends. With very few exceptions, all the wanderers have settled down as Christian communities on the various stations, and, where they are kept under careful guidance and religious instruction, the change from former days is really a most remarkable one.

Whilst, on the one hand, we have reason to rejoice that G.o.d has blessed His work to such an extent, we feel sorrow at stating that our joy is often mingled with disappointment, in so far that so very many of these people pa.s.s away either through the consequences of their former diseases, or for some unknown reason. The Lord does what seemeth good in His sight; and we have reason to thank Him for so many tokens of His grace, and for the triumphs of the Gospel in the redemption of those members who pa.s.sed away in peace to their eternal home, to be for ever with the Lord.

The carrying out of the Saviour's commandment to His Church, to preach the Gospel to every creature, has accomplished that which was considered by many an impossibility; for the influence of the Word of G.o.d proved its Divine power, and many of these poor depraved blacks soon began to sit at the feet of Jesus, 'clothed, and in their right mind.' General civilisation and education, in and out of school, for young and old, followed step by step as a fruit of true Christianity, and showed in reality a greater progress than we ourselves could have expected in accordance with the generally adopted opinion in reference to the capability of the aborigines.

I may state here that in every case of conversion we have been most careful and cautious not to administer the ordinance of baptism too soon, but only after long trials and careful instruction in the Word of G.o.d. Some of the converts have honoured their confession of faith by most honest, faithful, and consistent lives from beginning to end; some have been, and still are, weak in their Christian course, whilst others have often to be reminded, and have even had to be put under Christian discipline, in consequence of backslidings and sins; but even of those it can be stated truthfully that, though weak, they did cling to Jesus for salvation, and cried for mercy to Him who alone can forgive sins.

To enter into particulars of individual conversions and triumphs of faith would be out of place in such a short statement as this; but there are very many instances, both of young people, and of the very oldest aborigines, who lived and died as faithful humble Christians. On the whole, I believe that there is not any great difference between these blacks and any new converts from the heathen in other lands, or even among some cla.s.ses of white people.

It may also be stated that many people here and elsewhere at once expect the converted aborigines to be model Christians, whilst they forget that Christianity truly teaches all to grow in grace and in truth, and with patience and perseverance to press forward to the great aim; and this certainly is carried out by the converted aborigines in this colony.

I remain, dear sir, yours very truly, F. A. HAGENAUER.

CHAPTER XII.

SOME SPECIMENS OF AUSTRALIAN FAUNA AND FLORA.

MARSUPIALS--THE 'TASMANIAN DEVIL'--DINGOES--KANGAROO HUNTING--THE LYRE-BIRD--BOWER-BIRD--THE GIANT KINGFISHER--EMU HUNTING--SNAKES--THE SHARK--ALLEGED MONOTONY OF VEGETATION--TROPICAL VEGETATION OF COAST--THE GIANT GUM--THE ROSTRATA--THE MALLEE SCRUB--FLOWERS AND SHRUBS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUSTRALIAN TREE-FERNS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DINGOES.]

No large carnivorous animals roam over the Australian plains, to endanger the life of man or to destroy his flocks and herds. Australia is the mother country of the meek and mild marsupial, which is found in abundance, varying in size from the great red 'old man' kangaroo, which stands between six and seven feet high, to the marsupial mouse, which will sleep in a good sized pill-box. There is the stupid, heavy wombat, which seems a mere animated ball of flesh, which burrows in the ground, and which apparently cannot move a mile an hour when it appears on the surface, though its pace is really better than that. On the other hand, there is the elegant flying fox, or rather flying opossum, which by means of a bat-like membrane glides through the air at night, astonishing the traveller, who sees hundreds of large forms sweep noiselessly by. Great fruit-eaters are these flying foxes, and there is tribulation when a horde visits a settled district. The native bear, as a marsupial sloth is termed, is the most innocent-looking of animals, and the most harmless, feeding on the leaves of the gum. It swarms in the various colonies. In the next tree will be found a family of the _Dasyuridae_ or native cats, beautiful spotted creatures, the size of a half-grown cat, whose sharp face and continuous activity betray at once a restless and a wicked disposition. It is carnivorous, fierce and intractable. The marsupial pictured on page 183 is a specimen of an elegant variety of the common opossum, found princ.i.p.ally in the neighbourhood of the Ba.s.s River, Victoria. The common opossum is found everywhere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _Sarcophilus_ OR 'TASMANIAN DEVIL.']

While the native cat is the only mischievous carnivorous marsupial on the Australian mainland, Tasmania is possessed of two much larger and more destructive animals, the _Thylacinus_ or 'tiger-wolf,' and the _Sarcophilus_ or 'Tasmanian devil;' the former is nearly as large as a wolf, and is shapely and handsomely marked with stripes on the flanks.

The latter is a smaller animal. It has been described as 'an ugly bear-like cat.' It is a thick-set creature, black in colour, with white patches, and its hideous appearance and its untameable ferocity quite ent.i.tle it to its popular designation. Both 'tiger' and 'devil' are nocturnal, and both have been so hunted and trapped by the settlers, whose sheep and poultry they killed, as now to be very scarce. Neither has ever been known to attack man. At one time, as geological examination shows, the marsupial 'devil' and his relative were both found in Australia, and the wonder is that they should have so completely disappeared from the scene as they have done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ba.s.s RIVER OPOSSUM.]

An animal that stands entirely apart from the marsupials in Australia is the wild dog. The dingo is one of the mysteries. Whence did he come? He is allied to the wild dogs of India, but why should this Indian animal be in Australia--his form on the surface and his bones in ancient deposits--while no other representative of the fauna of the Old World is known? Leaving science to unravel this problem, it may be said of the dingo that he is a good-looking but an ill-behaved animal. He is compared to the sheep-dog, to the wolf, and to the fox, and, in fact, he has a dash of each of these creatures in his appearance. He is about two feet high, is well-proportioned, with erect ears and a bushy tail. He stands firmly on his legs, and shows a good deal of strength in his well-constructed body. His colour varies from a yellowish-tawny to a reddish-brown, growing lighter towards the belly; and the tip of his brush is generally white. He cannot bark like other dogs, but he can howl, and he does howl with a soul-chilling effect. His note is to be likened unto

The wolf's long howl from Oonalastra's sh.o.r.e.

Campbell's melodious line conveys the idea of misery, and discomfort and uneasiness are engendered when the slumbers of the sleeper in the bush are disturbed by the blood-curdling cry of these breakers of the nocturnal peace. The blacks used to catch the puppies of the wild dog, and then train them to hunt, but they found the European dog sufficient for their purposes, and much more docile and affectionate. As dingoes worry sheep, the first task of a squatter is to get rid of them. When they breed in shelter and a semi-settled district--if they can issue from mallee scrub--a handsome reward is always offered for their heads.

In parts of Victoria as much as 2 per head is paid. An engraving of the creature is given on page 181.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A KANGAROO BATTUE.]

Man has to be fed, and therefore game has to be shot and fish has to be caught. The animal life of Australia had little rest when the blacks roamed over the country, but it has still less, now that the white man is in possession. The kangaroo hunt varies from a necessary slaughter of the blue and red kangaroos of the plains, to an exciting run and desperate fight for life at the finish of it, when the game is the big dark forester living in the timber belts that line most of the Australian streams. The battue of kangaroos is often rendered imperative by the rapid increase of the marsupials after the disappearance of their old enemies, the aborigines and the dingo. As regards the kangaroo, matters are apt to become very serious for the grazier. On an average, these animals consume as much gra.s.s as a sheep, and where a few score originally existed there soon come to be a thousand. In some places they have threatened to jostle the sheep and his master out of the land; and, in consequence, energetic and costly steps have to be taken to reduce their numbers. In a battue of this description a whole neighbourhood joins. It may seem hard that this aboriginal should be ruthlessly destroyed in favour of the sheep, because he has no wool; but then, if he could reflect, he would see that, fed and cared for as the merino is, yet his fate would usually be the butcher at last.

The battue is not so welcome to the sportsman as the chase of the forester. The 'old man,' when finally run down, backs like a stag into a convenient corner, perhaps the hollow of a great gum-tree, the trunk of which has been partly burned away with a bush fire, and there, with a calm no-surrender expression in his mute face, and just the merest blaze in the big deer-like eyes, waits for the enemy like the splendidly resolute old veteran he is. If he can find a water-pool or river in which to 'stick up,' so much the better for him and the worse for those who attack him. He wades in until only his nervous fore-arms and head are above water, and in this position can keep even a half-dozen dogs from coming to quarters. The forester, standing six feet high, has the advantage over the dogs that, while he stands upon his hind-legs, they must swim.

Of the amphibious platypus everybody has heard. The creature has been playfully likened unto a creditor, because it is a 'beast with a bill'; but its peculiarities do not stop here. As a survival, or a 'connecting link,' it has other qualities that render it an object almost of veneration to the naturalist. It is a mammal, suckling its young, and yet it lays eggs. This fact was long known to bushmen, but it was doubted by the scientific world, and Mr. W. H. Caldwell, 'travelling bachelor,' of Cambridge, visited Australia in 1884-5, to specially study the subject, and his researches proved that, as the bushmen had declared, the platypus is oviparous. On the one hand, the platypus, with its duck's bill and its webbed feet, connects the beast with the bird, and, on the other hand, its peculiar oviparian qualities are held to establish a relationship with the reptile. The name once given it, 'water-mole,' indicates its size, though certainly the platypus has considerably the advantage of the mole. It is larger, indeed, than the largest water-rat. When the first specimens were taken to Europe a hoax, we are told, was suspected, the idea being that the bill and the feet had been cunningly attached to the body; but the platypus is too common a creature for the idea to be long entertained, and so its existence was officially acknowledged, and it received the t.i.tle _Ornithorhynchus_.

The platypus is a 'survival,' and it is likely to survive for many a generation. It breeds in security in a chamber at the end of a long pa.s.sage which it constructs from the river banks. It is sensitive to sound, and, as it dives with alacrity, and swims with only its beak above water, a shot is no easy matter. As it is still to be obtained in streams so well visited as the Yarra and the Gippsland Avon, it may be imagined that its existence in other rivers is perfectly secure. Yet its skin is much valued. As a fur it is equal to the sealskin; and if the animal were only larger it would be systematically hunted for its covering.

Australia is rich in the abundance and variety of birds of the parrot tribe, and in the occurrence of peculiar species of the feathered race.

She possesses the birds of Paradise, the king parrot, the blue mountain-parrot, the lories, parroquets and love-birds. The plumage of other birds is often of the gayest type. Thus, the blue wren is common about Nutbourne; and this bird, says Gould, is hardly surpa.s.sed by any of the feathered tribe, certainly by none but the humming-birds of America. The c.o.c.katoo, with white, black, or rosy crest, flies in flocks, and few sights in the world are prettier than one of these flights. When they finally settle on a tree, they cover it as with a snow-drift. Noisy they are, and clever, never feeding in the settled districts without posting sentinels to warn the rest of the approach of the human enemy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLATYPUS.]

One of the most interesting birds of Australia is the so-called lyre-bird, the _Menura Victoriae_ of the naturalist, the 'pheasant' of the settler, and the 'bullard-bullard' of the aborigines, the two words somewhat resembling the native note of the graceful creature. Gould was strongly of opinion that the lyre-bird, and not the emu, should be selected as the emblem of Australia, since it is very beautiful, strictly peculiar to the country, and 'an object of the highest interest.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LYRE-BIRD.]

The lyre-bird is about the size of the pheasant, and is valued because of the magnificent tail of the male bird. The tail is about three feet long. The outer feathers are beautifully marked, and form the lyre from which the bird takes its name. There are also curious narrow centre feathers crossing each other at the base, and curving gracefully outwards at the top. The habitat of the lyre-bird is the romantic fern country of South-eastern Australia, and the creature is in accord with its lovely surroundings. It has many peculiarities. Thus, the male bird forms a mound of earth, on which it promenades, displaying its tail to its utmost advantage, and uttering its liquid notes for the benefit of its female audience--for the female, dowdy as she is in comparison with her lord, has to be wooed and won. Then they are the best of mocking-birds. They imitate with precision the notes of the laughing jacka.s.s, the parrot, the solemn mopoke, and moreover they reproduce every sound made by man. Every splitter on the mountain-side has his story of endeavouring in vain to discover the users of a cross-cut saw in the neighbourhood, until he found that a 'pheasant' was mocking him; and another favourite topic is the perplexity of the 'new chum' settler, who hears an invisible mate chopping wood on his allotment, with an invisible but barking dog at his heels. The lyre-bird is slow of flight, and he would have a poor chance of escape from the shot-gun were his haunt not in the thick fern vegetation; but this jungle protects him.

The birds are not so common as they once were in the ranges immediately about Melbourne, but in the fastnesses of Gippsland they are met with in their old numbers.

The satin or bower-bird is another of Australia's wonders. It not only builds a 'bower,' but decorates the structure with the most gaily-coloured articles that can be collected, such as the blue tail-feathers of the rose-bill and Pennantian parrots, bleached bones, the sh.e.l.ls of snails, &c. Some of the feathers are stuck in among the twigs, while others, with the bones and sh.e.l.ls, are strewed about near the entrances. The propensity of these birds to pick up and fly off with any attractive object is so well known to the natives that they always search the runs for any small missing article, such as the bowl of a pipe, that may have been accidentally dropped in the bush. In the spotted bower-bird the approaches are decorated with sh.e.l.ls, skulls, and bones, especially those which have been bleached white by the sun; and as these birds feed almost entirely upon seeds and fruits, the sh.e.l.ls and bones cannot have been collected for any other purpose than ornament.

Another bird peculiar to Australia is the 'giant kingfisher,' or 'piping crow,' or 'musical magpie,' or 'settler's clock,' or, to use the term everywhere applied, 'the laughing jacka.s.s.' Its extraordinary note, and insane and yet good-humoured prolonged and loud cachinnation is unique, and so is the appearance of the bird. It is a great Australian favourite, is never shot, and as a consequence is tolerant of man. It is called the 'settler's clock' in the bush by virtue of its regular hilarious uproar at noon-tide and of its far-heard 'salutation to the moon,' and it will equally make any city reserve lively with its note. A dog-show was recently held in the Melbourne Exhibition. Five hundred dogs naturally made themselves audible. But above all the discord was heard the laugh of the giant kingfisher, intimating that he had secured a golden perch from the pond, and was disposed to rejoice accordingly.

It is doubtful whether the laughing jacka.s.s destroys snakes. His critics deny the a.s.sertion, which is made on his behalf. His admirers cling to a belief which is widespread and has earned for the jacka.s.s the immunity from destruction which he enjoys.