Greater Britain Part 18

Panama is a picturesque time-worn Spanish city, that rises abruptly from the sea in a confused pile of decaying bastions and decayed cathedrals, while a dense jungle of mangrove and bamboo threatens to bury it in rich greenery. The forest is filled with baboons and lizards of gigantic size, and is gay with the bright plumage of the toucans and macaws, while, within the walls, every housetop bears its living load of hideous turkey-buzzards, foul-winged and bloodshot-eyed.

It was the rainy season (which here, indeed, lasts for three-quarters of the year), and each day was an alternation of shower-bath, and vapor-bath with sickly sun. On the first night of my stay, there was a lunar rainbow, which I went on to the roof of the hotel to watch. The misty sky was white with the reflected light of the hidden moon, which was obscured by an inky cloud, that seemed a tunnel through the heavens.

In a few minutes I was driven from my post by the tropical rain.

At the railway station, I parted from my Californian friends, who were bound for Aspinwall, and thence by steamer to New York. A stranger scene it has not often been my fortune to behold. There cannot have been less than a thousand natives, wearing enormous hats and little else, and selling everything, from linen suits to the last French novel. A tame jaguar, a pelican, parrots, monkeys, pearls, sh.e.l.ls, flowers, green cocoa-nuts and turtles, mangoes and wild dogs, were among the things for sale. The station was guarded by the army of the Republic of New Granada, consisting of five officers, a bugler, a drummer, and nineteen privates. Six of the men wore red trowsers and dirty shirts for uniform; the rest dressed as they pleased, which was generally in Adamic style.

Not even the officers had shoes; and of the twenty-one men, one was a full-blooded Indian, some ten were negroes, and the remainder nondescripts, but among them was of course an Irishman from Cork or Kilkenny. After the train had started, the troops formed, and marched briskly through the town, the drummer trotting along some twenty yards before the company, French-fashion, and beating the _retraite_. The French invalids from Acapulco, who were awaiting in Panama the arrival of an Imperial frigate at Aspinwall, stood in the streets to see the New Granadans pa.s.s, twirling their moustaches, and smiling grimly. One old drum-major, lean and worn with fever, turned to me, and, shrugging his shoulders, pointed to his side: the Granadans had their bayonets tied on with string.

Whether Panama will continue to hold its present position as the "gate of the Pacific" is somewhat doubtful: Nicaragua offers greater advantages to the English, Tehuantepec to the American traders. The Gulf of Panama and the ocean for a great distance to the westward from its mouth are notorious for their freedom from all breezes; the gulf lies, indeed, in the equatorial belt of calms, and sailing-vessels can never make much use of the port of Panama. Aspinwall or Colon, on the Atlantic side, has no true port whatever. As long, however, as the question is merely one of railroad and steamship traffic, Panama may hold its own against the other isthmus cities; but when the ca.n.a.l is cut, the selected spot must be one that shall be beyond the reach of calms--in Nicaragua or Mexico.

From Panama I sailed in one of the ships of the new Colonial Line, for Wellington, in New Zealand--the longest steam-voyage in the world. Our course was to be a "great circle" to Pitcairn Island, and another great circle thence to Cape Palliser, near Wellington--a distance in all of some 6600 miles; but our actual course was nearer 7000. When off the Galapagos Islands, we met the cold southerly wind and water, known as the Chilian current, and crossed the equator in a breeze which forced us all to wear great-coats, and to dream that, instead of entering the southern hemisphere, we had come by mistake within the arctic circle.

After traversing lonely and hitherto unknown seas and looking in vain for a new guano island, on the sixteenth day we worked out the ship's position at noon with more than usual care, if that were possible, and found that in four hours we ought to be at Pitcairn Island. At half-past two o'clock, land was sighted right ahead; and by four o'clock, we were in the bay, such as it is, at Pitcairn.

Although at sea there was a calm, the surf from the ground-swell beat heavily upon the sh.o.r.e, and we were faint to content ourselves with the view of the island from our decks. It consists of a single volcanic peak, hung with an arras of green creeping plants, pa.s.sion-flowers, and trumpet-vines. As for the people, they came off to us dancing over the seas in their canoes, and bringing us green oranges and bananas, while a huge Union Jack was run up on their flagstaff by those who remained on sh.o.r.e.

As the first man came on deck, he rushed to the captain, and, shaking hands violently, cried, in pure English, entirely free from accent, "How do you do, captain? How's Victoria?" There was no disrespect in the omission of the t.i.tle "Queen;" the question seemed to come from the heart. The bright-eyed lads, Adams and Young, descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who had been the first to climb our sides, announced the coming of Moses Young, the "magistrate" of the isle, who presently boarded us in state. He was a grave and gentlemanly man, English in appearance, but somewhat slightly built, as were, indeed, the lads. The magistrate came off to lay before the captain the facts relating to a feud which exists between two parties of the islanders, and upon which they require arbitration. He had been under the impression that we were a man-of-war, as we had fired two guns on entering the bay, and being received by our officers, who wore the cap of the Naval Reserve, he continued in the belief till the captain explained what the "Rakaia"

was, and why she had called at Pitcairn.

The case which the captain was to have heard judicially was laid before us for our advice while the flues of the ship were being cleaned. When the British government removed the Pitcairn Islanders to Norfolk Island, no return to the old home was contemplated, but the indolent half-castes found the task of keeping the Norfolk Island convict roads in good repair one heavier than they cared to perform, and fifty-two of them have lately come back to Pitcairn. A widow who returned with the others claims a third of the whole island as having been the property of her late husband, and is supported in her demand by half the islanders, while Moses Young and the remainder of the people admit the facts, but a.s.sert that the desertion of the island was complete, and operated as an entire abandonment of t.i.tles, which the reoccupation cannot revive. The success of the woman's claim, they say, would be the destruction of the prosperity of Pitcairn.

The case would be an extremely curious one if it had to be decided upon legal grounds, for it would raise complicated questions both on the nature of British citizenship and the character of the "occupation"

t.i.tle; but it is probable that the islanders will abide by the decision of the Governor of New South Wales, to which colony they consider themselves in some degree attached.

When we had drawn up a case to be submitted to Sir John Young, at Sydney, our captain made a commercial treaty with the magistrate, who agreed to supply the ships of the new line, whenever daylight allowed them to call at Pitcairn, with oranges, bananas, ducks, and fowls, for which he was to receive cloth and tobacco in exchange, tobacco being the money of the Polynesian Archipelago. Mr. Young told us that his people had thirty sheep, which were owned by each of the families in turn, the household taking care of them, and receiving the profits for one year.

Water, he said, sometimes falls short in the island, but they then make use of the juice of the green cocoa-nut. Their school is excellent; all the children can read and write, and in the election of magistrates they have female suffrage.

When we went on deck again to talk to the younger men, Adams asked us a new question: "Have you a _Sunday at Home_, or a _British Workman_?" Our books and papers having been ransacked, Moses Young prepared to leave the ship, taking with him presents from the stores. Besides the cloth, tobacco, hats, and linen, there was a bottle of brandy; given for medicine, as the islanders are strict teetotalers. While Young held the bottle in his hand, afraid to trust the lads with it, Adams read the label and cried out, "Brandy? How much for a dose?.... Oh, yes! all right--I know: it's good for the women!" When they at last left the ship's side, one of the canoes was filled with a crinoline and blue silk dress for Mrs. Young, and another with a red and brown tartan for Mrs.

Adams, both given by lady pa.s.sengers, while the lads went ash.o.r.e in dust-coats and smoking-caps.

Now that the French, with their singular habit of everywhere annexing countries which other colonizing nations have rejected, are rapidly occupying all the Polynesian groups except the only ones that are of value--namely, the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand--Pitcairn becomes of some interest as a solitary British post on the very border of the French dominions, and it has for us the stronger claim to notice which is raised by the fact that it has figured for the last few years on the wrong side of our British budget.

As we stood out from the bay into the lonely seas, the island peak showed a black outline against a pale-green sky, but in the west the heavy clouds that in the Pacific never fail to c.u.mber the horizon were glowing with a crimson cast by the now-set sun, and the dancing wavelets were tinted with reflected hues.

The "scarlet shafts," which poets have ascribed to the tropical sunrise, are common at sunset in the South Pacific. Almost every night the declining sun, sinking behind the clouds, throws rays across the sky--not yellow, as in Europe and America, but red or rosy pink. On the night after leaving Pitcairn, I saw a still grander effect of light and color. The sun had set, and in the west the clear greenish sky was hidden by pitch-black thunder-clouds. Through these were crimson caves.

On the twenty-ninth day of our voyage, we sighted the frowning cliffs of Palliser, where the bold bluff, coming sheer down three thousand feet, receives the full shock of the South Seas--a fitting introduction to the grand scenery of New Zealand; and within a few hours we were running up the great sea-lake of Port Nicholson toward long lines of steamers at a wharf, behind which were the cottages of Wellington, the capital.

To me, coming from San Francisco and the Nevadan towns, Wellington appeared very English and extremely quiet; the town is sunny and still, but with a holiday look; indeed, I could not help fancying that it was Sunday. A certain haziness as to what was the day of the week prevailed among the pa.s.sengers and crew, for we had arrived upon our Wednesday, the New Zealand Thursday, and so, without losing an hour, lost a day, which, unless by going round the world the other way, can never be regained. The bright colors of the painted wooden houses, the clear air, the rose-beds, and the emerald-green gra.s.s, are the true cause of the holiday look of the New Zealand towns, and Wellington is the gayest of them all; for, owing to the frequency of earthquakes, the townsfolk are not allowed to build in brick or stone. The natives say that once in every month "Ruaimoko turns himself," and sad things follow to the shaken earth.

It was now November, the New Zealand spring, and the outskirts of Wellington were gay with the cherry-trees in full fruiting and English dog-roses in full bloom, while on every road-side bank the gorse blazed in its coat of yellow: there was, too, to me, a singular charm in the bright green turf, after the tawny gra.s.s of California.

Without making a long halt, I started for the South Island, first steaming across Cook's Straits, and up Queen Charlotte Sound to Picton, and then through the French Pa.s.s--a narrow pa.s.sage filled with fearful whirlpools--to Nelson, a gemlike little Cornish village. After a day's "cattle-branding" with an old college friend at his farm in the valley of the Maitai, I sailed again for the south, laying for a night in Ma.s.sacre Bay, to avoid the worst of a tremendous gale, and then coasting down to The Buller and Hokitika--the new gold-fields of the colonies.

CHAPTER II.

HOKITIKA.

Placed in the very track of storms, and open to the sweep of rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to waves that run from pole to pole, or from South Africa, to Cape Horn, the sh.o.r.es of New Zealand are famed for swell and surf, and her western rivers for the danger of their bars.

Insurances at Melbourne are five times as high for the voyage to Hokitika as for the longer cruise to Brisbane.

In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to cross the bars, we had reached the mouth of the Hokitika River soon after dark, but lay all night some ten miles to the southwest of the port. As we steamed in the early morning from our anchorage, there rose up on the east the finest sunrise view on which it has been my fortune to set eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW ZEALAND]

A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out upon a pale-blue sky in curves of a gloomy white that were just beginning to blush with pink, but ended to the southward in a cone of fire that stood up from the ocean: it was the snow-dome of Mount Cook struck by the rising sun. The evergreen bush, flaming with the crimson of the rata-blooms, hung upon the mountain-side, and covered the plain to the very margin of the narrow sands with a dense jungle. It was one of those sights that haunt men for years, like the eyes of Mary in Bellini's Milan picture.

On the bar, three ranks of waves appeared to stand fixed in walls of surf. These huge rollers are sad destroyers of the New Zealand coasting ships: a steamer was lost here a week before my visit, and the harbormaster's whale-boat dashed in pieces, and two men drowned.

Lashing everything that was on deck, and battening down the hatches in case we should ground in crossing, we prepared to run the gauntlet. The steamers often ground for an instant while in the trough between the waves, and the second sea, p.o.o.ping them, sweeps them from end to end, but carries them into the still water. Watching our time, we were borne on a great rolling white-capped wave into the quiet lakelet that forms the harbor, just as the sun, coming slowly up behind the range, was firing the Alps from north to south; but it was not till we had lain some minutes at the wharf that the sun rose to us poor mortals of the sea and plain. Hokitika Bay is strangely like the lower portion of the Lago Maggiore, but Mount Rosa is inferior to Mount Cook.

As I walked up from the quay to the town, looking for the "Empire"

Hotel, which I had heard was the best in Hokitika, I spied a boy carrying a bundle of some newspaper. It was the early edition for the up-country coaches, but I asked if he could spare me a copy. He put one into my hand. "How much?" I asked. "A snapper." "A snapper?" "Ay--a tizzy." Understanding this more familiar term, I gave him a shilling.

Instead of "change," he c.o.c.ked up his knee, slapt the shilling down on it, and said "Cry!" I accordingly cried "Woman!" and won, he loyally returning the coin, and walking off minus a paper.

When I reached that particular gin-palace which was known as _the_ hotel, I found that all the rooms were occupied, but that I could, if I pleased, lie down on a deal side-table in the billiard-room. In our voyage down the coast from Nelson, we had brought for The Buller and for Hokitika a cabin full of cut flowers for bouquets, of which the diggers are extremely fond. The fact was pretty enough: the store set upon a single rose--"an English rosebud"--culled from a plant that had been brought from the Old Country in a clipper ship, was still more touching, but the flowers made sleep below impossible, and it had been blowing too hard for me to sleep on deck, so that I was glad to lie down upon my table for an hour's rest. The boards were rough and full of cracks, and I began to dream that, walking on the landing-stage, I ran against a man, who drew his revolver upon me. In wrenching it from him, I hurt my hand in the lock, and woke to find my fingers pinched in one of the c.h.i.n.ks of the long table. Despairing of further sleep, I started to walk through Hokitika, and to explore the "clearings" which the settlers are making in the bush.

At Pakihi and The Buller, I had already seen the places to which the latest gold-digging "rush" had taken place, with the result of planting there some thousands of men with nothing to eat but gold--for diggers, however shrewd, fall an easy prey to those who tell them of spots where gold may be had for the digging, and never stop to think how they shall live. No attempt is at present made to grow even vegetables for the diggers' food: every one is engrossed in the search for gold. It is true that the dense jungle is being driven back from the diggers' camps by fire and sword, but the clearing is only made to give room for tents and houses. At The Buller, I had found the forest, which comes down at present to the water's edge, and crowds upon the twenty shanties and hundred tents and boweries which form the town, smoking with fires on every side, and the parrots chattering with fright. The fires obstinately refused to spread, but the tall feathery trees were falling fast under the axes of some hundred diggers, who seemed not to have much romantic sympathy for the sufferings of the tree-ferns they had uprooted, or of the pa.s.sion-flowers they were tearing from the evergreens they had embraced.

The soil about The Fox, The Buller, The Okitiki, and the other west-coast rivers on which gold is found, is a black leaf-mould of extraordinary depth and richness; but in New Zealand, as in America, the poor lands are first occupied by the settlers, because the fat soils will pay for the clearing only when there is already a considerable population on the land. On this west coast it rains nearly all the year, and vegetation has such power, that "rainy Hokitika" must long continue to be fed from Christchurch and from Nelson, for it is as hard to keep the land clear as it is at the first to clear it.

The profits realized upon ventures from Nelson to the Gold Coast are enormous; nothing less than fifty per cent. will compensate the owners for losses on the bars. The first cattle imported from Nelson to The Buller fetched at the latter place double the price they had cost only two days earlier. One result of this maritime usury that was told me by the steward of the steamer in which I came down from Nelson is worth recording for the benefit of the Economists. They had on board, he said, a stock of spirits, sufficient for several trips, but they altered their prices according to locality; from Nelson to The Buller, they charged 6_d_. a drink, but, once in the river, the price rose to 1_s_., at which it remained until the ship left port upon her return to Nelson, when it fell again to 6_d_. A drover coming down in charge of cattle was a great friend of this steward, and the latter confirmed the story which he had told me by waking the drover when we were off The Buller bar: "Say, mister, if you want a drink, you'd better take it. It'll be shilling drinks in five minutes."

The Hokitikians flatter themselves that their city is the "most rising place" on earth, and it must be confessed that if population alone is to be regarded, the rapidity of its growth has been amazing. At the time of my visit, one year and a half had pa.s.sed since the settlement was formed by a few diggers, and it already had a permanent population of ten thousand, while no less than sixty thousand diggers and their friends claimed it for their headquarters. San Francisco itself did not rise so fast, Melbourne not much faster; but Hokitika, it must be remembered, is not only a gold field port, but itself upon the gold field. It is San Francisco and Placerville in one--Ballarat and Melbourne.

Inferior in its banks and theaters to Virginia City, or even Austin, there is one point in which Hokitika surpa.s.ses every American mining town that I have seen--the goodness, namely, of its roads. Working upon them in the bright morning sun which this day graced "rainy Hokitika"

with its presence, were a gang of diggers and sailors, dressed in the clothes which every one must wear in a digging town, unless he wishes to be stared at by pa.s.sers-by. Even sailors on sh.o.r.e "for a run" here wear cord breeches and high tight-fitting boots, often armed with spurs, though, as there are no horses except those of the Gold Coast Police, they cannot enjoy much riding. The gang working on the roads were like the people I met about the town--rough, but not ill-looking fellows. To my astonishment I saw, conspicuous among their red shirts and "jumpers,"

the blue and white uniform of the mounted police; and from the way in which the constables handled their loaded rifles, I came to the conclusion that the road-menders must be a gang of prisoners. On inquiry, I found that all the New Zealand "convicts," including under this sweeping t.i.tle men convicted for mere petty offenses, and sentenced to hard labor for a month, are made to do good practical work upon the roads: so much resistance to the police, so much new road made or old road mended. I was reminded of the Missourian practice of setting prisoners to dig out the stumps that c.u.mber the streets of the younger towns: the sentence on a man for being drunk is said to be that he pull up a black walnut stump; drunk and disorderly, a large buck-eye; a.s.saulting the sheriff, a tough old hickory root, and so on.

The hair and beard of the short-sentence "convicts" in New Zealand is never cut, and there is nothing hang-dog in their looks; but their faces are often bright, and even happy. These cheerful prisoners are for the most part "runners"--sailors who have broken their agreements in order to get upon the diggings, and who bear their punishment philosophically, with the hope of future "finds" before them.

When the great rush to Melbourne occurred in 1848, ships by the hundred were left in the Yarra without a single hand to navigate them. Nuggets in the hand would not tempt sailors away from the hunt after the nuggets in the bush. Ships left Hobson's Bay for Chili with half a dozen hands; and in one case that came within my knowledge, a captain, his mate, and three Maories took a brig across the Pacific to San Francisco.

As the morning wore on, I came near seeing something of more serious crime than that for which these "runners" were convicted. "Sticking-up,"

as highway robbery is called in the colonies, has always been common in Australia and New Zealand, but of late the bush-rangers, deserting their old tactics, have commenced to murder as well as rob. In three months of 1866, no less than fifty or sixty murders took place in the South Island of New Zealand, all of them committed, it was believed, by a gang known as "The Thugs." Mr. George Dobson, the government surveyor, was murdered near Hokitika in May, but it was not till November that the gang was broken up by the police and volunteers. Levy, Kelly, and Burgess, three of the most notorious of the villains, were on their trial at Hokitika while I was there, and Sullivan, also a member of the band, who had been taken at Nelson, had volunteered to give evidence against them. Sullivan was to come by steamer from the North, without touching at The Buller or The Grey; and when the ship was signaled, the excitement of the population became considerable, the diggers a.s.serting that Sullivan was not only the basest, but the most guilty of all the gang. As the vessel ran across the bar and into the bay, the police were marched down to the landing-place, and a yelling crowd surrounded them, threatening to lynch the informer. When the steamer came alongside the wharf, Sullivan was not to be seen, and it was soon discovered that he had been landed in a whale-boat upon the outer beach. Off rushed the crowd to intercept the party in the town; but they found the jail gates already shut and barred.

It was hard to say whether it was for Thuggism or for turning Queen's evidence that Sullivan was to be lynched: crime is looked at here as leniently as it is in Texas. I once met a man who had been a coroner at one of the digging towns, who, talking of "old times," said, quietly enough: "Oh, yes, plenty of work; we used to _make_ a good deal of it.

You see I was paid by fees, so I used generally to manage to hold four or five inquests on each body. Awful rogues my a.s.sistants were: I shouldn't like to have some of those men's sins to answer for."

The Gold Coast Police Force, which has been formed to put a stop to Thuggism and bush-ranging, is a splendid body of cavalry, about which many good stories are told. One digger said to me: "Seen our policemen?

We don't have no _younger sons_ of British peers among 'em." Another account says that none but members of the older English universities are admitted to the force.

There are here, upon the diggings, many military men and university graduates, who generally retain their polish of manner, though outwardly they are often the roughest of the rough. Some of them tell strange stories. One Cambridge man, who was acting as a post-office clerk (not at Hokitika), told me that in 1862, shortly after taking his degree, he went out to British Columbia to settle upon land. He soon spent his capital at billiards in Victoria City, and went as a digger to the Frazer River. There he made a "pile," which he gambled away on his road back, and he struggled through the winter of 1863-4 by shooting and selling game. In 1864 he was attached as a hunter to the Vancouver's Exploring Expedition, and in 1865 started with a small sum of money for Australia. He was wrecked, lost all he had, and was forced to work his pa.s.sage down to Melbourne. From there he went into South Australia as the driver of a reaping machine, and was finally, through the efforts of his friends in England, appointed to a post-office clerkship in New Zealand, which colony he intended to quit for California or Chili. This was not the only man of education whom I myself found upon the diggings, as I met with a Christchurch man, who, however, had left Oxford without a degree, actually working as a digger in a surface mine.

In the outskirts of Hokitika, I came upon a palpable Life Guardsman, cooking for a roadside station, with his smock worn like a soldier's tunic, and his cap stuck on one ear in Windsor fashion. A "squatter"

from near Christchurch, who was at The Buller, selling sheep, told me that he had an ex-captain in the Guards at work for weekly wages on his "sheep-run," and that a neighbor had a lieutenant of lancers rail-splitting at his "station."