The Land of the Kangaroo Part 15

"'Preliminary surveys have been made in places where it is proposed that the colonial governments should build extensive works for saving water on a grand scale. The government would be repaid, in part at least, by selling the water to private landholders in the same way that water is sold in California, New Mexico, and other parts of the United States. I am confident that you will see a grand system of water storage in full operation in Australia before many years.'"

While on the subject of rainfall, Harry asked Ned if he knew where the heaviest annual rainfall in the world was.

Ned said he did not know, but he thought that Dr. Whitney might be able to inform them.

The question was appealed to the doctor, who paused a moment, and then said that "what might be considered a heavy rain in one place would be a light one in another. In Great Britain, if an inch of rain fell in a day it was considered a heavy rain; but in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland three inches not infrequently fall in one day. Once in the isle of Skye twelve inches of rain fell in thirteen hours, and rainfalls of five and seven inches are not uncommon. Thirty inches of rain fell in twenty-four hours at Geneva, in Switzerland, thirty-three inches at Gibraltar in twenty-six hours, and twenty-four inches in a single night on the hills near Bombay.

"The heaviest annual rainfall on the globe," continued the doctor, "was on the Khasia Hills, in India, where six hundred inches, or fifty feet, fell in a twelvemonth. Just think of it; a depth of fifty feet of water yearly, and of this amount five hundred inches fell in seven months, during the southwest monsoons."

"How do they account for such heavy rains?" Ned asked.

"It is accounted for," the doctor replied, "by the abruptness of the mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from which they are separated by low swamps and marshes. The winds arrive among the hills heavily charged with the vapor they have absorbed from the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. When they strike the hills and are forced up to a higher elevation, they give out their moisture with great rapidity, and the rain falls in torrents. As soon as the clouds have crossed the mountains the rain diminishes very much. Twenty miles further inland it drops from six hundred to two hundred inches annually, and thirty miles further inland it is only one hundred inches. The same conditions prevail to a certain extent in Australia. The mountain chains are near the coast. On the side next the ocean there is a liberal rainfall, but on the other side, towards the interior, the rainfall is light. As the clouds charged with vapor come from the sea to the mountains they yield their moisture freely, but, after pa.s.sing the mountains, they have little left to yield."

The burster died away along in the evening, and, though the streets were wet in many places, our friends went out for a stroll. During their walk their attention was naturally drawn to the sky, which was now bright with stars. Naturally, their conversation turned to the difference between the night skies of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, which had not escaped their observation during their voyage from the east coast of Africa down to the Equator, and thence in the Southern Ocean.

On this subject Harry wrote at one time in his journal as follows:--

"We found the famous Southern Cross a good deal of a disappointment. In the first place, it requires a considerable amount of imagination to make a cross out of it; very much more than is needed to make 'The Great Dipper' out of the constellation so called in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Southern Cross consists of three stars of the first magnitude, one of the fourth magnitude, and three of the fifth, and, look at them whichever way you may, you can't make a real cross out of them, either Greek or Roman. Before I investigated the subject, I thought the Southern Cross was over the south pole, but found it is not so. The constellations of the Southern Hemisphere altogether are not as brilliant as those in the northern one. If the princ.i.p.al object of a traveler in this region is to see the heavens, he had better stay at home.

"An interesting feature of the southern heavens is 'The Magellan Clouds,' two white spots in the sky like thick nebulae of stars. They are nearer to the pole than the Southern Cross is, and are much used by mariners in taking observations. Quite near the pole is a star of the fifth magnitude, called 'Octantis,' and this also is used for observation purposes. It isn't so brilliant, by any means, as the pole star of the north, which is of the second magnitude; and, by the way, that reminds me of what Dr. Whitney told me in the desert of Sahara, that what we called the polar star in the north is not directly over the pole, but nearly a degree away. The real polar star is a much smaller one and stands, as we look at it, to the left of the star, which I had always believed to be the proper one."

Melbourne has a Chinese quarter like San Francisco and New York, and our friends embraced an opportunity to visit it. They found the shops closely crowded together and apparently doing an active business. There were temples, shops, and a good many stores, some of them very small and others of goodly size. The sidewalks were thronged with people, mostly Chinese, and they hardly raised their eyes to look at the strangers who had come among them. Our friends took the precaution to be accompanied by a guide, and found that they had acted wisely in doing so. The guide took them into places where they would have been unable to make their way alone, and where, doubtless, they would have found the doors closed against them.

The Chinese are very unpopular in Australia and in all the colonies. The laws against them are decidedly severe, from a Mongolian point of view.

Every Chinaman landing in Victoria must pay fifty dollars for the privilege of doing so, and after getting safe on the soil he finds himself restricted in a business way, and subject to vexatious regulations. John is satisfied with very little and he usually manages to get it. He is a keen trader and always an inveterate smuggler. He is very skillful in evading the custom house, and as soon as one trick is discovered he invents another and his ingenuity seems to be boundless.

One of the industries in which the Chinese excel is that of market gardening. In driving in the suburbs of Melbourne, our friends observed numerous market gardens cultivated by Chinese, and in every instance they remarked that the cultivation was of the most careful kind. John can make more out of a garden than anybody else. He pays a high rental for his ground, but unless something very unusual happens he is pretty sure to get it back again, with a large profit in addition.

In some of the colonies the restrictions are more severe than in others.

In New South Wales the laboring cla.s.s of white men are politically in control of the legislature, and have enacted anti-Chinese laws of great severity. The tax upon immigrant Chinese in that colony is one hundred pounds sterling, or five hundred dollars. The naturalization of Chinese is absolutely prohibited, and ships can only bring into the ports of New South Wales one Chinese pa.s.senger for every three hundred tons of measurement. The restrictions in regard to residence and trading are very severe. The country is laid out into districts, and in each district not more than five trading Chinese are allowed to live and transact business. Steamers and sailing vessels having Chinese stewards or sailors on board are subject to seizure and fines on their arrival at Sydney, and so great have been the annoyances to this cla.s.s of vessels, that they have been compelled to leave in some other port, before coming to Australia, all their Chinese employees.

The hostility to Chinese labor in Australia is similar to that on the Pacific coast of the United States, and in the States of the Rocky Mountain region. It will doubtless increase as time goes on, as it increased in the United States, until it culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of a few years ago. Eventually, the Chinese in Australia will be shut out from all occupations, and expelled or excluded from the country. A good many intelligent Australians deprecate the hostility to the Chinese, but when it comes to voting, this cla.s.s of citizens is in the minority.

During a part of the gold rush, great numbers of Chinese found their way to the mines, where they were perfectly contented to work in abandoned mines and wash the earth, which had already been washed by the white men. Owing to the prejudice against them and the likelihood of interference, they rarely took up fresh claims, but contented themselves with what the white man had left. Even this form of work was considered an encroachment by the white miners, who frequently attacked the Mongolians and drove them out at the point of the pistol. Many of these attacks were accompanied by bloodshed, and if the history of Australian mining were written in full, it would contain many a story of oppression, accompanied with violence.

Our friends made a visit to the famous lake district of Victoria, where they found some very pretty scenery, and from the summit of one hill counted no fewer than fifteen lakes, some of them of no great size, while the largest measured ninety miles in circ.u.mference. Harry made note of the fact that this largest lake was called the Dead Sea. It is said to be not as salt as the famous Dead Sea near Jerusalem, but it is a great deal salter than the ocean, and no fish of any kind lives in it.

"I asked a resident of the neighborhood," said Harry, "if they had ever tried the plan of putting fish from the ocean into this Australian Dead Sea. They said they had done so, but the fish thus transported always died in a few hours, and the experiment of stocking the lake had been given up long ago.

"A curious thing that we found regarding the lakes in this part of Victoria," Harry continued, "is that some of them are salt and some fresh, and sometimes the salt lakes and the fresh ones are quite close to each other, and on the same level. We were puzzled how to account for the peculiarity and tried to learn about it. How the circ.u.mstances happened, n.o.body knows exactly, but the theory is that the salt in the salt lakes comes from the drainage of the rocks, and as the lakes have no outlets, the superfluous waters are carried off by evaporation. They told us that in summer these lakes sink a good deal below the level of other times of the year, and when they did so the ground left dry was thickly encrusted with salt, which the people gathered in large quant.i.ties. The market of Melbourne is supplied with salt from these lakes, and you can readily understand that it is very cheap.

"Another peculiarity of this part of Victoria is the large quant.i.ties of potatoes that are grown there. The land often yields from twenty to thirty tons of potatoes to the acre, and an acre of ground for raising potatoes will frequently sell for four hundred dollars, while it will rent for twenty-five dollars yearly. Most of the coast ports of Australia, including the great ones of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney, are supplied with potatoes from this region.

"The potatoes are among the finest we ever saw. They are large, rich, and mealy, and when properly cooked they are simply delicious. No other part of Australia can compete with this district in potato cultivation.

The excellence of this vegetable is supposed to come from the volcanic nature of the soil. All the country round here was once in a high state of ebullition, and the lakes I have mentioned are the craters of extinct volcanoes."

CHAPTER XIII.

JOURNEY UP COUNTRY--ANECDOTES OF BUSH LIFE.

Our friends accepted an invitation to go up country to visit a cattle station and also a sheep run, and to spend a week or so in the bush.

They went by train as far as the railway could carry them, and were met at the station by a wagon which enabled them to finish their journey.

They arrived at the station late in the afternoon, after a delightful drive through the gum-tree forest and across a small plain. It was not strictly a plain, however, as the ground was undulating, and in the hollows between the ridges there was generally a growth of trees from a quarter to a half a mile in width which broke the monotony of the landscape. The road was not the smoothest in the world, and before they had gone half way Harry and Ned both remarked that they would have excellent appet.i.tes for supper, and hoped that the meal would not be long delayed after their arrival at the cattle station.

The party received a cordial welcome from their host, Mr. Syme, who had preceded them a day in advance and sent his younger brother to the railway to meet them. About half a mile from the house they saw three or four men lying on the ground by the roadside, evidently taking a rest or waiting for something. They reminded our young friends of the individuals frequently seen in the United States, and known as "tramps," and after getting out of earshot of the party Ned asked their new acquaintance, who was escorting them, what those men were.

"Oh! those are sundowners," was the reply, and then there was a pause.

"Sundowners!" exclaimed Harry. "What is a sundowner?"

"A sundowner is what you call a tramp in America," was the reply; "and he gets his name from one of his peculiarities. It is the custom all over Australia--I mean in the country districts--to feed and lodge anybody who comes along, and if he has no money there is no charge for his entertainment. He is expected to move on in the morning the first thing after breakfast, unless we happen to have work for him and can give him employment at regular wages. If he comes along anywhere in the afternoon before sunset, he is expected to do any odd work that may be handy until supper, as a payment in part, at least, for his night's entertainment.

"Most of these fellows don't like to work," he continued, "and so they take good care not to arrive at a place before sunset. If they find they are getting too near it, they sit or lie down on the ground and wait until the sun has disappeared below the horizon. That is why we call them sundowners, as they turn up just after the sun has gone down."

"It is certainly very liberal on the part of the people in the country to feed and lodge all comers," remarked Ned.

"Well, we think it's not illiberal. It is the custom of the country which has grown up from the early days when farms were far apart and travelers were few in number. When the custom first began, the number of this sort of travelers would not exceed a dozen in a month. Nowadays we often lodge that number in a single night, and sometimes it is a pretty heavy tax on us. I don't think it will be many years before we have laws that will restrict these wanderers somewhat, just as you have tramp laws in many of the States of your Union. There is a very large number of idlers going about the country and subsisting in this way. They always pretend to be searching for employment, but whenever employment is offered, it is not the kind that they want. They are like an American tramp I heard of once, who was always looking in winter for a job at hay-making, and in summer he wanted to find employment at cutting ice.

When one of these fellows gets to a sheep station, he says he knows nothing about sheep, but understands everything about cattle; at the cattle station he reverses his story, and wants a job at shepherding."

"Don't you have trouble with them sometimes?" one of the youths remarked. "Are they willing to accept what you offer them, or do they demand something better?"

"As to that," was the reply, "there is a good deal of difference among them. We don't feed them with the best that the place affords, and the majority of them accept the situation and take what we choose to give.

Cold meat and bread are their usual fare, and there is always enough of that. Sometimes they make a row, and demand to be fed just in the same way that we feed our own farm hands. For instance, only last evening I was called into the men's dining-room to quell a disturbance caused by a sundowner. The travelers' table was supplied with cold meat, bread, and tea, while the table of our farm hands had on it bread and hot roast mutton. The sundowner had a knife in his hand and was threatening to kill the kitchen maid unless she gave him hot mutton instead of cold."

"What did you do about it?"

"I told him that if he could not eat cold meat he was not hungry enough to eat anything, and if he did not put that knife away one of our men would knock his head off. He became quiet at once and sat down to his supper, muttering something about not being treated like a gentleman. We would like to shut our doors altogether against this cla.s.s of fellows, but there are difficulties in the way. We would be liable at times to turn away honest and deserving men who were really in search of employment, and furthermore, the revengeful scoundrels would set our buildings on fire during the night, or perhaps kill our cattle and horses. They would be less likely to do the latter than the former, as the destruction of our buildings by fire would be much easier and safer than the other proceeding. We certainly need some kind of legal restriction over these sundowners, and we will get it in the course of time."

The house at which our friends arrived was large and s.p.a.cious, and its external appearance, as they approached it, betokened hospitality. It covered a considerable area of ground but was only a single story in height, with the exception of one end, where there was an upper story occupied by the female servants. The men employed at the place ate and slept in a building in the rear of the princ.i.p.al house, the two being connected by a kitchen and a shed. The house was substantially constructed of wood, the sides being double walled with planking, while the roof sloped gently to the front. There were gutters at the eaves to catch all the water which came down in the form of rain, and convey it to a large cistern just in the rear of the main dwelling. Their host explained that they had a fine spring close to the house, from which they usually obtained their supply of water. "This spring sometimes gives out in seasons of excessive dryness," said he, "and then we fall back upon the cistern."

"You have been long enough in Australia," he continued, "to learn the full value of water, and we are obliged to be careful in the use of it and in selecting a location for our house. In the great drought, when we had no rain for two years, we suffered exceedingly and a great many of my cattle perished for thirst. Since then I have built a reservoir for storing water, and if another drought should come, I don't think my herds will suffer as much as they did."

Dr. Whitney and our young friends were shown to the rooms they were expected to occupy during their stay. Dr. Whitney was a.s.signed to a good-sized bedroom, while the youths were placed in another bedroom close to it and equipped with two beds. They made a brief survey of the room and concluded that they would be very comfortable. Harry remarked that it was quite as good as any room they had thus far occupied in Australian hotels. They devoted a short time to removing the dust of travel and putting themselves in a condition of cleanliness, and shortly after they appeared on the veranda, where their host was awaiting them, and dinner was announced.

The size of the dining-room indicated that the place was an hospitable one, as the table was capable of accommodating not fewer than twenty people without crowding. Harry took note of the menu which comprised their meal, and according to his memorandum it was as follows:--

"Soup of kangaroo tail, mutton pie, roast beef, potatoes, cauliflower and parsnips, hot and cold bread, plum pudding and tea. There were also some canned apricots of home production. Altogether it was a very substantial meal, excellent in quality, liberal in quant.i.ty, and well cooked throughout."

The evening was pa.s.sed in front of a big fire in the large sitting-room.

As the night was chilly and somewhat damp, the fire was very welcome.

The time was pa.s.sed in conversation concerning the cattle business, interspersed with stories of Australian life. Harry and Ned asked the permission of their host to make use of their notebooks, and their request was readily granted. Accordingly, they kept their pencils in their hands, and placed on paper anything which seemed to them particularly interesting.

Harry made note of a statement of their host concerning the cattle business and its ups and downs. One of his notes reads as follows:--