The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn Part 75

"Good Lord!" said he, picking himself up, "what lungs she has got! I shall have a singing in my ears to my dying day. Yar! it went through my head like a knife."

Sam picked up the cook, and she, after a time, picked up her pots, giving, however, an occasional squall, and holding on by the dresser, under the impression that another earthquake was coming. We left her, however, getting dinner under way, and went back to the others, whom we soon set laughing by telling poor Eleanor's misadventures.

We were all in good spirits now. A brisk cool wind had come up from the south, following the earthquake, making a pleasant rustle as it swept across the plain or tossed the forest boughs. The sky had got clear, and the nimble air was so inviting that we rose as one body to stroll in groups about the garden and wander down to the river.

The brave old river was rushing hoa.r.s.ely along, clear and full, between his ruined temple-columns of basalt, as of old. "What a grand salmon-river this would be, Major!" said I; "what pools and stickles are here! Ah! if we only could get the salmon-sp.a.w.n through the tropics without its germinating.--Can you tell me, Doctor, why these rocks should take the form of columns? Is there any particular reason for it that you know?"

"You have asked a very puzzling question," he replied, "and I hardly know how to answer it. Nine geologists out of ten will tell you that basalt is lava cooled under pressure. But I have seen it in places where that solution was quite inapplicable. However, I can tell you that the same cause which set these pillars here, to wall the river, piled up yon Organ-hill, produced the caves of Widderin, the great crater-hollow of Mirngish, and accommodated us with that brisk little earthquake which we felt just now. For you know that we mortals stand only on a thin crust of cooled matter, but beneath our feet is all molten metal."

"I wish you could give us a lecture on these things, Doctor," I said.

"To-morrow," said he, "let us ride forth to Mirngish and have a picnic.

There I will give you a little sketch of the origin of that hill."

In front of the Brentwoods' house the plains stretched away for a dozen miles or so, a bare sheet of gra.s.s with no timber, grey in summer, green in winter. About five miles off it began to roll into great waves, and then heaved up into a high bald hill, a lofty down, capped with black rocks, bearing in its side a vast round hollow, at the bottom of which was a little swamp, perfectly circular, fringed with a ring of white gum-trees, standing in such an exact circle that it was hard to persuade oneself that they were not planted by the hand of man.

This was the crater of the old volcano. Had you stood in it, you would have remarked that one side was a shelving steep bank of short gra.s.s, while the other reared up some five hundred feet, a precipice of fire-eaten rock. At one end the lip had broken down, pouring a torrent of lava, now fertile gra.s.s-land, over the surrounding country, which little gap gave one a delicious bit of blue distance. All else, as I said, was a circular wall of gra.s.s, rock, and tumbled slag.

This was Mirngish. And the day after the earthquake there was a fresh eruption in the crater. An eruption of hors.e.m.e.n and horse-women. An eruption of talk, laughter, pink-bonnets, knives and forks, and champagne. Many a pleasant echo came ringing back from the old volcano-walls overhead, only used for so many ages to hear the wild rattle of the thunder and the scream of the hungry eagle.

Was ever a poor old worn-out gra.s.s-grown volcano used so badly? Here into the very pit of Tophet had the audacious Captain that very morning sent on a spring-cart of all eatables and drinkables, and then had followed himself with a dozen of his friends, to eat and drink, and talk and laugh, just in the very spot where of old roared and seethed the fire and brimstone of Erebus.

Yet the good old mountain was civil, for we were not blown into the air, to be a warning to all people picnicing in high places; but when we had eaten and drunk, and all the ladies had separately and collectively declared that they were SO fond of the smell of tobacco in the open air, we followed the Doctor, who led the way to the summit of the hill.

I arrived last, having dragged dear fat old Mrs. Mayford up the slippery steep. The Doctor had perched himself on the highest flame-worn crag, and when we all had grouped ourselves below him, and while the wind swept pleasantly through the gra.s.s, and rushed humming through the ancient rocks, he in a clear melodious voice thus began:--

"Of old the great sea heaved and foamed above the ground on which we stand; ay, above this, and above yon farthest snowy peak, which the westering sun begins to tinge with crimson.

"But in the lapse of ten thousand changing centuries, the lower deeps, acted on by some Plutonic agency, began to grow shallow; and the imprisoned tides began to foam and roar as they struggled to follow the moon, their leader, angry to find that the stillness of their ancient domain was year by year invaded by the ever-rising land.

"At that time, had man been on the earth to see it, those towering Alps were a cl.u.s.ter of lofty islands, each mountain pa.s.s which divides them was a tide-swept fiord, in and out of which, twice in the day, age after age, rushed the sea, bringing down those vast piles of water-worn gravel which you see acc.u.mulated, and now covered with dense vegetation, at the mouth of each great valley.

"So twenty thousand years went on, and all this fair champagne country which we overlook became, first a sand-bank, then a dreary stretch of salt saturated desert, and then, as the roar of the retiring ocean grew fainter and fainter, began to sustain such vegetation as the Lord thought fit.

"A thousand years are but as yesterday to Him, and I can give you no notion as to how many hundred thousand years it took to do all this; or what productions covered the face of the country. It must have been a miserably poor region: nothing but the debris of granite, sandstone, and slate; perhaps here and there partially fertilized by rotting seaweed, dead fish and sh.e.l.ls; things which would, we may a.s.sume, have appeared and flourished as the water grew shallower.

"New elements were wanting to make the country available for man, so soon to appear in his majesty; and new elements were forthcoming. The internal fires so long imprisoned beneath the weight of the inc.u.mbent earth, having done their duty in raising the continent, began to find vent in every weak spot caused by its elevation.

"Here where we stand, in this great crack between the granite and the sandstone, they broke out with all their wildest fury; hurling stones high in the air, making mid-day dark with clouds of ashes, and pouring streams of lava far and wide.

"So the country was desolated by volcanoes, but only desolated that it might grow greener and richer than ever, with a new and hitherto unknown fertility; for, as the surface of the lava disintegrated, a new soil was found, containing all the elements of the old one, and many more. These are your black clay, and your red burnt soil, which, I take it, are some of the richest in the world.

"Then our old volcano, our familiar Mirngish, in whose crater we have been feasting, grew still for a time, for many ages probably; but after that I see the traces of another eruption; the worst, perhaps, that he ever accomplished.

"He had exhausted himself, and gradually subsided, leaving a perfect cup or crater, the acc.u.mulation of the ashes of a hundred eruptions; nay, even this may have been filled with water, as is Mount Gambier, which you have not seen, forming a lake without a visible outlet; the water draining off at that level where the looser scoriae begin.

"But he burst out again, filling this great hollow with lava, till the acc.u.mulation of the molten matter broke through the weaker part of the wall, and rolled away there, out of that gap to the northward, and forming what you now call the 'stony rises,'--turning yon creek into steam, which by its explosive force formed that fantastic cap of rocks, and, swelling into great bubbles under the hot lava, made those long underground hollows which we now know as the caves of Bar-ca-nah.

"Is he asleep for ever? I know not. He may arise again in his wrath and fill the land with desolation; for that earthquake we felt yesterday was but a wild throe of the giant struggling to be free.

"Let us hope that he may not break his chains, for as I stand here gazing on those crimson Alps, the spirit of prophecy is upon me, and I can see far into the future, and all the desolate landscape becomes peopled with busy figures.

"I see the sunny slopes below me yellow with trellissed vines. They have gathered the vintage, and I hear them singing at the wine-press.

They sing that the exhausted vineyards of the old world yield no wine so rare, so rich, as the fresh volcanic slopes of the southern continent, and that the princes of the earth send their wealth, that their hearts may get glad from the juice of the Australian grapes.

"Beyond I see fat black ridges grow yellow with a thousand cornfields.

I see a hundred happy homesteads, half-hidden by cl.u.s.tering wheatstacks. What do they want with all that corn? say you; where is their market?

"There is their market! Away there on the barren forest ranges. See, the timber is gone, and a city stands there instead. What is that on the crest of the hill? A steam-engine; nay, see, there are five of them, working night and day, fast and busy. Their cranks gleam and flash under the same moon that grew red and lurid when old Mirngish vomited fire and smoke twenty thousand years ago. As I listen I can hear the grinding of the busy quartz-mill. What are they doing? you ask. They are gold-mining.

"They have found gold here, and gold in abundance, and hither have come, by ship and steamship, all the unfortunate of the earth. The English factory labourer and the farmer-ridden peasant; the Irish pauper; the starved Scotch Highlander. I hear a grand swelling chorus rising above the murmur of the evening breeze; that is sung by German peasants revelling in such plenty as they never knew before, yet still regretting fatherland, and then I hear a burst of Italian melody replying. Hungarians are not wanting, for all the oppressed of the earth have taken refuge here, glorying to live under the free government of Britain; for she, warned by American experience, has granted to all her colonies such rights as the British boast of possessing."

I did not understand him then. But, since I have seen the living wonder of Ballarat, I understand him well enough.

He ceased. But the Major cried out, "Go on, Doctor, go on. Look farther yet, and tell us what you see. Give us a bit more poetry while your hand is in."

He faced round, and I fancied I could detect a latent smile about his mouth.

"I see," said he, "a vision of a nation, the colony of the greatest race on the earth, who began their career with more advantages than ever fell to the lot of a young nation yet. War never looked on them.

Not theirs was the lot to fight, like the Americans, through bankruptcy and inexperience towards freedom and honour. No. Freedom came to them, Heavensent, red-tape-bound, straight from Downing-street. Millions of fertile acres, gold in bushels were theirs, and yet----"

"Go on," said the Major.

"I see a vision of broken railway arches and ruined farms. I see a vision of a people surfeited with prosperity and freedom grown factious, so that now one party must command a strong majority ere they can pa.s.s a law the goodness of which no one denies. I see a bankrupt exchequer, a drunken Governor, an Irish ministry, a----"

"Come down out of that," roared the Major, "before I pull you down.

You're a pretty fellow to come out for a day's pleasure! Jeremiah was a saint to him," he added, turning appealingly to the rest of us. "Hear my opinion, 'per contra,' Doctor. I'll be as near right as you."

"Go on, then," said the Doctor.

"I see," began the Major, "the Anglo-Saxon race--"

"Don't forget the Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese, and other barbarians,"

interrupted the Doctor.

"a.s.serting," continued the Major, scornfully, "as they always do, their right to all the unoccupied territories of the earth."

("Blackfellow's claims being ignored," interpolated the Doctor.)

"And filling all the harbours of this magnificent country----"

("Want to see them.")

"With their steamships and their sailing vessels. Say there be gold here, as I believe there is, the time must come when the mines will be exhausted. What then? With our coals we shall supply----"

("Newcastle," said the Doctor, again.)

"The British fleets in the East Indies----"