Читать книгу Mount Desolation - Carlton Dawe - Страница 3

"

Chapter 1 Before The Curtain

Table of Contents

THE sun, a dull, red, angry ball of fire, was sinking slowly behind the jagged peaks of Mount Desolation, flooding the great black rocks with an indescribable glory, and casting gaunt fantastic shadows on the plains below. The grasshoppers clicked loudly in the long grass, and the little lizards crept further out upon the granite ledges to escape the lengthening shadows. Above, in the steel-blue sky, whirled flocks of noisy parrots, while close to earth the air was filled with the hum of countless insects, all sighing, as it were, for the setting of that god which was their life. Shrill laughed the merry jackass; the magpie chattered to its heart’s content before it tucked its knowing head away beneath its wing; the blue bird and the “more-pork” had their say, the wombat crept from its hole to take a last peep, and the rabbit stopped in his headlong flight to look up at the great red god. The air, still warm, though tempered by approaching night, was laden with the perfume of wattle and honeysuckle, making it so delicious to inhale that one ceased to wonder why speechless Nature sobbed aloud. One great inarticulate cry went up to heaven; the sun sank behind the jagged peaks, and the silence of night fell upon the great plains.

Mount Desolation, as its name implies, was not in itself a very exhilarating object, being, in fact, a most gruesome and awe-inspiring monster. It was a huge barren mass of granite, rising some thousand feet above its surrounding alps—a thing of grim splendour and fascinating desolation. Seamed with deep black chasms, and strewn with iron-like boulders as slippery as blocks of ice, it presented formidable obstacles to its would-be assailant; and the people in the little town at its base rarely tempted fortune on its heights, but looked up from their thresholds at its great frowning brow and owned it master. To the children of the neighbourhood it was as mysterious as some mystic mountain of fairy lore, and they peopled its chasms with the ghosts of bygone generations of blacks, and with the presence of those immortals which we call sprites; and when the great white clouds rested on its grim summit, they used to say that God had come down to look upon his world. Oh, yes, there are children who dream even in the land of the Southern Cross, though their dreams have yet to be interpreted to them. The beauty we know so well is always the loveliest in our eyes. The strain of an old familiar song is the sweeter in our ear for our knowledge of its every note. The beauty of the earth is enhanced by guide-books.

Burke, the great explorer, who so soon after was to meet a fearful death away at Coopers Creek, was the original discoverer of this strange mountain, and from him it received its gloomy title. He had marched many days in the hope of finding the promised land, but upon climbing this forbidding mount such a scene of desolation met his view that he named the hill accordingly. But many a long, long year has passed since then, and grimy men with picks and shovels have scrambled over its every accessible part in search of gold; and those long-stretching, cheerless plains are now dotted with sheep and cattle; roads cut them at right angles, and the train to Sydney passes thirty miles to the south-west. Indeed, the member for this district, Mr. Martin Wingrove, has promised its inhabitants that they shall have a branch line running right up to the foot of the mountain, ay, right into Desolation itself, for such is the name of the township which nestles at the foot of the great black hill.

This village, or town, of Mount Desolation—for in Australia all villages are towns—was situated on the banks of a little stream which went by the name of the Warrigal (tradition telling of the native belief that a great black Warrigal was the deity of the stream), and had seen some strange scenes since the day Burke first looked down upon its site. At one time its ambition soared to that of chief town of the northeast, and when gold was discovered, and the diggers poured in by hundreds, it felt as though it were about to achieve that distinction. But alas for its hopes! The rush was but a poor thing after all. Two or three rich veins were discovered, but the alluvial diggings were not worth the trouble of working. Then began a general exodus; only those who had neither inclination nor power to move staying on. But with a cheerful heart the inhabitants turned from gold-digging to agriculture and pastoral farming, as a less precarious if comparatively unexciting method of subsistence; and upon the bosom of those bleak far-stretching plains, which seemed so ghastly and forbidding to the early explorer, thousands of sheep and cattle pastured, and the district had the reputation of being in a very flourishing condition.

Yet upon occasions there was much life even in Desolation, as its inhabitants called it—not, apparently, having time to use the word Mount—especially on Saturdays and race weeks. Any place in Australia that pretends to consideration can boast its racecourse, and it was not likely that such a thriving town as Desolation was going to be behind the times. As well might the mountain fall upon it and sweep it into chaos. It might boast of wealth, of luxury and learning, but unless it could also boast a racecourse it could have no pretensions to civilisation. It must have big names, too, for its races, such as Derby, Oaks, St. Leger; everything that could lend dignity to the gathering was freely patronised. And one week in every year the old town filled with strangers to partake of the local triumph. Traps rattled through the usually desolate streets, or street (for like most of its kind it had only one street of any consequence), and merry bushmen, mounted on their merry nags, galloped up and down with a recklessness which was simply charming. All the surrounding youth, beauty, and old age never missed the golden opportunity of attending this local fete, and if they did not make merry, the empty bottles we saw in the yard of the Mount Desolation Hotel must have borne false witness. It is true the thoroughbreds were not always of the highest class, nor the jockeys always sober, but that, instead of detracting from the enjoyment, considerably enhanced it. And didn’t the bookmakers come all the way from Melbourne? and didn’t they smoke big cigars, drink champagne, and flash their diamonds and bank-notes like a set of kino’s? And if the Desolationites failed to pocket any of those greasy notes, was it not entirely their own fault for backing the wrong horse? Ah, they were splendid times, as anyone would tell you, and the doings of one meeting supplied sufficient anecdotes to keep the good people going till the next.

But even when there were no races, the main street of the township presented a very cheerful appearance every Saturday night. Then the miscellaneous members of the community sought the refreshing atmosphere of the numerous bars, and in large quantities of vile beer and viler spirits beguiled the evening hours. On Sunday it was Desolation indeed; but on Monday the week began again, and the good folks laboured long and early, in the broiling sun, in the pitiless rain—for these people know how to work once they begin in earnest. Surely after such a week of terrible toil no one is sour enough to grudge them a little relaxation, even though it take the form of beer and tobacco, and discourse of an unintellectual nature. They are happy enough, heaven knows; and though they live far from the busy haunts of men, though their very existence is unknown to the majority of their countrymen in the south, they yet know themselves to be free-born Australians with a splendid heritage, and that should be enough for any man—especially when he can see horse-racing once a year, and every Saturday night of his life get gloriously drunk.

From this it must not be thought that all the inhabitants of this cheerful spot live but for Saturday night. A thousand times, no! There is a strong religious sentiment running through a large section of the community, which community, being mostly of the Methodist persuasion, has an uproarious way of its own of showing that sentiment. They never attend a racecourse; never patronise the “Wombat’s Head” or the “Bounding Kangaroo.” The travelling circus tempts them not; the wandering Christy cracks his bones and rattles his tambourine in vain. They are the elect—they will tell you so a thousand times a day. All others are rushing to perdition. Their self-assurance, their unbounded egotism is a marvel, of which the world has not seen a greater. And there can be no doubt of their sincerity—they talk so much about it. The benighted Catholic may sneer, the ungodly Protestant smile in his atheistical way: but as the Son of Man was reviled, so shall His followers be.

And yet these good folks, if the rumours of the ungodly be worthy of credence, are as full of errors as the rest of poor humanity. They do not attend the races, nor the circus, nor the show of the bone-clapping Christy, but they do many other things of which we dare not speak lest we should be accused of setting down aught in malice. The cloak of charity has been said to cover a multitude of sins; the cloak of sanctity has likewise its advantages, as we have seen in these times, and in times gone by. Even these excellent Methodists, with all their prayers and hymns, have found that out. The contemplation of the spiritual does not always exalt the material, and the elected one is only a poor passionate piece of earth, into which the Superior Force has blown a puff of human fire.

But enough of him. We had forgotten that the sun was sinking all this time, and that we have more important things to chronicle than the idle tittle-tattle of every pitiable clique in a wretched little country township.