Читать книгу THE SEA - Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril & Heroism - Frederick Whymper - Страница 18

The Port of Peter and Paul—Wonderful Colouring of Kamchatka Hills—Grand Volcanoes—The Fight at Petropaulovski—A Contrast—An International Pic-nic—A Double Wedding—Bering’s Voyages—Kamchatka worthy of Further Exploration—Plover Bay—Tchuktchi Natives—Whaling—A Terrible Gale—A Novel “Smoke-stack”—Southward again—The Liverpool of the East—Singapore, a Paradise—New Harbour—Wharves and Shipping—Cruelties of the Coolie Trade—Junks and Prahus—The Kling-gharry Drivers—The Durian and its Devotees—Australia—Its Discovery—Botany Bay and the Convicts—The First Gold—Port Jackson—Beauty of Sydney—Port Philip and Melbourne.

Many English men-of-war have visited the interesting peninsula of Kamchatka, all included in the China station. How well the writer remembers the first time he visited Petropaulovski, the port of Peter and Paul! Entering first one of the noblest bays in the whole world—glorious Avatcha Bay—and steaming a short distance, the entrance to a capital harbour disclosed itself. In half an hour the vessel was inside a landlocked harbour, with a sand-spit protecting it from all fear of gales or sudden squalls. Behind was a highly-coloured little town, red roofs, yellow walls, and a church with burnished turrets. The hills around were autumnly frost-coloured; but not all the ideas the expression will convey to an artist could conjure up the reality. Indian yellow merging through tints of gamboge, yellow, and brown ochre to sombre brown; madder lake, brown madder, Indian red to Roman sepia; greys, bright and dull greens indefinable, and utterly indescribable, formed a mélange of colour which defied description whether by brush or pen. It was delightful; but it was puzzling. King Frost had completed at night that which autumn had done by day. Then behind rose the grand mountain of Koriatski, one of a series of great volcanoes. It seemed a few miles off; it was, although the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere belied the fact, some thirty miles distant. An impregnable fortress of rock, streaked and capped with snow, it defies time and man. Its smoke was constantly observed; its pure snows only hid the boiling, bubbling lava beneath.

With the exception of a few decent houses, the residences of the civil governor, captain of the port, and other officials, and a few foreign merchants, the town makes no great show. The poorer dwellings are very rough, and, indeed, are almost exclusively log cabins. A very picturesque and noticeable building is the old Greek church, which has painted red and green roofs, and a belfry full of bells, large and small, detached from the building, and only a foot or two raised above the ground. It is to be noted that the town, as it existed in Captain Clerke’s time, was built on the sand-spit. It was once a military post, but the Cossack soldiers have been removed to the Amoor.

There are two monuments of interest in Petropaulovski; one in honour of Bering, the second to the memory of La Perouse. The former is a plain cast-iron column, railed in, while the latter is a most nondescript construction of sheet iron, and is of octagonal form. Neither of these navigators is buried in the town. Poor Bering’s remains lie on the island where he miserably perished, and which now bears his name; while of the fate of La Perouse, and his unfortunate companions, little is known.

In 1855, Petropaulovski was visited by the allied fleets, during the period of our war with Russia. They found an empty town, for the Russian Government had given up all idea of defending it. The combined fleet captured one miserable whaler, razed the batteries, and destroyed some of the government buildings. There were good and sufficient reasons why they should have done nothing. The poor little town of Saints Peter and Paul was beneath notice, as victory there could never be glorious. But a stronger reason existed in the fact, recorded in a dozen voyages, that from the days of Cook and Clerke to our own, it had always been famous for the unlimited hospitality and assistance shown to explorers and voyagers, without regard to nationality. All is not fair in war. Possibly, however, reason might be found for the havoc done, in the events of the previous year.

In August, 1854, the inhabitants of Petropaulovski had covered themselves with glory, much to their own surprise. On the 28th of the month, six English and French vessels—the President, Virago, Pique, La Fort, l’Eurydice, and l’Obligado—entered Avatcha Bay. Admiral Price reconnoitred the harbour and town, and placed the Virago in position at 2,000 yards. The Russians had two vessels, the Aurora and Dwina, to defend the harbour, and a strong chain was placed across its narrow entrance. The town was defended by seven batteries and earthworks, mounting fifty guns.

It was not difficult to silence the batteries, and they were accordingly silenced. The townspeople, with their limited knowledge of the English—those English they had always so hospitably received, and who were now doing their best to kill them—thought their hour was come, and that, if not immediately executed, they would have to languish exiles in a foreign land, far from their beautiful Kamchatka. The town was, and is, defended almost as much by nature as by art. High hills shut it in so completely, and the harbour entrance can be so easily defended, that there is really only one vulnerable point, in its rear, where a small valley opens out into a plot of land bordering the bay. Here it was thought desirable to land a body of men.

Accordingly, 700 marines and sailors were put ashore. The men looked forward to an easy victory, and hurriedly, in detached and straggling style, pressed forward to secure it. Alas! they had reckoned without their host—they were rushing heedlessly into the jaws of death. A number of bushes and small trees existed, and still exist, on the hill-sides surrounding this spot, and behind them were posted Cossack sharp-shooters, who fired into our men, and, either from skill or accident, picked off nearly every officer. The men, not seeing their enemy, and having lost their leaders, became panic-struck, and fell back in disorder. A retreat was sounded, but the men struggling in the bushes and underbrush (and, in truth, most of them being sailors, were out of their element on land) became much scattered, and it was generally believed that many were killed by the random shots of their companions. A number fled up a hill at the rear of the town; their foes pursued and pressed upon them, and many were killed by falling over the steep cliff in which the hill terminates.

The inhabitants, astonished at their own prowess, and knowing that they could not hold the town against a more vigorous attack, were preparing to vacate it, when the fleet weighed anchor and set sail, and no more was seen of them that year! The sudden death of our admiral is always attributed to the events of that attack, as he was known not to have been killed by a ball from the enemy.97

The writer has walked over the main battle-field, and saw cannon-balls unearthed when some men were digging gravel, which had laid there since the events of 1854. The last time he passed over it, in 1866, was when proceeding with some Russian and American friends to what might be termed an “international” pic-nic, for there were present European and Asiatic Russians, full and half-breed natives, Americans, including genuine “Yankee” New Englanders, New Yorkers, Southerners, and Californians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and one Italian. Chatting in a babel of tongues, the party climbed a path on the hill-side, leading to a beautiful grassy opening, overlooking the glorious bay below, which extended in all directions a dozen or fifteen miles, and on one side farther than the eye could reach. Several grand snow-covered volcanoes towered above, thirty to fifty miles off; one, of most beautiful outline, that of Vilutchinski, was on the opposite shore of Avatcha Bay.

The sky was bright and blue, and the water without a ripple; wild flowers were abundant, the air was fragrant with them, and, but for the mosquitoes (which are not confined to hot countries, but flourish in the short summer of semi-Arctic climes), it might have been considered an earthly edition of paradise! But even these pests could not worry the company much, for not merely were nearly all the men smokers, but most of the ladies also! Here the writer may remark, parenthetically, that many of the Russian ladies smoke cigarettes, and none object to gentlemen smoking at table or elsewhere. At the many dinners and suppers offered by the hospitable residents, it was customary to draw a few whiffs between the courses; and when the cloth was removed, the ladies, instead of retiring to another room, sat in company with the gentlemen, the larger proportion joining in the social weed. After the enjoyment of a liberal al fresco dinner, songs were in order, and it would be easier to say what were not sung than to give the list of those, in all languages, which were. Then after the songs came some games, one of them a Russian version of “hunt the slipper,” and another very like “kiss in the ring.” The writer particularly remembers the latter, for he had on that occasion the honour of kissing the Pope’s wife! This needs explanation, although the Pope was his friend. In the Greek Church the priest is “allowed to marry,” and his title, in the Russian language, is “Pope.”

And the recollection of that particular “Pope” recalls a well-remembered ceremony—that of a double wedding in the old church. During the ceremony it is customary to crown the bride and bridegroom. In this case two considerate male friends held the crowns for three-quarters of an hour over the brides’ heads, so as not to spoil the artistic arrangement of their hair and head-gear. It seems also to be the custom, when, as in the present case, the couples were in the humbler walks of life, to ask some wealthy individual to act as master of the ceremonies, who, if he accepts, has to stand all the expenses. In this case M. Phillipeus, a merchant who has many times crossed the frozen steppes of Siberia in search of valuable furs, was the victim, and he accepted the responsibility of entertaining all Petropaulovski, the officers of the splendid Russian corvette, the Variag, and those of the Telegraph Expedition, with cheerfulness and alacrity.

The coast-line of Kamchatka is extremely grand, and far behind it are magnificent volcanic peaks. The promontory which terminates in the two capes, Kamchatka and Stolbevoy, has the appearance of two islands detached from the mainland, the intervening country being low. This, a circumstance to be constantly observed on all coasts, was, perhaps, specially noticeable on this. The island of St. Lawrence, in Bering Sea, was a very prominent example. It is undeniable that the apparent gradual rise of a coast, seen from the sea as you approach it, affords a far better proof of the rotundity of the earth than the illustrations usually employed, that of a ship, which you are supposed to see by instalments, from the main-royal sail (if not from the “sky-scraper” or “moon-raker”) to the hull. The fact is, that the royal and top-gallant sails of a vessel on the utmost verge of the horizon may be, in certain lights, barely distinguishable, while the dark outline of an irregular and rock-bound coast can be seen by any one. First, maybe, appears a mountain peak towering in solitary grandeur above the coast-line, and often far behind it, then the high lands and hills, then the cliffs and low lands, and, lastly, the flats and beaches.

It was from the Kamchatka River, which enters Bering Sea near the cape of the same name, that Vitus Bering sailed on his first voyage. That navigator was a persevering and plucky Dane, who had been drawn into the service of Russia through the fame of Peter the Great, and his first expedition was directly planned by that sagacious monarch, although he did not live to carry it out. Müller, the historian of Bering’s career, says: “The Empress Catherine, as she endeavoured in all points to execute most precisely the plans of her deceased husband, in a manner began her reign with an order for the expedition to Kamchatka.” Bering had associated with him two active subordinates, Spanberg and Tschirikoff. They left St. Petersburg on February 5th, 1725, proceeding to the Ochotsk Sea, viâ Siberia. It is a tolerable proof of the difficulties of travel in those days, that it took them two years to transport their outfit thither. They crossed to Kamchatka, where, on the 4th of April, 1728, Müller tells us, “a boat was put upon the stocks, like the packet-boats used in the Baltic, and on the 10th of July was launched, and named the boat Gabriel.” A few days later, and she was creeping along the coast of Kamchatka and Eastern Siberia. Bering on this first voyage discovered St. Lawrence Island, and reached as far north as 67° 18′, where, finding the land trend to the westward, he came to the conclusion that he had reached the eastern extremity of Asia, and that Asia and America were distinct continents. On the first point he was not, as a matter of detail, quite correct; but the second, the important object of his mission, settled for ever the vexed question.

A second voyage was rather unsuccessful. His third expedition left Petropaulovski on the 4th of July, 1741. His little fleet became dispersed in a storm, and Bering pursued his discoveries alone. These were not unimportant, for he reached the grand chain of the rock-girt Aleutian Islands, and others nearer the mainland of America. At length the scurvy broke out in virulent form among his crew, and he attempted to return to Kamchatka. The sickness increased so much that the “two sailors who used to be at the rudder were obliged to be led in by two others who could hardly walk, and when one could sit and steer no longer, one in little better condition supplied his place. Many sails they durst not hoist, because there was nobody to lower them in case of need.” At length land appeared, and they cast anchor. A storm arose, and the ship was driven on the rocks; they cast their second anchor, and the cable snapped before it took ground. A great sea pitched the vessel bodily over the rocks, behind which they happily found quieter water. The island was barren, devoid of trees, and with little driftwood. They had to roof over gulches or ravines, to form places of refuge. On the “8th of November a beginning was made to land the sick; but some died as soon as they were brought from between decks in the open air, others during the time they were on the deck, some in the boat, and many more as soon as they were brought on shore.” On the following day the commander, Bering, himself prostrated with disease, was brought ashore, and moved about on a hand-barrow. He died a month after, in one of the little ravines, or ditches, which had been covered with a roof, and when he expired was almost covered with the sand which fell from its sides, and which he desired his men not to remove, as it gave him some little warmth. Before his remains could be finally interred they had literally to be disinterred.

The vessel, unguarded, was utterly wrecked, and their provisions lost. They subsisted mainly that fearful winter on the carcases of dead whales, which were driven ashore. In the spring the pitiful remnant of a once hardy crew managed to construct a small vessel from the wreck of their old ship, and at length succeeded in reaching Kamchatka. They then learned that Tschirikoff, Bering’s associate, had preceded them, but with the loss of thirty-one of his crew from the same fell disease which had so reduced their numbers. Bering’s name has ever since been attached to the island where he died.

There is no doubt that Kamchatka would repay a detailed exploration, which it has never yet received. It is a partially settled country. The Kamchatdales are a good-humoured, harmless, and semi-civilised race, and the Russian officials and settlers at the few little towns would gladly welcome the traveller. The dogs used for sledging in winter are noble animals, infinitely stronger than those of Alaska or even Greenland. The attractions for the Alpine climber cannot be overstated. The peninsula contains a chain of volcanic peaks, attaining, it is stated, in the Klutchevskoi Mountain a height of 16,000 feet. In the country immediately behind Petropaulovski are the three peaks, Koriatski, Avatcha, and Koseldskai; the first is about 12,000 feet in height, and is a conspicuous landmark for the port. A comparatively level country, covered with rank grass and underbrush, and intersected by streams, stretches very nearly to their base.

PETROPAULOVSKI AND THE AVATCHA MOUNTAIN.

And now, before leaving the Asiatic coast, let us, as many English naval vessels have done, pay a flying visit to a still more northern harbour, that of Plover Bay, which forms the very apex of the China Station. Sailing, or steaming, through Bering Sea, it is satisfactory to know that so shallow is it that a vessel can anchor in almost any part of it, though hundreds of miles from land.98 Plover Bay does not derive its name from the whaling which is often pursued in its waters, although an ingenious Dutchman, of the service in which the writer was engaged at the periods of his visits, persisted in calling it “Blubber” Bay; its name is due to the visit of H.M.S. Plover in 1848–9, when engaged in the search for Sir John Franklin. The bay is a most secure haven, sheltered at the ocean end by a long spit, and walled in on three sides by rugged mountains and bare cliffs, the former composed of an infinite number of fragments of rock, split up by the action of frost. Besides many coloured lichens and mosses, there is hardly a sign of vegetation, except at one patch of country near a small inner harbour, where domesticated reindeer graze. On the spit before mentioned is a village of Tchuktchi natives; their tents are composed of hide, walrus, seal, or reindeer, with here and there a piece of old sail-cloth, obtained from the whalers, the whole patchwork covering a framework formed of the large bones of whales and walrus. The remains of underground houses are seen, but the people who used them have passed away. The present race makes no use of such houses. Their canoes are of skin, covering sometimes a wooden and sometimes a bone frame. On either side of one of these craft, which is identical with the Greenland “oomiak,” or women’s boat, it is usual to have a sealskin blown out tight, and the ends fastened to the gunwale; these serve as floats to steady the canoe. They often carry sail, and proceed safely far out to sea, even crossing Bering Straits to the American side. The natives are a hardy race; the writer has seen one of them carry the awkward burden of a carpenter’s chest, weighing two hundred pounds, without apparent exertion. One of their principal men was of considerable service to the expedition and to a party of telegraph constructors, who were left there in a wooden house made in San Francisco, and erected in a few days in this barren spot. This native, by name Naukum, was taken down into the engine-room of the telegraph steamer—G. S. Wright. He looked round carefully and thoughtfully, and then, shaking his head, said, solemnly, “Too muchee wheel; makee man too muchee think!” His curiosity on board was unappeasable. “What’s that fellow?” was his query with regard to anything, from the donkey-engine to the hencoops. Colonel Bulkley gave him a suit of mock uniform, gorgeous with buttons. One of the men remarked to him, “Why, Naukum, you’ll be a king soon!” But this magnificent prospect did not seem, judging from the way he received it, to be much to his taste. This man had been sometimes entrusted with as much as five barrels of villainous whisky for trading purposes, and he had always accounted satisfactorily to the trader for its use. The whisky sold to the natives is of the most horrible kind, scarcely superior to “coal oil” or paraffine. They appeared to understand the telegraph scheme in a general way. One explaining it, said, “S’pose lope fixy, well; one Melican man Plower Bay, make talky all same San Flancisco Melican.” Perhaps quite as lucid an explanation as you could get from an agricultural labourer or a street arab at home.

Colonel Bulkley, at his second visit to Plover Bay, caused a small house of planks to be constructed for Naukum, and made him many presents. A draughtsman attached to the party made a sketch, “A Dream of the Future,” which was a lively representation of the future prospects of Naukum and his family. The room was picturesque with paddles, skins, brand-new Henry rifles, preserved meat tins, &c.; and civilisation was triumphant.

Although Plover Bay is almost in sight of the Arctic Ocean, very little snow remained on the barren country round it, except on the distant mountains, or in deep ravines, where it has lain for ages. “That there snow,” said one of the sailors, pointing to such a spot, “is three hundred years old if it’s a day. Why, don’t you see the wrinkles all over the face of it?” Wrinkles and ridges are common enough in snow; but the idea of associating age with them was original.

The whalers are often very successful in and outside Plover Bay in securing their prey. Each boat is known by its own private mark—a cross, red stripes, or what not—on its sail, so that at a distance they can be distinguished from their respective vessels. When the whale is harpooned, often a long and dangerous job, and is floating dead in the water, a small flag is planted in it. After the monster is towed alongside the vessel, it is cut up into large rectangular chunks, and it is a curious and not altogether pleasant sight to witness the deck of a whaling ship covered with blubber. This can be either barreled, or the oil “tryed out” on the spot. If the latter, the blubber is cut into “mincemeat,” and chopping knives, and even mincing machines, are employed. The oil is boiled out on board, and the vessel when seen at a distance looks as if on fire. On these occasions the sailors have a feast of dough-nuts, which are cooked in boiling whale-oil, fritters of whale brain, and other dishes. The writer has tasted whale in various shapes, but although it is eatable, it is by no means luxurious food.

WHALERS AT WORK.

It was in these waters of Bering Sea and the Arctic that the Shenandoah played such havoc during the American war. In 1865 she burned thirty American whalers, taking off the officers and crews, and sending them down to San Francisco. The captain of an English whaler, the Robert Tawns, of Sydney, had warned and saved some American vessels, and was in consequence threatened by the pirate captain. The writer was an eye-witness of the results of this wanton destruction of private property. The coasts were strewed with the remains of the burned vessels, while the natives had boats, spars, &c., in numbers.

But Plover Bay has an interest attaching to it of far more importance than anything to be said about whaling or Arctic expeditions. It is more than probable that from or near that bay the wandering Tunguse, or Tchuktchi, crossed Bering Straits, and peopled America. The latter, in canoes holding fifteen or twenty persons, do it now; why not in the “long ago?” The writer has, in common with many who have visited Alaska (formerly Russian-America, before the country was purchased by the United States), remarked the almost Chinese or Japanese cast of features possessed by the coast natives of that country. Their Asiatic origin could not be doubted, and, on the other hand, Aleuts—natives of the Aleutian Islands, which stretch out in a grand chain from Alaska—who had shipped as sailors on the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition, and a Tchuktchi boy brought down to be educated, were constantly taken for Japanese or Chinamen in San Francisco, where there are 40,000 of the former people. Junks have on two occasions been driven across the Pacific Ocean, and have landed their crews.99 These facts occurred in 1832–3; the first on the coast near Cape Flattery, North-west America, and the second in the harbour of Oahu, Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. In the former case all the crew but two men and a boy were killed by the natives. In the latter case, however, the Sandwich Islanders treated the nine Japanese, forming the crew of the junk, with kindness, and, when they saw the strangers so much resembling them in many respects, said, “It is plain, now, we come from Asia.” How easily, then, could we account for the peopling of any island or coast in the Pacific. Whether, therefore, stress of weather obliged some unfortunate Chinamen or Japanese to people America, or whether they, or, at all events, some Northern Asiatics, took the “short sea route,” viâ Bering Straits, there is a very strong probability in favour of the New World having been peopled from not merely the Old World, but the Oldest World—Asia.

The Pacific Ocean generally bears itself in a manner which justifies its title. The long sweeps of its waves are far more pleasant to the sailor than the “choppy” waves of the Atlantic. But the Pacific is by no means always so, as the writer very well knows. He will not soon forget November, 1865, nor will those of his companions who still survive.

Leaving Petropaulovski on November 1st, a fortnight of what sailors term “dirty weather” culminated in a gale from the south-east. It was no “capful of wind,” but a veritable tempest, which broke over the devoted ship. At its outset, the wind was so powerful that it blew the main-boom from the ropes which held it, and it swung round with great violence against the “smoke-stack” (funnel) of the steamer, knocking it overboard. The guys, or chains by which it had been held upright, were snapped, and it went to the bottom. Here was a dilemma; the engines were rendered nearly useless, and a few hours later were made absolutely powerless, for the rudder became disabled, and the steering-wheel was utterly unavailable. During this period a very curious circumstance happened; the sea driving faster than the vessel—itself a log lying in the trough of the waves, which rose in mountains on all sides—acted on the screw in such a manner that in its turn it worked the engines at a greater rate than they had ever attained by steam! After much trouble the couplings were disconnected, but for several hours the jarring of the machinery revolving at lightning speed threatened to make a breach in the stern.

No one on board will soon forget the night of that great gale. The vessel, scarcely larger than a “penny” steamer, and having “guards,” or bulwarks, little higher than the rail of those boats, was engulfed in the tempestuous waters. It seemed literally to be driving under the water. Waves broke over it every few minutes; a rope had to be stretched along the deck for the sailors to hold on by, while the brave commander, Captain Marston, was literally tied to the aft bulwark, where, half frozen and half drowned, he remained at his post during an entire night. The steamer had the “house on deck,” so common in American vessels. It was divided into state-rooms, very comfortably fitted, but had doors and windows of the lightest character. At the commencement of the gale, these were literally battered to pieces by the waves dashing over the vessel; it was a matter of doubt whether the whole house might not be carried off bodily. The officers of the expedition took refuge in the small cabin aft, which had been previously the general ward-room of the vessel, where the meals were served. A great sea broke over its skylight, smashing the glass to atoms, putting out the lamps and stove, and filling momentarily the cabin with about three feet of water. A landsman would have thought his last hour had come. But the hull of the vessel was sound; the pumps were in good order, and worked steadily by a “donkey” engine in the engine-room, and the water soon disappeared. The men coiled themselves up that night amid a pile of ropes and sails, boxes, and miscellaneous matters lying on the “counter” of the vessel, i.e., that part of the stern lying immediately over the rudder. Next morning, in place of the capital breakfasts all had been enjoying—fish and game from Kamchatka, tinned fruits and meats from California, hot rolls and cakes—the steward and cook could only, with great difficulty, provide some rather shaky coffee and the regular “hard bread” (biscuit) of the ship.

The storm increased in violence; it was unsafe to venture on deck. The writer’s room-mate, M. Laborne, a genial and cultivated man of the world, who spoke seven languages fluently, sat down, and wrote a last letter to his mother, enclosing it afterwards in a bottle. “It will never reach her,” said poor Laborne, with tears dimming his eyes; “but it is all I can do.” Each tried to comfort the other, and prepare for the worst. “If we are to die, let us die like men,” said Adjutant Wright. “Come down in the engine-room,” another said, “and if we’ve got to die, let’s die decently.” The chief engineer lighted a fire on the iron floor below the boilers, and it was the only part of the vessel which was at all comfortable. Noble-hearted Colonel Bulkley spent his time in cheering the men, and reminding them that the sea has been proved to be an infinitely safer place than the land. No single one on board really expected to survive. Meantime, the gale was expending its rage by tearing every sail to ribbons. Rags and streamers fluttered from the yards; there was not a single piece of canvas intact. The cabins held a wreck of trunks, furniture, and crockery.

In one of the cabins several boxes of soap, in bars, had been stored. When the gale commenced to abate, some one ventured into the house on deck, when it was discovered that it was full of soapsuds, which swashed backwards and forwards through the series of rooms. The water had washed and rewashed the bars of soap till they were not thicker than sticks of sealing-wax.

OUR “PATENT SMOKE-STACK.”

At last, after a week of this horrible weather, morning broke with a sight of the sun, and moderate wind. There were spare sails on board, and the rudder could be repaired; but what could be done about the funnel? The engineer’s ingenuity came out conspicuously. He had one of the usual water-tanks brought on deck, and the two ends knocked out. Then, setting it up over the boiler, he with pieces of sheet-iron raised this square erection till it was about nine feet high, and it gave a sufficient draught to the furnaces. “Covert’s Patent Smoke-Stack” created a sensation on the safe arrival of the vessel in San Francisco, and was inspected by hundreds of visitors. The little steamer had ploughed through 10,000 miles of water that season. She was immediately taken to one of the wharfs, and entirely remodelled. The sides were slightly raised, and a ward-room and aft-cabin, handsomely fitted in yacht-fashion, took the place of the house on deck. It was roofed or decked at top in such a manner that the heaviest seas could wash over the vessel without doing the slightest injury, and she afterwards made two voyages, going over a distance of 20,000 miles. Poor old Wright! She went to the bottom at last, with all her crew and passengers, some years later, off Cape Flattery, at the entrance of the Straits of Fuca, and scarcely a vestige of her was ever found.

And now, retracing our steps en route for the Australian station, let us call at one of the most important of England’s settlements, which has been termed the Liverpool of the East. Singapore consists of an island twenty-five miles long and fifteen or so broad, lying off the south extremity of Malacca, and having a city of the same name on its southern side. The surface is very level, the highest elevation being only 520 feet. In 1818, Sir Stamford Raffles found it an island covered with virgin forests and dense jungles, with a miserable population on its creeks and rivers of fishermen and pirates. It has now a population of about 100,000, of which Chinese number more than half. In 1819 the British flag was hoisted over the new settlement; but it took five years on the part of Mr. Crawford, the diplomatic representative of Great Britain, to negotiate terms with its then owner, the Sultan of Johore, whereby for a heavy yearly payment it was, with all the islands within ten miles of the coast, given up with absolute possession to the Honourable East India Company. Since that period, its history has been one of unexampled prosperity. It is a free port, the revenue being raised entirely from imports on opium and spirits. Its prosperity as a commercial port is due to the fact that it is an entrepôt for the whole trade of the Malayan Archipelago, the Eastern Archipelago, Cochin China, Siam, and Java. Twelve years ago it exported over sixty-six million rupees’ worth of gambier, tin, pepper, nutmegs, coffee, tortoise-shell, rare woods, sago, tapioca, camphor, gutta-percha, and rattans. It is vastly greater now. Exclusive of innumerable native craft, 1,697 square-rigged vessels entered the port in 1864–5. It has two splendid harbours, one a sheltered roadstead near the town, with safe anchorage; the other, a land-locked harbour, three miles from the town, capable of admitting vessels of the largest draught. Splendid wharfs have been erected by the many steam-ship companies and merchants, and there are fortifications which command the harbour and roads.

“A great deal has been written about the natural beauties of Ceylon and Java,” says Mr. Cameron,100 “and some theologians, determined to give the first scene in the Mosaic narrative a local habitation, have fixed the paradise of unfallen man on one or other of those noble islands. Nor has their enthusiasm carried them to any ridiculous extreme; for the beauty of some parts of Java and Ceylon might well accord with the description given us, or rather which we are accustomed to infer, of that land from which man was driven on his first great sin.

“I have seen both Ceylon and Java, and admired in no grudging measure their many charms; but for calm placid loveliness, I should place Singapore high above them both. It is a loveliness, too, that at once strikes the eye, from whatever point we view the island, which combines all the advantages of an always beautiful and often imposing coast-line, with an endless succession of hill and dale stretching inland. The entire circumference of the island is one panorama, where the magnificent tropical forest, with its undergrowth of jungle, runs down at one place to the very water’s edge, dipping its large leaves in the glassy sea, and at another is abruptly broken by a brown rocky cliff, or a late landslip, over which the jungle has not yet had time to extend itself. Here and there, too, are scattered little green islands, set like gems on the bosom of the hushed waters, between which the excursionist, the trader, or the pirate, is wont to steer his course. ‘Eternal summer gilds these shores;’ no sooner has the blossom of one tree passed away, than that of another takes its place and sheds perfume all around. As for the foliage, that never seems to die. Perfumed isles are in many people’s minds merely fabled dreams, but they are easy of realisation here. There is scarcely a part of the island, except those few places where the original forest and jungle have been cleared away, from which at night-time, on the first breathings of the land winds, may not be felt those lovely forest perfumes, even at the distance of more than a mile from shore. These land winds—or, more properly, land airs, for they can scarcely be said to blow, but only to breathe—usually commence at ten o’clock at night, and continue within an hour or two of sunrise. They are welcomed by all—by the sailor because they speed him on either course, and by the wearied resident because of their delicious coolness.”

Another writer101 speaks with the same enthusiasm of the well-kept country roads, and approaches to the houses of residents, where one may travel for miles through unbroken avenues of fruit-trees, or beneath an over-arching canopy of evergreen palms. The long and well-kept approaches to the European dwellings never fail to win the praise of strangers. “In them may be discovered the same lavish profusion of overhanging foliage which we see around us on every side; besides that, there are often hedges of wild heliotrope, cropped as square as if built up of stone, and forming compact barriers of green leaves, which yet blossom with gold and purple flowers.” Behind these, broad bananas nod their bending leaves, while a choice flower-garden, a close-shaven lawn, and a croquet-ground, are not uncommonly the surroundings of the residence. If it is early morning, there is an unspeakable charm about the spot. The air is cool, even bracing; and beneath the shade of forest trees, the rich blossom of orchids are seen depending from the boughs, while songless birds twitter among the foliage, or beneath shrubs which the convolvulus has decked with a hundred variegated flowers. Here and there the slender stem of the aloe, rising from an armoury of spiked leaves, lifts its cone of white bells on high, or the deep orange pine-apple peeps out from a green belt of fleshy foliage, and breathes its bright fragrance around. The house will invariably have a spacious verandah, underneath which flowers in China vases, and easy chairs of all kinds, are placed. If perfect peace can steal through the senses into the soul—if it can be distilled like some subtle ether from all that is beautiful in nature—surely in such an island as this we shall find that supreme happiness which we all know to be unattainable elsewhere. Alas! even in this bright spot, unalloyed bliss cannot be expected. The temperature is very high, showing an average in the shade, all the year round, of between 85° and 95° Fahr. Prickly heat, and many other disorders, are caused by it on the European constitution.

VIEW IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.

The old Strait of Singhapura, that lies between the island of Singapore and the mainland of Johore, is a narrow tortuous passage, for many centuries the only thoroughfare for ships passing to the eastward of Malacca. Not many years ago, where charming bungalows, the residences of the merchants, are built among the ever verdant foliage, it was but the home of hordes of piratical marauders, who carried on their depredations with a high hand, sometimes adventuring on distant voyages in fleets of forty or fifty prahus. Indeed, it is stated, in the old Malay annals, that for nearly two hundred years the entire population of Singapore and the surrounding islands and coasts of Johore subsisted on fishing and pirating; the former only being resorted to when the prevailing monsoon was too strong to admit of the successful prosecution of the latter. Single cases of piracy sometimes occur now; but it has been nearly stopped. Of the numberless vessels and boats which give life to the waters of the old strait, nearly all have honest work to do—fishing, timber carrying, or otherwise trading. “A very extraordinary flotilla,” says Mr. Cameron, “of a rather nondescript character may be often seen in this part of the strait at certain seasons of the year. These are huge rafts of unsawn, newly-cut timber; they are generally 500 or 600 feet long, and sixty or seventy broad, the logs being skilfully laid together, and carefully bound by strong rattan-rope, each raft often containing 2,000 logs. They have always one or two attap-houses built upon them, and carry crews of twenty or twenty-five men, the married men taking their wives and children with them. The timber composing them is generally cut many miles away, in some creek or river on the mainland.” They sometimes have sails. They will irresistibly remind the traveller of those picturesque rafts on the Rhine, on which there are cabins, with the smoke curling from their stove-pipes, and women, children, and dogs, the men with long sweeps keeping the valuable floating freight in the current. Many a German, now in England or America, made his first trip through the Fatherland to its coast on a Rhine raft.

The sailor generally makes his first acquaintance with the island of Singapore by entering through New Harbour, and the scenery is said to be almost unsurpassed by anything in the world. The steamer enters between the large island and a cluster of islets, standing high out of the water with rocky banks, and covered to their summits by rich green jungle, with here and there a few forest trees towering above it high in the air. Under the vessel’s keel, too, as she passes slowly over the shoaler patches of the entrance, may be seen beautiful beds of coral, which, in their variegated colours and fantastic shapes, vie with the scenery above. The Peninsular and Oriental Steamers’ wharfs are situated at the head of a small bay, with the island of Pulo Brani in front. They have a frontage of 1,200 feet, and coal sheds built of brick, and tile-roofed; they often contain 20,000 tons of coal. Including some premises in Singapore itself, some £70,000 or £80,000 have been expended on their station—a tolerable proof of the commercial importance of the place. Two other companies have extensive wharfs also. The passengers land here, and drive up to the city, a distance of some three miles. Those who remain on board, and “Jack” is likely to be of the number, for the first few days after arrival, find entertainment in the feats of swarms of small Malay boys, who immediately surround the vessel in toy boats just big enough to float them, and induce the passengers to throw small coins into the water, for which they dive to the bottom, and generally succeed in recovering. Almost all the ships visiting Singapore have their bottoms examined, and some have had as many as twenty or thirty sheets of copper put on by Malay divers. One man will put on as many as two sheets in an hour, going down a dozen or more times. There are now extensive docks at and around New Harbour.

On rounding the eastern exit of New Harbour, the shipping and harbour of Singapore at once burst on the view, with the white walls of the houses, and the dark verdure of the shrubbery of the town nearly hidden by the network of spars and rigging that intervenes. The splendid boats of the French Messageries, and our own Peninsular and Oriental lines, the opium steamers of the great firm of Messrs. Jardine, of China, and Messrs. Cama, of Bombay; and the beautifully-modelled American or English clippers, which have taken the place of the box-shaped, heavy-rigged East Indiamen of days of yore, with men-of-war of all nations, help to make a noble sight. This is only part of the scene, for interspersed are huge Chinese junks of all sizes, ranging up to 600 or 700 tons measurement. The sampans, or two-oared Chinese boats, used to convey passengers ashore, are identical in shape. All have alike the square bow and the broad flat stern, and from the largest to the smallest, on what in a British vessel would be called her “head-boards,” all have two eyes embossed and painted, glaring out over the water. John Chinaman’s explanation of this custom is, that if “no got eyes, no can see.” During the south-west monsoon they are in Singapore by scores, and of all colours, red, green, black, or yellow; these are said to be the badge of the particular province to which they belong. Ornamental painting and carving is confined principally to the high stern, which generally bears some fantastic figuring, conspicuous in which can invariably be traced the outlines of a spread eagle, not unlike that on an American dollar. Did “spread-eagleism” as well as population first reach America from China?

“It is difficult,” says Mr. Cameron, “while looking at these junks, to imagine how they can manage in a seaway; and yet at times they must encounter the heaviest weather along the Chinese coast in the northern latitudes. It is true that when they encounter a gale they generally run before it; but yet in a typhoon this would be of little avail to ease a ship. There is no doubt they must possess some good qualities, and, probably, speed, with a fair wind in a smooth sea, is one of them. Not many years ago a boat-builder in Singapore bought one of the common sampans used by the coolie boatmen, which are exactly the same shape as the junks, and rigged her like an English cutter, giving her a false keel, and shifting weather-board, and, strange to say, won with her every race that he tried.”

Passing the junks at night, a strange spectacle may be observed. Amid the beating of gongs, jangling of bells, and discordant shouts, the nightly religious ceremonies of the sailors are performed. Lanterns are swinging, torches flaring, and gilt paper burning, while quantities of food are scattered in the sea as an offering of their worship. Many of those junks, could they but speak, might reveal a story, gentle reader—

“A tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul.”

JUNKS IN A CHINESE HARBOUR.

The chief trade of not a few has been, and still is, the traffic of human freight; and it is, unfortunately, only too lucrative. Large numbers of junks leave China for the islands annually packed with men, picked up, impressed, or lured on board, and kept there till the gambier and pepper planters purchase them, and hurry them off to the interior. It is not so much that they usually have to complain of cruelty, or even an unreasonably long term of servitude; their real danger is in the overcrowding of the vessels that bring them. The men cost nothing, except a meagre allowance of rice, and the more the shipper can crowd into his vessel the greater must be his profit. “It would,” says the writer just quoted, “be a better speculation for the trader whose junk could only carry properly 300 men, to take on board 600 men, and lose 250 on the way down, than it would be for him to start with his legitimate number, and land them all safely; for in the first case, he would bring 350 men to market, and in the other only 300. That this process of reasoning is actually put in practice by the Chinese, there was not long ago ample and very mournful evidence to prove. Two of these junks had arrived in the harbour of Singapore, and had remained unnoticed for about a week, during which the owners had bargained for the engagement of most of their cargo. At this time two dead bodies were found floating in the harbour; an inquest was held, and it then transpired that one of these two junks on the way down from China had lost 250 men out of 600, and the other 200 out of 400.”

ISLANDS IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.

The Malay prahus are the craft of the inhabitants of the straits, and are something like the Chinese junks, though never so large as the largest of the latter, rarely exceeding fifty or sixty tons burden. They have one mast, a tripod made of three bamboos, two or three feet apart at the deck, and tapering up to a point at the top. Across two of the bamboos smaller pieces of the same wood are lashed, making the mast thus act as a shroud or ladder also. They carry a large lug-sail of coarse grass-cloth, having a yard both at top and bottom. The curious part of them is the top hamper about the stem. With the deck three feet out of the water forward, the top of the housing is fifteen or more feet high. They are steered with two rudders, one on either quarter. In addition to the ships and native craft, are hundreds of small boats of all descriptions constantly moving about with fruits, provisions, birds, monkeys, shells, and corals for sale. The sailor has a splendid chance of securing, on merely nominal terms, the inevitable parrot, a funny little Jocko, or some lovely corals, of all hues, green, purple, pink, mauve, blue, and in shape often resembling flowers and shrubbery. A whole boat-load of the latter may be obtained for a dollar and a half or a couple of dollars.

CHINESE JUNK AT SINGAPORE.

Singapore has a frontage of three miles, and has fine Government buildings, court-house, town-hall, clubs, institutes, masonic lodge, theatre, and the grandest English cathedral in Asia—that of St. Andrew’s. In Commercial Square, the business centre of Singapore, all nationalities seem to be represented. Here, too, are the Kling gharry-drivers, having active little ponies and neat conveyances. Jack ashore will be pestered with their applications. “These Klings,” says Mr. Thomson, “seldom, if ever, resort to blows; but their language leaves nothing for the most vindictive spirit to desire. Once, at one of the landing-places, I observed a British tar come ashore for a holiday. He was forthwith beset by a group of Kling gharry-drivers, and, finding that the strongest of British words were as nothing when pitted against the Kling vocabulary, and that no half-dozen of them would stand up like men against his huge iron fists, he seized the nearest man, and hurled him into the sea. It was the most harmless way of disposing of his enemy, who swam to a boat, and it left Jack in undisturbed and immediate possession of the field.” The naval officer will find excellent deer-hunting and wild-hog shooting to be had near the city, and tiger-hunting at a distance. Tigers, indeed, were formerly terribly destructive of native life on the island; it was said that a man per diem was sacrificed. Now, cases are more rare. For good living, Singapore can hardly be beaten; fruit in particular is abundant and cheap. Pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, bananas of thirty varieties, mangoes, custard-apples, and oranges, with many commoner fruits, abound. Then there is the mangosteen, the delicious “apple of the East,” thought by many to surpass any fruit in the world, and the durian, a fruit as big as a boy’s head, with seeds as big as walnuts enclosed in a pulpy, fruity custard. The taste for this fruit is an acquired one, and is impossible to describe, while the smell is most disgusting. So great is the longing for it, when once the taste is acquired, that the highest prices are freely offered for it, particularly by some of the rich natives. A former King of Ava spent enormous sums over it, and could hardly then satisfy his rapacious appetite. A succeeding monarch kept a special steamer at Rangoon, and when the supplies came into the city it was loaded up, and dispatched at once to the capital—500 miles up a river. The smell of the durian is so unpleasant that the fruit is never seen on the tables of the merchants or planters; it is eaten slily in corners, and out of doors.

SINGAPORE, LOOKING SEAWARDS.

And Jack ashore will find many other novelties in eating. Roast monkey is obtainable, although not eaten as much as formerly by the Malays. In the streets of Singapore a meal of three or four courses can be obtained for three halfpence from travelling restaurateurs, always Chinamen, who carry their little charcoal stoves and soup-pots with them. The authority principally quoted says that, contrary to received opinion, they are very clean and particular in their culinary arrangements. One must not, however, too closely examine the nature of the viands. And now let us proceed to the Australian Station, which includes New Guinea, Australia proper, and New Zealand.

LOOKING DOWN ON SINGAPORE.

This is a most important colony of Great Britain, although by no means its most important possession, a country as English as England itself, tempered only by a slight colonial flavour. Here Jack will find himself at home, whether in the fine streets of Melbourne, or the older and more pleasant city of Sydney, with its beautiful surroundings.

When the seventeenth century was in its early youth, that vast ocean which stretches from Asia to the Antarctic was scarcely known by navigators. The coasts of Eastern Africa, of India, and the archipelago of islands to the eastward, were partially explored; but while there was a very strong belief that a land existed in the southern hemisphere, it was an inspiration only based on probabilities. The pilots and map-makers put down, as well as they were able, the discoveries already made; must there not be some great island or continent to balance all that waste of water which they were forced to place on the southern hemisphere? Terra Australis, “the Southern Land,” was therefore in a sense discovered before its discovery, just as the late Sir Roderick Murchison predicted gold there before Hargreaves found it.102

In the year 1606, Pedro Fernando de Quiros started from Peru on a voyage of discovery to the westward. He found some important islands, to which he gave the name “Australia del Espiritu Santo,” and which are now believed to have been part of the New Hebrides group. The vessel of his second in command became separated in consequence of a storm, and by this Luis vas Torres in consequence reached New Guinea and Australia proper, besides what is now known as Torres Straits, which channel separates them. The same year a Dutch vessel coasted about the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is to the persistent efforts of the navigators of Holland that the Australian coasts became well explored. From 1616, at intervals, till 1644, they instigated many voyages, the leading ones of which were the two made by Tasman, in the second of which he circumnavigated Australia. “New Holland” was the title long applied to the western part of Australia—sometimes, indeed, to the whole country.

The voyages of the Dutch had not that glamour of romance which so often attaches to those of the Spanish and English. They did not meet natives laden with evidences of the natural wealth of their country, and adorned by barbaric ornaments. On the contrary, the coasts of Australia did not appear prepossessing, while the natives were wretched and squalid. Could they have known of its after-destiny, England might not hold it to-day. When Dampier, sent out by William III. more than fifty years afterwards, re-discovered the west coast of Australia, he had little to record more than the number of sharks on the coast, his astonishment at the kangaroos jumping about on shore, and his disgust for the few natives he met, whom he described as “the most unpleasant-looking and worst-featured of any people” he had ever encountered.

Nearly seventy years elapsed before any other noteworthy discovery was made in regard to Australia. In Captain Cook’s first voyage, in 1768, he explored and partially surveyed the eastern part of its coasts, and discovered the inlet, to which a considerable notoriety afterwards clung, which he termed Botany Bay, on account of the luxuriant vegetation of its shores. Rounding the western side, he proceeded northwards to Torres Straits, near which, on a small island off the mainland, he took possession of the whole country, in the name of his sovereign, George III., christening it New South Wales. It is still called Possession Island. Captain Cook gave so favourable an account of Botany Bay on his return, that it was determined at once to form a colony, in which convict labour should be systematically employed. Accordingly, a fleet of eleven vessels, under Captain Phillip, left Portsmouth on the 13th of May, 1787, and after a tedious voyage, reached Botany Bay the following January.

Captain Phillip found the bay was not a safe anchorage, and in other respects was unsuitable. A few miles to the northward he discovered an inlet, now named Port Jackson—from the name of the seaman who discovered it—and which had been overlooked by Cook. The fleet was immediately removed thither, the convicts landed, and the British flag raised on the banks of Sydney Cove. Of the thousand individuals who formed this first nucleus of a grand colony, more than three-fourths were convicted offenders. For some time they were partially dependent on England for supplies. It had been arranged that they should not, at first, be left without sufficient provisions. The first ship sent out after the colonists had been landed for this purpose was struck by an iceberg in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, and might not have been saved at all, but for the seamanship of the “gallant, good Riou,” who afterwards lost his life at the battle of Copenhagen. He managed to keep her afloat, and she was at length towed into Table Bay, and a portion of her stores saved. Meantime, the colonists were living “in the constant belief that they should one day perish of hunger.” Governor Phillip set a noble example by putting himself on the same rations as the meanest convict; and when on state occasions he was obliged to invite the officers of the colony to dine with him at the Government House, he used to intimate to the guests that “they must bring their bread along with them.” At last, in June, 1790, some stores arrived; and in the following year a second fleet of vessels came out from England, one ship of the Royal Navy and ten transports; 1,763 convicts had left England on board the latter, of whom nearly 200 died on the voyage, and many more on arrival. The number of free settlers was then, and long afterwards, naturally very small; they did not like to be so intimately and inevitably associated with convicted criminals. In 1810 the total population of Australia was about 10,000. In 1836 it had risen to 77,000, two-fifths of whom were convicts in actual bondage, while of the remainder, a large proportion had at one time been in the same condition. Governor King, one of the earlier officials of the colony, complained that “he could not make farmers out of pickpockets;” and Governor Macquarie later said that “there were only two classes of individuals in New South Wales—those who had been convicted, and those who ought to have been.” Under these discouraging circumstances, coupled with all kinds of other difficulties, the colony made slow headway. Droughts and inundations, famine or scarcity, and hostility on the part of the natives, helped seriously to retard its progress. About the period of Sir Thomas Brisbane’s administration, there was an influx of a better class of colonists, owing to the inauguration of free emigration. In 1841, transportation to New South Wales ceased. Ten years later the discovery of gold by Mr. E. H. Hargreaves (on the 12th of February, 1851) caused the first great “rush” to the colony, which influx has since continued, partly for better reasons than gold-finding—the grand chances offered for stock-raising, agricultural, horticultural, and vinicultural pursuits.

To the north and south of Sydney, the coast is a nearly unbroken range of iron-bound cliffs. But as a vessel approaches the shore, a narrow entrance, between the two “Heads” of Port Jackson, as they are called, discloses itself. It is nowhere greater than a mile in width, and really does not appear so much, on account of the height of the cliffs. On entering the harbour a fine sea-lake appears in view, usually blue and calm, and in one of its charming inlets is situated the city of Sydney. “There is not,” writes Professor Hughes, “a more thoroughly English town on the face of the globe—not even in England itself—than this southern emporium of the commerce of nations. Sydney is entirely wanting in the novel and exotic aspect which belongs to foreign capitals. The emigrant lands there, and hears his own mother tongue spoken on every side; he looks around upon the busy life of its crowded streets, and he gazes on scenes exactly similar to those daily observable in the highways of London, Liverpool, Birmingham, or Manchester. … ‘Were it not,’ says Colonel Mundy, ‘for an occasional orange-tree in full bloom, or fruit in the background of some of the older cottages, or a flock of little green parrots whistling as they alight for a moment on a house-top, one might fancy himself in Brighton or Plymouth.’ ”103 Gay equipages crowd its streets, which are lined with handsome shops; the city abounds in fine public buildings. In the outskirts of the city are flour-mills of all kinds, worked by horse, water, wind, and steam; great distilleries and breweries, soap and candle works, tanneries, and woollen-mills, at the latter of which they turn out an excellent tweed cloth. Ship-building is carried on extensively around Port Jackson. Although now overshadowed by the commercial superiority of Melbourne, it has the preeminence as a port. In fact, Melbourne is not a sea-port at all, as we shall see. Vessels of large burdens can lie alongside the wharves of Sydney, and “Jack,” in the Royal Navy at least, is more likely to stop there for awhile, than ever to see Melbourne. He will find it a cheap place in most respects, for everywhere in New South Wales meat is excessively low-priced; they used formerly to throw it away, after taking off the hides and boiling out the fat, but are wiser now, and send it in tins all over the world. Such fruits as the peach, nectarine, apricot, plum, fig, grape, cherry, and orange are as plentiful as blackberries. The orangeries and orchards of New South Wales are among its sights; and in the neighbourhood of Sydney and round Port Jackson there are beautiful groves of orange-trees, which extend in some places down to the water’s edge. Individual settlers have groves which yield as many as thirty thousand dozen oranges per annum. One may there literally “sit under his own vine and fig-tree.” If a peach-stone is thrown down in almost any part of Australia where there is a little moisture, a tree will spring up, which in a few years will yield handsomely. A well-known botanist used formerly to carry with him, during extensive travels, a small bag of peach-stones to plant in suitable places, and many a wandering settler has blessed him since. Pigs were formerly often fed on peaches, as was done in California, a country much resembling Southern Australia; it is only of late years they have been utilised in both places by drying or otherwise preserving. A basket-load may be obtained in the Sydney markets during the season for a few pence. The summer heat of Sydney is about that of Naples, while its winter corresponds with that of Sicily.

But are there no drawbacks to all this happy state of things? Well, yes; about the worst is a hot blast which sometimes blows from the interior, known popularly in Sydney as a “brick-fielder” or “southerly buster.” It is much like that already described, and neither the most closely-fastened doors nor windows will keep out the fearful dust-storm. “Its effect,” says Professor Hughes, “is particularly destructive of every sense of comfort; the dried and dust-besprinkled skin acquiring for the time some resemblance to parchment, and the hair feeling more like hay than any softer material.”

Should Jack or his superior officers land during the heat of autumn, he may have the opportunity of passing a novel Christmas—very completely un-English. The gayest and brightest flowers will be in bloom, and the musquitoes out in full force. “Sitting,” says a writer, “in a thorough draught, clad in a holland blouse, you may see men and boys dragging from the neighbouring bush piles of green stuff (oak-branches in full leaf and acorn, and a handsome shrub with a pink flower and pale green leaf—the ‘Christmas’ of Australia) for the decoration of churches and dwellings, and stopping every fifty yards to wipe their perspiring brows.”

Before leaving Sydney, the grand park, called “The Domain,” which stretches down to the blue water in the picturesque indentations around Port Jackson, must be mentioned. It contains several hundred acres, tastefully laid out in drives, and with public walks cut through the indigenous or planted shrubberies, and amidst the richest woodland scenery, or winding at the edge of the rocky bluffs or by the margin of the glittering waters. Adjoining this lovely spot is one of the finest botanic gardens in the world, considered by all Sydney to be a veritable Eden.

Port Phillip, like Port Jackson, is entered by a narrow passage, and immediately inside is a magnificent basin, thirty miles across in almost any direction. It is so securely sheltered that it affords an admirable anchorage for shipping. Otherwise, Melbourne, now a grand city with a population of about 300,000, would have had little chance of attaining its great commercial superiority over any city of Australia. Melbourne is situated about eight miles up the Yarra-Yarra (“flowing-flowing”) river, which flows into the head of Port Phillip. That poetically-named, but really lazy, muddy stream is only navigable for vessels of very small draught. But Melbourne has a fine country to back it. Many of the old and rich mining-districts were round Port Phillip, or on and about streams flowing into it. Wheat, maize, potatoes, vegetables and fruits in general, are greatly cultivated; and the colony of Victoria is pre-eminent for sheep-farming and cattle-runs, and the industries connected with wool, hides, tallow, and, of late, meat, which they bring forth. Melbourne itself lies rather low, and its original site, now entirely filled in, was swampy. Hence came occasional epidemics—dysentery, influenza, and so forth.

A TIMBER WHARF AT SAN FRANCISCO.