Читать книгу The Genesis of Queensland. - Henry Stuart Russell. - Страница 3
ОглавлениеPREFACE.
But for respect to prescribed custom, I should leave this book to be ushered into public presence under the countenance of Patrick Leslie's silent introduction.
A preface, however, does shape itself into an easy chair for the scruples of the most self-distrusting occupant from which he may address himself in tendering the payment of a debt always incurred by ordinary men to their neighbours in the attainment of an end.
For my own relief I use it, therefore, for thanking those who have, in all courteous sympathy, helped me to a short review of times synchronous with the detachments of story to which this first one hundred of Australia's years of self-assertion under the Union Jack has committed her. By tradition of the past, in a measure, Australia's habit may be characteristically caparisoned in the future.
To the late Michael Fitzpatrick (awhile Premier of New South Wales), and then to the unreserved and hearty acquiescence of Henry Halloran and Deputy-Surveyor-General R.D. Fitzgerald, in obtaining for me the perusal of many official documents, a preface gives room for my grateful acknowledgments. These may have forgotten; I have not.
Among the amenities of private intercourse, I am glad to thank Philip Gidley King for enabling me to produce Journals of Allan Cunningham, of which a record in full had been long fallow among his family preserves; also the widow of the noble Carron, to whose manhood I wish to pay tribute, and by her to his memory; and her also who has honoured me by the permission to place this neophyte beneath the tutelary presence of the same Patrick Leslie.
To the boon of a public library, its able and energetic Chief Librarian, R.C. Walker, and his considerate, cordial, and courteous coadjutor, D.R. Hawley—not forgetting the politeness of the active officials therein—I have now a chance of bearing warm testimony.
To the friend to whom I dedicate this redemption of a pledge given to himself when in life, and who procured for me the accompanying specimens of Cook's Log and handiwork, it is too late to address myself. Those who inherit his cherished name may accept my meaning and regret.
The chagrin shared with others now gone, that the days of "our" Darling Downs, on which we breathed a then new element, and revelled in the elastic aspirations of the squatter of the olden time, should fade out of the freshness of their dawn; the aim, that objects wrought out by single enterprise should be fixed to the right name; the fear, that as years fall farther and farther back, the impress of many a notable occurrence, whether affecting time, place, or person, the progress of squatting exploration or that of locality, might fall back with them into the haze of forgotten or irrecoverable things, or, what is more fretting, into the fogs of future distortion and assumption—have all spurred this "small chronicler of his own small times" to present himself to the "some few" yet living to whom the recital may yet bring reflection, whether of personal interest or not; and to those who follow, mindfulness of some worthies gone before, whose names may plead the claim of whilom companionship and attachment in bush or town, prosperity or adversity.
Out of the sunny years of her who called our Queensland into her lot, have the purer rays been shed upon it which have lit up the latter, the happier half of Australia's age.
May not the last, the youngest branch of Australia's growth, bud out in hope, yet more loyally grafted upon the name of her who gave it as the days consolidate its own Centenary?
HENRY STUART RUSSELL.
North Willoughby,
Sydney, N.S.W.
CHAPTER I.
King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap
Left by the the Holy Quest.— Tennyson. (The Holy Grail.)
Assuredly the gallant Pedro Fernandez de Quiros must have been possessed by some of the "sacred madness" of King Arthur's bard when as he first gazed, as he thought, upon the coral-gripped coast of the new land which King Philip of Spain had sent him to seek, he shouted in reverent joy with doffed sombrero: "Australia del Espiritu Santo!" But was "Australia" the utterance, or was it "Tierra"? 'Twas not for de Quiros to discover his own error. Choosing one course for further discovery, he directed his Lieutenant to take another in the second ship, and so they parted in 1606. Superstitious dread prevailed over the discipline of his own, and he was compelled by his mutinous men to return to Peru, which he reached in disgrace, ever attendant upon failure. His Lieutenant, Luis Vaes de Torres, soon found that the Admiral had saluted but an island—probably one of the New Hebrides—continued his course westwards, bore away along the south coast of New Guinea; unwittingly fixed his eyes upon the true "Tierra Austral"; upon the "very large islands" which the Cape, since called York, presented to his bewildered sight, ere he stood away to the north, threading his way through the mazy channel which exposed his commander's mistake.
Torres had unconsciously fulfilled the Holy Quest. The memory of and monument to his name are baptised and bathed by the isle-fretted waters which bear it.
In John Bull justice did a native of our own British island stamp "Torres" with his hand of authority as hydrographer to the Admiralty upon that strange channel which had already begun to be the promise of a grand highway claimed by, but not destined for the sovereignty of that flag under which Torres had sailed.
The most authentic registration of Queensland's birth was thus declared from the far north; her future growth was nourished and confirmed from the far south. Among the first forms of a new shore brought to light, she has derived her existence from that which was delivered last by the labour of our Yorkshire countryman, James Cook, Into the arms of our glad motherland.
But through what throes has the first colony planted in this our Australia been nursed to its stature, that it may bear its own part, and send forth its own offspring to bear theirs on the great stage upon which in these years of grace, 1887-8, it and they are summoned to enact the several characters allotted to them, and as yet rehearsed by the help of the common prompting of religion, race, kindred, and country.
It is by the finger-posts of incident in colonial life that the tracks of a community's social rise and progressive ability may be faithfully followed and run out, irrespective of the governing element. Whether of good or evil, worthy or unworthy, noble or ignoble report, the course of events proves a people's character; whereas a religious and political history, even of a new country, compiled from a mass of wrestling opinions, can be taught and learnt but by the commonwealth's outcome up to a present—a present which can find no end while the world is.
The former—my task—is an easy one: the latter, one which only rare ability and genius dare challenge. Yet the one may allure the interest and amused attentiveness of the many, who do not care to dig up or into the thirsty ground of theory, nor sink into the quicksands of inquiry which cannot be solidified.
For instance, who that dwells in this land of bright token can take up an almanac, and fail to exult in his secret soul that on the 20th day of January, 1788, our fellow countryman, Arthur Phillip, had saved it for us "Britishers" but by a few days from becoming the rightful refuge for the Frenchman's "folies"; that two days after he had taken possession of the country in the name of the United Kingdom, established his head-quarters on the bay-sporting waters of Port Jackson, and in all chivalrous courtesy "fended off" "l'Astrolabe" and "la Bussole" with their gallant commanders, Jean Francois Galamp de la Perouse, and his friend Delangle, to the less hospitable shores on which they met their sad fates? Is the fact that the same month of the same year—1788—hailed the birth in our realm of a people's new and giant power—the power of the press, the fourth estate—in a dingy room at Printing-House Square, whence on the first of its days issued forth the first cry of the infant Times, now stalking forth in strength equal to a nation's leverage, worth no grateful glance? Can the nascent glow of Australia's poetic aspirations bear no reflective companionship with the spark which kindled the simultaneously new-born Byron's genius? Are all incurious to the fact that Norfolk Island was made a dependency of New South Wales on the 13th day of the month following, under Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, and then Governor King?
Is it not worth a glance that on the 26th of September, 1791, Lieutenant-Governor, afterwards Governor King, had arrived in the "Gorgon", having received our territorial seal, with authority to grant pardons absolutely or conditionally? Nothing to any housewife that in 1796 coals were being received in Sydney from Newcastle? nor to the admirers of sea-bred pluck that Dr. Bass had thrown open the straits which wear his name, and returned in his whaleboat thence to Port Jackson in February, 1798? Are there none now who would be surprised that until December, 1800, no copper coin was in circulation in the colony? None now living who may read with namesake interest the first noteworthy death in New South Wales, that of Judge-Advocate Richard Dove; none to lift up their eyebrows at the recorded name of his successor, Richard Atkins?
And then, a smart step onward on March 5, 1803, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, published "by authority", coupled with the drawback—important enough in those days—of the report brought to Sydney by him to whom the coast of New Holland had become so much indebted for development, Matthew Flinders, of the loss of the "Porpoise" and "Cato", upon his arrival within the Heads on September 8th, in an open boat.
Is there no sensation attendant upon the announcement of horrors presumably lawful (in the type of the period), and tendered in a somewhat cynical regard for authority one day of this year: "Memorable execution(!).—Joseph Samuels, for burglary, was three times suspended; first, the rope separated; second, it unrove at the fastening; third, it snapped short! The Provost Marshal, Mr. Smith—a man universally respected—compassionating the criminal's protracted suffering, represented the case to the Governor, who was pleased to reprieve him"?
Was there no thought for defence in those troublous days of antipodean wars? Nor for light in those days of darkness? There was; for on the 18th of July, 1816, Governor Macquarie laid the first stones of the tower which makes his name redoubtable, and of the South Head Lighthouse, pulled down not long ago, and then put up again the brightest beacon of the seas! The old Seal, too, worn out, not probably by the frequency of pardoning, but by ceaseless attachments to hanging warrants, was replaced by a new Territorial Seal, sent with a warrant, by the clemency of the Prince Regent, in the November following.
Why should we decline to refresh our knowledge of the stirring times during the chaotic reign of Governor Bligh for one year, five months, and thirteen days; or mark the record of a new era which set in with the arrival of John Thomas Bigge, the Honourable Commissioner of Inquiry, consequent upon Bligh's eviction, in the ship "John Barry", with his secretary, Thomas Hobbes Scott, on the 25th September, 1819? Or, beginning already to creep away to the northward, to mark that a gallant officer of the 48th Regiment, Captain Allman, whose name is still held high in Campbelltown esteem, and in our midst, in memory of a fine old soldier and impartial magistrate, was sent forth to establish a penal settlement at Port Macquarie?
Coming apace to household names of our own years, the preaching of his introductory sermon by Dr. Lang in Sydney, on June 8, 1823, will surely make many prick up their ears.
And how strangely it sounds now that on the 8th of the preceding month Thomas McVitie was magistrate for the week! That the harbour of Port Jackson presented "a novel and gay appearance on the Sunday before, as six vessels were under sail at once! Five to go through Torres Straits, Captain Peach, of H.M.S. "Britomart", being commodore of the squadron; that this smart vessel saluted Point Piper en passant, which was promptly answered by our respected naval officer (and postmaster), Captain Piper"!
