BOOKS.
A BOOK ABOUT QUEENSLAND.*
TkIli " University Man " makes no •secret of the fact that he went out to Queensland in the hope of making a fortune, and that he came home disappointed. His readers must, of course, remember this when they come to estimate the value of his evidence. To us he seems to write as one who has no kindly recollections of the place which he describes, but is a good trustworthy witness, with a bias, as good witnesses often have, against the party accused. We say "accused," for the book is really a very serious accusation against the social and political condition of the colony. One thing is perfectly evident. The author writes to the point, he is no holiday traveller, viewing the country through the rose-coloured spectacles of successful men. He has lived the life, the life of struggle and uncertainty and privation, which ordinary emigrants must expect to live, and he has done good service in telling his fellow countrymen about it. These do not expect to find a paradise where a man can get his bread without working, but they do expect to be told whether labour, when they have gone half round the world to find it, is fairly certain and well paid, and not subject to any exceptionally unfavourable conditions. On the whole, our author's answer to this question is unfavourable. He declares that the colony is not and never can be an agricultural colony ; " there are," he says, " here and there small patches of alluvial ground which will grow anything,' as the saying is, but the main portion of the colony will produce nothing but dry grass and firewood." If you have no capital, for that is the upshot of the whole matter, and are willing to stand the monotony of a shepherd's life, or have an aptitude for other bush life (any one can be a shepherd), you will get good wages and can save thorn, for there is no possibility of spending them, that is to say, if you do not follow what seems to be the almost universal practice of
Queensland, drink out your six months' earnings in a week's leave. Or if you have capital and will take a " run," you make a fortune with fair speed and safety. But for the "peasant" class of colonist there seems no room at all.
Let us give a sketch of the " University Man's" career, He lands at Brisbane, and finds, as a first discovery, the worthless-
ness of " letters of introduction." Dinners his new friends would give him as long as he did not want them, but employment was a different thing. The gentleman on whom he most relied offered him work in his garden at ten shillings a week ! Another offered him a free passage to another settlement, but forgot the arrange- ments for making it "free," and a third kindly took charge of his boxes and appropriated their contents. From Brisbane he goes to Port Denison, and there finds work on a new telegraph line, the work consisting in digging holes for the posts. This he abandons before the end of the first week. His next place was with a photographer who kept a "labour office," To the labour office no one ever came, and during a month's stay two photographs
only were taken. For such services as he here rendered he got his food in return, but he managed to pick up four or five pounds by selling " correct cards " at the local races. With this capital he hired himself as assistant to a surveyor at a pound a week and rations. At the end of three months he takes to shepherding. His descriptions of this life are very vivid and picturesque, and his statements about the men who follow it are very startling. This passage, for instance :-
" I was once shepherding on a station belonging to a man who could barely read and write, who could not have done a rule-of-three stun to save his life, and the list of whose shepherds stood as followS : one Cambridge man ; one Trinity, Dublin ; one ex-lieutenant in the army, educated at Rugby, who had carried the Queen's colours (so be said) into the Roden, and buried the dead afterwards ; one Oxford man (my- Hoff); one old Wintonian ; and two Germans. We five used to feel bound together by a kind of froemasonary, and used to meet together by the hour end talk shop under the gum-trees. All these men (my- self excepted) used to drink frightfully when they got the chance. I did not—simply from disinclination ; and it is owing to that fact that I am here now, and writing the present pages."
This drinking seems indeed to be the curse of the country in a degree to which there is no parallel here. The shepherds, as we know, all drink. This, one might fancy, is the result of a reaction against a lonely life. Not so. "I was astonished," says the writer, of the working-men of Brisbane, "to find what an intelli- gent and companionable set of men they were, for the most part.
When I say that the working-men of Queensland are, as a body, far superior, both in their mental and physical capacity, to
the same class in England, I am saying very little There • coioniat aaeoaue0 and Experience& By a University Mau. London: Boll and Daley. 1871
is a leaven of education and information pervading the whole class which is very remarkable But the worst of it is, from the first to the last, they all drink.' The professional classes are no better. "There is sometimes a qualified doctor in the larger Bush townships who is usually the greatest drunkard in the place." This is bad enough, but mark what follows :—
" One would naturally be tempted to exclaim, what a first-rate open- ing in such a country for a sober medical man ! but it is not so. A doctor who did not drink would got very few patients, he would not be able to gain their sympathy. His steadiness would he sot down to weakness of constitution, his sobriety to a morose disposition, and the place would soon be too hot to hold him. And it is a. curious fact that a doctor, in Queensland, derives a positive reputation for ability in proportion to the quantity of grog which ho swallows. You hoar people say, ' Capital doctor, Dr. 0.,—clover fellow.—only ho lushes ; ' Could do anything short of raising the dead,—only ho lushes.' It is much the same in other walks of life. The more a man neglects his business, the more capable he is supposed to be of performing it ; so-and-so Lushes fearfully, but he's the best blacksmith in the district.' Another man could realm 'any money he liked if he didn't drink.' " It would be easy to follow up the vicissitudes of the writer's career,--how he taught a blacksmith's children, the blacksmith being, after the usual fashion of the country, " an excellent fellow, but lushes ;" how ho helped the same man on another occasion in the work of stripping off bark, bark being a substance which in " Capricornia" is used for everything, roofing, sheeting, dishes, plates, teapots, and shrouds; how ho made candles ; how he followed the profession of public crier, and so forth. Indeed, the reader cannot do better than follow them for himself in the very lively and pleasant narrative before us. His description of how he was lost in the bush, and how very near he came to being murdered by a party of black fellows—a fate from which he was saved only by the sagacity of his dog—are specially interesting. But we must find space for a matter of more public interest, and which is exciting much attention at present, and in which the testimony of a competent and disinterested witness is specially valuable. This is the " coolie question." This is one part of what our author has to say about it Now for the method of stocking a plantation with coolies. There are two ways which have been adopted, and found successful. One illustrates the ' force of persuasion,' the other the 'force of circum- stances.' We will first explain what is meant by the 'force of per- suasion.' This method is chiefly adopted on such of the islands as have been subjected to Christianity and civilization. The man wishing to obtain the coolies sends out a schooner to one of the islands, having on board a general cargo, and carrying, as well, a man of gentle man- ners and persuasive aspect (a converted missionary, if possible,) with good stock of toys, tracts, idols, locking glasses, Bibles, grog, and tobacco. All these are kindly intended for gratuitous distribution, after the cargo has been sold out. The schooner is then converted into a kind of floating bazaar and reception-room. Missionary meetings are hold upon deck, and the little presents, as they meet the taste of each recipient, are distributed below. When a favourable opportunity occurs, the natives are surprised and overpowered, and carried over to Queens- land. Some of them are persuaded to go of their own accord, but the proper complement could not easily bo obtained in this way, as the art of persuasion ' (an art as old as the father of lies) is rather a tedious one, The simplest way, after all, is to use the 'force of circumstances.' This method has been found the most sueeeasful one among the canni- bal tribes, who in default of missionaries, are in the habit of devouring, oath man, his vanquished enemy."
And these poor creatures, it must be remembered, are not held savages, who, though that is no justification of such doings, may be thought better of in a Christian land than in the midst of their own barbarism :- "There is yet another thing to be considered. A groat many of these islanders are good Catholics, and much better Christians, in doctrine and practice, than the people who employ them. Many of them have been in the habit of going to church: there are no churches in Capricornirt. They have been instructed by ministers: there are none in Caprieornia. They have been taught forbearance, brotherly love, honesty, sobriety : rare virtues, indeed, in Capricornia. It is not so with all of them, uoeny have been cannibals, others simply heathens. The cargo of which I have spoken was a miscellaneous assortment. There were coolies in it of all kinds. There were scowling and violent- looking savages ; some who seemed intelligent and gentle, but quite untamed ; while there were many, who had almost the air and manner of gentlemen, who could speak French fluently, and frequently crossed themselves as they repeated their devotions. A great many were line apeohnons of humanity, and not much darker in colour than Europeans,"
There must be no trifling with a matter which has so serious an aspect as this. Shall we have to keep another slave squadron in the Australasian seas to watch our own colonists ?
We can recommend the book as one of very genuine value, full of exactly the information which thousands of people want to obtain,
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