29 MAY 1852, Page 16

BOOKS.

OUR ANTIPODES—MENDE ON THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES..

THIS work is the result of five years' service in New South Wales, New Zealand, and Van Diemen.'s Land, between 1846 and 1851. The post to which Colonel Mundy was appointed was Deputy-Ad- jutant-General of the Australian Colonies ; but the inkling of mi- litary duty that appears in the book relates to tours of inspeotion or observation, made in company with Governors or other high officials ; and the result, so far as the author's pages go, con- cerns the appearance of the country, the characteristics of the people, the incidents of the journey, and general remarks. The military character of the writer shows itself favourably, in a wide experience of different countries, the old campaigner's habit of keep- ing his eyes open and taking men and events as they happen to come, as well as in the power of adapting himself to "each change of many-coloured life." Much service in four quarters of the globe has knocked any exclusiveness out of the Colonel, if he hap- pened to have started with any : his observations on many of the matters that come before him show the military mind as well as the man of the world. It is twenty years since Colonel then Captain Mundy appeared before the public, as a lively, graphic, agreeable traveller, in his "Pen and. Pencil Sketches in India."-t Time has ripened his judg- ment, added to his pleasantry, perhaps increased his command over his pen as well as his pencil. But the world too has somewhat changed its tastes and increased its knowledge of foreign parts in twenty years. It is less disposed than of yore to value smart writing, sketches, or good stories, however capital each may be ; in some degree because it has not time for much reading and wants to get at information or results very quickly, and this is more especially the case when it comes before the world in a bulky form. Hence, a good many- of Colonel Mundy's pictures of New South Wales have not an effect equal to their real merit.- This arises in part from the fact that we have had a great many ac- counts of Sydney and its interior districts, the writers of which, though they may not have had the advantages of Colonel Mundy, and their powers of description and pleasantry may have been in- ferior, yet have reached the same conclusions ; another reason may be, that the reader, looking to the three volumes before him, -is not well disposed to loiter by the way. The appearance of Sydney—the mixed and by no means select character of its popula- tion—the heat, the,dust, the glare, yet the healthiness of its climate —the peculiarity of the landscapes and vegetation of New South Wales—a stook.keeper's life and employments—have all been pre- sented to the British reader in various forma. Colonel Mundy, however, enjoyed the advantage of long residence, opportunities of seeing, and the faculty of judging of the arcana of society. All his pictures are amusing, frequently informing, sometimes novel. Re- sidence, for example, made him well acquainted with the greatest plague in life, "domestic servants." He recurs to it oftener than once, and at length as well as with lively good-nature. The fol- lowing is an example.

"Of all the plagues of New South Wales, and indeed of all the Australian colonies, the household servants are the worst. There are few good and faithful—as few skilful. One reason of this is the blameworthy indifference to character and cause of discharge exhibited by the employing classes—a -relic this of the old convict system. Another cause lies in the unsettled mind of the emigrant, and his trying half-a-dozen trades, of which he knows nothing, before he is driven to accept service. Many old colonists do not scruple to say that they prefer convicts to free servants. 'We have a greater hold upon them,' says one. 'There are but two classes—the found-out and the unfound-out,' mutters a cynic. A servant, holding the most responsible place, discharged in disgrace at an hour's notice and without a character, is engaged the next day in a similar post, and you have the pleasure of seeing him in- stalled as confidential butler behind the chair of the lady or gentleman who may be entertaining you at dinner. You recognize the soupe a la jardinidre, the baked schnapper farei, in the preparation of which and other dishes it had taken you six months to instruct your late cook—whom you had just dis-

charged for repeated insolence and dishonesty. • • •

"The Sydney domestic servants treat service like a round of visits ; taking a sojourn of a week, a month, or a quarter, according to their own tastes, the social qualities of their fellow servants, the good living of the hall,' and

the gullibility and subserviency of the employer. •

+ 1/Peelator for 1832, page 470.

4.•

"I think I must have had twenty or even thirty servants in one year, always giving the highest wages. I shall not readily forget the amusing results of an advertisement for a butler and valet, which I was recom- mended to insert in the Sydney Horning Herald. There was no want of applicants. The first was a miserable old ruin of a man, scarcely four feet high, who indignantly repelled my well-intended hint, that I did not think him strong enough for the situation. The next was a gigantic Negro. He had been "teward,' he said on board three or four merchant-vessels, and was tired of the sea. He looked like a descendant of Mendoza the pugilist, and had probably been transported for killing a man in a twelve- foot ring. A tall, thin, grey-haired man, of polished exterior, next tendered his services. He had been a solicitor in England ; had met with reverses ; was at present a tutor at a school ; could clean plate, because once he had had a service of his own. Then came a handsome, dark-eyed gaillard, with long black curls hanging over the collar of his round jacket, who threw rapid glances over the furniture and trinkets of the drawmgroom—not forgetting the maidens as he passed the kitchen-door—in a truly buccaneer- ing style. He gave his name juan (la Silva, and resented any mention of references. At length we were suited. He was a highly respectable young immigrant just landed, who had served in an aristocratic family at home. Jeames,' being steady, attentive, and perfectly acquainted with his duties, we were charmed with our acquisition, and congratulated ourselves on some- thing like permanence of service ; when, lo ! in less than a month he gave • Our Antipodes; or Residence and Rambles in the Australian Colonies. With a Glimpse of the Gold Fields. By Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Charles Mundy, Au- Pen of Pen and Pencil Sketches in India." In three volumes. Published by Bentley. warning. He had made use of my house as an hotel until he could settle himself; and having at length decided in favour of the drapery line, he was in a few days duly installed behind a counter in George Street. " This mode of action had probably been suggested for his observance by some crafty adviser in England ; and the idea is by no means bad. A gentle- man's regular household is not a bad look-out post for the newly arrived perhaps penniless, immigrant. He gets good pay, food, and lodging ; aisgiiisesliis ambitious projects under a show of zeal for his master's service- no one suspects that be has a soul above crumb and coat brushing. On ; sudden the mask is thrown off, and the tape and riband measurer elect stands confessed. He quits his temporary asylum, smiling inwardly at your simplicity in taking him in, and being taken in yourself; and you are once more, on the pave for a servant. In the case just mentioned, our old mune warned us that that young fellow ain't a-going to stay ' ; and I wondered the less at his want of taste when she told me that she had one son in the ironmongery line getting fifty-two guineas a year, and another, only twelve

years old, receiving at some shop 20/. and his '

"The great pleasure of shop-boys, unenjoyed by domestic servants, con- sists in going at half-priee to the theatre, and smoking cigars ad libitum. my first coachman had learnt all the arcana of his trade by driving a muffin- baker's cart. My second was an old worn-out, long-backed, bandy-legged, and gouty man, but an excellent whip, who 'had druv tie last four-as coacksbetween Lunnun and Huntingdon, for Muster Newman,' and had been beat off the road by the railways. This was an immigrant at the expense of the Land Fund. He remained about a year, and then went off to California (thereby defrauding that same Fund) to dig gold, just three weeks before the gold was discovered in Australia. I may here state, as a fact, that the only really steady, sober, active, and efficient coachman I had in the colony, was an emancipated convict."

Colonel Mundy went to New Zealand on " particular service "; which being interpreted, means, we fancy, to look about him. He lodged at the Governor's, voyaged in the Government vessel; visit- ed the principal if not all the settlements; and has given a brief resume of the colonial-military history of the country, as well as a picture of its condition at the time he was there, in 1847-1848. Though the historical facts are not new, they are animated by the living spirit of observation ; his sketches give a very lifelike idea of the natives, unsophisticated, corrupted, old and young. For there is an old New Zealand, retaining the habits, sometimes the super- stitions of heathenism, and fed of yore with many a cannibal feast ; a " young New Zealand," Christianized as Christians go, as well as baptized, together with another class having a tendency to imitate " fast " Young England. It is to the natural extinction of the patriarchs that Colonel Mundy looks for permanent peace and quiet in the Antipodes, much more than to our military force ; -which at its present strength is not adapted to the nature of the country or its mode of warfare. The visit to Melbourne, then the capital of Australia Felix, now of Victoria, was brief. The account of Van Diemen's Land is ful- ler, and more interesting; with sketches of the society of the place, the "exiles of Erin," and a discussion on transportation. We pass these things, for the gold-dieeovery, which took place not long before Colonel Mundy left the colony. The Colonel himself visited the gold-districts of New South Wales ; and he bears testi- mony to their richness, as well as to the great occasional prizes; but upon the whole, they seem no exception to the proverbial ill success of mining ; some work for little or nothing—do not in fact pay their expenses. The work is as hard, the exposure as severe, as in California ; the privation in respect of food was not then so great, because there were some sheep-runs near at hand, and stores of other kinds were more within reach than at California. The diggers were free from sickness : wetted through, in chill, some- times cold weather—for it was winter—and under canvass at best, the climate of Australia carried them through safely. Either from the bulk of the New South Wales population being less hardy than the Californian adventurers' or because the latter had no place to fall back upon, many of the Sydney miners soon returned. Colonel Mundy, on his journey to the diggings, met numbers. "The gold mania, so rabid at the outset, had begun to abate towards the end of June. The weather at the mines had become bitterly cold, wet, and tempestuous ; provisions were exorbitantly dear, owing to the difficult transport of stores across the mountains at this season. The Summerhill Creek Was flooded, whereby the working on its bed was put an end to. In short, gold was not so plentiful as was anticipated—not to be picked up on the hill-sides in an afternoon's stroll ; nor were nuggets to be dug up, like potatoes, by the bushel. The privations inseparable from gold-digging were more severe than suited the expectations of the sanguine, the ignorant, and that large class of idle, feckless creatures known in this colony by the name of Crawlers.

"In my four days' journey across the Cordillera I met, as I calculate, about 300 men returning, disheartened and disgusted, towards the townships; many having sold for next to nothing the mining equipments, tents, carts, cradles, picks, spades, crows, and washing-dishes, which had probably cost them all they possessed in the world three weeks before. They had nothing left but tin pots, 'possum rugs, and a suit of seedy clothes. A few had geld with them,—' no great things,' they said. Some had drunk and gambled away, or had been robbed of their earnings. Mortified, half-starved, and crest-fallen fellows, so able to work and so easily dispirited, were not the men for winter mining ! Some looked so gaunt, savage, ragged, and realms, that my thoughts turned involuntarily to my pistols as they drew near. They were returning to their deserted homes and families in a state of mind by no means likely to redound to domestic peace and comfort. A good many of this ebbing stream of would-be gold-miners wore a sort of shy, embarrassed, repellent air, of which I could make nothing, until I found out that they were ticklish on the subject of a cant phrase with which it appeared they had been pelted by the villagers and upward passengers on the road. 'Have you sold your cradle ?' was a verbal dagger in their bosoms!"

The following is the picture of the gold-fields, and the people thronging them.

"In strolling down the works—if strolling can be applied to scrambling among jagged slate rocks in the river bed and slipping over the loose shale on the hill-side—I found it no easy task to get into conversation with the diggers. Some appeared sullen from disappointment, few communicative en the subject of their gams, and all apparently imbued with that spirit of in- dependence and equality natural in a community where, whatever might be the real distinction in the station and education of individuals, all were new living and labouring on the same terms. If ever there was a pure democracy, it now exists at the Bathurst gold- mines ; pure as the most penniless possessor of nothing could wish, purer by tar than any spouter of Socialism having anything to lose ever truly desired, and infinitely too transcendently pure for the views of those who believe that human society, like a regiment, should be a graduated community. 4' The present state of affairs will not last long. In another year or two three-fourths of the men now working on their own account will be the hired labourers of capitalists or companies, and the social equipoise will be rain restored.

At present, here are merchants and cabmen, magistrates and convicts, amateur gentlemen rocking the cradle merely to say they have done so, fashionable hairdressers and tailors, cooks, coachmen, lawyers' clerks and

their masters, colliers, coblers, quarrymen, doctors of physic and music, aldermen, an A.D.C. on leave, scavengers, sailors, short-hand-writers, a real Jive lord on his travels—all levelled by community of pursuit and of cos- tume. The serge shirt, leathern belt, Californian hat, and woollen comforter, with the general absence of ablution and abrasion, leave the stranger con- tinually in doubt as to which of the above classes he may be addressing. • What luck, my good fellow ? ' said I to a rough, unshorn, clay-slate complexioned figure, clad in a zebra-coloured Jersey, with beef boots up to

his middle. What luck ?'

• Why, aw ! ',replied any new friend, with a lisp, and a movement 88 if be were pulling up a supposititious gill, only tho-tho at prethent. Our claim was tolewably. wemunewative owiginally, but it has detewiowated tewibly since the warns set in.'

" Ihavolo"! thought I, what euphuist in a rough husk have we here ?

"I learnt afterwards that this gentleman is a member of the faculty, and woe tun:ling.-over more gold as a miner than he had ever done as a medico. reeegnizectroany familiar faces without being able to put names to them, so much were their owners disguised. Some gave me a knowing smile in

return for my inquiring looks; others favoured me with a wink.

My.peruquier, Mr. It—, was doing well ; he had served his time in California. My saddler, Mr. B—, looked half-starved. It was clear he had better have stuck to the pigskin ; a thing, by the way, often easier said than done.

"The Sydney counter-skippers generally made but poor quarrymen : many of them longed, no doubt, to be measuring tape again ; and, perhaps, would have long since taken measures for resuming their old and proper trade, had they not felt sure that the employers, whom they had deserted at a day's notice, would probably refuse to engage them again.

"I soon found, that in so earnest a quest as that of gold-hunting, those pursuing it are averse to the impertinent interruption of strangers. The Jew speculators and others, who were beginning to traffic at the mines, had, how- ever, introduced one initiative question, seldom failing to open a dialogue in which some information might be picked up. 'Will you sell your gold ?' was that query. I resolved, therefore, to become a purchaser on a small scale. Had the idea sooner occurred to me, I mighthave made an excellent speculation ; for the gold rose in price several shillings per ounce soon after

my visit to the mines. At Ophir, I could have bought any quantity at 31. to 3/. ls. an ounce, and, conveying it myself to Sydney, could have at once sold it for 31. 7s. 6d. At present, however, I had made no arrangement for the necessary outlay.

"After a long ramble over the ranges, I was not sorry to get back to the Commissioner's tent ; where, seated at a little table in its entrance, our feet on a carpet spread over sheets of bark, with a huge fire of logs blazing in front, we were ministered to by an old soldier, one of the troopers, in a rough but wholesome and welcome repast. "Whilst engaged in the discussion of tea in a tin pot, damper, and grilled mutton, assisted by pickled onions, several men came up to camp for the purpose of getting their gold weighed by Mr. Green, for they distrusted the weights of the storekeepers in the township. In some instances, they

indeed, been sadly imposed on ; but the cheating was not entirely confined to one side : for on a certain occasion, amine; presenting a nugget for sale at

the counter of a store, was offered 21. for it, which, after solemn consultation with a comrade, he accepted. The nugget turned out to be a piece of a brass candlestick, battered into a rough form, with bits of quartz intermixed. The imposition was soon discovered, but the seller's position was impregnable_

he had never said it was gold. The 'sold' party could hardly afford to com- plain, for had it been gold 6l. would have been the lowest equitable offer for "The Commissioner, being instructed to receive the tax in dust from parties not possessing coin, has his scales always at hand. It was amusing

to watch the painful anxiety of some and the careless indifference of others

88 they produced their respective earnings for valuation. It was pleasant to mark the perfect confidence all had in the Government functionary; many of

them requesting him to take charge of their gold unweighed, and leaving it for weeks in his tent, although he was by no means responsible for any loss that might happen. Leathern bags, tobacco-pouches, old handkerchiefs and dirty rags, were pulled out, and the glittering ore was poured upon a vener- able newspaper for weighing. The common wooden lucifer-box, however, seemed to be the favourite receptacle for the gold-dust; the penny match- box holding about 40/. worth of its new contents."