RICHARD HOWITT'S IMPRESSIONS OF AIISTRALIA FELIX.
FROM his own incidental account it appears, that Richard Howitt, the brother of William, was born and brought up upon an English farm, and accustomed to "handle all sorts of tools, agricultural and others." -But neither the facts before his eyes nor experience of the hard reality could impress him with the importance of the truth as it is in nature, over the medium by which it is conveyed to the minds of others. The poetaster and litteratenr were born with Richard ; he "would die in them at the stake"; "fire" would only subdue his preference for words and fancies by decomposing him altogether. What could induce such a man to turn settler in a new country, seems difficult to divine, even though a brother and brothers-in-law were about to seek their fortune in Australia Felix : however, to Port Phillip he went ; and his four-years lucubrations exhibit a singular picture of the pastoral mind engaged in practical affairs, at sea and in the bush. It is not merely failure, and consequent imputation upon every cause but the true one : the reader sees that-" everything goes wrong" with Richard Howitt, from the first qualmish emotion at the Nore in the out. ward-bound, to short allowance of water and provisions on the return voyage. He chose a captain who had never been in the Australian seas; adverse winds delayed them in the Channel; a collision took-place—as it strikes us, by gross want of seamanship ; the vessel had to put into Portsmouth for weeks to refit, and start without properly refitting. From some of those " circumstances " which always attend the thought- less, the trade-winds were lost, and the voyage delayed. Instead of choosing a ship going direct to Port Phillip, the inconsiderate people were carried to Van Diemen's Land, and kept there a month. When they at last arrived, the first thing they managed on landing was to get their boat seized by the Customhouse : but Richard, by threatening an article, got it released. By one of those " accidents " which are always happening to some people, Richard and three companions had to pass their first night in Australia on the sea-shore, in early winter, with only the sky for a canopy. When he got to the "location," matters did not mend. A bad one seems to have been chosen; at least the labour of clearing was immense, unless Richard exaggerates his toils. The first crop Was sown—but too late. The next season was also lost, through adverse " accidents " a Durham bull ate up the cabbages ; a flood carried away a crop of potatoes that had been cultivated "like a garden," palings and all. Next year, as we read it, the produce was "eaten up by flies in myriads ; and ;hat escaped the fly was devoured by clouds of grads- hoppers, very locusts in voracity." " All the poetry of Australian firm- ing had now evaporated,"—or rather, a few paragraphs earlier. It went with the potatoes, and the lover in the comic song, "floating down the river"; and Richard Howitt betook himself to "do the looking-on." He gazed at the ladies, equipages, improvements, and wilder nature about the capital; he made pleasant pedestrian excursions through the colony, "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies" ; he did a little compila.- tion on Colonial Government, the Aborigines, statistics, and so forth; or he wandered on the beach by Melbourne, "in lofty madness meditating song."
The rather weak and wordy volume which is the produce of all these adventures consists of several sections. There is a journal of the outward- bound voyage, sprinkled with verses upon any incident that turns up,—for as soon as Richard was himself again on shipboard, he began to pour forth song : then there is a journal of the return ditto, with a magazinish story he got out of somebody on board. His adventures in Australia from the day of his landing till the poetry of farming evaporated" are told in the narrative form,—or attempted to be told, for they are continually im- peded by thrusting in some short "article." The remainder of the book is hodgepodge,—now an account of an excursion, now some occasional verses ; then a discussion of colonial grievances ; then a bit of compilation or information picked up and stuck in : but so little of thought or care does Richard Howitt give to the planning even of his own business, that we sometimes find fragments in this division that should have formed part of his personal narrative of the troubles of colonization.
The actual experiment of colonization—the long residence in the co. lony—the period when he was there, embracing the height of the rashest speculation and the depths of the lowest depression—with the leisure he allowed himself for observation and excursionizing, were basis enough for a good book. But, notwithstanding a great parade of actuality, Mr. Richard Howitt is unfitted to describe any thing as it is. The wordiness of the litterateur and the dreaminess of the poetaster combine in his mind, rendering little fine effects, or attempts at them, dominant over a plain description ; so that much of his book is the merest verbiage, or the most trivial account of matters and feelings that concern himself: As a reporter looks upon a "horrid murder" or any other "tragic incident" as a subject bringing grist to the mill, so our author regards creation at large as little more than a theme for him to write about ; and, unfor- tunately, he gives us more of Richard Howitt than of other created things.
That Australia Felix has its difficulties, and that some of them are chargeable upon misgovernment, is very probable : but no dependence can be placed upon any representations of Richard Howitt; because the cast of his intellect disqualifies him from drawing sound conclusions upon such subjects. He is also at odds with himself: Sometimes he traces the evil to the system of not granting land gratis, as of yore ; then to land-sales by auction ; then it is Lord John Russell's rescinding that plan for the uniform price ; anon the licensed squatters do all the mischief, at least to the regular farmer; but he denounces a tax per head upon their stock, though it is the only possible way of placing a proportionate charge upon them : another time he ascribes the mischief with more pro- bability, to the connexion with New South Wales ; then again he charges it upon Governor Gipps ; but at last he seems inclined to put it upon the Sydney banks, supplied with British capital to foster speculation.
The bulk of the book is as indifferent as may be expected from this ac- count of it : but there are occasionally descriptive passages not devoid of reality, though mostly dashed by writing ; and some pretty enough verses—a few of them more than pretty, full of an English home feeling.
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH THE GOVERNMENT-PEOPLE.
Of the first five persons we saw in Van Diemen's Land, four were convicts, and perhaps the fifth. These were the assigned servants of the pilot. Instantly they approached our vessel, the sight of them rapt me in a reverie of criminal trials, of convicts, gray wigs, black caps, reprieves, transportation; and lo ! here they were—the very commonest shapes of debased kind-of-man-animals ever seen. One of these fellows had been transported from the neighbourhood of Nottingham ten years before. He heard that on board our ship there were some Nottingham people; and he lost no time in making inquiries about his parents; of whom, how- ever, I could give him no intelligence. About a person of the name of Brown, whose mother came to me in Nottingham, begging that I would make incpilries after her son, a fellow-transport, I obtained some information. At the mention of Brown's name, his countenance darkened. "Ay," said he, "we were fellows, old companions, and came oat together: his sentence expires in a few months, but mine is for life ! " Then, tqlking about his native place, he grew abstracted; and, taking an old broken penknife from his pocket, he pared his finger-nails uncon- sciously to the quick. Like Peter Bell's, "HIS mind was Waking deep
Through years that had been long asleep."
Ile had not ceased to feel, to reflect, it was evident. He, after a long pause, de- clared that the one desire ever uppermost, was to undo much of the misery he had done—to see his native place and kindred once more: that to effect this he had once smuggled himself on board of a homeward-bound ship, but was dis- covered before the ship sailed, and taken back, and flogged for the attempt. He was not, however, fainthearted: life he cared little about, but for freedom much; -aid he would, the first opportunity, try to escape again.
THE PEOPLE TO DO.
There came out among the bounty Irish emigrants some three or four persons of the name of, I think, O'Shauasay. One of these people rented a small place not many miles from us. He and his wife were indefatigable earth-worms. One day, my brother, Dr. Howitt of Melbourne, had ridden up to our farm, and we were Miring together, when our Irish neighbour came to us to make inquiry after some stray cattIe. His dress was of the coarse gray home-spun Irish cloth. He was bare-footed, bare-legged; carrying his shoes and stockings under his arm, that he might not damage them with the dew. "There," observed the Doctor, "you may do your best, but you cannot stand against that. A sheep will bite so near the ground, that it will starve an ox to death; and a goose, by biting still nearer, will famish both. Scotchman nor Englishman can contend with that." The observation was just. He and his family came out at a time, coming at this country's cost, when labour was dear. All of them were workers, and they laid by nearly all their earning. They then bought a few cattle; land there was in our neighbourhood that had been bought up by Sydney speculators, on which, as it lay unoccupied and unclaimed, they made free to depasture their cattle. Wilk they took into the town, where it sold well. They had nothing to pay— neither rent nor taxes—for at least a thousand acres of land. They soon bought a horse, and then four working bullocks; and now and then they added to their stock a cow or two. So thoroughly did their godsend estate seem their own, .that after they had grazed it without interruption for a year or two, they began to cut down and cart into Melbourne all its best fire-wood. Regularly, with a ho and-with four bullocks in a dray, these people, besides taking in two charnsrsrllicUi milk tied together with a rope, and slung over the horse's back, before breakfast, took two loads of wood into the town four miles off. This they did six days in every week; clearing besides the milk three pounds per week. Their clothing and food cost little; there was no licence to pay the Government for, the land not be- longing to the Crown: all was nearly clear. When people are so very prosperous, it is a pity they cannot live far ever. One day, as our neighbour was walking by the side of his bullocks, his shoe-string came untied, and it was the death of him. He stooped down to tie it; the bullocks went on; caught the off-wheel against a stump, turned over the dray upon him, and killed him on the spot.
VIEWS DI MELBOURNE.
Next to the bell-noise-makers, what strikes us as quite colonial is the immense numbers of drays, many loaded with wood, drawn by four, six, and eight bulloclui: few drays drawn by horses in proportion. There is not so much variety in the shops as in old countries; necessity having, whilst there were few, compelled the shopkeepers to deal in almost everything, Thus, "general stores" are common. Another peculiarity: you see many people not to be mistaken, hard-faced, grim- visaged, dry-countenanced workmen—and women too—whom at a glance you recog- nize to have been convicts. Even among the richer folk there are some, not dis- guised by dress or wealth. The dresses of the people are peculiar too; light colours, and of lighter texture. The houses are roofed with wooden shingles— not inelegant covering; and the heads of the human creatures with straw. Walking along Ciillins Street, you see of shops kept by Jews very many— Levi's, Lazarus's, Nathan's, Soloman's, Simeon's, and Benjamin's. There is no lack of Liverpool, Manchester, and London marts; grand shops (one of them the smartest in Melbourne) all kept by these people. Other peculiarities there are, quite Australian. On our first arrival we fre- quently met walking about on the Eastern hill—tame of course—two emus. Parrots, the gorgeous native parrots, abound in cages; cockatoos also, but gene- rally at liberty. On lawns and grass-plots, hop about or bask in the sun tame kangaroos. At one of the inns a pelican stalks in and out very leisurely. Nor is it anything extraordinary to see tame opo,suins and other animals- of the country, tame exceedingly.
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