Five Years Under the Southern Cross: Experiences and Impressions. Frederic C. Spurr
exact science. There is no experimenting, no guessing. The steamers leave the home ports ready for all demands likely to be made upon them.
The next question is that of storage. How is all the fresh food—meat, vegetables, poultry, fish, etc.—kept? Even a child to-day would reply in a word—“cold storage.” But this means much more than it seems to mean. Cold storage is a fine art, and a still finer art is that of thawing. It would appear to be a perfectly simple thing to remove a piece of meat or some poultry from the cold chamber and roast it for the table. But it is far from simple. Unless the thawing is properly done, the joint is ruined. Hence, elaborate instructions are issued both for freezing and for thawing fresh foods. It is really wonderful, when one comes to think of it, that food can be preserved from corruption by the application of cold; but the cold must be scientifically applied. In the refrigerating chamber the temperature is kept from 20 degrees to 25 degrees—“It snows there.” Stewards who enter the chamber for business purposes are compelled to dress in special garments, so as to avoid a sudden chill, with its possible fatal consequences. The air in the cold chamber is changed three times a week. And so it is all a miracle of atmosphere, regulated at will.
The practical work of preparing meals for passengers is very fascinating. The kitchens are models of cleanliness. No slovenliness is permitted. Most of the food is untouched by hand. Dough is mixed by a machine. Bread and cakes are cut by a patent knife. Potatoes are peeled by a huge “peeler,” which removes only the minimum of skin. There are enormous roasters and steam cookers, which perform their work with absolute precision. The kitchen of a great liner is a place of wonder, and the scullery is only second to it. Here labour is saved at every turn. Knives are cleaned in a new and expeditious manner; plates are washed by steam and dried in a whirling machine turned by electricity at a terrific rate of speed. Science operates everywhere. There is no chance for germs to develop. Every man has his place and his duty. Galley fires must be lighted at 4 A.M.; cooks must be on duty at a certain fixed hour. Stewards have their duties clearly defined. Nothing is left to chance. The discipline of the ship is perfect.
But while we examine this fascinating department of ship life, we become aware of an increasing throb in the engines. The boat is rolling heavily. The sea is behaving badly; and we are seized with a desire to go below and see life in the nethermost regions of the boat. It has been represented to us as a kind of inferno, in which men work naked. In company with the “chief” we descend to the engine-room. Here four powerful engines turn the steel shafts, which in turn move the propellers. At last we arrive at the ultimate expression of force in this wonderful ship. All is now left behind, save the thick steel shafts which run horizontally through the stern of the vessel. Silently and swiftly they move round, forcing the propellers outside to displace the waters of the ocean, and so urge forward the steamer. It is a weird experience to descend to the very bottom of the steamer, into its uttermost corner, where the boat is narrowest, and to watch the steel shafts ever turn round. The mighty vessel above us depends in reality upon these shafts. If they broke, and could not be replaced, the steamer would lie upon the bosom of the water a helpless mass of iron and steel. One frail plate of steel between us and destruction! The idea is chilling.
I dreaded the furnaces—the satanic stokehole, where men suffer in the presence of broiling heat. But when we pass into this region of the ship, where is the inferno? To my utter astonishment, the stokehole is cooler than the engine-room. A pleasant draught of cool air plays around the stokers, who are not naked nor perspiring. Despite roaring fires and enormous boilers, the room is pleasantly cool. Thus another illusion has disappeared. The old order of things has changed. Science has rendered service more humane. The terrors of life are one by one departing.
CHAPTER II
THE GOLDEN WEST
Passengers from England to Australia via the Cape generally touch Australian soil first at Albany. They thus miss the true “gateway” into the country, Fremantle. This latter city is the port for Perth; it is the traveller’s first introduction to Australia if he travels via the Suez and Ceylon. And glad is he to behold land once more after the monotonous voyage of ten days across the Indian Ocean. A languid air steals over the ship during the time it is in the region of the Equator. At night the decks are strewn with mattresses for the accommodation of passengers who prefer to “sleep out” rather than be stifled in intolerable cabins. Then, if the season be that of the Australian winter (June to August), the heat gradually moderates, and by the time the boat reaches Fremantle all white clothing has been discarded, and men are thankful once more to take to blankets and heavier dress.
The development of Western Australia has been remarkable. For many years it lay practically stagnant; then in a moment its progress commenced. The discovery of gold made all the difference. Twenty years ago Perth was a mere village, with all the disadvantages of a village. Many of its houses were primitive and ugly. A few relics of that period still survive. Certain houses were built of kerosene tins; many more of wood. A neglected look characterised the place. “Squalid,” one old inhabitant calls it; but that is probably an exaggeration. It had a beautiful natural situation, being built upon a slope of the lovely Swan River. Yet the city at that time was badly lighted and badly drained. It brought little credit to its fair surroundings. In the long ago the French, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had in turn visited the West, named it, and then passed on. And now it seemed but a few years ago as if the British, in the persons of their Australian children, had determined to leave no mark upon the same West.
It was the discovery of gold, I say, that made the difference. Just twenty years ago Coolgardie was a desert. But into its wilds two men had penetrated, prospecting for gold. There came a day when, quite suddenly, the desert was transformed into a treasure house. In one evening these men possessed themselves of 500 ounces of pure gold. Aladdin’s chamber had been found at last. The news of the discovery spread with amazing rapidity. A frenzy seized the people. Men threw down their tools, broke up their homes, abandoned their situations, and proceeded in a mad rush to the goldfields. There was no road for them to travel over, nothing but a wild track. Each man made his own path. Whatever conveyance happened to be within reach was requisitioned for the conveyance of such conveniences as the goldfields might require. One man, unable to procure anything better, seized a wheel-barrow, in which he pushed his few goods along the terrible 350 miles of desert. From every State steamers brought hundreds and thousands of men who were seized with the lust of gold. Australia turned out its gamblers into the desert. A city soon sprang up; a strange medley of human elements. Land which yesterday was worse than worthless now fetched pounds per foot. Saloon keepers made easy fortunes by selling drink at fancy prices. Houses of every kind sprang up like mushrooms. The most curious house of all was built of bottles, cemented together with some kind of mortar. A year later Kalgoorlie was discovered—an earlier Klondyke. The new field speedily eclipsed the old. Coolgardie lost its prestige, and, while it continues to thrive in certain directions, it has given place to its brilliant rival. A splendid story this, of the discovery of gold, and as sordid as it is splendid. In the easy gaining of gold men have lost themselves. The stories I have heard from men who were on the fields cannot be set down in print; no newspaper or book dare give publicity to them. This camp of men, with no idea but that of gaining as much gold as possible, men without ideals and often without pity, with the beauty of humanity crushed out of them, as the machinery of the goldfields crushes to dust the quartz that passes beneath its wheels, living only for gold, spending much of it in drink and lust, consumed with the fever of getting—ah! the story of the world’s goldfields is largely a story of hell upon earth, of the abasement of the soul to the lust of the eye and the pride of life. There is another side to it, and that is the prodigious folly of allowing this precious metal—the standard for the world’s commerce—to be scrambled for by the first-comers, upon conditions that are as economically ridiculous as they are morally pernicious. …
After the frenzy, the reaction. After the rush to the goldfields, the cultivation of the land. The real prosperity of the Golden West lies not in the quantity of gold secured by adventurers, but in the honest work put into the soil. Prospecting continues all the time. Old reefs are still being worked and new ones sought for. In these vast spaces there is hidden an