The Book of the Bush. George Dunderdale
musket. On the ships conveying women there were no soldiers, but an extra half-crew was engaged. These men were called "Shilling-a-month" men, because they had agreed to work for one shilling a month for the privilege of being allowed to remain in Sydney. If the voyage lasted twelve months they would thus have the sum of twelve shillings with which to commence making their fortunes in the Southern Hemisphere. But the "Shilling-a-month" man, as a matter of fact, was not worth one cent the day after he landed, and he had to begin life once more barefoot, like a new-born babe.
The seamen's food on board these transports was bad and scanty, consisting of live biscuit, salt horse, Yankee pork, and Scotch coffee. The Scotch coffee was made by steeping burnt biscuit in boiling water to make it strong. The convicts' breakfast consisted of oatmeal porridge, and the hungry seamen used to crowd round the galley every morning to steal some of it. It would be impossible for a nation ever to become virtuous and rich if its seamen and convicts were reared in luxury and encouraged in habits of extravagance.
When the transport cast anchor in the beautiful harbour of Port Jackson, the ship's blacksmith was called out of his bunk at midnight. It was his duty to rivet chains on the legs of the second-sentence men--the twice convicted. They had been told on the voyage that they would have an island all to themselves, where they would not be annoyed by the contemptuous looks and bitter jibes of better men. All night long the blacksmith plied his hammer and made the ship resound with the rattling chains and ringing manacles, as he fastened them well on the legs of the prisoners. At dawn of day, chained together in pairs, they were landed on Goat Island; that was the bright little isle--their promised land. Every morning they were taken over in boats to the town of Sydney, where they had to work as scavengers and road-makers until four o'clock in the afternoon. They turned out their toes, and shuffled their feet along the ground, dragging their chains after them. The police could always identify a man who had been a chain-gang prisoner during the rest of his life by the way he dragged his feet after him.
In their leisure hours these convicts were allowed to make cabbage-tree hats. They sold them for about a shilling each, and the shop-keepers resold them for a dollar. They were the best hats ever worn in the Sunny South, and were nearly indestructible; one hat would last a lifetime, but for that reason they were bad for trade, and became unfashionable.
The rest of the transported were assigned as servants to those willing to give them food and clothing without wages. The free men were thus enabled to grow rich by the labours of the bondmen--vice was punished and virtue rewarded.
Until all the passengers had been disposed of, sentinels were posted on the deck of the transport with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to escape. But when all the convicts were gone, Jack was sorely tempted to follow the shilling-a-month men. He quietly slipped ashore, hurried off to Botany Bay, and lived in retirement until his ship had left Port Jackson. He then returned to Sydney, penniless and barefoot, and began to look for a berth. At the Rum Puncheon wharf he found a shilling-a-month man already installed as cook on a colonial schooner. He was invited to breakfast, and was astonished and delighted with the luxuries lavished on the colonial seaman. He had fresh beef, fresh bread, good biscuit, tea, coffee, and vegetables, and three pounds a month wages. There was a vacancy on the schooner for an able seaman, and Jack filled it. He then registered a solemn oath that he would "never go back to England no more," and kept it.
Some kind of Government was necessary, and, as the first inhabitants were criminals, the colony was ruled like a gaol, the Governor being head gaoler. His officers were mostly men who had been trained in the army and navy. They were all poor and needy, for no gentleman of wealth and position would ever have taken office in such a community. They came to make a living, and when free immigrants arrived and trade began to flourish, it was found that the one really valuable commodity was rum, and by rum the officers grew rich. In course of time the country was divided into districts, about thirty or thirty-five in number, over each of which an officer presided as police magistrate, with a clerk and staff of constables, one of whom was official flogger, always a convict promoted to the billet for merit and good behaviour.
New Holland soon became an organised pandemonium, such as the world had never known since Sodom and Gomorrah disappeared in the Dead Sea, and the details of its history cannot be written. To mitigate its horrors the worst of the criminals were transported to Norfolk Island. The Governor there had not the power to inflict capital punishment, and the convicts began to murder one another in order to obtain a brief change of misery, and the pleasure of a sea voyage before they could be tried and hanged in Sydney. A branch pandemonium was also established in Van Diemen's Land. This system was upheld by England for about fifty years.
The 'Britannia', a convict ship, the property of Messrs. Enderby & Sons, arrived at Sydney on October 14th, 1791, and reported that vast numbers of sperm whales were seen after doubling the south-west cape of Van Diemen's Land. Whaling vessels were fitted out in Sydney, and it was found that money could be made by oil and whalebone as well as by rum. Sealing was also pursued in small vessels, which were often lost, and sealers lie buried in all the islands of the southern seas, many of them having a story to tell, but no story-teller.
Whalers, runaway seamen, shilling-a-month men, and escaped convicts were the earliest settlers in New Zealand, and were the first to make peaceful intercourse with the Maoris possible. They built themselves houses with wooden frames, covered with reeds and rushes, learned to converse in the native language, and became family men. They were most of them English and Americans, with a few Frenchmen. They loved freedom, and preferred Maori customs, and the risk of being eaten, to the odious supervision of the English Government. The individual white man in those days was always welcome, especially if he brought with him guns, ammunition, tomahawks, and hoes. It was by these articles that he first won the respect and admiration of the native. If the visitor was a "pakeha tutua," a poor European, he might receive hospitality for a time, in the hope that some profit might be made out of him. But the Maori was a poor man also, with a great appetite, and when it became evident that the guest was no better than a pauper, and could not otherwise pay for his board, the Maori sat on the ground, meditating and watching, until his teeth watered, and at last he attached the body and baked it.
In 1814 the Church Missionary Society sent labourers to the distant vineyard to introduce Christianity, and to instruct the natives in the rights of property. The first native protector of Christianity and letters was Hongi Hika, a great warrior of the Ngapuhi nation, in the North Island. He was born in 1777, and voyaging to Sydney in 1814, he became the guest of the Rev. Mr. Marsden. In 1819 the rev. gentleman bought his settlement at Kerikeri from Hongi Hika, the price being forty-eight axes. The area of the settlement was thirteen thousand acres. The land was excellent, well watered, in a fine situation, and near a good harbour. Hongi next went to England with the Rev. Mr. Kendall to see King George, who was at that time in matrimonial trouble. Hongi was surprised to hear that the King had to ask permission of anyone to dispose of his wife Caroline. He said he had five wives at home, and he could clear off the whole of them if he liked without troubling anybody. He received valuable presents in London, which he brought back to Sydney, and sold for three hundred muskets and ammunition. The year 1822 was the most glorious time of his life. He raised an army of one thousand men, three hundred of whom had been taught the use of his muskets. The neighbouring tribes had no guns. He went up the Tamar, and at Totara slew five hundred men, and baked and ate three hundred of them. On the Waipa he killed fourteen hundred warriors out of a garrison of four thousand, and then returned home with crowds of slaves. The other tribes began to buy guns from the traders as fast as they were able to pay for them with flax; and in 1827, at Wangaroa, a bullet went through Hongi's lungs, leaving a hole in his back through which he used to whistle to entertain his friends; but he died of the wound fifteen months afterwards.
Other men, both clerical and lay, followed the lead of the Rev. Mr. Marsden. In 1821 Mr. Fairbairn bought four hundred acres for ten pounds worth of trade. Baron de Thierry bought forty thousand acres on the Hokianga River for thirty-six axes. From 1825 to 1829 one million acres were bought by settlers and merchants. Twenty-five thousand acres were bought at the Bay of Islands and Hokianga in five years, seventeen thousand of which belonged to the missionaries. In 1835 the Rev. Henry Williams made a bold offer for the unsold country. He forwarded a deed of trust to the governor of New South Wales, requesting that the missionaries should be appointed trustees