The Book of the Bush. George Dunderdale
was murdered, his body had not been found: there could be no murder without a corpse; and finally, he would respectfully submit to that honourable court, that the case bristled with ineradicable difficulties."
The seamen would have been sent to the gallows in any case, but Nicholas' speech made their fate inevitable. The court brushed aside the legal bristles, and hanged the four seamen on the evidence of the mate and the cook.
The tragedy of the gallows was followed by a short afterpiece. Jim Parrish, Ned Tomlins, and every whaler and foremast man in Hobart Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober, and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his peers and condemned to die, and he knew it. He tried to escape by shipping on board a schooner bound to Portland Bay with whalers. The captain took on board a keg of rum, holding fifteen gallons, usually called a "Big Pup," and invited the mate to share the liquor with him. The result was that the two officers soon became incapable of rational navigation. Off King's Island the schooner was hove to in a gale of wind, and for fourteen days stood off and on--five or six hours one way, and five or six hours the other--while the master and mate were down below, "nursing the Big Pup." The seamen were all strangers to the coast, and did not know any cove into which they could run for refuge. The cook was pitched overboard one dark night during that gale off King's Island, and his loss was a piece of ancient history by the time the master and mate had consumed the rum, and were able to enter up the log.
Ex-Attorney-General Gellibrand sailed to Port Philip to look for country in Australia Felix, and he found it. He was last seen on a rounded hill, gazing over the rich and beautiful land which borders Lake Colac; land which he was not fated to occupy, for he wandered away and was lost, and his bones lay unburied by the stream which now bears his name.
When Colonel Arthur's term of office expired he departed with the utmost ceremony. The 21st Fusiliers escorted him to the wharf. As he entered his barge his friends cheered, and his enemies groaned, and then went home and illuminated the town, to testify their joy at getting rid of a tyrant. He was the model Governor of a Crown colony, and the Crown rewarded him for his services. He was made a baronet, appointed Governor of Canada and of Bombay, was a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council, a colonel of the Queen's Own regiment, and he died on September 19th, 1854, full of years and honours, and worth 70,000 pounds.
Laming was left an orphan by the death of Lizard Skin. The chief had grown old and sick, and he sat every day for two years on a fallen puriri near the white man's pah, but he never entered it. His spear was always sticking up beside him. He had a gun, but was never known to use it. He was often humming some ditty about old times before the white man brought guns and powder, but he spoke to no one. He was pondering over the future of his tribe, but the problem was too much for him. The white men were strong and were overrunning his land. His last injunction to his warriors was, that they should listen to the words of his Pakeha, and that they should be brave that they might live.
When the British Government took possession of New Zealand without paying for it, they established a Land Court to investigate the titles to lands formerly bought from the natives, and it was decided in most cases that a few axes and hoes were an insufficient price to pay for the pick of the country; the purchases were swindles. Laming had possession of three or four hundred acres, and to the surprise of the Court it was found that he had paid a fair price for them, and his title was allowed. Moreover, his knowledge of the language and customs of the Maoris was found to be so useful that he was appointed a Judge of the Land Court.
The men who laid the foundations of empire in the Great South Land were men of action. They did not stand idle in the shade, waiting for someone to come and hire them. They dug a vineyard and planted it. The vines now bring forth fruit, the winepress is full, the must is fermenting. When the wine has been drawn off from the lees, and time has matured it, of what kind will it be? And will the Lord of the Vineyard commend it?
FIRST SETTLERS.
The first white settler in Victoria was the escaped convict Buckley; but he did not cultivate the country, nor civilise the natives. The natives, on the contrary, uncivilised him. When white men saw him again, he had forgotten even his mother tongue, and could give them little information. For more than thirty years he had managed to live--to live like a savage; but for any good he had ever done he might as well have died with the other convicts who ran away with him. He never gave any clear account of his companions, and many people were of opinion that he kept himself alive by eating them, until he was found and fed by the blacks, who thought he was one of their dead friends, and had "jumped up a white fellow."
While Buckley was still living with the blacks about Corio Bay, in 1827, Gellibrand and Batman applied for a grant of land at Western Port, where the whalers used to strip wattle bark when whales were out of season; but they did not get it.
Englishmen have no business to live anywhere without being governed, and Colonel Arthur had no money to spend in governing a settlement at Western Port. So Australia Felix was unsettled for eight years longer.
Griffiths & Co., of Launceston, were trading with Sydney in 1833. Their cargo outward was principally wheat, the price of which varied very much; sometimes it was 2s. 6d. a bushel in Launceston, and 18s. in Sydney. The return cargo from Port Jackson was principally coal, freestone, and cedar.
Griffiths & Co. were engaged in whaling in Portland Bay. They sent there two schooners, the 'Henry' and the 'Elizabeth', in June, 1834. They erected huts on shore for the whalers. The 'Henry' was wrecked; but the whales were plentiful, and yielded more oil than the casks would hold, so the men dug clay pits on shore, and poured the oil into them. The oil from forty-five whales was put into the pits, but the clay absorbed every spoonful of it, and nothing but bones was gained from so much slaughter. Before the 'Elizabeth' left Portland Bay, the Hentys, the first permanent settlers in Victoria, arrived in the schooner 'Thistle', on November 4th, 1834.
When the whalers of the 'Elizabeth' had been paid off, and had spent their money, they were engaged to strip wattle bark at Western Port, and were taken across in the schooner, with provisions, tools, six bullocks and a dray. During that season they stripped three hundred tons of bark and chopped it ready for bagging. John Toms went over to weigh and ship the bark, and brought it back, together with the men, in the barque 'Andrew Mack'.
WRECK OF THE CONVICT SHIP "NEVA," ON KING'S ISLAND.
She sailed from Cork on January 8th, 1835, B. H. Peck, master; Dr. Stevenson, R.N., surgeon. She had on board 150 female prisoners and thirty-three of their children, nine free women and their twenty-two children, and a crew of twenty-six. Several ships had been wrecked on King's Island, and when a vessel approached it the mate of the watch warned his men to keep a bright look out. He said, "King's Island is inhabited by anthropophagi, the bloodiest man eaters ever known; and, if you don't want to go to pot, you had better keep your eyes skinned." So the look-out man did not go to sleep.
Nevertheless, the 'Neva' went ashore on the Harbinger reef, on May 13th unshipped her rudder and parted into four pieces. Only nine men and thirteen women reached the island; they were nearly naked and had nothing to eat, and they wandered along the beach during the night, searching amongst the wreckage. At last they found a puncheon of rum, upended it, stove in the head, and drank. The thirteen women then lay down on the sand close together, and slept. The night was very cold, and Robinson, an apprentice, covered the women as well as he could with some pieces of sail and blankets soaked with salt water. The men walked about the beach all night to keep themselves warm, being afraid to go inland for fear of the cannibal blackfellows. In the morning they went to rouse the women, and found that seven of the thirteen were dead.