 This is Chapter 13 of Following the Equator. This LibriVox recording is in the Public Domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 13. Public Works in Australasia. Botanical Garden of Sydney. Four special socialties. The Government House. A Governor and his functions. The Admiralty House. The Tour of the Harbour. Shark Fishing. Admiral Rhodes Shark and his First Fortune. Free Board for Sharks. The Timid Man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The Bold Man strikes for double value and compromises on par. Puddinhead Wilson's New Calendar. One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works, such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks and botanical gardens. I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped and architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighbouring planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its streets with the electric light when I was there. Now he's ahead of London. London is still obscured by gas, gas pretty widely scattered too in some of the districts, so widely indeed that except on moonlight nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps. The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climbs of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the Great Harbour, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House, fifty-six acres, and at hand also is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition there are the zoological gardens, the race course, and the great cricket grounds where the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room for reposeful lazing and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work. There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the visitor's book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against you, and it will be very pleasant, for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England, he always is. The Continent has four or five Governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago, but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get a board ship and go back home. And so the Lieutenant Governor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. The others were at home. The Australasian Governor would not be so restless perhaps if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve energies, but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself and prefers to do it, and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes to help, and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name. Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than our Governor's functions with us, and therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the state, he is the real head of society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion, and by his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his countenance makes the horse race thrive. He is usually a Lord, and this is well, for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English Lord is generally well equipped for that. Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House, which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither, and there, or on board the flagship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity of his office. Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbour in a fine, steam-pleasure launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short. And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney harbour is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their living catching them, for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The larger the shark, the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable. The shark is the swiftest fish that swims, the speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his, and he is a great gat about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not, has yet, been in print. In 1870 a young stranger arrived in Sydney and set about finding something to do. But he knew no one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no employment. He had aimed high at first, but as time and his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him. He could find no opening of any sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day thinking, he walked them all night thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting aimlessly along the harbour shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher the man looked up and said, Say, young fellow, take my line of spell and change my luck for me. How do you know I won't make it worse? Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't change it, no harm's done. If you do change it, it's for the better, of course. Come. All right. What will you give? I'll give you the shark if you catch one, and I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line. Here you are. I will get away now for a while so that my luck won't spoil yours. For many and many a time I've noticed that if—there! Pull in! Pull in, man! You've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right, he's landed. It was an unusually large shark. A full nineteen-footer, the fisherman said, as he laid the creature open with his knife. Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my luck, you see, but by goodness I hope you haven't changed your own. Oh, it wouldn't matter. Don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll rob him. When the fisherman got back, the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay and was starting away. What—you're not going? Yes, good-bye. But what about your shark? The shark? Why, what use is he to me? What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report him to government and you'll get a clean, solid eighty-shillings bounty? Hard cash, you know? What do you think about it now? Oh, well, you can collect it. And keep it? Is that what you mean? Yes. Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentric, I judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes and I'm believing it now. Why, yours are looking just ratty, don't you know? And yet you must be rich. I am. The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a stand-up. There was a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself. There isn't enough to buy clothes with, and went his way. At half-past nine the richest woolbroker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A servant put his head in and said, There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir. What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his business. He won't go, sir. I've tried. He won't go. That's unusual. He's one of two things, then. He's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy? No, sir. He don't look it. Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants? He won't tell, sir. Only says it's very important, and won't go. Does he say he won't go? Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day. And yet isn't crazy. Show him up. The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, No, he's not crazy. That is easy to see. So he must be the other thing. Then, aloud, Well, my good fellow! Be quick about it. Don't waste any words. What is it you want? I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds. Scott! It's a mistake he is crazy. No, he can't be. Not with that eye. Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you? Nobody that you know. What is your name? Cecil Rhodes. No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then, just for curiosity's sake, what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand? The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty days? Well, well, well, it is the most extraordinary idea that—sit down, you interest me. And somehow you—well, you fascinate me. I think that that is about the word. And it isn't your proposition. No, that doesn't fascinate me. It's something else. I don't quite know what. Something that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then, just for curiosity's sake, again, nothing more. As I understand it, it is your desire to borrow—I said intention. Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word, an unheedful valuing of its strength, you know. I knew its strength. Well, I must say—but look here, let me walk the floor a little. My mind is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any. Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy, but as to his being remarkable—well, really, he amounts to that and something over. Now then, I believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike and spare not. What is your scheme? To buy the wool-crop, deliverable in sixty days. What, the whole of it? The whole of it? No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how you talk—do you know what our crop is going to foot up? Two and a half million sterling, maybe a little more. Well, you've got your statistics right, anyway. Now then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days? The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get. Right once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish you had the money, and if you had it, what would you do with it? I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days. You mean, of course, that you might make it, if I said shall. Yes, by Georgie you did say shall. You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got what you believe to be a rational reason for venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool-crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it out. I am prepared, acclimatized, if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you—I don't think, I know. Definite again. How do you know? Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up fourteen percent in London, and is still rising. Oh, indeed! Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair! But it didn't stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason. I have read the morning paper. You can look at it, if you want to. The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night. Fifty days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no war-clouds anywhere. And as for wool, why, it is the low-spirited commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump now. Well, why don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion when—because I have later news. Later news? Oh, come! Later news than fifty days? Brought steaming hot from London by the—my news is only ten days old. Oh, munch-housen! Here the maniac talk! Where did you get it? Got it out of a shark. Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! Call the police, bring the gun, raise the town! All the assailants in Christendom have broken loose in the single person of—sit down, and collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a statement, which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity. Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report—what does your middle initial stand for, sir? Andrew, what are you writing? Wait a moment. Proof about the shark and another matter. Only ten lines. There. Now it is done. Sign it. Many thanks. Many—let me see. It says—it says—oh, come, this is interesting. Why, why, look here! Prove what you say here, and I'll put up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings with you half and half. There now, I've signed. Make your promise good, if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old. Here it is, and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, without a doubt, for you will notice that the last entry in the book is dated London, and is of the same date as the Times, and says—Berkonfekens der Kreikese Flarun reife ich heute nach Deutschlandab, Arbach ich mein Leben, auf dem Altar meines Landes Legen mag, as clean native German as anybody can put on paper, and means that in consequence of the declaration of war this loyal soul is leaving for home to-day, to fight, and he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the day was done, poor fellow, and a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend to this case further on. Other matters are pressing now. I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and by the crop. It will cheer the drooping spirits of the boys in a transitory way. Everything is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say your name is? Sassel Rhodes. It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and by if you live. There are three kinds of people. Commonplace men, remarkable men, and lunatics. I'll classify you with the remarkables, and take the chances. The deal went through and secured to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed. The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little sails. A boat upsets now and then by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking. Sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun, such as it is with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young fellows scramble aboard whole, sometimes, not always. Tragedies have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Parramatta River and screamed for help, and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks, but the sharks made swift work with the lives of both. The government pays a bounty for the shark to get the bounty, the fishermen bait the hook or the sane with agreeable mutton. The news spreads, and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony. CHAPTER XIV Bad health, to Melbourne by rail, maps defective, the colony of Victoria, a round-trip ticket from Sydney, change cars from wide to narrow gauge, a peculiarity at Albury, customs fences, my word, the Blue Mountains, rabbit piles, government railroad restaurants, duchesses for waiters, sheep-dip, railroad coffee, things seen and not seen. We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard, but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that. CHAPTER XIV My health had broken down in New York in May. It had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of eighty-two days. It broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland, in the circumstances to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable. So we moved south with a westward slant, seventeen hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne, that juvenile city of sixty years and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small, but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map, looks like a county, in fact, yet it is about as large as England, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just eighty times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one third as large as the state of Texas. Outside of Melbourne Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favourable to other great industries, among others, wheat-growing, and the making of wine. We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping-car. Also the car was clean and fine and new, nothing about it to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for—that was continental—continental and troublesome. Any detail of rail-roading that is not troublesome cannot honourably be described as continental. The tickets were round-trip ones, to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected to make. But then, as the round-trip wouldn't cost much more than the single-trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs. Now comes a singular thing. The oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria, our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern light in the morning in the biting cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth. Imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders. It is a narrow-gauge road to the frontier and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies, the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten, but it is of no consequence. It could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable. All passengers fret at the double gauge. All shippers of freight must of course fret at it. Unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefited. Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbour with a custom house. Personally I have no objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific Coast requires a world of iron machinery and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed, but they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific Coast is the same as if there were several rows of custom fences between the coast and the east. Iron carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived. We changed cars, this was at Albury, and it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains, accurately named. My word, as the Australians say, but it was a stunning colour that blue, deep, strong, rich, exquisite, towering in majestic masses of blue, a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky, made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey, and washed out, a wonderful colour, just divine. A resident told me that those were not mountains, he said they were rabbit piles, and explained that long exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of Gratis' information furnished by unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travellers are usually erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit plague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order. We breakfasted at the station, a good breakfast except the coffee, and cheap. The government establishes the prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think, but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies, generally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levy in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how. All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through thin, not thick forests of great melancholy gum-trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark, erosipolous convalescence, so to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray blue corrugated iron, and the door-steps and fences were clogged with children, rugged little simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk. And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy advertisements, mainly of almost two self-righteous brands of sheep-dip—if that is the name, and I think it is—it is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed onto places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out to flies and has healing properties, and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good to eat, that is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad coffee is too vague, but with it it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself railroad coffee is too passive, but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee? We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorincus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed the land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no aboriginals, no black fellows. And to this day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before. CHAPTER XV WAGA WAGA THE TICK-BORN CLAIMENT A STOCK MYSTERY THE PLAN OF THE ROMANTS THE REALISATION THE HENRY BASKUM MYSTERY BASKUM HALL THE AUTHOR'S DEATH AND FUNERAL Truth is stranger than fiction, to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it. Putin had Wilson's new calendar. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. Putin had Wilson's new calendar. The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant. It was a charming excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago. WAGA WAGA. This was because the tick-borne claimant had kept a butcher shop there. It was out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of space a time with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiosity, curiosity as to which of the two long missing persons he was? Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir Roger Tickborn, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then, and the dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and fascinating and marvellous real life romance that has ever been played upon the world stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial development. When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale as compared with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The fiction artist could achieve no success with the materials of this splendid Tickborn romance. He would have to drop out the chief characters. The public would say such people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most picturesque incidents. The public would say such things could never happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did happen. It cost the Tickborn estates four hundred thousand dollars to unmask the claimant and drive him out, and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still believed in him. It cost the British government another four hundred thousand to convict him of perjury, and after the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him, and among these believers were many educated and intelligent men, and some of them had personally known the real Sir Roger. The claimant was sentenced to fourteen years in prisonment. When he got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whiskey saloon in the Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view. He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tickborn until death called for him. This was but a few months ago not very much short of a generation since he left Wagga Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his deathbed he yielded up his secret and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher, that and nothing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case. A weaker article would probably disagree with them. I was in London when the claimant stood his trial for perjury. I attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were about twenty-five gentlemen present, educated men, men moving in good society, none of them commonplace. Some of them were men of distinction, none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and admirers. It was Sir Roger—always Sir Roger—on all hands. No one withheld the title. All turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if it tasted good. For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry, but I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note of about six lines was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually the same effect. Would I and mine come to the writer's country a place in England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve days, and depart by such and such a train at the end of the specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station. These invitations were always for a long time ahead—if we were in Europe three months ahead, if we were in America six to twelve months ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and also for the end of the visit. This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive by the four ten p.m. train from London August sixth. The carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days later—train specified. And there were these words—speak to Tom Hughes. I showed the note to the author of Tom Brown at Rugby, and he said, Accept, and be thankful. He described Mr. Baskham as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. He said that Baskham Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately menorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going a long way to see, like Noel. That Mr. B was of a social disposition, liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort coming and going. We paid the visit—we paid others in later years, the last one in 1879. Soon after that Mr. Baskham started on a voyage around the world in a steam-yacht, a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections in all lands of birds, butterflies, and such things. The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering-place on Long Island Sound, and in the mail-matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne postmark on it. It was for my wife, but I recognized Mr. Baskham's handwriting on the envelope and opened it. It was the usual note, as to paucity of lines, and was written on the customary strip of paper, but there was nothing usual about the contents. The note informed my wife that, if it would be any assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture tour in Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, the writer, could testify that such was the case. Also, that her husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this note. That the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and city governments, and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the sad privilege of acting as one of the Paul-bearers, signed Henry Baskham. My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those tears and comforted those sorrowing governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money. I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been able to catch them. Others in my trade had tried to catch their imposter doubles, and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a ghost? None, and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know about that man's lecture tour and last moments, but that could wait. When I should see Mr. Baskham, he would tell me all about it. But he passed from life, and I never saw him again. My curiosity faded away. However, when I found that I was going to Australia, it revived. And naturally, for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on business. Well, to surprise, the Sydney journalists had never heard of that imposter. I pressed them, but they were firm. They had never heard of him, and didn't believe in him. I could not understand it. Still, I thought it would all come right in Melbourne. The government would remember, and the other mourners. At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the matter. But, no, it turned out that they had never heard of it. So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I believed it would never be cleared up in this life, so I dropped it out of my mind. But, at last, just when I was least expecting it—however, this is not the place for the rest of it—I shall come to the matter again in a far distant chapter. End of Chapter 15 This is Chapter 16 of Following the Equator. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 16 Melbourne and its Attractions The Melbourne Cup Races Cup Day Great Crowds Clothes Regardless of Cost The Australian Larrikin Is he dead? Australian Hospitality Melbourne Woolbrokers The Museums The Palaces The Origin of Melbourne There is a moral sense, and there is an immoral sense. History shows us that the moral sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the immoral sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it. Puddinhead Wilson's New Calendar Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city, architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable car service. It has museums and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity and gas, and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honour and credit. It has one specialty, this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred metropolitan of the horse racing cult. Its race ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice, the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day, business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and every man and woman of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere. It is the Melbourne Cup that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago at unlimited cost and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' clothes, but one might know that. And so the grandstands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy, everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change hands right along all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept at white heat. And when each day is done the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year's cup-clothes, and then lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy again. The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's. Each of them evokes interest, but not everybody's. Each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's. In each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are a universal and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme. It has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day in any country which can be named by that large name, Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day in any country whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one. But this one does it. In America we have no annual Supreme Day, no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy. Neither of them can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone, if still alive. The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cartload of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes. They put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day as a function has become general of late years. The thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm. We have a Supreme Day, a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement, but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years, therefore it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup. In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days, Christmas and the Queen's birthday, but they are equally popular. There is no supremacy. I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique, solitary, unfollowed, and likely to hold that high place a long time. The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people, next, the novelties, and finally the history of the places and countries visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the world, he is in effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the Laracan he will not be able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blather-skite, according to his geographical distribution. The Laracan differs by a shade from those others in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they, more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At least it seems so to me, and I had opportunity to observe—in Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture theatre, but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways and did it. Every night on my way home at ten or a quarter past I found the Laracan grouped in considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave me this pleasant salutation. �Hello, Mock! Is to you, old chap? Say, Mock, is he dead?� A reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did not detect at that time, that that was its source, and I didn�t detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don�t know what it means. I will remark here, if it is not an indecorum, that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his voice, and from Winnipeg to Africa experience will teach him nothing. He will never learn to expect it. It will catch him, as a surprise, each time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere there was never anything to remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have been prominently lacking in some countries in the circumstances. And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of the water, whereas, whenever a prospective war between two nations had been in the air there to fore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit too, and not learned of the French and German press, either before sedan or since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now if its sections do not get to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their differences so much better, and also so much more indefinitely. No. As I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just like stockbrokers. They all bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in unison, no stranger can tell what, and the President calmly says, Sold to Smith and Company! Thruppence Farthing! Next! When probably nothing of the kind happened. For how should he know? In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things, but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes and break your back and burn out your vitalities with their consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich in Melbourne are much like the palaces of the rich in America, and the life in them is the same, but there the resemblance ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large and not often beautiful. But in the Melbourne case the grounds are often dukely spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country's seats have grounds, domains, about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the country mansion of an English lord, but I was not out in the country. I had my hands full in town. And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial townhouses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always picturesque. Indeed, it is so curious and strange that it is itself the chief's novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies, and all of a fresh new sort, no moldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures and incongruities and contradictions and incredibilities, but they are all true. They all happened. CHAPTER XVII The British Empire, its exports and imports, the trade of Australia, to Adelaide, Broken Hill Silver Mine, a roundabout road, the scrub and its possibilities for the novelist, the aboriginal tracker, a test case, how does one cow-track differ from another? The English are mentioned in the Bible, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, Putin had Wilson's new calendar. When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other power except one, Russia, is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are about the same, four hundred million each. No other power approaches these figures, even Russia is left far behind. The population of Australasia, four million, sinks into nothingness and is lost from sight in that British ocean of four hundred million. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions of dollars, New South Wales Blue Book, and it is claimed that more than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this, Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic inter-colonial trade, amounting to a hundred and fifty millions. In round numbers the four million buy and sell about six hundred million dollars worth of goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents commodities of Australasia production. The products exported annually by India are worth a trifle over five hundred million dollars. Now here are some faith-straining figures. Indian production, three hundred million population, five hundred million dollars. Australasia production, four million population, three hundred million dollars. That is to say the product of the individual Indian annually for export some wither is worth a dollar seventy-five. That of the individual Australasia for export some wither, seventy-five dollars. To put it in another way, the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an annual result worth eight dollars and seventy-five cents, while the Australasia family sends away three hundred and seventy-five dollars worth. There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and others which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product, both for export and home use, is worth in gold only seven dollars and fifty cents, or thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents for the family aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication, the Australasia family's aggregate production would be nearly one thousand six hundred dollars. Truly nothing is so astonishing as figures if they once get started. We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast province of South Australia, a seventeen hour excursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends, among them a judge who was going out on circuit and was going to hold court at Broken Hill where the celebrated Silver Mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on the eastern border. A fairly straight line, seven hundred miles long, drawn westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill just as a somewhat shorter one, drawn west from Boston, would strike Buffalo. The way the judge was travelling would carry him over two thousand miles by rail, he said, southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales once more, to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over the border to Buffalo, New York. But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpected world. Its stocks started at shillings and went by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares, and comes next month and buys your house at your own price, and moves into it herself, where the coachman takes a few shares, and next month sets up a bank, and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied and at once. Adelaide was close by. Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one. It was not worthwhile for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands irrevocably. New South Wales furnishes law for Broken Hill, and sends her judges two thousand miles, mainly through alien countries, to administer it, but Adelaide takes the dividends and makes no moan. We started at four twenty in the afternoon, and moved across level plains until night. In the morning we had a stretch of scrub country, the kind of thing which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the settler, then slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the novelist's heroin gets lost, search fails of result. She wanders here and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones, and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody can find a lost heroin in the scrub but the aboriginal tracker, and he will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it as seamless as a blanket to all appearance. One might as well walk under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal tracker was able to hunt out people lost in the scrub, also in the bush, also in the desert, and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over a louvial ground which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints. From reading Australian books and talking with the people I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evinced a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of detective work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia, published by the Government of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or yesterday. And there is the case, on record, where A, a settler, makes a bet with B. That B may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A will produce an aboriginal who will find her. B selects a cow and lets the tracker see the cow's footprint, then B put under guard. B then drives the cow a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions and frequently doubles back upon itself, and he selects difficult ground all the time, and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows and mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings his cow home, the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around in a great circle, examining all cow tracks until he finds the one he is after, then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and ultimately tracks it to the stable where B has hidden the cow. Now, wherein does one cow track differ from another? There must be a difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat. A difference minute, shadowy, and not detectable by you or me, or by the late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a member of a race charged by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human intelligence. CHAPTER XVIII The gum-trees, unsociable trees, gorse and broom, a universal defect, an adventurer, wanted two hundred pounds, got twenty million pounds, a vast land scheme, the smash-up, the corpse got up and danced, a unique business by one man, buying the kangaroo skin, the approach to Adelaide, everything comes to him who waits, a healthy religious atmosphere. What is the matter with the specter? It is easier to stay out than get out, put in Head Wilson's new calendar. The train was now exploring a beautiful hill-country, and went twisting in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several varieties of gum-trees among them many giants. Some of them were bodied and barked like the sycamore. Some were a fantastic aspect and reminded one of the quaint apple-trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines. The lower half of each bunch, a rich brown or old gold color. The upper half, a most vivid and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching. The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last samples of it, seen by us, were not more than half an hour apart. There was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass speared itself above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was not a sociable sort. It did not gather in groups or couples, but each individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine. And as far as you could see the tree itself, you could also see the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet. On some part of this railway journey we saw a gorse and broom. Importations from England, and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit, tried to tell me which was which, but as he didn't know he had difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had never been confronted with the question before, during the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against the background of sober or somber color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch his breath with a happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality usually wanting in Australian blossoms. The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his information about the gorse and the broom, told me that he came out from England a youth of twenty, and entered the province of South Australia with thirty-six shillings in his pocket, an adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearly defined purpose in his head. He would stay until he was worth two hundred pounds, then go back home. He would allow himself five years for the accumulation of this fortune. "'That was more than fifty years ago,' said he, and here I am yet. As he went out at the door he met a friend and turned and introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation, and said there was something very pathetic about this half-century of exile, and that I wish the two hundred-pound scheme had succeeded. "'With him?' "'Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest,' and he left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just in time to help discover the Buddha-Buddha-Compermines. They turned out seven hundred thousand pounds in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded twenty million pounds. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village. He could go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land-boom a while before. There it is again, picturesque history, Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. In 1836 the British Parliament erected it, still a solitude, into a province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery. Speculators took hold now and inaugurated a vast land-scheme, and invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. It was well worked in London, and bishops, statesmen, and all sorts of people made a rush for the land-company's shares. Immigrants soon began to pour into the region of Adelaide, and select townlots and farms in the sand, and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come. Prices of land rose high, then higher, and still higher. Everybody was prosperous and happy. The boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet-iron huts and clabbered sheds sprang up in the sand, and in these wigwams fashion made display. Richly dressed ladies played on costly pianos. London swells in evening dress and patent leather boots were abundant. And this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds, as it had been accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious values. On the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during four or five years. Then, all of a sudden, came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn by the governor upon the treasury were dishonored. Land company's credit went up in smoke. A panic followed. Values fell with a rush. The frightened immigrants seized their grip-sacks and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men. Adelaide was indeed almost empty. Its population had fallen to three thousand. During two years or more, the death trance continued. Prospect of revival there was none. Hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced. The wool production began to grow. Grain-raising followed. Followed so vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this little colony which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly and pay hard prices for them, once fifty dollars a barrel for flour, had become an exporter of grain. The prosperity's continued. After many years, Providence, desiring to show a special regard for New South Wales, and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare, which should certify to all nations, the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, broken hill, and South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks. Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a strong word, but I use it justifiably, if I did not misconceive what the American told me, for I understood him to say that in the world there was not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was buying the kangaroo skin crop, buying all of it, both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian, and buying it for an American house in New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's aggregate of skins would cost him thirty thousand pounds. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After the tanning the leather takes a new name, which I have forgotten. I only remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German competition for a while some years ago, but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning the skin successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now then I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really entitled to bear that high epithet unique. And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a soul person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one pope, there is more than one emperor. There is even more than one living god, walking upon the earth and worshipped in all sincerity by large populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these beings myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come good by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a permit. Approaching Adelaide, we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect—mountains, crags, country-homes, gardens, forests, color, color, color everywhere, and the air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city. We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble capital of huts and sheds of the long vanished day of the land-boom. No, this was a modern city, with wide streets compactly built, with fine homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful. There was prosperity in the air, for another boom was on. Providence, desiring to show a special regard for the neighbouring colony on the west called Western Australia, and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Kulgardi, and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good and waits. But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable home for every alien who chooses to come, and for his religion too. She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000 odd, and yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census. Church of England, 89,271. Roman Catholic, 47,179. Wesleyan, 49,159. Lutheran, 23,328. Presbyterian, 18,206. Congregationalist, 11,882. Bible Christian, 15,762. Primitive Methodist, 11,654. Baptist, 17,547. Christian Brethren, 465. Methodist New Connection, 39. Unitarian, 688. Church of Christ, 3367. Society of Friends, 100. Salvation Army, 4356. New Jerusalem Church, 168. Jews, 840. Protestants, undefined, 5,532. Mohammedans, 299. Confucians, etc., 3884. Other religions, 1719. Object, 6,940. Not stated, 8046. Total, 320,431. The item in the above list, other religions, includes the following as returned. Agnostics, 50. Atheists, 22. Believers in Christ, 4. Buddhists, 52. Calvinists, 46. Christodelfians, 134. Christians, 308. Christ's Chapel, 9. Christian Israelites, 2. Christian Socialists, 6. Church of God, 6. Cosmopolitan, 3. Deists, 14. Evangelists, 60. Exclusive Brethren, 8. Free Church, 21. Free Methodists, 5. Free Thinkers, 258. Followers of Christ, 8. Gospel Meetings, 11. Greek Church, 44. Infidel's, 9. Maronite's, 2. Memnonists, 1. Moravian's, 139. Mormon's, 4. Naturalists, 2. Orthodox, 4. Others, indefinite, 17. Pagans, 20. Pantheists, 3. Plymouth Brethren, 111. Rationalists, 4. Reformers, 7. Secularists, 12. Seventh-day Adventists, 203. Shaker, 1. Shintoists, 24. Spiritualists, 37. Theosophists, 9. Town City Mission, 16. Welsh Church, 27. Huguenot, 2. Hussite, 1. Zoroastrians, 2. Swinglian, 1. About sixty-four roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, atheists, free thinkers, infidels, Mormons, Pagans, indefinites—they are all there. And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it. They can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the spiritualists and the theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world. End of Chapter 18 This is Chapter 19 of Following the Equator. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 19 The Botanical Gardens Contributions from All Countries The Zoological Gardens of Adelaide The Laughing Jackass The Dingo A misnamed province. Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco. A mania for holidays. The temperature. The death rate. Celebration of the reading of the proclamation of 1836. Some old settlers at the commemoration. Their staying powers. The intelligence of the aboriginal. The antiquity of the boomerang. Pity is for the living. Envy is for the dead. Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty—the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate. The lax would still be so great. The confined sense. The sense of suffocation. The atmospheric dimness. The sweaty heat. These would all be there in place of the Australian openness to the sky. The sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia. The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst in January 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January 1880 the heat at Adelaide, South Australia was 172 degrees in the sun. When the white man came, the continent was nearly as poor in variety of vegetation, as the desert of Sahara. Now it has everything that grows on the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world. And wherever one goes the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful tree or bush or flower and ask about it, the people answering usually name a foreign country as the place of its origin. India, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. In the zoological gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon, or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal, when he has any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L.J. will take my advice, he will not kill all of them. In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog, the dingo. He was a beautiful creature, shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The dingo is not an importation. He was present in great force when the whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe. His origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camels. He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He is hunted now, just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried out. This is all right and not objectionable. The world was made for man. The white man. South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a southern exposure except one, Queensland. Properly speaking, South Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the centre of the continent like the middle board in a centre table. It is two thousand miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little spot down in its south-eastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its population. The other one or two-tenths are elsewhere, as elsewhere as they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver and Chicago and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is plenty of room. A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that two thousand miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean. South Australia built the line, and did it in 1871, too, when her population numbered only a hundred and eighty-five thousand. It was a great work, for there were no roads, no paths. One thousand three hundred miles of the route had been traversed but once before by white men. Provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried over immense stretches of desert. Wells had to be dug along the route to supply the men and cattle with water. A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to India, and there was telegraphic communication with England from India. And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin, it meant connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could watch the London markets daily now. The profit to the wool growers of Australia was instant and enormous. A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately twenty thousand miles, the equivalent of five-sixth of the way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated. Still, but little time is lost, these halts and the distances between them are here tabulated. From Round the Empire, George R. Parkin, all but the last two. Melbourne to Mount Gambier, three hundred miles. Mount Gambier to Adelaide, two hundred and seventy. Adelaide to Port Augusta, two hundred. Port Augusta to Alice Springs, one thousand thirty six. Alice Springs to Port Darwin, eight hundred and ninety-eight. Port Darwin to Banjewangi, one thousand one hundred and fifty. Banjewangi to Batavia, four hundred and eighty. Batavia to Singapore, five hundred and fifty-three. Singapore to Penang, three hundred and ninety-nine. Penang to Madras, one thousand two hundred and eighty. Madras to Bombay, six hundred and fifty. Bombay to Aden, one thousand six hundred and sixty-two. Aden to Suez, one thousand three hundred and forty-six. Suez to Alexandria, two hundred and twenty-four. Alexandria to Malta, eight hundred and twenty-eight. Malta to Gibraltar, one thousand eight. Gibraltar to Falmouth, one thousand sixty-one. Falmouth to London, three hundred and fifty. London to New York, two thousand five hundred. New York to San Francisco, three thousand five hundred. I was in Adelaide again some months later and saw the multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg to commemorate the reading of the proclamation in eighteen thirty-six which founded the province. If I have at any time called it a colony, I withdraw the discriticy. It is not a colony. It is a province, and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm. It was the province's national holiday, its fourth of July, so to speak. It is the preeminent holiday, and that is saying much in a country where they seem to have a most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are working-men's holidays, for in South Australia the working-man is sovereign. His vote is the desire of the politician. Indeed, it is the very breath of the politician's being. The parliament exists to deliver the will of the working-man, and the government exists to execute it. The working-man is a great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. He has had a hard time in this world and has earned a paradise. I am glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but was not able to do it. You have seen that the province is tolerant religious-wise. It is so politically also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration Banquet, the Minister of Public Works, was an American, born and reared in New England. There is nothing narrow about the province, politically, or in any other way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a yanky cabinet minister. No amount of horse-racing can dam this community. The mean temperature of the province is sixty-two degrees. The death rate is thirteen in the one thousand, about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death rate for the average citizen of the province, but there seems to be no death rate for the old people. There were people at the Commemoration Banquet who could remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These old settlers had all been present at the original reading of the proclamation in 1836. They showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time in their outward aspect, but they were young within, young and cheerful, and ready to talk. Ready to talk, and talk all you wanted, in their turn and out of it. They were down for six speeches, and they made forty-two. The Governor and the Cabinet and the Mayor were down for forty-two speeches, and they made six. They had a splendid grit, the old settlers, splendid staying power. But they do not hear well, and when they see the Mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the one, and they all get up together and begin to respond, in the most animated way. And the more the Mayor just articulates and shouts, sit down, sit down, the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and reminiscent and enthusiastic they get. And next, when they see the whole house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking, jokes of the vintage of 1836, and then the way they do go on. And finally, when ushers come and plead and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into their seats, they say, oh, I am not tired, I could bang along a week. And they sit there looking simple and childlike and gentle and proud of their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully prepared speech impressively and with solemnity. When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, of wisdom, of forethought, of—up come the immortal six again in a body with a joyous, hey, I've thought of another one! And at it they go, with might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the visible violences for applause as before, and hammering joyously away till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again, and a pity too. For those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over in these days of their honoured antiquity, and certainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing. It was a stirring spectacle, stirring in more ways than one, for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic. For they had seen so much these time-worn veterans, and had suffered so much, and had built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep in liberty and tolerance, and had lived to see the structure rise to such state and dignity, and hear themselves so praised for their honourable work. One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward, things about the Aboriginals mainly. He thought them intelligent, remarkably so in some directions, and he said that along with their unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones, and he considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced their invention of the Boomerang, and the wheat-wheat, as evidences of their brightness, and as another evidence of it, he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with those two toys that the Aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the trick of the Boomerang in perfection, that it had possibilities which they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, could not make it obey him, but the Aboriginal could. He told me some wonderful things, some almost incredible things, which he had seen the blacks do with the Boomerang and the wheat-wheat. They have been confirmed to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books. It is contended, and may be said to be conceded, that the Boomerang was known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended that it was known to the ancient Egyptians. One of two things is then apparent. Either someone with a Boomerang arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge of the thing had been lost, or the Australian Aboriginal reinvented it. It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the fact. But there is no hurry. END OF CHAPTER XXI A caller, a talk about old times, the fox-hunt, an accurate judgment of an idiot, how we passed the customs officers in Italy. It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. Puddin had Wilson's new calendar. From Diary. Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nowheim, Germany, several years ago, the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had known there, or had casually met, and G. said, Do you remember my introducing you to an earl, the earl of sea? Yes, that was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, just starting, belated, for the train. I remember it. I remember it, too, because of a thing which happened then which I was not looking for. He had told me a while before about a remarkable and interesting Californian whom he had met, and who was a friend of yours, and said that if he should ever meet you, he would ask you for some particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that day at Nowheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time. But the thing that surprised me was this. When I introduced you, you said, I am glad to meet your lordship again. The, again, was the surprise. He is a little hard of hearing and didn't catch that word, and I thought you hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, Why, what do you know about him? And I understood you to say, Oh, nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of—then we were gone, and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess it out. He thought it must be foxhounds or horses, for he is a good judge of those, no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because you didn't know him. You had mistaken him for someone else. It must be that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And, of course, you hadn't, had you? Yes, I had. Is that so? Where? At a foxhound in England. How curious that is! Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had you any conversation with him? Some, yes. Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk about? About the fox? I think that was all. Why, that would interest him. That ought to have left an impression. What did he talk about? The fox. It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an impression upon you? Yes, it showed me that he was a quick judge of. However, I will tell you all about it. Then you will understand. It was a quarter of a century ago, 1873 or 1974. I had an American friend in London named F, who was fond of hunting, and his friends, the blanks, invited him and me to come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country-place. In the morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. I had always been diffident about horses anyway, even those of the common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said, I could go with her in the dog cart, and we would drive to a place she knew of, and there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by. When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog cart fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox hunt. I waited, dreaming, and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the forest on the left, a mellow bugle note came floating. Then, all of a sudden, a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by and disappeared in the forest on the right. There was a pause, and then a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie fire, a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to see him ride. He was a master horseman. He came like a storm till he was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall. Then he stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toenails and shouted like a demon, Which way did the fox go? I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on. For he was excited, you know. But I was calm, so I said softly and without acrimony. Which fox? It seemed to anger him. I don't know why, and he thundered out. Which fox? Why, THE fox! Which way did the fox go? I said, with great gentleness, even argumentatively, if you could be a little more definite, a little less vague, because I am a stranger and there are many foxes, as you will know even better than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify, and you're certainly the damnedest idiot that has escaped in a thousand years, and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man. I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited too. Oh, all alive! She said, He spoke to you, didn't he? Yes, it is what happened. I knew it. I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew he spoke to you. Do you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds. Tell me, what do you think of him? Him? Well, for sizing up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and accurate judgment of any man I ever saw. It pleased her, I thought it would. G. got away from Nalheim just in time to escape being shut in by the quarantine bars on the frontiers, and so did we, for we left the next day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian Custom House, and we should have feared likewise, but for the thoughtfulness of our Consul General in Frankfurt. He introduced me to the Italian Consul General, and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian majesty service. But it was more powerful than it looked. In addition to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were filled exclusively with dutiable stuff—household goods purchased in Frankfurt for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going to ship these through by express, but at the last moment an order went throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them in the Custom House might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I was courier for the party, the most incapable one they ever employed. We arrived and pressed with the crowd into the immense Custom House, and the usual worries began. Everybody crowding to the counter and begging to have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing. It would be better to give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the language. I should never accomplish anything. Just then a tall, handsome man in a fine uniform was passing by, and I knew he must be the station master, and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap and made a beautiful bow to me and said in English, which is your baggage? Please show it to me. I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it. Nobody was interested in it. All the family's attempts to get attention to it had failed, except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutyable goods. It was just being opened. My officer said, There! Let that alone! Lock it! Now chalk it! Chalk all of the lot, and now please come. He plowed through the waiting crowd, eye following, to the counter, and he gave orders again in his emphatic military way. Chalk these! Chalk all of them! Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again and went his way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were present, getting their baggage chalked, and as we passed down in review on our way to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy which gave me deep satisfaction. But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered it up in his arms, pointed back once I had come, and marched me ahead of him past that long wall of passengers again, he chattering and exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at heart I was cruelly humbled. When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of it was at the worst, the stately station master stepped out from somewhere and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him, and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying to him the whole shabby business. The station master was plainly very angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian. Then suddenly took off his hat and made that beautiful bow, and said, Oh! it is you! I beg a thousand pardons! This idiot here, he turned to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were moving in procession again, he in the lead and ashamed this time, I with my chin up, and so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and I went forth to the train with the honors of war, tobacco and all.