Part 5 (1/2)

As he said seriously, while joking on the point, 'In the far south there was literally n.o.body to lead, whereas Greece had men sufficient to mould her destinies. Anyhow, one given the administration of Greece, would not have had a work more honourable than the development of Australasia, a larger business altogether. 'Here was a region where several kingdoms were in the raising, where the pattern could take something from yourself. What drew me to the far south, as a fairy-tale might, was that charm, ”Yes, it's all new. Hardly anything has yet been done. It's mine to do with as I will.”'

There was the white man's history to fas.h.i.+on, and the black man's history to discover. Sir George did not neglect the second inquiry, because the other was the more important. His explorations had given him the idea that Australia was of a volcanic origin. He judged it to have been, at some period, a series of islands, each with its own volcano. These islands had risen from the sea, been licked into shape probably by earthquakes, and coming gradually together, had formed a continent.

During his Governors.h.i.+p of South Australia, Sir George fell upon a piece of evidence which materially supported this belief. The skeleton of a whale, as Sir Richard Owen certified the specimen, was discovered quite inland, beyond the first mountain range. If Sir George had arrived at some view, after long deliberation, he liked it to be accepted, as we all do. Therefore he welcomed the discovery of that whale.

'I was laughed at,' he commented, 'when I insisted that the natives of Australia must have come from a race more civilised than themselves. A variety of reasons supported my estimate of their origin; as that, all over native Australia, there appeared to prevail a rigorous law governing marriage.

'It demonstrated that the natives understood the effect which blood kins.h.i.+p would exercise upon the stamina of a race. There was no single great tribe in Australia, but a series of tribes; yet this law was general among them. No conqueror could have imposed it; instead, it must have sprung from a family coming in, and bringing it with them. Where did that family come from? I cannot tell. But we see, among the Aborigines of Australia, customs resembling those of the African continent.'

Studying those customs, Sir George had been witness of the ancient rite of circ.u.mcision, which also argued a higher civilisation. The blacks built themselves, layer upon layer, into a human altar, and on it the sacrifice was performed. Meanwhile a grunting noise, 'Ha-ha-ha,'

sonorous, even solemn, a savage ma.s.s, arose from the heap. Sir George imagined that he was almost the first Englishman to behold this ceremony, on the part of the Aborigines of Australia. To them it was religion; whence did they get it? Their common rule Sir George found expressed as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but they had their lighter moments. He discovered, in a lady savage, a humorous link between the vanity of all womankind. There had been a native dance, and he was leaving, when the chieftainess approached him with the request, 'Oh, don't go away until you have seen my son dance; he will be beautiful!'

'I waited, of course,' Sir George consented, ever gallant, 'and the son presented himself, daubed over with dirt of divers colours, and began to hop about. He was well built, he danced cleverly, he cackled in his finery, and his mother was hugely proud of him. She might have been an English d.u.c.h.ess, introducing a pretty daughter to a first ball. It was seeing the parent in the child, the most marked form of self-flattery.

Actually, tears of joy ran down those black, wizened cheeks. I wouldn't have had it otherwise, and I was glad I stayed for the young buck.'

Wherever Sir George Grey went in Australia, he found the natives living from hand to mouth, on roots and the reward of the chase. They were equally primitive, in a system of punishment, which stood an offender up as a mark for spears. But they were sportsmen, for it was prescribed that the quarry must only be chastened in the legs. The tribes also reached out to civilisation, in that each had its ground marked off, with the accuracy of a European estate.

'I believe'--Sir George carried this subject wider--'that the cardinal trouble in the settlement of new countries, has lain in the desire of the white man to possess the lands of the black man. Perhaps it has been inevitable, but the thing should be done on a proper method, and that has not always obtained.'

Sir John Franklin, at Van Diemen's Land, was a brother Australian Governor to Sir George Grey, but they never met. 'I had correspondence with him,' Sir George observed, 'and from all I heard he was a most interesting personality. Subsequently, I did meet Lady Franklin, who had much character, allied to womanly gentleness. Everybody admired her laving persistence to unravel the fate which had overtaken her husband in the Arctic regions.'

It was almost a discovery to Sir George, with his wide knowledge of Australasia, that he had never set foot in Tasmania. He pa.s.sed it variously, on board s.h.i.+p, yet had not been ash.o.r.e. How was that? 'Maybe,'

he replied, 'because all my life I made it a rule, not to let anything turn me aside from what I had immediately in hand. If you set out for a place, with some definite object in view, your road should be the most direct one. Don't branch off, because there is something elsewhere which might gratify your curiosity.'

Sir George disciplined the hours, holding himself accountable for them to his fellow-men and to the Great Accountant.

VIII PICTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE

There had been a reception in London, by Gladstone, following the usual dinners which ministers of the Queen give in honour of her birthday.

To Sir George Grey, who was in the splendid crowd, came the wife of an eminent member of the Government, carrying to an old friend a woman's eager news of her own dinner. 'Oh,' she whispered in that still small voice which rises a clarion note above a general buzz, 'oh, everything went off admirably, and Bob's delighted. But the soup was just a little cold.'

The soup often got cold at the Governor's board in Adelaide, the while he was laying the foundations of the Colony. This implied study of the problem, 'How are we to utilise the natives for the civilisation which has begun to invade them in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?'

Already, in Western Australia, Sir George had devoted earnest study to the subject, and method ripened with him. He felt, perhaps, that he had been given a unique work, in the sense of moulding raw human materials to higher ends. He was a master craftsman, and as he contrived, so there might be issues near and remote. The future dwelt with Sir George when to others, lacking the seer's eye, it was still below the farthest horizon.

Call it the second-sight of statesmans.h.i.+p--something which is born with a person rather than acquired. He had simple words for the ideas that underlay his life's labour, in bringing barbarous races under the harrow of cultivation.

'It is quite evident that man's great line of exertion, is towards getting more food for himself and his family. This truth applies to him in all his states; only the more he advances in material welfare, the more he needs to satisfy him. With a savage, mere food is enough, but in the centres of civilisation beautiful clothes, fine horses and carriages, marble palaces, all form the prize. Ever, it is the same impelling desire.

'Well, the way to adopt with natives, was to show them how to obtain more food. Benefit them in that manner, and they would regard you as their friend, and you would have influence over them. I always paid a native, doing unskilled work, the wage a white would have received for the same effort. It was mere justice. Yet, so small a thing had immense results, for manhood was cultivated in the black. Self-respect infected him. He discovered himself, with proud surprise, to be a man instead of a chattel.

'The mystery of managing native races, resolves itself into a few natural laws. My hardest trouble was the witchcraft, which held in bonds, the savage peoples whom I had to govern. It might differ, here or there, in its characteristics; the evil was there all the same. Not merely did the natives believe in witch-craft, having been swathed in it for ages, but their chiefs made a profit therefrom, and were staunch for its maintenance. My antidote was the introduction of medical aid, so that in the cures wrought, those children of the dark, might see what surpa.s.sed their own magic. They were discomfited, as it were, on their own ground.

'Superst.i.tion, which I distinguish from witchcraft, though the greater evil flourished on the less, had its best treatment in the spread of the Christian religion. Surely, a wonderful witness of its divine origin, lies in the fact that it applies to the elevation and happiness of all the world's races--is understandable to all. Farther, native schools made advances upon sheer ignorance, as hospitals did in respect to witchcraft; and it was possible, in some measure, to eradicate native indolence by affording youths a training in a trade, or grown men work on public improvements: Here we return to where we began--food as the primitive impulse driving mankind.'

No trait of human nature was neglected by Sir George Grey, in his exertions to plant the better ideas of living. He detected that the Kaffirs of South Africa were sharp to humour, owners of a lively sense of the ridiculous. On that hung an incident, which brought out the value of the personal equation in dealing with natives, whether in South Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. It was an item of Sir George Grey's whole native policy. An old witch doctor, he mentioned, had been inciting unrest among the dark ma.s.ses of Kaffraria. Sir George had him put comfortably in prison, where he could be certain of medical attendance and rest. That was the least office, demanded towards a human being evidently in a disturbed state of health.

It confounded the witch doctor. Never was such a father to his people as Sir George Grey, and the tribes of a hemisphere acclaimed it. The witch doctor had his doubts, took his physic wryly, and begged piteously to be set free. He was released, on the strict promise that he would cease being a firebrand. Not that alone, for he publicly recanted among the Kaffirs, gathered on a market morning, to their huge amus.e.m.e.nt and derision. He made no more trouble, and could not, had he tried, his fame being ruined.

'A joust of fun like that,' was Sir George Grey's moral from the incident, 'had a wonderful effect upon natives. It was much better than shooting the witch doctor, and quite as effective. Even among whites, ridicule may be a very serious punishment.'