CHAPTER II.
SYDNEY—CAMELLIA TREES—ORANGE GARDENS.
SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, _June 2_.
DEAR NELL,—My last letter home was posted at Rockhampton, two days before we reached Brisbane. The latter lies twenty miles up a river, so a little steamer comes down to meet the big one and carry letters and passengers to and fro. On this occasion there was a special one for Sir Arthur, and he and his party were hospitably entertained by the Governor, Mr Cairns. His private secretary at present is Mr Maudslay, a son of the celebrated engineer. He has already travelled far and near for his own amusement, and we think it probable that some day he will find his way to Fiji and become one of our band of brothers, or Knights of the Round Table, if you think that sounds better. I should scarcely think Brisbane was a congenial atmosphere. It seemed to us a singularly uninteresting place, its botanical gardens being almost the only resource. Of course, in a semi-tropical climate like that of Queensland, there is always the attraction of very varied foliage; but we thought even this was somewhat stunted.
We had lovely weather on our two days’ voyage from Brisbane, and also the day we arrived here. Unfortunately we just missed seeing the festivities for the Queen’s birthday, when every ship in the beautiful harbour was dressed, and there was an immense volunteer review. There are no military here, and the volunteers only meet on this one day. Lady Robinson is, however, to have a great ball to-night, when she promises to show us any number of Australian beauties.
The accommodation of Government House is so very limited, and the family party so large, that it was as much as she could do to find room for Lady Gordon and the children. All the gentlemen have found quarters at an hotel; and Commodore and Mrs Goodenough, a most hospitable and kind couple, have managed to take me in. Never was there a better illustration of the old proverb that “where there is heart-room there is hearth-room,” for their house is tiny and yet shelters many friends. Lady Robinson kindly says that, though not living under her roof, I am nevertheless her guest. So I dine there most nights.
How you would revel in the exquisite loveliness of the camellias! The dinner-table is most often decorated with delicate pink camellias and maidenhair fern; and the loveliest white ones are abundant as snowdrops in an English spring. Beautiful as these are, I am not enamoured of what we have hitherto seen of Australia as contrasted with Ceylon and India. To begin with, I have contrived to catch a severe cold, not improved by all these starlight walks to and from Government House, which is just too near to be worth driving to; and the climate is apparently as changeable as in England. We have had four consecutive days of incessant rain and cold, raw air, so on every side you hear people coughing and sneezing; and we are glad to cower over fires—for which, by the way, the coal comes from Newcastle.
It is so absurd to hear the old familiar names out here. A man tells you he has just come from Morpeth, Oxford, or Hyde Park, Norwood or Sydenham, Waterloo, Waverley or Paddington, Birkenhead or Liverpool, Brighton or Cremorne, Clifton, St Leonard’s, Darlington, Anglesea, &c. It is quite a relief to hear so wholly novel a name as Wooloomoolloo!
But truly all the attractions which have hitherto delighted me in foreign lands are here conspicuous by their absence. Apparently no native population. Certainly no rich colour; no statuesque tropical undress; no graceful cocoa-palms. Everything is British, even to the ploughman riding his horses home at night, and the four-horse omnibuses, and the hansom cab which drives you about the town at 4s. an hour, and the genuine unadulterated cockney accents of men born and bred in the colony. Of course it is interesting to see this Greater Britain mushroom, but it is difficult to believe that we are 14,000 miles from London! and I hope, before long, to get glimpses of bush-life.
But of Sydney itself we run some danger of getting more than we wish, inasmuch as the difficulties of getting ready a house in Fiji are very great, especially from lack of hands to labour—a difficulty which has been sorely increased by a frightful plague of measles, which, by news just received, have (at the lowest computation) carried off one-fifth of the whole population of the Isles. Some rate it far higher. And the survivors are all disheartened and miserable, and unfit for work. So, although Sir Arthur is buying his doors and windows and planking ready-made here to facilitate his building, it may be months before he has a house ready for us; and meanwhile we must have one here, and a very difficult article it is to find. The gentlemen are house-hunting all over the place, with very bad success; and the worst of it is that there is so little time, as Sir Arthur must start for Fiji within ten days, and leave us settled here,—a dull prospect for Lady Gordon, and doubly so as she must be anxious at his running into such a sink of measles, he being the only one of the party who has never had them.
We went to the opera last night. The most remarkable thing about it was the drop-scene, which was simply a huge advertisement sheet, with puffs of all sorts, from the newest sewing-machine to the most efficacious pills! Imagine the effect of this descending between each act of Anna Bolena! I regretted much that I had not rather accompanied Commodore and Mrs Goodenough, who spent the evening with a large party of blue-jackets. It is quite touching to see their cordial kindness to all the men, and extreme interest in all that concerns them; and yet the Commodore has the name of being stern. I can only say I never saw a face which more thoroughly revealed the genial nature within.
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_June 10._
We have had several pleasant expeditions in the neighbourhood. Last Monday, Sir Hercules having ordered a special train to take us to see the Blue Mountains, we started early and went as far as the wonderful zigzags by which the rail is carried across the mountains. I had the privilege of sitting on the engine, so I obtained an admirable view.
The following day Mr Gordon, Capt. Knollys, Dr Macgregor, Dr Mayo, and Mr Eyre started for Fiji in H.M.S. Barracouta, so our first detachment is fairly under weigh. Sir Arthur is waiting for telegrams from England, and is to follow in H.M.S. Pearl with Commodore Goodenough. It has been decided that we are to remain at Pfahlert’s Hotel till he sends us orders to follow, which we hope may come soon.
Meanwhile we find some attractions here. To-day we drove out to the South Heads, and had a most lovely walk along the cliffs. At the entrance to the harbour we came to a pretty little church perched among the rocks, and listened to the choir practising “The strain upraise,” while we sat basking in the sunshine, the whole air fragrant with the honeyed blossoms of the red and white epacris, which grows in profusion, and is suggestive of many-coloured heaths. Though the everlasting gum-tree is apparently the only indigenous growth, there is lovely foliage of all sorts in the gardens of innumerable villas, which lie dotted all over the countless headlands, and along the shores of the many creeks which branch off from this immense and most lovely harbour.
In these gardens you find clumps of bamboo growing beside weeping-willows; holly-bushes, with clusters of scarlet berries, overshadowed by stiff date palms; broad-leaved plantains, contrasting with leafless trees; frost-dreading heliotrope beside wintry chrysanthemums and withered oak; while dark Norfolk Island pines serve as a background to large camellia-trees, literally one blaze of blossom, pink, white, crimson, and variegated. These grow in such rank profusion wherever they receive the slightest care, that we marvel to find them in so comparatively few gardens, especially as their value is so fully recognised that good blossoms fetch about 6d. a-piece; and market-gardeners allow millions to drop unheeded, rather than lower their price.
There are lovely ferns in many of the little gullies, and delightful spots at which to land for picnics. One of the favourite “ploys” here is to start armed with a small hammer, a bottle of vinegar or some lemons, and slices of bread and butter, and find a feast of oysters on the rocks! Two days ago, the weather being warm and sunny, Lady Robinson took us in her steam-launch fourteen miles up one of the creeks. It was like a beautiful Scotch lake; and we caught glimpses of many lesser creeks branching off to right and left, all tempting us to explore. Now I must despatch my letter. So good-bye.—Your loving sister.
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PFAHLERT’S HOTEL, SYDNEY, _Sunday, June 20, 1875_.
I told you in my last that the first detachment of our party started for Fiji in the Barracouta. Now so many have followed that we feel quite forsaken. This day last week Sir Arthur and Lady Gordon went to a farewell lunch on board H.M.S. Pearl with Commodore and Mrs Goodenough, and on Monday the Barracouta sailed. We sat in the beautiful botanic gardens to watch her pass down the harbour, carrying away so many of our friends—Sir Arthur, Mr Mitchell, and Mr Le Hunte of our own set, and the good kind Commodore and his officers. I do so envy them going off to the Isles, and of course it is a sore trial to Lady Gordon to be left here: it will be fully three months before we are allowed to follow. On Wednesday another detachment followed—namely, Mr and Mrs de Ricci, Mrs Macgregor and her little girl, Mrs Abbey and her two little boys. They went by the Meteor, a very small sailing ship, and I fear they are likely to have a very uncomfortable passage, lasting fully a fortnight.
The people here are not encouraging as to our prospects. Many of them have lost a great deal of money which they had invested in Fijian plantations; and those who have had friends or relations there, in some cases ladies and children, give us most lamentable accounts of the hardships they had to undergo from want of the commonest necessaries of life, and dangerous voyages in open canoes. From all we hear, I think there can be no doubt a planter’s life in the Isles must be a most unenviable lot; but of course, as far as we individually are concerned, the way will be made smooth.
I am preparing for emergencies by attending the infirmary several days a week, to pick up a few ideas about simple nursing. It is under the care of Miss Osborne, a cousin of Florence Nightingale. Evidently her whole heart is in her work, and everything is done thoroughly; and kindness and order reign supreme. I have been very much interested in some of the patients, especially in one poor sailor who hails from “the parish of Dyke.”[4]
Nothing strikes me more here than the exceeding loyalty of the inhabitants. Every one speaks of England as “home,” though neither they nor their parents or grandparents ever saw the old country; and certainly our Queen has no more devoted subjects. To-day being her Majesty’s Accession, the churches were crowded; and at the cathedral this afternoon we had the “Coronation Anthem,” and then “God save the Queen.”
I find here that it does not do to use the word _native_, as we are wont to do, with reference to the brown races. Here it is applied exclusively to white men born in the country, the hideous blacks being invariably described as _aborigines_. Hideous indeed they are, far beyond any race I have yet met with; and of so low a type that it is impossible, in their case, to regret that strange law of nature which seems to ordain the dying out of dark skinned races before the advance of civilisation, and which is nowhere so self-evident as in Australia, where they have simply faded away, notwithstanding the strict observance of their own most elaborate marriage laws, which set forth the various degrees of relationship between different tribes, and the rotations in which alone they are permitted to marry. Perhaps, however, if all tales be true concerning the ruthless policy of extermination practised by too many of the settlers on the frontier, and the manner in which tribes have been shot down wholesale for daring to trespass on the lands taken from them without any sort of right the extinction of the Australian black may be found to be less a law of nature than an illustration of the might that makes right. But certainly the few specimens we have come across have been unspeakably wretched, living in gipsy camps far more miserable than those of any British tinker, altogether dirty and debased.
The Commodore rejoices us by saying that our Fijians are a very superior race, many of them really handsome, fine, stalwart men. He brought some Fijian yams on his return from the Isles, and had a dinner party, that we might all taste them. Anything Fijian is really as great a curiosity here as it would be in London. You know the Pearl took Sir Hercules to Fiji to make final arrangements about annexation; and when that business was settled, King Thakombau and his sons came to visit Sir Hercules and see something of civilisation. You can imagine how strange the great city must have seemed to men whose notion of a king’s palace is a one-roomed thatched house one storey high. The horses and carriages were still more wonderful; and as to the railway, that was beyond comprehension. But the old king took it all very philosophically, and was never so happy as when Lady Robinson’s little grand-daughter, a pretty little child with golden hair, crept on to his knee, whispering, “You won’t eat _me_, will you?” Or else he would lie down and rest on his own mat, keeping his big Bible beside him,—not that the old man could read it, for I believe his studies commenced rather too late in life, but he said “it made him feel so good!”
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PFAHLERT’S HOTEL, _July 15_.
DEAR EISA,—I have been all the morning waiting for the mail, sure of a letter from you, but I again have drawn a blank in that tantalising lottery. You can scarcely realise what a matter of interest the mails become in a place like this—the perpetual coming and going of the steamers, the signalling of their approach from the Heads, then watching them come up the harbour, right past Government House to their respective creeks. Such a lovely harbour as it is, and every headland dotted with picturesque villas! We have had both time and weather to enjoy it, the latter having been faultless ever since the rainy week which greeted our arrival, when it did pour with a vengeance. Now it is quite lovely, only the nights are too chilly sometimes for perfection. It is midwinter, you know, and all the deciduous trees are leafless. Leafless oak and apple trees beside camellia and orange trees in full flower and fruit! But the willows have not lost _their_ leaves, but grow beside great clumps of bamboo.
The days slip away pleasantly. Many very kind friends plan delightful excursions for us, by land or water; and I learn what carriage-springs are capable of enduring when I see the daintiest little pony-phaetons driven, apparently at random, through the bush, across fields, or over the roughest cart-tracks. When we come to a paling, we deliberately take it down, and, of course, put it up again. Sometimes we come to dells where the loveliest maidenhair fern grows wild, and we fill the carriage with it and the pink epacris. As to the sweet wild geranium which abounds, it is thought quite extraordinary that we should care to gather it! Yesterday we went by rail to Paramatta, and drove to the great orange gardens, and noticed one group of trees from 40 to 45 feet high, the stems being nearly a foot in diameter, and the lowest branch three feet above my head. I do not remember any so large in Malta or elsewhere. It seemed strange to see these gardens with such wealth of fruit and blossom, while the neighbouring peach and pear orchards were all leafless. We drove on to the camellia gardens, and paid five shillings for quite a small basketful, though millions of blossoms were wasting their loveliness, and I would fain have carried off even those that lay unheeded on the grass. To-night there is a great ball at the Masonic Hall, to which we go, being bound to see everything.