Colonial facts and fictions: Humorous sketches

COLONIAL FACTS AND FICTIONS
Humorous Sketches
By MARK KERSHAW
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1886
Colonial Facts and Fictions .
Residents in foreign lands often think that it is an impertinence if a passing stranger write about them. Those who have been for a long time resident in a country seldom write a description of their experiences. About many things they seem to have learnt how little they really know, whilst to things of every-day occurrence they have become so accustomed, that they do not think them worthy of description. The persons who do write, and who delight to write about a place, are the birds of passage. These persons know very little about their subject. The very fact of only knowing a little about a place adds a charm to an attempt at its description. If you know everything about it you are inclined to write a series of facts, while if you only know a little, there is room for the exercise of the imagination, and the production becomes a combination of truths and untruths.
Reading a book of facts is like reading a dictionary. To make facts palatable they must be diluted as you dilute whisky. Never having been blessed with a capacity for gleaning facts, I have gradually come to dislike them. Now and again facts have been unpleasantly thrust upon my attention. Some facts come out of two bottles. You take an inch of one and dilute it with two inches of the other. In many respects these facts may be compared to the high and low pressure cylinders of a marine engine. Other facts come out of tall, gilt-necked bottles. First they pop, and then they fizzle. When you have imbibed a lot of these facts, at first you feel jolly. Afterwards you feel unwell. The facts I picked up at Port Darwin gave me a headache. When I came to P.D. (it is an Australian custom to abbreviate), I did not know the difference between a kangaroo’s tail and a gum tree. I do not think that I knew very much more when I left.
The first thing that happened when we dropped anchor, was that the anchor made a great splash in the water. This was followed by the rattling of the chain, and a great deal of vibration. We had many Chinamen on board, and as Australians dislike Chinamen, they do what they can to keep them out of their country. At every port, wherever we went, no matter whether the Chinamen were to land or not, they had to pass a medical inspection. At some of the ports the doctors also inspected the Europeans. ‘Let me look at your forehead, now your chest—Um, no spots. That will do.’