The Results of the Pioneers' Work
About the time that Bligh was dispatched in the Bounty to obtain bread-fruit plants great developments were instituted in regard to Australia as the result of Cook's earlier voyages. The revolt of the American colonies and other circumstances had deprived the British Government of a region across the seas, to which convicted criminals might be sent as a cheap and easy way of getting rid of them. It was accordingly suggested to the British Government by various persons, including Sir Joseph Banks, that New South Wales (as Cook had called the eastern part of Australia) would be an excellent region in which to found a penal settlement, as well as to take steps for the ultimate founding of a free colony, a region to which British emigrants might go.
Australia and Tasmania need no longer take it to heart that their foundation as nations dates from such a cause as the transportation of convicts, since from a remote period in the history of civilized peoples this is how many and many a new colony has been founded. More especially was it so in the case of British America and the oldest of the British West India Islands. These settlements were chiefly valued for nearly 200 years by the British Government because they were places to which persons convicted of felony or of political crimes could be transported. Moreover, the free emigrants of good character who colonized Australia and Tasmania from the first considerably outnumbered the convicts who were sent to Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, and West Australia. Amongst these again the criminal convicts for the most part died out without leaving issue. It was the political prisoners among the transported persons who chiefly prospered and founded families. In short, the colonization of Australia resembled in its processes the colonization of the United States. The person appointed to superintend the first settlement of Australia was Captain Arthur Phillip, the son of a German teacher of languages in London, who had entered the British Navy and served with great distinction. He commanded the first expedition to New South Wales, and left England in 1787 with a fleet of two men-of-war and six transports, conveying 550 men and 200 women convicts, and three store ships. There were also some free emigrants; in all about 1100 persons. The ships sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and reached Botany Bay on 18 January, 1788. Less than a month afterwards Phillip had already chosen and named the wonderful harbour of Sydney as the capital of the future colony, and almost on that very day there arrived at Botany Bay two French ships under the command of the Comte de la Pérouse, who had been sent out from France on a scientific expedition similar to those of Captain Cook. It is possible that but for the punctual arrival of Governor Phillip the French flag would have been hoisted over Australia. Though, as it would certainly have been pulled down again a few years later by the British conquest of the seas, the possibility is not one to give rise to sensational writing. But Governor Phillip was a man of energy. He not only asserted the British claim to all the coasts of eastern and southern Australia, but sent a party to take possession of Norfolk Island and its splendid sources of timber supply, and here a number of convicts were set on shore.[108]
The interest of the French Government in the lands of the Pacific Ocean did not cease with the remarkable voyage of Bougainville. In 1785 Jean-François Galaup, Count of the Perouse (a native of Albi in the south-west of France, who had done gallant service for his country in Canada), took command of an expedition of two vessels, La Boussole and L'Astrolabe, which was to explore more especially the northern parts of the Pacific. Although France had recently been expelled from Canada by the success of the British arms, and had transferred Louisiana to Spain, she still hoped in some way to regain her position in North America; and in spite of Cook's inability to find a navigable strait of water across the vast breadth of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the opinion still persisted in France that such a sea route across the continent did exist.[109] De la Pérouse was also directed to explore the coasts of north-eastern Asia, China, Japan, New Guinea, and Australia. His explorations of north-east Asia were very remarkable, but do not come within the scope of this narrative. He reached the Samoa archipelago in the winter of 1787. Here the officers and crew of the Astrolabe quarrelled with the natives, and as a result eleven of the Frenchmen were killed. From Samoa the French expedition passed by way of Tonga and Norfolk Island to the coast of New South Wales, and, as already related, arrived at Botany Bay only a few days after the British expedition under Governor Phillip. After a brief stay in Botany Bay the Comte de la Pérouse sailed away northwards, and his expedition was heard of no more, nor was his actual fate ever completely made known. Apparently the two ships were wrecked on the coral reefs of Vanikoro, a small island in the Santa Cruz group to the north of the New Hebrides. The natives of the Santa Cruz Islands showed themselves very hostile to strangers and white men in earlier times. It was here that Bishop Patterson was murdered in 1871, and it is possible that after the two French ships were driven on to the coral rocks by some storm their crews perished at the hands of the savages.
In 1791 another expedition, under the command of Bruni D'Entrecasteaux, Governor of Mauritius, was dispatched from Mauritius with two ships, La Recherche and L'Espérance, to search for de la Pérouse. D'Entrecasteaux obtained no information about the fate of his predecessor's ships, but his voyage added considerably to our knowledge of Australasia. He did much to complete Cook's very imperfect outline of the coast of New Caledonia, he surveyed a good deal of the Tasmanian coast (though he failed to find out that this was after all an island), and he explored the south coast of Australia, which, except for the preceding voyage of Vancouver, had remained almost entirely unknown since the hasty exploration of Pieter Nuyts in 1628.
George Vancouver (whose great work as a British pioneer is associated more with the north-west coast of America) had in 1791 mapped a good deal of the south-west Australian coast and had pointed out the value as a harbour of King George's Sound. He also added to our knowledge of New Zealand, and then continued his route across the Pacific towards what is now the coast of British Columbia.
The troubles which ensued in France, owing to the Revolution and the uprise of Napoleon, diverted the attention of the French from oversea discovery for something like eight years. The British took advantage of this lull to increase their knowledge of the Australian coast and their claims to this region, which even in 1788 were defined as extending from Cape York on Torres Straits, round the east coast of Australia to the southernmost point of Tasmania, and to comprise all the adjacent islands of the Pacific Ocean. A remarkable discovery of an outcrop of coal on the Australian coast near Tasmania by shipwrecked sailors attracted the attention of George Bass, the surgeon of a small Government vessel. This bold man, embarking in a mere whaleboat, passed along the Australian coast until he found the outcrop of coal. In the following year, 1798, his explorations of these regions convinced him that Tasmania was an island. Bass was accompanied on his circumnavigation of Tasmania by Lieutenant Matthew Flinders. This first circumnavigation of Tasmania, which lasted for five months, was undertaken in a little vessel which had been constructed in Australia from the timber of the Norfolk Island pine, and was only of 25 tons burden. In this same vessel the gallant Flinders[110]—one of the most remarkable amongst Australian pioneers—in 1799 explored the coast of what we now know as Queensland, which was then called the Moreton Bay district. In 1802 Flinders had become the commander of H.M.S. Investigator, a ship of 334 tons. He christened the continent for the first time definitely with the name of Australia; and having already added to Cook's exploration of the Queensland coast, he now turned his attention to that of South Australia, which at the commencement of the nineteenth century was most imperfectly known, being only vaguely delineated from the surmised outline put down in the early part of the seventeenth century by the Dutch explorers, together with a little work achieved by Captain Vancouver and the Frenchman D'Entrecasteaux. Amongst other points Flinders discovered Kangaru Island off the coast of South Australia.[111] The French seem to have had some conception of the indentation of the South Australian coast known as Spencer's Gulf, and from this hint arose the theory put forward at the end of the eighteenth century that New South Wales was one vast island and New Holland another, separated by a strait of water uniting Spencer Gulf on the south with the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north. Flinders's exploration of Spencer's Gulf definitely proved the continuity of the whole Australian area.
With Flinders on board the Investigator was a young midshipman (his cousin) of the name of John Franklin, long afterwards to become a governor of Tasmania and to achieve deathless fame as one of the great Arctic pioneers.
In 1800 there was dispatched from France another scientific expedition for the exploration of Australia. This was under the command of Captain Nicolas Baudin, and consisted of two ships, Le Géographie and Le Naturaliste, and contained twenty-three geographers, zoologists, and draughtsmen; but owing to bad arrangements in regard to her supplies of food the crews of the two ships suffered to a horrible extent from scurvy before they reached Australia, and indeed might have perished but for the assistance they received from the British settlement at Port Jackson (Sydney). This French expedition also explored the southern coast of Australia, but, with the exception of about 160 miles of coast which it was the first to examine, added little to geographical knowledge as regards priority of discovery, though for a long time Captain Louis de Freycinet, the mapmaker who accompanied Baudin, posed as having been the first to map much of the Tasmanian and South Australian coasts. It is evident that his commander, Baudin, or Freycinet himself, had borrowed and copied the charts made by Flinders, and had amused themselves by giving the names of French personages to many a bay, promontory, and island already discovered and named by the British.
In the autumn of 1802 Flinders, having completed his survey of the whole south coast of Australia from Cape Leuwin to Sydney, started once more in the Investigator to complete his circumnavigation of the island continent. He made a careful exploration of the Great Barrier Reef, and then proceeded to explore the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. After a brief rest at the Island of Timor the Investigator sailed round the west and south coasts of Australia and once more reached Port Jackson in 1803. Flinders had thus been the first commander to circumnavigate Australia and to prove that it was an undivided area, and that there were no more surprises or mysteries in its outline.
Whaling in the South Seas
Flinders left Port Jackson again in August, 1803, to proceed to England in H.M.S. Porpoise, which was accompanied by a merchant vessel, the Cato. But both these vessels struck a coral reef about 800 miles north from Port Jackson and were completely wrecked. The crews managed to land in safety on a small sand-bank only 4 feet at most above high-water mark, and here they were obliged to camp under a blazing sun with all that they could save in the way of provisions and important papers. Flinders, getting into a six-oared boat with a few seamen, actually rowed and sailed 800 miles across the sea back to Port Jackson, obtained a small vessel there, returned to the reef, and brought off safely all the officers and men who had been left there. In this same vessel, the Cumberland, a schooner of only 29 tons, he started for England with ten seamen and a collection of papers, charts, and geological specimens. In this little unseaworthy vessel he actually sailed across the stormy Indian Ocean and reached Mauritius, where he put in for rest and refreshment.
Mauritius at that time—December, 1803—was still in the possession of the French. Although Flinders had been granted a French passport when he left England in the Investigator, the Governor of Mauritius refused to recognize this as he was no longer in that ship. This Governor-General Decaen—on the contrary, put Flinders in prison, charging him with being a spy, and seized all his papers and charts. But although these last were kept from him until the close of 1807, and one of his logbooks was never returned to him, it is now shown that they were not made use of in compiling the atlas for the report of Baudin's expedition. What the French had borrowed from him was due to his friendly communications when the two expeditions met on the south-east coast of Australia.
Nevertheless, Flinders was detained more or less as a prisoner in Mauritius, eating his heart out, for nearly seven years. He reached England in October, 1810, after Mauritius had been surrendered to a British fleet. His treatment by the Government of his country on his return to England staggers one with its heartless ingratitude. The first circumnavigator of Australia—who had encountered perils which only a heroic spirit could have overcome, who had nevertheless taken the utmost care of the health of those serving under him, and had consequently had little loss of life to report, who had really by his presence on the Australian coasts at many points on different occasions assured to his mother country undisputed possession of that continent by forestalling the expeditions of France, who had traversed the Indian Ocean from Torres Straits to Mauritius in a little boat of 29 tons—was given no reward or honour, and was told that his long imprisonment in that island had barred him from all promotion. He settled down to work for the Admiralty at Portsmouth, and he devoted himself with unceasing industry to the compilation of a book describing his explorations and reproducing his original charts of the Australian coastline. On the very day on which this book was published—in July, 1814—Flinders died, only forty years old. His constitution had been greatly impaired, not so much by the incidents of his circumnavigation of the Australian coast as by the long and unhealthy imprisonment in Mauritius; and his health was undoubtedly further affected by the utter lack of recognition which his great journey met with on the part of the British Government.
Soon after the fall of Napoleon, in 1815, the French Government again sent out exploring expeditions to the Pacific, and each one caused fresh British settlements on the Australian coasts and on those of New Zealand. This last region had been visited at the close of the eighteenth century not only by Captain Vancouver but by Spanish and even Russian ships, while the infant marine of the United States, chiefly interested in whaling enterprise, were attracted to New Zealand on account of the abundance of seals and whales on its coasts or in the adjacent waters of the Pacific. They found in New Zealand (which in spite of occasional episodes of savage anger against the white man, and cannibalism, was becoming more and more used to trade and the settlement of the white man) a useful base for their operations, and their attention was directed not merely to the obtaining of oil from whales and seals, but to the value of the New Zealand flax and timber.
It was, however, the foundation of the British colony of New South Wales which most powerfully influenced the fate of New Zealand. Communication rapidly sprang up from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards between Sydney and New Zealand. In 1814 there arrived a party of English missionaries, under the leadership of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, which settled in the North Island. In spite of frequent disappointments and rebuffs these missionaries actually succeeded in about twenty-five years in bringing the two islands into something like a condition of peace by composing the quarrels between native tribes, many of whom became converted to Christianity. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who had already carried out several successful colonizing experiments in South Australia, desired to do the same in New Zealand, but was opposed by the missionaries and by the British Government. He eventually succeeded in his purpose, and may almost be called the creator of the New Zealand Dominion, though he would have failed had it not been for the co-operation of that great Governor, Sir George Grey. The British Government hesitated to annex New Zealand, until forced to do so by learning that a French colonial expedition was on its way to take possession of these islands for France. New Zealand was therefore added to the British empire on 11 August, 1840. The French settlers arrived at Akaroa, in the South Island; but, in spite of the British flag having been hoisted only two days before, fifty-seven of them decided to remain, and their descendants at Akaroa now number six hundred.
Between 1835 and 1853 the French obtained some small satisfaction for their eighteenth-century explorations by establishing a protectorate over the Tahiti archipelago and annexing the large island of New Caledonia, to which possessions they subsequently added the Marquezas, the Paumotu, and Tubuai archipelagos, and the Loyalty Islands near New Caledonia. It was really French scientific expeditions which definitely discovered the Fiji archipelago, so curiously overlooked by the great British explorers. But when a French expedition, under Dumont d'Urville, examined these islands in 1827 it found them already under British influence; for from time to time convicts had escaped from the Australian penal settlement and had sought refuge in Fiji, where they had become in some cases the advisers of the native chiefs. A better influence, however, came among them in 1835, in the shape of the Wesleyan missionaries, who migrated to the Fiji archipelago from the Tonga or Friendly Islands, where they had met with complete success.
Map of Australia and New Zealand
In 1813, three explorers—Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson—had succeeded in pushing their way through the difficult country of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, which although not excessively lofty had nevertheless daunted even Bass, the companion of Flinders, and discoverer of Bass's Straits. As the result of the crossing of the Blue Mountains a road was made through this mountainous region, and the pastoral interior of the eastern half of Australia was forthwith opened up. A maritime surveyor, Lieutenant John Oxley, R.N., in 1823, once more continued the exploration of Queensland. A colony—Victoria—had grown up round the great harbour of Port Phillip from 1803 onwards. Tasmania had been explored from 1803 onwards, Lieutenant Bower being the pioneer, and had been selected as a penal settlement in 1805. Hither had been removed the convicts first stationed on Norfolk Island. In 1829 the first settlement in West Australia was founded on the Swan River, where Perth, the capital of that State, now stands.
In 1828-30 Captain Charles Sturt made a remarkable overland journey from New South Wales to what is now known as South Australia, during which he discovered the Murrumbidgee, Darling, and Murray Rivers, the most important streams in Australia (Sturt also, in 1845, travelled from the banks of the Darling to the very centre of the stony, desert heart of Australia). One of the results of Sturt's first journeys was the foundation of the colony of South Australia, which began in 1836. In 1840 Edward John Eyre (long afterwards to be Governor of Jamaica under unhappy circumstances, yet to survive triumphs and troubles alike, and to die in England in 1901) travelled overland the whole way from Spencer Gulf in South Australia to King George's Sound in West Australia, and discovered the salt Lake Torrens, and caught a glimpse of the larger Lake Eyre—believing, indeed, that he had had a vision of a mighty inland sea, instead of four separate, shallow, brackish lakes. In 1844-5 Dr. F.W.L. Leichardt, a German explorer, made a wonderful journey, 3000 miles in length, from near Brisbane, in Queensland, to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and then across Arnhem land to Port Essington, in the extreme north of the continent. In 1847 Leichardt attempted to cross Australia from east to west, but got lost in the bush in the interior of Queensland, and died, probably of thirst.
After these journeys, and the further explorations of the great John M'Douall Stuart (Central Australia, and the crossing from south to north) in 1858-62; R. O'Hara Burke and W.J. Wills (also Central Australia) in 1860-1—they were the first explorers to traverse Australia from south to north; A.H. Howitt, 1861; J. M'Kinlay (South and Central Australia), 1862; W.C. Gosse (West Australia), 1873; Major P. Egerton Warburton (Central to West Australia), 1873; Sir John Forrest (Central to West Australia) in 1873-4; and Ernest Giles (West and South Australia) in 1875; the main features and characteristics of the Australian continent became known to the civilized world.
The first value attached to Australia was for its wheat-growing and cattle-rearing possibilities. Next followed, early in the nineteenth century, the introduction of merino sheep, and for forty years or so the main interests of Australia were pastoral, while the breeding of horses for the use of India ("Walers" they were called, as an abbreviation of New South Wales) became an important object of the settlers. The timber of Eucalyptus, Araucaria, and Casuarina was good enough to export; and the capacity of southern and south-eastern Australia as a vine-growing country soon became apparent. But in the middle of the nineteenth century the discovery on a large scale of gold threw all the other assets of this southern continent into the shade. Australia proved, moreover, to be rich in silver, copper, tin, precious stones, and coal, besides gold; and happily the desert and stony regions, which were quite worthless for agricultural or pastoral purposes, turned out to be better endowed with minerals than the fertile land. In 1812 the total white population in all Australia scarcely exceeded 12,000; in 1912 it is not far off 4,500,000. A hundred years ago this continent of 2,947,000 square miles was a barely known and derelict land, the coasts of which were roughly indicated on the map, the interior being completely unknown. To-day it is the home of a young, white nation, which may some day rival in power and resources the United States of North America.
As regards New Guinea, no close attention was given to the geography of that great island until the surveying expedition of H.M.S. Fly, in 1842-6, commanded by Captain F.P. Blackwood, R.N., and that of H.M.S. Rattlesnake under Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., in 1846-50. This last-named expedition included in its staff as surgeon the great professor, Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley named the high mountains of south-east New Guinea after his commander, who died before the expedition returned to England. South-east New Guinea (Papua), the portion nearest to Australia, was annexed by Great Britain in 1884.
In the settlement which followed the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars Great Britain decided to restore to Holland the Island of Java, which she had occupied since 1811. She also gave up all other Dutch possessions in the Malay Archipelago, and compensated herself by the establishment of Singapore and the elimination of Dutch rule from the Malay Peninsula. Thenceforth—from 1818—the kingdom of Holland extended its sway through the nineteenth century over all parts of Malaysia, except the Philippine Islands (which belonged to Spain down to 1898), the Portuguese portion of the Island of Timor, and the northern parts of the great island of Borneo. It is difficult to understand why the Dutch left North Borneo alone. That region had been, however, for centuries, more or less under the dominion of a once powerful Muhammadan prince, the Sultan of Brunei, and it may be that he was too strong (possessing, as he did, in the early part of the nineteenth century, a great fleet of pirate ships) for the Dutch to tackle. This potentate occasionally entered into relations with the East India Company, but was not infrequently called to account for the piracies committed by his subjects or his allies the "sea-gipsies" (see p. 55) in the narrow seas between Borneo and Indo-China.
The possibilities of North Borneo attracted the attention in 1830-2 of a notable pioneer of the British Empire, James Brooke, who had been an officer in the service of the East India Company, but was taking a journey to China on account of his health. Learning that the Sultan of Brunei wished for assistance to enable him to put down piracy and overcome rebellious chiefs, Brooke, having inherited his father's fortune, fitted out an expedition at his own expense in England and left the mouth of the Thames in 1838 for North Borneo in a ship of his own, a sailing yacht of only 140 tons. It would somewhat daunt the modern adventurer to embark on a little sailing vessel of that size and voyage round the Cape of Good Hope and across the stormy southern half of the Indian Ocean to the Sea of China. Brooke found on his arrival at Brunei that the uncle of the sultan was engaged in a difficult war with the Dayaks in the western part of northern Borneo (Sarawak). On condition that he subdued the rebels and pirates in the western part of his dominions the Sultan of Brunei agreed to confer on Brooke the chieftainship of this region; and this delegation of authority developed (not altogether, however, to the liking of the Sultan of Brunei) into the creation of the very remarkable State of Sarawak, which ever since 1841 has been a sovereign state in Malaysia, under the rule of an English raja. Indeed, although Sarawak was founded in 1841, it has only known, so far, two rulers, firstly, Sir James Brooke, and secondly, his nephew Sir Charles Johnson Brooke. Ever since 1888 Sarawak has been under British protection. The British Government had annexed the Island of Labuan, near Brunei, in 1846, as a basis from which they might attack the pirates who infested the Malaysian seas. In 1881 a charter was granted to a company of British merchants for the foundation of the State of North Borneo, originating in concessions made by the sultans of Brunei and Sulu. The historic Sultanate of Brunei itself was brought under British protection in 1888, and finally under British administration in 1906, so that the whole of the northern third of Borneo is now within the limits of the British Empire.
Germany first began to take an interest in Australasia about 1850, when German steamers or sailing vessels from Hamburg and Bremen found their way to the South Seas. Especially noteworthy was the house of Godeffroy, founded originally by French Huguenots. Although this firm eventually failed, it did much to lay the foundations of German commerce in the Pacific, and took an especial interest in the Samoa archipelago. As a result of its work the German Government decided to acquire possessions in this direction where other European nations were not already established. The Marshall Islands were annexed in 1885; and the Caroline Islands, with the exception of the island of Guam (which was ceded by Spain to the United States), came under the German flag by purchase in 1899. The Dutch had laid claim to the western half of New Guinea during the middle of the nineteenth century, when all that region was being explored with great advantage to science by Alfred Russell Wallace; but at the same period it was almost taken for granted that the eastern half, and especially the parts of New Guinea nearest to Australia, would eventually become British.
The Government of Queensland, indeed, annexed all the eastern half of New Guinea in 1883; but their action was disavowed by the British Government. Shortly afterwards, however (in 1884), seeing that other European powers were considering the possibilities of New Guinea as a suitable region for annexation, the British flag was raised there, and eventually, by agreement with Germany, Great Britain added to her empire the south-eastern parts of New Guinea, together with nearly all the Solomon Islands and the Santa Cruz archipelago. Germany, in the same year (1884), had annexed north-eastern New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelmsland) and the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, the Admiralty Islands, &c.). She also acquired Bougainville and Buka Islands in the Solomon archipelago. France attempted about the same time to claim the New Hebrides, but Australia objected, with the result that the New Hebrides are at present administered jointly by Britain and France. In 1899 Germany annexed the two principal islands of Samoa, the smallest of the three falling to the United States, which, by its successful war with Spain, had acquired the Philippine archipelago and the island of Guam. Fiji had been ceded to the British Government in 1874 by its chiefs and people. In 1899-1904 the Tonga or Friendly Islands became a British protectorate; and at earlier and later dates many small Pacific islands and groups not important enough to need special mention were brought within the British Empire.
The people of Hawaii archipelago, where Cook lost his life, had been converted early in the nineteenth century to Christianity by missionaries, British and American. The islands were ruled in a more or less civilized fashion by a native dynasty of kings, but at the same time were increasingly settled by white men as planters and merchants. The white population became too difficult of government by these half-civilized Polynesians, a revolution was brought about, for a few years Hawaii was an independent republic administered by Americans, and finally was annexed by the United States in 1898. Consequently there remains at the present day no territory whatever in Australasia which is not under the flag of some European or American power. In Australia—which became a homogeneous state by the institution of federal government in 1900—we have the beginnings of a mighty nation; likewise in the Dominion of New Zealand, which now has a white population of over 1,000,000. New Guinea is still a land mainly inhabited by savages, and it is probable that owing to its unhealthiness it will remain more or less a domain of the black man, and the same may be the case with the Solomon Islands. But elsewhere, though the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples are far from being exterminated, they are diminishing in numbers from one cause and another, and those that survive will probably fuse in blood with the white colonists. Many of these Pacific islands are earthly paradises, so far as climate and fertility of soil are concerned. They will doubtless some day become densely inhabited, and their prosperity will justify the efforts, the sufferings, and even the crimes and mistakes of the Pioneers.
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