The New Zealand of the Future.
At last I ventured to interrupt Bacon in the perusal of his learned work. “Where do you think,” I asked, “we are going to?”
To which he answered perfectly dryly: “I suppose we cannot be very far from New Zealand. We have made a considerable détour through the upper air in order to take advantage of the atmospheric current which arises between the tropics, and then extends to the north and south and east successively, but now we are descending again. See how the barometer is going up.”
Thinking on Bacon’s words, I looked once more through one of the telescopes, and at some considerable distance I viewed two large islands barely separated by a very narrow strait.
“Now we are among our antipodes,” continued Bacon. “New Zealand is the Great Britain of the Southern Pacific.”
“But still she has not anything like a population so wealthy, powerful, and civilised.”
“Still a better one than you would have imagined. Already New Zealand has several large cities with the same institutions for education and science and art as are to be found in Europe. She possesses an important commercial navy, has plenty of ore and coal mines, a splendid agriculture, innumerable herds of cattle, a flourishing industry, and an energetic population, chiefly of English descent.”
“What has become of the Maoris?”
“They have utterly disappeared, no one really knows where to. According to some New Zealand naturalists, they have died out; others imagine that they have migrated somewhere; others again are inclined to believe that a portion of the native inhabitants are of lineal Maoric descent. If this were the case, they must have considerably improved as a race; for the people here are now extremely peaceful. Should you ever visit Londinia in your travels again, you ought not to omit paying a visit to the National Museum; there you will find two embalmed Maoris, a male and a female, the former beautifully tatooed. You will see them side by side with other embalmed specimens of the aboriginals, such as New Hollanders, American Redskins, etc., all of whom have long become extinct.”
“Does the same apply to the inhabitants of all countries where Europeans have settled?”
“No, only to those that are situated beyond the tropics; for the tropical regions, with the exception of the cooler mountain districts, are in the long run unsuited to the Caucasian race. The interior of Africa has still its original negro population; New Guinea is still inhabited by the Papoos, and many other islands of tropical clime are still occupied by the descendants of the ancient aboriginals, although they are rather on the decrease.”
“Have those tribes that belong to the so-called inferior races improved at all in civilization?”
“Not much. With all of them progress is slow, extremely slow. Some even hold the opinion that their progress is after all more imaginary than real; that is to say, that it merely consists of their aping some of the European manners and customs, and of these rarely the best. Still I believe I have sufficient ground to admit that they too are progressing, only that their progress differs essentially in its character from that of the Caucasian races.”
Meanwhile we had reached so far the northern island of New Zealand that I was able to see through the telescope, not only the mountain tops but even the most densely populated districts.
Our fellow-passengers woke up one after the other, and Miss Phantasia asked me would I stay at the same hotel with them at Melbourne? “We go to the Old-England,” continued she; “we have already ordered our dinner.”
I answered of course that I could never too late part with such excellent company.
Bacon called the steward, and gave orders for us to be put down near Cape Maria van Diemen, from which a telegram should be sent to Melbourne.
Shortly afterwards we floated over New Zealand, and I was obliged to confess that Bacon had not said too much of that country. Few districts in this world have been so largely favoured by nature. The large bays and gulfs were crowded with innumerable vessels apparently belonging to all nations. Of cities, towns, and villages, there was no end, and everything indicated the highest degree of prosperity.
Among the most conspicuous flags I noticed one very liberally represented; it had twelve suns on a blue field. Not knowing what they meant, I once more inquired of my guide: what country did they represent?
“That is the standard of the twelve united states of New Holland, which together form a federate republic,” answered Bacon.
“A republic!” was my reply; “I always thought that New Holland belonged to the British crown.”
“Such was the case,” replied Bacon, “at one time; but the child has outgrown the mother. For ever so long the New Hollanders manage their own affairs. They are, as you are doubtless aware, of European descent. That is the great difference between New Holland and the East Indian islands, which at one time were yours. We have therefore parted on the very best of terms, and the only bond that still joins us together is that of reciprocal commercial interests. The vast Southland has become a powerful government; and if ever—improbable as it is—civilization should migrate from Old Europe, it still would know where to find a centre. You will soon become aware of this on our landing.”
We were rapidly moving. New Zealand disappeared from our horizon, and in opposite direction other districts seemed to emerge from the sea. That was New Holland, the great Southland, the goal of our voyage.
Every passenger began to look after his luggage. The long extensive coastline lay before us. We were slowly and obliquely descending. The objects on the surface of the earth grew in size and distinctness. It was evident that we were approaching a large city. Melbourne it was. A few moments afterwards we heard a bustle and a kind of confused noise, only to be compared with the unfurling of sails and the untying of ropes. A violent shock followed, and—I woke up in my arm-chair.
THE END.
Watson and Hazell, Printers London and Aylesbury
[1] For the original of these passages we refer the scholar to that admirable letter of Bacon’s, De mirabile potestate artis et naturae, etc., which appeared first of all in the work of Claudius Celestinus, De his quae mundo mirabiliter eveniunt, Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1542. Bacon’s description of a flying machine, of which we read in the same document, shows, however, that he too, in his philosophical visions, was apt to transgress the line of the possibilities. [↑]
[2] At the end of the nineteenth century the Saxon element had almost entirely disappeared from the English tongue; even the most intelligible Norman words had had to give way to the most miraculous novelties in the shape of bad Greek and Latin compounds. At the revival of the genuine national dialect all such abominable mongrels as telegram, bicycle, velocipede, etc., were expelled from decent conversation. A telegram became a wire-message; a bicycle a two-wheel; a velocipede a swift-foot; post-mortem examinations went by the name of after-death examinations; and as the language gained in nationality, the nation’s mind grew in clearness. The change was a change for the better.
T. [↑]
[3] The camera obscura (dark chamber) is a closed space impervious to light. Porta, the inventor here referred to, was a Neapolitan physician. He found that by fixing a double convex lens in the aperture, and placing a white screen in the focus, the image was much brighter and more definite.
T. [↑]
[4] Galvani was a professor of anatomy in the university of Bologna. While engaged in his anatomical investigations he observed, accidently so to say, that when the lumbar nerves of a dead frog were connected with the crural muscles by a metallic circuit, the latter became briskly contracted. The electricity theory drawn by Galvani from his observation of the frog was chiefly opposed by the philosopher likewise here mentioned, Alexander Volta, professor of physics in Pavia.
T. [↑]
[5] Oerstedt’s discovery, published in the year 1819, was afterwards considerably extended by Ampère and Faraday. It laid, however, the foundation of the recognition by science of the relations between magnetism and electricity.
T. [↑]
[6] Nor did La Condamine probably suspect that the small bottle of india-rubber, which he brought with him on his return from a scientific tour to America, and passed round as a curiosity to his colleagues of the French academy, was actually filled with a liquid destined to become of the most extensive application to different branches of industry; aye, a liquid without which the submarine telegraph would simply have remained an impossibility up to the present day. [↑]
[7] Such photographs have been produced in Italy since the third edition of this work appeared in the original text.
T. [↑]
[8] The truth of this remark cannot, I think, be sufficiently impressed upon the even now existing opposition minority in England. Let us have compulsory education for three, or even two, generations, and every citizen in the state will be so well educated himself as to know the value of education, and not to deny it his children. The repeal of any law, prohibitory or compulsory, can only prove this, that the people for whom the measure was originally framed have risen in the scale of moral and social organization.
T. [↑]
[9] Like the ingenious author of the “Origin of Species,” Miss Phantasia appears to have convinced herself that the time would come when the absence or rarity of intermediate species, the great stumbling-block in the grand Darwinian theory, would no longer have to be accounted for negatively by the “poorness of our palæontalogical collections,” and the “imperfectness of the genealogical record.” Bacon, though apparently familiar with, and not averse to, Mr. Darwin’s theory of evolution, does not seem to follow the doctrine out in its application to the human race. How many errors remain to be eradicated, even in minds of the highest order, through man’s adopted notion that he stands exclusively apart from all his natural surroundings, both in degree and in kind!
T. [↑]
[10] It is but fair to say that the apparatus of Léon Scott for registering the vibrations produced by the voice in singing had preceded the discovery of Reis. Scott’s “phonautograph” is fully described, both in construction and working, in Ganot’s Treatise on Physics (Atkinson’s translation, p. 211, etc.)
T. [↑]
[11] It is embarrassing to render the original German coinage humanität, which, we believe, is due to the grand idea of Lessing, but it is a decided fallacy, current even among literati, that the absence of a certain word in a certain language indicates the absence of the idea embodied in the word among the nations by whom that language is spoken. This vulgar error, the prolific source of so many idle boasts, and unjust charges, and national vanities, we have endeavoured to refute in a paper on “The Philosophy of Verbal Monopoly,” printed in the “Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Art, Science, and Literature,” 1868.
T. [↑]
[12] So little do we know of a country so worth knowing, that we daily commit ourselves by speaking of it as Holland. The kingdom of the Netherlands, as now constituted, is divided into ten counties or provinces, and two of these are respectively called North and South Holland. The former is the territory here alluded to; it includes neither Leiden, nor the Hague, nor Rotterdam. To speak of the Netherlands as Holland, corresponds to calling England Devonshire or Cheshire, and this particular terminology is the more amusing to the natives because with them it is a shibboleth of vulgarity. There never was a kingdom of Holland, except from 1806–1810, under Napoleonic rule, when the Dutch had lost their independence through that most dangerous scourge of nations, internal division.
T. [↑]
[13] The Dutch adopted the metric system for weights and measures simultaneously with the French; that is to say, at the close of the eighteenth century. Their meter is little more than three English feet.
T. [↑]
[14] In order to make this allusion to Rotterdam intelligible to our English readers, we have to state a few facts. While Rotterdam has an excellent harbour, Amsterdam has not. From time to time the citizens of the latter city have devised all kinds of means whereby to remedy the natural disadvantage under which they labour. There is no lack of petty jealousies between the two great rival commercial cities of the Netherlands, and hence the allusion of dramatic rejoicings in Rotterdam at the misfortune of the competitor.
T. [↑]
[15] Although most of these speculations on university education would appear to apply to the author’s own country, it cannot be denied by any one at all acquainted with the English seats of learning, that the whole is an unconscious but delightful bit of satire on the working and results of both Oxford and Cambridge.
T. [↑]
[16] The principal colony of the Dutch in the East Indies, from which they derive no small benefits for their commerce and navigation. The island produces chiefly coffee, rice, sugar, and some tobacco.
T. [↑]