LAND, HO!—A SKETCH OF AUSTRALIA.
"Land, ho!" cried the look-out. Blessed sound to the weary landsman!—a sound associated with liberty and society, a walk on turf, a dinner of fresh meat and green vegetables, clear water to drink, and something to do. The dark line in the horizon was Terra Australis, the land of my dreams. As we approached more near, I was not greeted, as I had hoped, by sloping shores of yellow sands, or hills covered with green pasture, or clad with the bright-colored forests of southern climes; but far above us towered an iron-bound coast, dark, desolate, barren, precipitous, against which the long, rolling swell of the Pacific broke with a dull, disheartening sound.
No wonder that the first discoverers, who coasted along its shores in the midst of wintry tempests, abandoned it, after little investigation, as an uninhabitable land, the dwelling-place of demons, whose voices they fancied they heard in the wailing of the wind among the inaccessible cliffs.
But soon a pilot boarded from a stout whale-boat, rowed by a dozen New Zealanders. He reached the rocks, which, divided by a narrow cleft, or canal, and towering above the coast line are the sailors' landmark, known as Sydney Heads—the cleft that Captain Cook overlooked, considering it a mere boat harbor. Steering under easy sail through this narrow channel, the scene changed, "as by stroke of an enchanter's wand," and Port Jackson lay before us, stretching for miles like a broad, silent river, studded with shrub-covered islands; on either hand of the shores, the gardens and pleasure-grounds of villas and villages descended to the water's edge; pleasure-boats of every variety of build and size, wherries and canoes, cutters, schooners, and Indians, glided about, gay with flags and streamers, and laden with joyous parties, zig-zagged around like a nautical masquerade. Every moment we passed some tall merchant-ship at anchor—for in this land-locked lake all the navies of the world might anchor safely.
It was Sunday evening, and the church-bells clanged sweetly across the waters, mingling in harmonious discord with the distant sounds of profane music from the pleasure parties. On we sailed, until we reached the narrow peninsula, where, fifty years previously, trees grew and savages dwelt, and where now stands one of the most prosperous cities in the world—there, in deep water, close along shore at Cambell's wharf, we moored.
In the buildings, there was nothing to denote a foreign city, unless it were the prevalence of green jalousés, and the extraordinary irregularity in principal streets—a wooden or brick cottage next to a lofty plate-glass fronted shop in true Regent-street style. There were no beggars, and no half-starved wretches among the working-classes. In strolling early in the morning through the streets where the working-classes live, the smell and sound of meat frizzling for breakfast was almost universal.
One day, while strolling in the outskirts of the town, above a cloud of dust, I saw approaching a huge lumbering mass, like a moving hay-stack, swaying from side to side, and I heard the creaking of wheels in the distance, and a volley of strange oaths accompanied the sharp cracking of a whip; presently the horns of a pair of monstrous bullocks appeared, straining solemnly at their yokes; then another and another followed, until I counted five pair of elephantine beasts, drawing a rude cart, composed of two high wheels and a platform without sides, upon which were packed and piled bales of wool full fourteen feet in height. Close to the near wheel stalked the driver, a tall, broad-shouldered, sun-burnt, care-worn man, with long, shaggy hair falling from beneath a sugar-loaf shaped grass hat, and a month's beard on his dusty chin; dressed in half-boots, coarse, short, fustian trowsers, a red silk handkerchief round his waist, and a dark-blue cotton shirt, with the sleeves rolled right up to the shoulders of his brown-red, brawny, hairy arms. In his hands he carried a whip, at least twenty feet long, with the thong of which, with perfect ease, he every now and then laid into his leaders, accompanying each stroke with a tremendous oath.
A little mean-looking man, shabbily dressed in something of the same costume, trotted humbly along on the off-side. Three huge, ferocious dogs were chained under the axle of the dray. This was a load of the golden fleece of Australia, and its guardians the bullock-driver and bullock watchman. The dust, the creaking of the wheels, and the ejaculation of the driver, had scarcely melted away, when up dashed a party of horsemen splendidly mounted, and sun-burnt, but less coarse and worn in features than the bullock-driver, with long beards and mustaches, and flowing hair, some in old shooting-jackets, some in colored woolen shirts, almost all in patched fustian trowsers; one, the youngest, had a pair of white trowsers, very smart, tucked into a pair of long boots—he was the dandy, I presume; some smoked short pipes; all were in the highest and most uproarious spirits. Their costume would have been dear in Holywell-street at twenty shillings, and their horses cheap at Tattersall's at one hundred pounds. These were a party of gentlemen squatters coming down after a year or two in the bush, to transact business and refresh in the great city of Australia.