“Before I close with some of my ‘personal experiences,’ I want you to note the missionary side of this question. You know I’m too disgusted with the greedy way various missionary societies have gone in for land-grabbing and land-dealing in New Zealand to be much of a philo-missionist, and we both know something of mission work in the South Seas, and that too much humbug and too many tares among the wheat—
‘Of generous thought and deed were sown;’
yet I feel very friendly towards the little circle of men who have taken up the cause of the unfortunate natives of Australia. The Revs. J. B. Gribble, R. J. Flanagan, Fyson, J. Flierl, and my friend Feder here have made a hard fight for it; and a most dangerous and unthankful position these men occupy, in the midst of squatters and squatter-commissioned police who watch their every action. As it is, the fund secured to preserve and protect the natives is apparently almost entirely derived from Europe, and half of that amount I believe from Germany. Are these natives worth preserving? Well, when the colony of Victoria a few years back—as I see by a Government report—adopted a new system of education, the first school obtaining one hundred per cent. of marks was the Ramah Yuck School of Aborigines, Gippsland. This, I believe, is a fair sample of what can be done with the ‘niggers’ if properly handled, and all agree that the northern blacks are a finer race than those of the south; and, speaking of my personal acquaintance with them, I can say they compare in intelligence very favourably with our ‘noble savage’ in New Zealand; in fact, are, I think, much ‘cuter.’ Now, at the risk of making this letter too long,—and if so you can take it in instalments,—I’ll just give you some of my ‘personal experiences’ to show you to what an extent slavery and murder obtains in Queensland.
“I had been introduced a few days since to a cockatoo-squatter, who holds a small run within thirty miles of one of the civilized (?) municipalities in this district.
“‘Come out and stop a few days with me,’ he said, ‘and if you want any native curios, or a skull or two, as you’re a scientist, I’ll see if Sergeant Bedad can come up with his “boys.” No end of sport, can assure you.’ I thought he was making a grim joke,—but you will see. A town councillor who was going my way, to visit a goldmine up on the ranges beyond my destination, offered to show me the way. We started together, and, after about two hours’ ride, as we were entering a piece of scrub, Mr. Councillor pulls out a long-barrelled revolver from his dust-coat pocket, and motions to me to be quiet. Thinking he saw a wild pig or cassowary, I let him go on by himself a bit.
“‘I saw two niggers here, last time I was passing,—last week,’ he explains as I overtake him,—‘they were getting grubs out of that rotten tree, by the bush-layers there; but they cleared off before I could get a fair shot at them.’ I needn’t tell you, old man, that I was astonished at what my companion said; and, getting off my horse to see if he was ‘having me,’ found the print of the niggers’ feet in the black soil, the hole in the rotten tree which they had made in searching for grubs, and lastly, the most circumstantial piece of evidence to prove he was not joking, but terribly in earnest, the bullet-hole of the shot he had fired in a tree stem close by.
“Arrived at the little station, I was introduced to Mrs. Cockatoo-squatter. She was a tall, dark, ladylike person, with something particularly gentle and womanlike about her, that was very charming after the specimens of the weaker (?) sex one generally sees up this way. But she was the next one to startle my new-chum anti-slavery notions. She had no children of her own, but was possessed of two little child-slaves, who, she informed me, the local sergeant of Black Police had kindly ‘saved for her’ out of a camp of blacks he had destroyed four miles down the river. I saw the remains of the ingenious fish-weir erected by these unfortunates one day when out for a ride. These blacks had apparently never injured any one; but, as Mrs. Cockatoo informed me, with a gentle smile, ‘they were always singing or making a noise of some sort, and disturbed the cattle,’ which liked to stand in the shallows near the camp, in preference to merely taking a drink at the steep banks of the other parts of the river frontage. ‘The niggers frightened them; besides, the blacks are always a nuisance.’ So the camp was surrounded one night and ‘dispersed,’—the meaning of which word, in this part of the Queen’s dominions, I have already explained to you.
“These child-slaves, whose baby-love for each other was most touching, were naturally very pretty, as most of the native children I have seen are; but they were sadly neglected, and very cruelly treated. Their sole garment consisted of an old sack, stiff and coated with dirt, the bottom of which was perforated with three holes, one for the head and two for the little black arms. Although only six or eight years of age, these children had to chop up the firewood used in the house, fetch the water from the river, etc., and were often cruelly beaten for trivial offences. In fact I left the station, after spending three days there, chiefly on account of the painful sight always before my eyes of the cruelty inflicted upon these unhappy little ‘niggers.’
“Mrs. Cockatoo told me a pleasant story, too, the first day I was at her house, illustrating the ‘annoyance’ the blacks had been to her husband and herself, ‘till dear Inspector Nemo cleared the niggers off the hills’ that surround the run. ‘It was January, I think,’ she said; ‘yes, the end of last January. I hadn’t had Topsey and Turvey (the two slave-children) very long, and I was cleaning some fish that we had got out of a net we sometimes run across the river at the old fish-weir. Bob (her husband) was away, and there were only two white men near the house. They were fencing round the dog kennel there. Bob hadn’t got the dogs then,’ my fair hostess added, turning her gentle eyes towards the two magnificent bloodhounds which were sunning themselves by the ‘lean-to’ door, and whose use I was afterwards to learn.
“‘Well, I was at work, just as I am now,’ she went on, ‘when I chanced to look up, and I saw two old niggers coming up from the river, and walking across the paddock towards the house. Bob had told me not to allow any niggers to cross the run or “come in” (come and work as slaves) to the station; so when they came near I told them to go or I’d shoot them. They, at least one of them did, kept on saying, “Me very good boy, me very good boy,” and “Me velly hungey,” and they wouldn’t go away. So I got the gun, that one with the broken stock,—Bob broke it finishing an old rascal of a nigger, last time he was out with Inspector Nemo,—and I told them to go, but they knelt down and wouldn’t go. So I had to shoot them, and get the men to throw them into the river. Bob said I had done quite right, but I’m afraid you don’t think so.’ This amiable couple, for they were really amiable and good-hearted in every other respect than their treatment of niggers and animals, had destroyed by poison, shooting, and hunting with ‘the dogs,’—whose ‘score was only four at present,’ Mrs. Cockatoo informed me, laughing,—about thirty or forty aborigines in the six years since they had taken up the small run. Mr. Cockatoo reminded me, in his conversation, much of that old Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, we used to read about at school, who, you will remember, although as cruel and devilish an individual, perhaps, as ever sat on a throne, yet patronised the Arts, was fond of peace, and said ‘that not only crime, but every wicked and corrupt thought, ought to be punished.’ He was one of the ‘seven wise men,’ too, I think.