“Nothing about it, save that the reef was firmly believed in by your uncle, and he expected of late to find it on the Great Coast Range, in Northern Queensland. Now I’ve told you all I know. My pump of recollection ‘sucks,’ as the engineers say. No more to be had of personal reminiscences. But I’ve still one thing to add,—had almost forgotten it, although to my mind most important of the lot. I’ve reason to believe that, contrary to his usual custom, your uncle has either invested in some large speculation up north or has loaned a considerable amount to some one. I say contrary to his usual custom, for he did not inform me of it. It strikes me that this is the secret of his calling you to his grave. Now, as I am appointed sole executor under his will, which will have to be proved upon your return, it is part of my duties to find out what has become of the missing money. The singular silence upon this point maintained by him is odd; but I think that your friend of the Royal, who took you to see the rink so obligingly, but who carelessly dropped you on the way, could point out the answer to what we want to get at.”
The two men rise to go, and soon they are crossing Hunter Street, on their way to the rooms, or rather room, of the Royal and Imperial E. and G. S. of A. Claude, so far from feeling inclined to murmur “Ich bin langeweilig”—as an illustrious person did on a similar occasion—at the loquacity of the old gentleman at his side, has been intensely interested in all he has heard. The evident affection also the narrator had for the memory of the best points in the character of his “old chum Sam” reflected Mr. Winze’s own goodness in its expression; and the young man respects him accordingly, and is ready to follow his directions. Our friends arrive at the Society’s room, and on the way the mining agent has sketched its history for Claude’s benefit.
This august body, like many of the institutions of New South Wales, is unique in its way; it belongs to a class of scientific associations whose parallel is to be found nowhere outside the Australian colonies. To understand the Society’s present position, one must be aware that the most prominent trait of the practical, pushing, nervous brains that are rolling Australia’s “old chariot along” is the instinctive readiness with which any object likely to facilitate the upward march of the individual is seized and made use of, to be thrown aside when it has served the purpose of the climber.
“Advance Australia,” yells Mr. Corn-stalk (N. S. Wales), John Chinaman Crow-eater, Esq. (South Australia), or hot-headed Master Banaana-boy (Queensland); but really they mean “Advance Australian,” which Australian is the particular ego of each individual shouter of the national motto.
Let a thing be untried or unknown, then America or Europe must test it. It will hardly have a chance in Australia of a fair trial. But once an idea has proved itself a good one, an invention has been found labour-saving, an actor has crowded the houses of New York or London, and the hero-worshippers of Sydney and Melbourne become frantically enthusiastic over the new matter, man, or thought brought to their notice. It was through this latter kind of forcing growth that the humbly-useful, plain Geological Society (no Royal and Imperial then) of Sydney—which was originally composed of real lovers of science—suddenly burst into the green-leafed glory of public recognition, with a real live Governor of the Colony as patron.
Science is a tender plant in many respects, and requires plenty of room in which to expand and throw out its ever-increasing tendrils. You cannot assist it by tying its budding branches to the regal fence with ribbons and parchment charters. Indeed, the healthful circulation of the life-giving chlorophyll is dependent on freedom. Second only in harmfulness to the dank shadows of the Church is the hot blaze of Imperial glories on the tender shootlets. Science is impatient of both.
About 1884 great public interest was awakened by an attempt of the “man of blood and iron” to annex the whole island of New Guinea. Germany’s Chancellor for once in his life made a mistake. He had calculated upon the surprise, supine, peace-at-any-price restfulness of the English Colonial Secretary, but he was frustrated by the prompt pluck of the Premier of the Queensland Ministry, Sir Thomas McIlwraith. Some of the business-men subscribers of the Society—who had joined to oblige their scientific friends, wives, or sons—saw in the excitement caused by the New Guinea question the tide in their affairs that, taken at the flood, was to lead them on to promotion in their business and social worlds. They got elected on the executive of the Association; worked upon the feelings of the newspaper proprietors till copious “notices” of the Society appeared in “our columns;” got anybody and everybody who knew, or pretended to know, anything of New Guinea to read papers before the members; and, after judiciously waiting till the public were well advertised of the existence of the Society, suddenly proclaimed that an expedition would be despatched to the Dark Island, and proceeded to obtain contributions towards the same. Dinners and conferences follow, with the Governor himself yawning at the end of the committee-room table; and then, as a finishing touch of the picture, came the gilding of “Her Majesty’s gracious permission” to add the prefix Royal and Imperial to the little Society’s scientific cognomen. The energetic councillors soon received the rewards of their energy; their plan to robe themselves in the reflected glories of the English scientific societies, by building a dazzling looking-glass association on the lowly foundation of an already established body of thinkers, met with perfect success. Plain Mr. Orkshineer became John Orkshineer, Esq., F.R.G.S., and Hon. Treasurer Royal and Imperial Ethnological and Geological Society of Australasia, and found himself rubbing shoulders, at conversaziones and soirées, with a far better crowd in which to enlarge his clientage than he could have dared to show himself in heretofore; and Mr. Lionel E. Gentlydon, the gay and handsome—but, alas! briefless—barrister, met sixteen solicitors’ daughters at one scientific garden-party, where he spread his peacock’s tale of new-born glories as Hon. Sec. of the R.I.E.G.S.A. He has never since regretted his far-sighted policy in climbing up by the scientific ladder, which he had helped to ruin on his way up. The original and true naturalist members of the Society are, as is generally the case, quiet men who dislike all this tinsel and glitter, and they retire more and more into the shade. The New Guinea expedition goes; the brave explorers employed find their provisions composed of damaged and unsaleable articles got rid of by advertising firms, whose names appear before the public as Donators to the Expedition Fund. Even the steam-launch, which must be their home for many months, has long been condemned as useless by her owners, and is obtained for the Society, at an enormous sum per month, through the kindness of one of the shipping-agent members of the Council.
The expedition returns, scientifically successful in spite of all the disadvantages of jobbery and bad management, and the round of dinners, speech-making, and festivities is begun again. Meanwhile the unhappy explorers—several of whom are quite incapacitated by sickness and the hardships they have undergone—wait in vain for their wages for months; when it is discovered that the Society is financially ruined. The business-men have sucked what they wanted out of the Association, and now the older members come forward, and are trying to rejuvenate the dried husk when Claude is first introduced to their notice by Mr. Winze. We have perhaps trespassed too long already upon the subject of the Society, or we would indulge in a sketch of the Executive Council, as the members thereof sit round the little table in the shady room with the map-covered walls. Suffice it, however, to say that the genial old mining agent, having long been a member of the Society, briefly introduces Claude. He points out that he is a scientifically-inclined young man, who is about to visit on business some property of his in Central-Northern Queensland, and that Mr. Angland is willing to collect information and data upon such subjects as the Council may suggest, without cost to the Society, in return for being accredited as its representative. The President welcomes and thanks Claude, and half an hour afterwards he says good-bye to Mr. Winze, having successfully accomplished the first item in the programme laid out for him by his new friend.
Claude feels light-hearted, and is intensely interested in the work before him; and he proceeds to make a few purchases of such scientific instruments as he may require in his new rôle of explorer,—a couple of aneroids, maximum and minimum thermometers, and the like. Then he sends word from a messenger-boy office for his little friend of the arches to be ready to start with him next day,—for Angland has taken his little guide of the arches under his wing entirely. Don’s parents have readily agreed to part with him to Claude, upon receiving a few greasy, crumpled pieces of paper issued by a local bank; and so altered has the child become, in the last few days, that the old expression, “his own mother wouldn’t know him,” would have actually been the case had that bedraggled, whisky-sodden lady taken the trouble to go and look at him. The general “cleaning and refitting” the youngster has undergone by Claude’s orders have so changed him that even our hero can hardly believe that his little henchman is the same child that piloted him out of the railway yard. By the advice of Mr. Inspector Chime, Don has been placed under “police supervision,” namely, at the home of a suburban constable; and here, in a week, by the motherly care of Mrs. Peeler, he has developed into a bright, good-looking little fellow, with an intense desire to become a policeman, and a large capacity for food. His pup has improved with its master, and now shows—the matted coat being treated with carbolic soap—all the points of a well-bred brown retriever. For Claude has wisely arranged that the development of the child’s good qualities should suffer no arrest, even for an instant, by being separated from the only object he has as yet learned to show unselfish kindness to.