As you can imagine, I have met many strange types of men and women in my travels, types both good and bad. I tramped many, many weary miles in the Australian bush when I was fifteen years of age. Often I tramped alone, when I could not get a congenial comrade. I was sometimes very lucky; and my reminiscences of those good comrades are the lights that shine down the dark tracks far away as I remember their eyes. One was a man of about thirty years of age. He was exceedingly cheerful and full of song and devilment. I can still see his refined face aglow as he sits under the scorched gum-trees smashing swamp mosquitoes on his hand or singing his favourite songs in a quiet, manly voice. We stayed together for two or three days at a sheep station, where the boss was a German. He was all right. But there were two German women and a son there too. When I played the violin to them, and turned around for the welcome and expected applause, they said: “Vell, dat vash little nize”; and then they shook their Teutonic square heads and, with their eyes and hands lifted to the shanty roof, said: “But, O-ez! you shoulds hear zem play that tunezz in Germanhy—O-o-o-o-e-z-z-z-z-z ze diff-er-enze!”
Then my boyish blood warmed up and I said: “Germans can’t play the violin. Paganini wasn’t a German. No German ever played except by science.”
“Mein Gott! Mein Gott! O, haves you never vash heards Vons Kriessburgh? He play that same tuenz vich you just now play so—phoo!”—here they shrugged their shoulders with disgust at my performance—“like dis,” and the two German women, who had faces like pasty pumpkins with glass eyes stuck in them, and the son, with his big moustache twirled at the ends, lifted their hands and eyes to the roof to express the ecstatic memory of the German’s violin-playing. Their mouths went “O, o-ez-e-z-z-z-z-z-z-ez,” emitting a strange sound that faded away in complete exhaustion as they sank down on to the three chairs like three puppets. Not only violin-playing, but everything, was wonderful in German art. If one said, “What a nice picture,” or “What nice butter,” they’d raise their eyebrows and sigh out that old crescendo, “O, O-e-z-z-z,” and say: “Have yous never, never tasted German butter?” It was the same with eggs, beef, pork, men, boots, girls or any d——d thing!
My congenial comrade went off to New Zealand, and I ran across another one, who was most uncongenial for a time. We were tramping across the bush-lands, looking for work on stations and secretly hoping that we were not wanted. My friend was a short, thick-set, thick-necked fellow about two years older than I, with a slightly elevated, protruding chin and a mouth that talked from morn till night about his ancestry. I forget now whether he said they were descendants of Julius Cæsar’s invading horde or of William the Conqueror. Anyway our friendship was one incessant argument.
I was just on six feet high, full of health and independent strength, and I found that I was supposed to walk beside him with my head hanging for shame because I was only a “common Englishman.” We were on a lonely bush track; ragged gum-trees fenced the broken sky-lines for miles and miles around us. The only onlookers were parrots and cockatoos, like vividly coloured leaves overhead. There was no sight or sound of human habitation in that vast, sombre solitude as we tramped along together. A feeling of grim exultation seemed to suddenly seize me. Once more I swallowed another pill of insult, and I looked down sideways at my blue-blooded companion. I thought of my ancestral forefathers, and wondered if his ancestors had robbed my ancestors, and ravaged their lands and castles—my possible birthright!
He did not know what I was thinking of as he talked away. His short legs strutted along the track with the toes turned up, his nose and chin also inclined skyward, as once more he reminded me of my plebeian origin. Suddenly!—— Well, I’ll not tell you all, for why should we be proud of the animalistic strain that sometimes dominates our natures? Why be proud that suddenly a bolt seemed to fall from the blue, and one of the reputed descendants of the first Kaiser Bill got his deserts, and lay with his back in the dust, his Imperial nose and semi-conscious eyes staring half vacantly up at the Australian sky, while plebeian, old pioneer England, with a swag on his back, tramped away and faded on the horizon—triumphant—alone!
Ere sunset darkened the sky I lay ambushed in a clump of wattles by the forest, then peeped and saw my comrade coming slowly down the track with his toes turned down. I repented and thought: “Even if it’s true, he cannot help being the descendant of bloodthirsty ravishers, who killed old men and robbed my country’s churches. No, even he cannot help himself.” So I crept out and told him I repented, and once more we tramped along as comrades. So silent was he about William the Conqueror that you would have thought such a man had never lived. He admitted that night, as we sat by the camp fire, when I had explained my feelings to him, that his descent was only a family rumour. Hearing that, I truly forgave him, and we lifted the billy can of cold tea and drank a united toast to the memory of Caractacus and Boadicea, and death to all descendants of the first great bloated Kaiser Bill who dare prove to us their murderous, cowardly ancestry!
Lake Rotorua and Mokoia Island, N.Z.
I met yet another gentleman of ancient emigrant blood in Tahiti. He was a gigantic old chap, a chief. I slept in his hut with four American runaway sailors, who were waiting with me for the next boat to call, so that we could clear out. Night after night that old chief would sit and tell us of the wonderful earlier days, when he was the great king of the inland dominions, loved by all the tribes for his bravery and justice, and had had a special envoy sent out by Queen Victoria to represent her appreciation to the one true Christian monarch of the Southern Seas.