Queensland Natives
Two more natives came alongside this morning. They had not the slightest vestige of clothing; but two men, whom I saw over the side later in the day, both sported hats, and one of them had on besides a man-of-war shirt; the other wore a very short tunic cut low in the neck and several rows of canary-coloured glass beads. We weighed at eleven, and proceeded towards Dungeness under sail. I was carried up into the deck-house to see the view, which was provokingly obscured by mists and driving rain. We found some difficulty in making our way, owing to the new buoys not having yet been entered on the Admiralty chart. Fortunately, the officers of the 'Myrmidon' had warned Tom of this fact, made more dangerous by the thick mist and fog. We ultimately arrived at Dungeness in safety, taking everybody by surprise, as no ship had ever been known to go through the southern entrance of Hinchinbrook Channel before without a pilot. The pilot, a nice old man, had been looking for us all day yesterday, as well as all last night. As we did not appear, he must have gone home, thereby losing the pleasure of conducting us into the harbour, but giving Tom the gratification of bringing the vessel in through the channel without taking a pilot.
Thursday, August 11th.—When I awoke at eight Tab and Mr. des Graz had already started on their shooting expedition, and at noon we also set forth on an excursion up the Herbert River. Tom had caused a comfortable bed to be rigged up for me in the gig, so that I was not obliged to dress, but simply got out of one bed into another. The gig was towed by the steam-launch, which also trailed the 'Flash' behind in case we might want to land in any shallow place or get aground on a sand or mud bank. After the first little fluster of moving was over it was a great pleasure to me to be once more in the open air after being shut up for what seems so long a time. It felt deliciously warm too, the temperature being 74°. The scenery was beautiful—sandy shores, green woods with high precipitous mountains in the background, covered with shiny slate-like shale, which when moist shows up like a mirror through the mist. The view so reminded me of Scotland that I felt inclined to take up my glasses to look for deer among the craggy peaks and corries. We passed the little pilot station of Dungeness, and almost directly afterwards the hamlet of the same name. It bears some resemblance to its English namesake, for it is situated on a sandy spit of land, surrounded by mangrove swamps instead of grass marshes. I noticed, too, that the people have the fever-stricken look which is sometimes seen about Lydd and that part of the country. There are only fifty-six inhabitants, men, women, and children. Dull as the surroundings seemed, it is wonderful how bright and cheerful the people who came on board yesterday seemed to be. The river, though wider, put us very much in mind of the Kuching, in Borneo—the same tropical vegetation and miles of unhealthy-looking mangrove swamps. We passed several tidy-looking little settlements on the banks, some picturesquely built of wood thatched with sugar-cane or palm-leaf, while others were constructed of corrugated iron, which must be frightfully hot in summer. The white people, so far as we could judge, as we passed up and down the river, were suffering from the climate. The Kanakas and Chinamen seemed more prosperous; and the few aboriginals looked quite happy in their natural surroundings.
Cardwell School House
The servants, with their usual ingenuity, managed to both cook and serve an excellent lunch, in the boat, with only the assistance of the 'Darby and Joan' stove. About half-past two we reached the wharf of the Halifax sugar-plantation, where our arrival disturbed a large party of aboriginals, women and children, who were enjoying their afternoon bath, splashing, jumping like a shoal of fish. Our party (including the dogs) landed, and on their return said that the crop of sugar looked very healthy, and the rolling and crushing stock of the cane was in excellent order. The whole district is well adapted for the cultivation of sugar. No less than 9,600 tons were produced in 1886. The growth is steadily increasing, and the country will sooner or later become the centre of a large and prosperous trade.
For the cultivation of sugar on the Herbert both British and coloured labour is employed—British workmen in the mills, the coloured people in cutting the cane. Wages for Englishmen range from twenty-five shillings upwards weekly. We spoke to some of the wives of the workmen, several of whom are recent arrivals from Lancashire. Their dwellings are of the simplest description, made of corrugated iron or of straw, and scattered at haphazard in a clearing in the jungle or on the banks of the river. These pioneers of cultivation have to lead a hard life and bear many privations—circumstances in which the colonising qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race always come to the front.
There was an hotel and a store, and, as is usual in this sort of place, enormous piles of broken bottles and empty cases of tinned meats, jams, &c. It breaks my heart to see the colonists, particularly the children, living on condensed milk, tinned meats, and canned fruits from America, when there is so much good pasture running to waste all round the house. In the orchards the trees are literally broken down from the weight of their crop, while quantities of fruit which the boughs cannot support are given to the pigs and cattle.