The Bushman — Life in a New Country

by Edward Wilson Landor

"Spearing Kangaroos"

Each tribe has its doctor, or wise man, who is supposed to have supernatural powers of healing wounds, and is the oracle of the tribe. One of these fellows described to me the mode of his initiation. He said his father, himself a wise man, took him one night to the edge of a steep hill, where he left him lying wrapped in his kangaroo-skin cloak. He was very much frightened, but durst not stir. During the night Chingi came and tried to throw him down the hill, and to strangle him, but did not succeed. Chingi was like something very black. He afterwards came again, and told him a great many secrets; and thus is was that my informant became a doctor and a wise man. I think I have heard of people obtaining the power of second sight in the Isle of Skye by lying on a rock all night, wrapped in a bull's hide, and receiving a visit from the devil. The similarity between these initiatory processes struck me forcibly.

CHAPTER 18.

THE MODEL-KINGDOM.

A well-governed colony is the Model of a great kingdom. As in the case of other models, every part of the machinery by which it is moved is placed at once before the eye of the spectator. In a great empire, the springs of action are concealed; the public behold only the results, and can scarcely guess how those results were brought about. In a colony, every one stands so close to the little machine of Government, that he can readily discern how it is made to work, and therefore takes a more lively interest in the working of it. The model has its representative of a sovereign; its Ministers, who comprise the Executive Council with the Colonial Secretary as Premier; its Parliament, the Legislative Assembly; its Bishop of London, who is represented by the Colonial Chaplain, the dignitary of the Church in those parts. In the Legislative Assembly there are the Government party, consisting of the Colonial Secretary and the Attorney General, who prove their loyalty and devotion by adhering to His Excellency the Governor on every division, and (according to general belief) would rather vote against their own measures than against the representative of their Queen. Then there is the popular party, consisting of the popular member, who speaks at random on either side of the debate, but invariably votes against the Government, in order to maintain inviolate the integrity of his principles. We have also the Judge, or Lord chancellor, the great Law officer of the Crown, who sits silently watching the progress of a Bill, as it steals gently forward towards the close of the second reading; and then suddenly pounces upon it, to the consternation of his Excellency, and the delight of the popular member, and tears it in pieces with his sharp legal teeth, whilst he shows that it is in its scope and tendency contrary to the Law of England in that case provided, and is besides impossible to be carried out in the present circumstances of the Colony. The Model Nation has its national debt of one thousand pounds, due to the Commissariat chest; and this burthen of the State costs his Excellency many a sleepless night, spent in vain conjectures as to the best mode of relieving the financial embarrassments.

It is pleasant to learn from the model, how Government patronage is disposed of in the Parent country. Kindly motives, however, which never appear in the arrangements of the latter, are always conspicuous in a colony. A public work is sometimes created for the sole purpose of saving an unfortunate mechanic from the horrors of idleness; and a debt due to the State is occasionally discharged by three months' washing of a Privy Councillor's shirts.

Then we have the exact fac-simile of a Royal Court, with its levees and drawing-rooms, where his Excellency displays the utmost extent of his affability, and his lady of her queenly airs. There may be seen, in all its original freshness and vigour, the smiling hatred of rival ladies, followed by their respective trains of admirers; whilst the full-blown dames of Members of Council elbow their way, with all the charming confidence of rank, towards the vicinity of her who is the cynosure of all eyes. The early levees of the first Governor of Western Australia were held in a dry swamp, near the centre of the present town of Perth. His Excellency, graciously bowing beneath the shade of a banksia tree, received with affability those who were introduced to him, as they stumbled into his presence over tangled brushwood, and with difficulty avoided the only humiliation that is scorned by English courtiers—that of the person.

Ladies, in struggling through the thorny brake, had sometimes to labour under the double embarrassment of a ragged reputation and dress. To appear before the Presence, under such circumstances, with a smiling countenance, proved the triumph of feminine art, and of course excited general admiration. But this was in the early days of the settlement. We have now a handsome Government-house, where ladies who attend drawing-rooms incur no danger of any kind.

From the financial difficulties of a small colony you may form some idea of the troubles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at home. And yet there is less financial talent required to raise five hundred thousand pounds in England than five hundred in an impoverished colony. In the former country only a few voices, comparatively, are raised in expostulation; and no one cares about them, if Mr. Hume could be gagged, and the other patriots in the Commons. But in a colony! threaten to raise the price of sugar by the imposition of another half-penny per pound, and the whole land will be heaved as though by an earthquake. Not only will the newspapers pour forth a terrific storm of denunciations against a treacherous Government, but every individual of the public will take up the matter as a personal injury, and roar out his protest against so monstrous a political crime. Those who called most loudly for the erection of a necessary bridge, will be most indignant when asked next year to contribute towards its cost.

The Governor of a colony should not only be a good financier, but if he would avoid the bitter pangs of repentance, must possess great firmness in resisting the innumerable calls upon the Government purse.