Yes, Sydney has every scenic, natural, and healthful advantage that a city can be favoured with, while architecturally, it must be admitted, its citizens have done their duty as far as possible, remembering their limitations. Like us, they do not believe in defiling their cities with skyscrapers, but keep their buildings of a reasonable height, in accordance with the width of the thoroughfares. Two buildings especially cannot fail to impress the most careless and casual observer—the Town Hall and General Post Office. I do no injustice to Melbourne, but only state the bare fact when I say that not only are these two really magnificent edifices far finer than the corresponding municipal erections in Melbourne, but in their position they are much more highly favoured, in spite of the fact that Melbourne's thoroughfares are so much wider and straighter than those of Sydney. But Sydney's Town Hall has what every civic structure should have, a vast open space in which to stand manifesting its glories—a position, in fact, like St. George's Hall, Liverpool, and the Town Halls of Glasgow, Manchester, and Leeds. Melbourne Town Hall, while undoubtedly a noble building, suffers much from its position at an angle of Collins and Swanston Streets, with other buildings crowding in behind it, so that from no point can more than a small portion of it be visible, and no view of it can be obtained from any farther away than across the street. And the same remarks apply exactly to Melbourne Post Office, which is at the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, and but for its grand tower would hardly be noticeable. Sydney Post Office is so magnificent in its outlines that it entirely puts to shame the similar buildings in such great cities as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow, which have nearly double Sydney's population. And its situation is a peculiarly advantageous one in that, although it is in the heart of the city and bounded on two sides by the comparatively narrow yet noble thoroughfares of Pitt and George Streets, it has an exceedingly wide space on its immense frontage which already has some grand companion buildings on the opposite side of it, and will doubtless soon be completely edified and in full keeping with the stately façade of the Post Office, which fills the entire front of the block between the two main thoroughfares of the city. A curious but pretty feature of the fine promenade along the front of the Post Office, the busiest part of the city during the day, is the number of flower-sellers (all men), who stand at the edge of the pavement with huge baskets of glorious blooms before them. These they vend in great bunches, tightly tied up and as large as a medium cabbage, at a uniform rate of sixpence each, which leads to the belief that everything which grows in this marvellous country is characterised by a uniformity of cheapness. And of course I was told that, being winter, the show was nothing compared with its summer beauty.
XI THE KING OF NEW ZEALAND
To-day I have had a veritable treat. By the courtesy of a few friends I was privileged to go and visit the Sobraon, that grand old flyer which, under Captain Elmslie, brought out from England to this Colony so many of her leading citizens. She is in her way almost as classic as the Mayflower or the Argo, although towering mightily above them in beauty, size, and comfort for those who sailed in her. And she has met a far happier fate than have the majority of the celebrated old clippers of the bygone days. It gives the old sailor's heart a severe pang when he occasionally comes across a ship which in her day of glory was an honour to command; to be her master conferred brevet rank and dignity which nothing could rob a man of, even though, as, alas! was often the case, he descended from her wreck to a beggared old age; sold to the Norwegians, Italians, or even to some Indian coasting firm for a drudge and a byword. Some of these old flyers perished gloriously, but most of them were degraded into timber droghers or country-wallahs, without even the consolation that their shame was hidden under a change of name.
Not so the Sobraon. Trim and taut as ever she was in her prideful days as the premier ship sailing to Sydney from England, she now lies snugly moored in one of the most beautiful bays of that most splendid of all harbours. She belongs to the Government of New South Wales, and it is her grand mission to receive and deal with those waifs and strays who in this country, with its floating and polyglot population, have drifted or may readily drift into crime. She is at once a reformatory, an elevator, and a school of the best type. And the proof of her usefulness is found in the splendid results shown from most unpromising material. For not only are many of the boys here the result of the most curious miscegenation, Chinese, negroes, aborigines, and every European race being mingled and producing some extraordinary blends, but they have, by reason of neglect and freedom of the wild, often become literally young savages. Yet so wise is the rule and so excellent the training that from this queer raw material there is turned out a really fine finished product. All the officers are enthusiasts. I protested against the boys being put through their facings to make a show for me, but I found that to refuse to witness what they could do would give not only the officers but the boys entirely unnecessary pangs of disappointment. So of course I yielded, and was exceedingly glad I did, for the spectacle I was treated to was an inspiring as well as an illuminating one. Also, the fates being propitious, during the exercises the Premier of the Colony, Mr. J. H. Carruthers, with the Japanese Admiral Shimamura and his staff, and a host of representative ladies and gentlemen, came alongside in a steamer and assisted at the function.
I have never seen anything better done, and as for the singing of the boys, well, there must be something in Australian air that makes for excellence of the vocal powers. I have never heard children sing as they sing here. I heard the children sing at rehearsal in the Town Hall for Empire Day, and was astounded at the purity and volume of their voices, and the same characteristics were noticeable here in the vocalisation of these whilom waifs. Be it remembered that they do not all become sailors; many of them go into other employments, for which they become eminently fitted here, being taught trades in addition to the peculiarly saltwater training, which fits a man to help himself, to cook, wash, mend, and rise to the occasion whatever it may be.
The food is, as might be expected here, super-excellent and plentiful, but even then there are certain luxuries, such as boys love, which may be earned by good behaviour and diligence. There are other privileges, too, as well as rewards, which may be earned in the same way, and in consequence the percentage of punishments is so low that it savours of necromancy how such boys can so readily be brought under the wholesome standard of sea discipline. And to crown all, the Sobraon has now a tender called the Dart, which is rigged as a topsail schooner and has besides a set of engines and boilers, in which the boys who wish to go to sea are trained under actual sea conditions to become deck hands or firemen, as the case may be. To sum up, the institution is a great credit to Australia, not merely to New South Wales alone, for the practical way in which it deals with the waif problem, for the object-lesson in discipline and its value which it daily presents to a people never enamoured of discipline and continually growing more impatient of the slightest restraint, and for the excellent results it shows.
Of course they (the powers that be) have been exceptionally fortunate in securing so perfectly adapted a ship as the Sobraon, and also in their superintendent of this fine enterprise, Captain W. H. Mason, whose ability, energy, and enthusiasm for his work is beautiful to witness, while it is also very pleasant to hear him speak of the manner in which his efforts are aided and backed up by the Government, no matter of what political complexion it may happen to be at the time when supplies are being voted.