New Zealanders are now employed at Sydney as labourers, and are much esteemed for their steady and sober habits: they are also careful of the money they earn:—as an instance, one of them, who had just returned to Sydney from a whaling voyage, on receiving his wages, placed the amount in the hands of a gentleman, from whom he drew occasionally, about ten shillings at a time, to purchase clothes, or any other necessary article.
The Australian ladies may compete for personal beauty and elegance with any European, although satirized as “corn-stalks” from the slenderness of their forms. It is true their reserve is great, but it proceeds from diffidence, for in family intercourse they are both animated and communicative. Their education, from a deficiency of good schools, was formerly much neglected, except they were sent to Europe for that purpose; but now that cause of complaint is removed by the establishment of several respectable seminaries and teachers; so the high degree of natural talent the Australian females really possess may now be improved by proper cultivation. Even among the male Australians there is a taciturnity proceeding from natural diffidence and reserve, not from any want of mental resources: this led one of their more lively countrymen to observe, “that they could do every thing but speak.”
It has been said that formerly it was dangerous in England to inform a fellow-traveller of having just arrived from Botany Bay, as he will soon shun your acquaintance; but visitors from that country must, after the following anecdote, stand a worse chance in the celestial empire. A ship arriving at China from Australia, the commander, when asked by the Chinese where the ship came from, jocosely answered, “From New South Wales, where all the English thieves are sent.” The inhabitants of the empire, taking the joke seriously, reported this and every other ship which arrived from that country to the mandarin as “ship from thiefo country: one thiefo captain, three thiefo officers, twenty-five thiefo crew.” And when the Hooghly arrived with the late governor of New South Wales, it was—“One thiefo viceroy of thiefo country, with several thiefo attendants.” The thiefo viceroy’s lady landing at Macao, was not reported to the mandarin.
One afternoon, a party was formed for a fishing excursion in Port Jackson: we took a seine with us, and pulled out to a fine bay or cove, called “Chowder Bay,” a picturesque little spot, and not far distant in the harbour from the north head at the entrance of Port Jackson. On the seine being hauled, immense numbers of the Balistes, more commonly known by the name of “Leather Jackets,” from the great toughness of their skins, of various sizes were obtained. This fish is troublesome to hook-and-line fishermen, from biting their hook into two parts. It was probably this circumstance that caused the name of File-fish to be conferred upon them. Their flesh is not used by Europeans; but the blacks eat them. Several sting-rays (Trygon pastinaca? of Cuvier) were also caught, together with numerous specimens of Diodon; Sygnathus, and two species of Mullus; one was the Mullus barbatus, Linn., of a bright-red colour, “Le Rouget” of the French: this is the species said to be so celebrated for the excellence of its flavour, as well as the pleasure the Romans took in contemplating the changes of colour it experienced while dying.
The “Cat-fish,” (Silurus,) said to have the power of stinging with the tentaculæ or feelers, which pend from about the external part of the mouth, large quantities of the Chœtodon fasciata, or Banded Chœtodon, and several species of bream, were caught in this and other coves so numerous in the splendid harbour of Port Jackson.
Several large cephalopodous animals, Loligo of Lamarck, Les Calmars of Cuvier, were frequently taken in the seine. If taken in the hand alive, they would, with the succulent tentaculæ, draw the fingers of the person holding them towards their parrot-beaked mouths, and inflict a severe bite: they also discharge, when captured, a large quantity of thick black fluid, a very minute proportion of which suffices to render turbid a large quantity of water. Should this black liquid fall upon linen clothes, it produces a stain difficult, if at all possible, to be removed. It is from this fluid that the material known by the name of China or Indian ink, is manufactured. The ancients were also accustomed to use it as a writing ink, and esteemed the flesh as a delicacy. Most of the eastern natives, and those among the Polynesian islands, partake of it, and esteem it as food: they may be seen exposed for sale in the bazaars throughout India.
Having brought my researches in this colony to a conclusion for the present, I have to regret the limited portion of time I was able to devote to the investigation of its various natural productions, &c., so numerous and interesting in all portions of the great continent of Australia. The discoveries already made have been numerous; and, when it is considered that an immense tract of country still remains unexplored, many treasures in every department of natural history may yet be looked for from this comparatively new and extraordinary portion of the globe.
To the botanist and zoologist, objects of peculiar interest are continually presenting themselves, not previously described, or indeed known in Europe. While a field of investigation might be opened by the geologist, the cultivation of which may be expected to repay his labours a thousand fold.