Many of the men wore tall hats. Tall hats are almost unknown in the tropics. Taking Brisbane as the northern limit, they extend as far south as Dunedin, that is to say, over nineteen degrees of latitude. They have a similar geographical range in the northern hemisphere. There are, therefore, two belts round the globe, each about 1,200 miles in width, in which we may study chimney-pots.
Judging from the brogue I heard in the streets and in the hotels, I should fancy that English, Scotch, and Irish are mixed up in Brisbane in about equal proportions. This may not agree with statistics. Statistics consider people who were born in Ireland as Irishmen. In my estimate I only reckon as Irishmen those who talk with a good brogue, make bulls, and tell every girl they see that she is the prettiest in the town. I spent my first evening with a very jovial Irishman. One thing which he taught me was, that the whisky of the southern hemisphere resembles, in all its properties, that which is made in other parts of the world.
One morning I spent in visiting the Brisbane museum. It is a large building, and is apparently omnivorous in the curiosities it receives. There were lots of minerals to be seen, including a number of very good specimens of opal. Upstairs there was a large collection of oil-paintings illustrating Australian scenery. Downstairs I saw many fossil bones, including those of the extinct gigantic kangaroo-like animal called the diprotodon. The Major was anxious to get some diprotodon shooting, but when we told him that the animal was 55 feet from the tip of his tail to the tip of his snout, and 55 feet from the tip of his snout to the tip of his tail, making in all 110 feet, that his skin was impenetrable to the bullet of the European, etc., etc., the Major was not so anxious. He saw we were joking, bit his lips, and got quite cross.
From the museum I was directed to the public gardens at the end of the street—‘The gate right ahead of you,’ said my informant. I walked in, entered between two rather fine gate-posts into a garden-like avenue. ‘Odd sort of botanical garden,’ I thought. ‘Trees ought to be labelled. Don’t want to over-educate the people of Brisbane, I suppose. Might be dangerous if they knew a lot of Latin names for trees.’ So I walked on until I came to a big house with a carriage at the door. ‘Good place for a curator,’ I thought. ‘Ought to have started life as a botanist, and I might have had a house like that.’ While looking at the house, and wondering whether a re-education would enable me to start in the plant line, a policeman broke into my reveries by inquiring whether I wanted to see the Governor? ‘No,’ said I; ‘I want to see the botanical gardens.’ ‘You have taken the wrong entrance,’ he replied. ‘You will find the entrance next to the one you came in by.’ So I had to retrace my steps to the entrance next to the one I came in by. This was one of those iron-gate sort of things, like a big squirrel-cage. It had a cast-iron label on, to the effect that these gardens were the invention of Sir George Bowen. After entering the squirrel-cage turnstile, swing the gate and then pass on. Do not pause when once inside the squirrel-cage, or another person may come, and, by swinging the gate at the wrong moment, crack you like a nut between nut-crackers. Here I found labels and Latin names, nursemaids, perambulators, grassy slopes, and children to my heart’s content. Sir George Bowen’s invention is very pretty, and well repays a visit. I forgot to say that at the museum there are the apartments of the Royal Society of Queensland. They began by calling themselves ‘Royal,’ in the same way that a public-house may call itself the Royal Bull. Subsequently they prayed the Government to petition the Queen for the use of the word ‘Royal.’ This was naturally granted. They have a fine library, and are doing much good work.
ADVENTURES WITH A BOOMERANG.
I had a boomerang given to me when in Brisbane. I have got it yet. If the troubles it has caused me, and the troubles it has in store for me, do not bring me to an early grave, I have the intention of passing this specimen of aboriginal workmanship on to some fellow I don’t like. By the same messenger I intend to send him the address of a respectable undertaker. If you have a deadly hatred for a man—if there is a man who has insulted you, called you a liar and a thief, converted you and your family into paupers, blasted your hopes for this world and the future—just ask him, when he goes to Australia, to bring you a boomerang. Tell him you would like a good big one—a fighting boomerang. He will either be dead or imprisoned before he gets back. My boomerang is a fighting boomerang. It is made out of very hard wood. At both ends it is pointed. The edge of it is like that of a sword, and it is shaped like a young moon. My troubles with this thing began in the streets of Brisbane. It would not go in any of my portmanteaus, so I tied it on the outside of my bag. The bag then became like a double-ended ram pointed at both ends. The first notice I received about my double-ended ram was from an old gentleman against whom my bag happened to bump. ‘D—n it, sir, what’s that? You’ve torn my trousers,’ said he. I apologized, and felt very mean. I shall never forget the way in which that old man glared through his spectacles, first at me, then at his trousers, and then at the double-ender. The last look decided the course I should take. I might charge him. After this I tried to be more careful, and got on pretty well until I reached the station.
At the ticket-office I found myself in a crowd, and, the persons behind pushing me, drove the double-ender into the legs and hinder parts of those in front. The way in which they jumped and squirmed was quite ridiculous. ‘Please excuse me; it’s only a boomerang,’ I said. ‘Boomerang be hanged!’ said one man. ‘What do you mean by bringing a thing like that for in here?’ By-and-by it got generally known that there was a man with a boomerang in a bag coming through the crowd, and they made a passage for us. The amount of apologies that I made for my boomerang during the next six or seven days nearly killed me. Every time I made a move into a railway-carriage, out of a railway-carriage, near to a group of people where there was not much room, I had always to herald myself by, ‘Ah! please excuse me—ahem! I’ve got a boomerang.’ Once the bag got a side-blow, and swung round to catch me across the calf of the leg; the result of which was that for decency’s sake I had to borrow some pins to fasten up the rent. It is useless to say that the trousers and my leg were both spoiled. My leg got better, but the trousers didn’t. It cost me twenty-six shillings for a new pair. Once or twice I thought of throwing the thing away; but as I heard that boomerangs come circling back towards the thrower, my courage failed me. To have a thing weighing forty pounds, with the shape and edge of a scimitar, cavotting about your head, was not to be risked. If I had paid a man to throw it away for me, I might have been indicted for manslaughter. I would sooner be mated to a tinted Venus or a Frankenstein than to a good-sized boomerang.
Since the above experience I have tried the thing, and thus far it has not exhibited a trace of the movement attributed to Noah’s dove. At first I only threw it two or three feet; but as I gained courage I threw it farther—first edgeways, then sideways, flatways, pointways, straightways, upwards, downwards, obliquely forwards, backwards, upwards, outwards, and in some fifty or sixty other manners and directions, but invariably with the result that I had to walk after the confounded thing and bring it back. I was afraid to leave the weapon behind—it might kill somebody. I believe I have walked one thousand seven hundred miles after that boomerang. The only way in which I have been successful in inducing a boomerang to return to me has been either by paying a man to fetch it, or else by tying a long string to it. After this it is needless to say that the return of the boomerang is a myth, and as a myth let us relegate it to the land of the unicorn and the deadly upas.
Note.—Since writing the above I met with a gentleman who declares that boomerangs are capable of returning, not simply once, but repeatedly. The difficulty, in his mind, was how to prevent them from returning. ‘There were tame boomerangs and frisky boomerangs,’ he remarked. My boomerang was probably a tame one. If his boomerang had not knocked over two policemen and dispersed a crowd, he would at this moment have been the inmate of a gaol. It came about in this way. ‘Do you see,’ said he, ‘Christmas was drawing nigh, and I thought I would buy something to amuse the kids. Well, I went into a big toy-shop at the corner of Market Street, and, after looking at a lot of mechanical dolls, rocking-horses, and what not, I decided on taking a boomerang. The young lady, who wrapped it up in a sheet of stiff brown paper, remarked that I had selected one that was rather lively. It was just getting dark when I got in the ’bus, and I put the parcel containing the boomerang on my knee. Once or twice I observed that the thing began to edge along sideways towards the lap of an old lady, who was my neighbour. “That parcel of yours seems to be fidgetty,” said she. At that moment it gave a jump. “O lor’!” said the old lady; “why, it’s alive!” “Don’t be alarmed, mum,” said I; “it’s quite harmless;” and I put both hands over my purchase to keep it quiet. “It’s only a boomerang that I bought to amuse the children.” At the word “boomerang” everybody looked as if they had received an electric shock. One young man put up his eyeglass, an old gentleman looked over his spectacles, the old lady shot open her umbrella, and everybody edged away. If I had said it was an infernal machine the consternation could not have been greater. “Oh, you wicked young man!” said the old lady, still keeping up her umbrella as a shield; but just then the ’bus stopped at the corner of my street, so, wishing my companions good-night, I got out, feeling, as you may suppose, much relieved.