The coal-mines well repaid the visit. I was shown every courtesy that could be desired. There was no particular reason why I should have been shown any courtesy whatever. I visited the coke-ovens and works above ground, and afterwards walked some miles underground, where everything that was remarkable was carefully described. On the surface I was particularly struck with the size of a coal-box. Ordinary coal-boxes are portable; this coal-box had been made too large to admit of removal. It held, I was told, upwards of 3,000 tons of coal. If they had told me that it would have held half the coal in the universe I should have unhesitatingly accepted the statement, and noted it down as a fact to be publicly recorded. This box was built of wood. It stood on legs, so that locomotives and whole trains could run underneath it. Beneath this particular coal-box—for at other mines there are also coal-boxes—there were three lines of rails, so that three long trains could seek the shelter of its wings. These wings were sliding doors. Open the doors, when, presto! the trucks beneath were full, and three great trains could start away laden with a cargo of black diamonds sufficient to supply the British fleet. Unfortunately, the British fleet never came to be supplied. Newcastle folks have had a mania for coal loading. At Newcastle itself they have a wonderful arrangement of hydraulic cranes, which lift whole trucks, much as we would lift a spoonful of soup, and then tip it into any portion of a ship where the coals are wanted. In many cases I believe that the supply comes in more quickly than those in the ship can get it trimmed. It is a wonderful fact, but skippers say it is a fact, that, in consequence of this, the coolies of China and the boys and girls of Japan can load an ocean-going steamer as fast with coals as it can be done with the hydraulic cranes of Newcastle. At Nagasaki I have been told that the passing in and passing out of a cargo is a sight to be remembered. Women or boys stand shoulder to shoulder up the gangways from the lighter to the steamers. The baskets of coal fly along from hand to hand, and so rapidly, that no individual ever carries any weight; all that he does is to give the flying parcel an additional quantity of momentum. The empty baskets pass back in a similar manner. The general effect is that of a huge circle of revolving baskets. All this is accompanied by parrot-like chattering and giggling. The Easterns are a happy lot. When they have finished coaling they wash themselves.
Underground I was shown where a great fire had occurred. In places the coal was burnt to a cinder. As you receded you passed places where it was only coked. The shales that accompany the coal had been baked to a state of brick or porcelain. This fire had been put out by flooding the mine with water. This was accomplished by making a huge syphon out of a 6-inch pipe, and conducting water from a creek which, at the time of the fire, very luckily happened to be in a state of flood. The seam I saw was six feet thick. In places it was a bituminous coal; in other parts it had a stony look—this was splint coal. On one occasion this splint coal had been returned, the buyers thinking it was shale. As a matter of fact, it was a better coal than the bituminous variety. Buyers often grumble about it. One thing of interest was a contrivance for automatically greasing the wheels of the coal-trucks. Another striking arrangement was a bar of iron called a “bull,” which was to stop a truck from running away, supposing it got free when on an incline.
Sydney was the next great city which I visited. There is a daily, or rather nightly, steamer communication between Newcastle and Sydney. Before long there will be a railway connection, when the steamers will have to lower their prices, or to seek their freights in other ports. It was night when I left Newcastle. On my way to the wharf I asked a young man the way to the boat for Sydney. His reply could not even be put in Latin. In all countries which are leading factors in the world’s advancement, we find the over-civilized, the civilized, the semi-civilized. The gentleman to whom I spoke on the Newcastle wharf might out of courtesy be admitted to the last class. I suppose he belonged to that particular division of the human species known in Australia as the larrikin, in ’Frisco as the corner boy, and in London as the loafer. Sydney and Melbourne are the headquarters of the larrikin. They may, if it is an honour, claim the invention of this excrescence in Australian civilization. By some, the larrikin is regarded as a type of humanity which owes its peculiarity to a redundance of animal spirits. It includes shop-boys and young workmen, who shriek after couples in the act of spooning: “Heh! why don’t you marry the girl! I’ll tell your mother what you’ve done!” Young gentlemen who are impertinent and cheeky. Young men who are given to larks and larking. Thus their name. The larrikins I have seen have certainly the above qualification; but, in addition, not only do they make themselves conspicuous by their wits, but they live by them. During the day they are apparently idle. They stand at corners, where they smoke. The better class of them, or rather those whose “wits” are above the average, adopt black suits, velvet collars, and high-heeled boots. You see the larrikin in numbers on piers, especially on the arrival of a steamer. I say they live on their wits, because, like the policemen, I really do not know how they do live. “Go down Clarence Street at night with some money, and you will find out,” said a friend of mine. What he meant I do not know.
The larrikins are the town loafers of Australia. The country loafers are called sundowners. These are gentlemen who travel with their swag on their backs, and so arrange their movements that if possible they reach a station at sundown. Here they take advantage of the hospitality accorded to strangers, and practically demand shelter and food. To refuse them might be dangerous, for after their departure fences might be destroyed, fires might break out, or other little troubles might occur which would be objectionable and dangerous. The sundowner is a black mailer, and many of the squatters find his demands a serious item in their expenses.
An old gentleman whom we suspected as being a sundowner visited our ship while it was lying at the wharf in Newcastle. He was a tall old man with a long grey beard. His tattered clothes, his staff, and the bundle on his back, made him so much like the pictures of Rip Van Winkle that he attracted general attention. His worn shoes and dusty appearance indicated that he had travelled many miles. He told Captain Green, who did the interviewing, that he had walked across the Blue Mountains from Sydney to Brisbane, and was in search of work. He was an engineer, but wherever he went, there was always the same answer,—‘Old men are not employed.’ As he was evidently a man who had interesting experiences to relate, our Captain asked him on board. His foot was no sooner on the deck than he saw a Chinaman. “What!” exclaimed the old man, “you carry wretches like that,—heathens who have robbed me of honest employment,” and he seemed inclined to leave the ship. A little persuasion, however, brought him into the cabin, and when a heathen had given him a steak and a bottle of porter, his bitterness subsided.
It turned out that he had been educated at Bath, and when he heard that the captain had been in Bath, the old man’s eyes almost filled with tears. ‘You must know the old church, then?’ ‘Yes, yes; I shall never forget an inscription on one of the gravestones I read there; forty years ago now:
‘“Life is but a maze of crooked streets,
Death is the market-place where each man meets;
If life were merchandise which men could buy,