The persons who live here are of various nationalities. I saw British, Blacks, Cingalese, Japanese, and Kanakas. There were also a few residents from Damascus, and a Polish emigrant from Siberia. The chief occupation is diving for pearl shells. This is done from small boats with diving dresses. The divers hold a monopoly of their business. They get from £3 to £3 10s. for 100 shells, and it takes 8 to 900 shells to make a ton, which is worth from £130 to £150. White men provide the capital for this business, but it is the dark-skinned people who do the actual diving. If a white man insists on diving, the probability is that an accident occurs. The poor fellow’s signals were not understood, and he dies for want of air. The divers take as their perquisite all the pearls they find, which they trade off to jewellers or at grog shops. The pearls ought properly to go to the owners of the boats. At the end of a year a diver, after having received all his food which he insists shall be of the best description, and accompanied with the necessary sauces, finds that he has from £300 to £500. Then comes the ‘knocking down’ and a general debauch, at which time those persons not desirous of being converted into lead mines or sieves, retire to their dwelling.
Now there is a small church at Thursday Island, and the manners of the cosmopolitans it is hoped may be softened. How they will get on at their christenings without water, is a problem yet to be solved.
Thursday Island is a young place, but still it has its stories. The stories chiefly relate to enormous pearls and the adventures of divers. I was particularly struck with one story I heard, partly because I had reason to believe it to be true, and partly because the scenes referred to were indicated by the narrator as the story went on. It was called:
Ah Foo, the Gardener of Thursday Island.
Pearls and pearl shells are now getting scarce at and about Thursday Island, began the narrator. In early days pearls were common enough to be had for the asking. There are some of my mates here that have had pearls given to them by the handful. They would get a few set in rings for their sweethearts, the balance they would pass on to their friends. The first who discovered this El Dorado was an Israelite from Vienna. He came and bought up all he could, and then he went, and we have never heard of him since. After the first Oriental there came a second Oriental. This was a Chinaman. He called himself Ah Foo, and told us that his home was in Shantung or Shanshi. I forget which. In big colonial towns Chinamen are usually washermen. In the suburbs, and in the country, they are gardeners. About half Australia depends upon Chinamen for their vegetable diet. As Chinamen supply it, the profession of a gardener has come to be regarded as an occupation by no means comparable with true manhood.
You point to the only fertile spot in a barren burnt up township, and before you can ask what it is, you are told that it is one of those gardens made by Chinamen. They are always making gardens. With the manure they use they will poison some of us yet. Would you believe it, they only use night soil. They are such a dirty lot.
This is all the thanks a Chinaman gets for making a pleasant little green oasis and feeding the whites on cabbages and peas. To be a gardener is looked upon as a Chinaman’s profession. In fact pottering about with a watering pot, and hawking vegetables, is the greatest height to which a Chinaman’s soul is supposed to rise.
Ah Foo, when he came to Thursday Island, started a garden. How things were to be induced to grow, nobody could conceive. That was the Chinaman’s business. If there is a second Aden in the world, it must be remembered that it is well represented by Thursday Island. It seldom rains at Thursday Island, but yet Ah Foo kept digging away at his ground, expecting that some day or other it might produce a crop, and the harvest he would get, for cabbages were worth five shillings each, would well repay him for his labours. But weeks passed, and no rain came, and the Chinaman for a month or so paused in his labours. From time to time during this period of melancholy, he would descend from his hut up the gully, and take a seat upon a bench within the little Public.
‘Well, John, and how’s the garden?’ the landlord would ask.
‘Me loose plenty money. No catchee lain, water melons and cabbages no makee glow,’ replied John;—and he looked sad enough for the first mourner at a funeral. Several of the residents on Thursday Island, who had travelled, knew that Chinamen succeeded in growing vegetables in places where even a Mormon would fail.