A month had well-nigh gone before we reached Hong-Kong, the British portal to Cathay, a month of dreamy weather. Only one thing more,—a thing more like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Toward the end of the journey I discovered where the five hundred Chinese whose noses had been counted when we left Sydney had gone. Going forward, I looked over into an open hatchway, down into the hold, and there was a sight I shall never forget. These hundreds of deck passengers were all in a muddle amid cargo, parcels, hundreds of birds in cages, parrots, a kangaroo,—yet oblivious of everything. For the entire voyage nothing that I tell of could possibly have come within their ken, as during those days their minds were bent on one thing and one alone,—on playing fan-tan. There in the bottom of the hold hundreds of gold sovereigns passed from hand to hand in a game of chance. And at last they were to be released, to spread, a handful of sand thrown back upon the beach.
As for myself, with my arrival at Hong-Kong and a visit to Shanghai ended the longest continuous voyage I had made upon the Pacific, and the second side of that great Pacific Triangle was drawn. But meanwhile let me review in detail the outposts of the white man in the far Pacific—the lands I had passed on the white man's side of the triangle, ending in Hong-Kong, where white man and Oriental meet.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS
1
In the normal course of human variation, there should have been virtually no change of experience for me in going from New Zealand to Australia, notwithstanding the twelve hundred miles of sea that separate them. And though the sea is hardly responsible, there was a difference between these two offshoots of the "same" race for which distance offers little explanation. To me it seemed that regardless of the pride of race which encourages people to vaunt their homogeneity, the way these two counterparts of Britain have developed proves that homogeneity exists in wish more than in fact. It seems to me that the New Zealander has developed as though he were more closely related to the insular Anglo-Saxon, and the Australian as though he were the continental strain in the Englishman cropping out in a new and vast continent. However, this is sheer conjecture. All I can do is to offer in the form of my own observations reasons for the faith that is in me.
From the moment that I set foot in Australia I felt once again on a continent. Melbourne is low, flat, and gave me the impression of roominess which New Zealand cities never gave. They, with the exception of Christchurch on the Canterbury plains, always clambered up bare brown hills and hardly kept from slipping down into the sea. But in Australia I felt certain that if I set out in any direction except east I could walk until my hair grew gray without ever coming across a mountain. It was a great satisfaction to me that first day, for it was intensely hot and I had a heavy coat on my arm and two cameras and no helmet. Added to my difficulties was the cordiality of an Australian fellow-passenger who was determined that I should share with him his delight at home-coming. He was a short, stout, olive-skinned young man of about twenty-three who had a slightly German swing in his gait and accentuated his every statement with a diagonal cut outward of his right hand, palm down.
ONE OF THE OLDEST AUSTRALIAN RESIDENCES IS NOW A PUBLIC DOMAIN