Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

by Thomas Henry Huxley

1848-1850.

[The whole cruise of the "Rattlesnake" lasted almost precisely four years, her stay in Australian waters nearly three. Of this time altogether eleven months were spent at Sydney, namely, July 16 to October 11, 1847; January 14 to February 2, and March 9 to April 29, 1848; January 24 to May 8, 1849; and February 14 to May 2, 1850. The three months of the first northern cruise were spent in the survey of the Inshore Passage—the passage, that is, within the Great Barrier Reef for ships proceeding from India to Sydney. In 1848, while waiting for the right season to visit Torres Straits, a short cruise was made in February and March, to inspect the lighthouses in Bass' Straits. It was on this occasion that Huxley visited Melbourne, then an insignificant town, before the discovery of gold had brought a rush of immigrants.

The second northern cruise of 1848, which lasted nine months, had for its object the completion of the survey of the Inner Passage as far as New Guinea and the adjoining archipelago. The third cruise in 1849-50 again lasted nine months, and continued the survey in Torres Straits, the Louisiade archipelago, and the south-eastern part of New Guinea. After this the original plan was to make a fourth cruise, filling up the charts of the Inner Passage on the east coast, and surveying the straits of Alass between Lombok and Sumbawa in the Malay Archipelago; then, instead of returning to Sydney, to proceed to Singapore and so home by the Cape. But these plans were altered by the untimely death of Captain Stanley on March 13, and the "Rattlesnake" sailed for England direct in May 1850.

There was a great monotony about these cruises, particularly to those who were not constantly engaged in the active work of surveying. The ship sailed slowly from place to place, hunting out reefs and islets; a stay of a few days would be made at some lonely island, while charting expeditions went out in the boats or supplies of water and fresh fruits were laid in. On the second expedition there were two cases of scurvy on board by the time the mail from Sydney reached the ship at Cape York with letters and lime-juice, the first reminder of civilisation for four months and a half. On this cruise there was an unusual piece of interest in Kennedy's ill-fated expedition, which the "Rattlesnake" landed in Rockingham Bay, and trusted to meet again at Cape York. Happy it was for Huxley that his duties forbade him to accept Kennedy's proposal to join the expedition. After months of weary struggles in the dense scrub, Kennedy himself, who had pushed on for help with his faithful black man Jacky, was speared by the natives when almost in sight of Cape York; Jack barely managed to make his way there through his enemies, and guided a party to the rescue of the two starved and exhausted survivors of the disease-stricken camp by the Sugarloaf Hill. It was barely time. Another hour, and they too would have been killed by the crowd of blackfellows who hovered about in hopes of booty, and were only dispersed for a moment by the rescue party.

On the third cruise there were a few adventures more directly touching the "Rattlesnake." Twice the landing parties, including Huxley, were within an ace of coming to blows with the islanders of the Louisiades, and on one occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the broiling sun, until a party came to his relief. At Cape York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among them for several years. Here, too, Huxley and Macgillivray made a trip inland, and were welcomed by a native chief, who saw in the former the returning spirit of his dead brother.

Throughout the voyage Huxley was busy with his pencil, and many lithographs from his drawings illustrate the account of the voyage afterwards published. As to his scientific work, he was accumulating a large stock of observations, but felt rather sore about the papers which he had already sent home, for no word had reached him as to their fate, not even that they had been received or looked over by Forbes, to whom they had been consigned. As a matter of fact, they had not been neglected, as he was to find out on his return; but meanwhile the state of affairs was not reassuring to a man whose dearest hopes were bound up in the reception he could win for these and similar researches. Altogether, it was with no little joy that he turned his back on the sweltering heat of Torres Straits, on the great mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley range, which had remained hidden from D'Urville in the "Astrolabe" to be discovered by the explorers on the "Rattlesnake," and the far stretching archipelago of the Louisiades, one tiny island in which still bears the name of Huxley, after the assistant-surgeon of the "Rattlesnake."

A few extracts from letters of the time will give a more vivid idea of what the voyage was like. The first is from a letter to his mother, dated February 1, 1849:—]

…I suppose you have wondered at the long intervals of my letters, but my silence has been forced. I wrote from Rockingham Bay in May, and from Cape York in October. After leaving the latter place we have had no communication with any one but the folks at Port Essington, which is a mere military post, without any certain means of communication with England. We were ten weeks on our passage from Port Essington to Sydney and touched nowhere, so that you may imagine we were pretty well tired of the sea by the time we reached Port Jackson.

Thank God we are now safely anchored in our old quarters, and for the next three months shall enjoy a few of those comforts that make life worth the living…

The only place we have visited since my last budget to you was Port Essington, a military post which has been an object of much attention for some time past in connection with the steam navigation between Sydney and India. It is about the most useless, miserable, ill-managed hole in Her Majesty's dominions. Placed fifteen miles inland on the swampy banks of an estuary out of reach of the sea breezes, it is the most insufferably hot and enervating place imaginable. The temperature of the water alongside the ship was from 88 to 90, i.e. about that of a moderately warm bath, so that you may fancy what it is on land. Added to this, the commandant is a litigious old fool, always at war with his officers, and endeavouring to make the place as much of a hell morally as it is physically. Little more than two years ago a detachment of sixty men came out to the settlement. At the parade on the Sunday I was there; there were just ten men present. The rest were invalided, dead, or sick. I have no hesitation in saying that half of this was the result of ill-management. The climate in itself is not particularly unhealthy. We were all glad to get away from the place.