SYDNEY.—UP ANCHOR FOR HOME.—"GALWAY MIKE."
What a change in their bill of fair awaited our crew the morning after our anchor went down in this beautiful harbor; the change from the eternal salt junk and yams, and unrelenting hard-tack, to the luxuries of a Sydney bumboat! The sailor, to be sure, is no great connoisseur in matters of this sort; nevertheless, as our observant cook pithily expressed it, "he likes good grub better than he does poor." A very small sum of money was sufficient to spread a table (or a sea-chest, either,) with baker's loaves, fresh butter and cheese, new milk, eggs, and various other "manavelins," as Jack terms them. I write the word as it is pronounced, but my researches in etymology, are, thus far, all at fault. Neither Noah Webster nor Nat Bowditch throws any light on the matter.
Prices of fresh meats, except pork, were almost nominal. Beef could be bought at a penny a pound, mutton at three farthings; for this was long before the gold discoveries in Australia or California. No flood-tide of emigration had yet set in that direction; no yellow-metal fever had yet raged to inflate prices to a fictitious standard. Australia possessed peculiar advantages as a grazing country, and stock could be raised almost without trouble or expense. Thousands were slain merely for the hides, horns and tallow, and extensive shipments of these articles, as also of wool, were made to the mother country. Several large ships were loading at the time of our arrival, forcing the bales of wool into their places with jack-screws, much after the manner of our cotton-droghers in southern ports.
Sydney impressed us as rather a handsome town, though not showy or glaring in appearance, most of the buildings being of a crumbly sandstone, which is quarried in the immediate neighborhood, and worked out by convict labor. We inferred, from what we saw, that stone might be cheaper than lumber for building purposes. The convicts who worked in quarrying stone appeared to be the most finished illustrations of laziness reduced to a system that I have ever met with, and to accomplish the least amount of work that it was possible for men to perform who kept steadily at it all day. This was what they called "working government stroke;" and they might have all taken diplomas at the great Circumlocution Office in the science of, How not to do it. They were not allowed to stop work entirely, nor were they ever hurried up. Sentinels in scarlet paced back and forth near them, but this was merely to preserve order and to prevent escape. The convicts themselves were all in uniform of stout, coarse cloth, with the name of the gang or division to which they belonged conspicuously stenciled on the leg of the pants, and across the back of the frock-shirt. Thus some were labelled "Chain Gang," others "Hyde Park Barracks," and so on. They were scarcely ever called convicts here, I observed, being spoken of either politely, as "government men," or else, in slang phrase, as "lags."
One of the striking features of Sydney, as of all British seaport towns of any size, was the taverns, or "publics," the name of which was legion, each having its distinctive sign. Here were to be found the Red Cross, the Blue Cross, and crosses of all hues of the rainbow; the Red Rose and the White Rose as rivals, typical of the ancient houses of Lancaster and York; the Thistle and the Shamrock both rivalling the Rose, and again a more compromising publican bore aloft a trinity of all three; Red Lions, Green Boars, Blue Elephants, and other impossibilities in zoology, boldly asserted the reality of their existence, while Swans and Magpies on one side of the street eyed Crooked Billets and Wheels of Fortune on the other, and the Jolly Tar near the landing swung his tarpaulin aloft, and kicked up his heels at the whole 'long shore tribe' of them. The landlord of this house was especially gracious to us all, and found his account in it, as our men spent much of their time and money in his establishment, so that the Jolly Tar was, for the time being, even more jolly than was his wont.
The advent of an American whaleship at Sydney was a rare occurrence at that day, though, two or three years later, it became a fashionable port of resort for Nor'westmen, the exorbitant port-charges to foreign ships having been taken off, as also the duties on oil sold under a certain quantity. As we had a good voyage in the ship, and came on shore with substantial linings to our pockets, we were always welcome visitors at the "publics," taking the wind out of the sails of all wool-droghers, soldiers, and bar-room loungers generally. It was "Get up, Jack, and let John sit down," when the Yankee whaler's men were coming. I made the acquaintance of an intelligent seaman at the Jolly Tar, a Philadelphian, who had been here some time, having been left sick in the hospital from an American brig, and was anxious to ship and go home with us if possible. Speaking of the landlord of the house, this Ashton said to me:
"You would hardly believe, would you, that this man was sent here with two pen'worth of lag?"
"Two pen'orth of lag!" said I, considerably mystified, "What do you mean by that?"
"It means," explained Ashton, "in the slang phrase used here, that he was transported for fourteen years. A term of seven years is called a pen'orth of lag, fourteen years two pen'orth, and so on."
"But you don't mean to say that he is a convict, now?" said I.