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23 chapters
THE BLACK POLICE.
THE BLACK POLICE.
IN the following story I have endeavoured to depict some of the obscurer portions of Australia’s shadow side. The scenes and main incidents employed are chiefly the result of my personal observations and experiences; the remainder are from perfectly reliable sources. Arthur James Vogan. Tauranga, New Zealand. September 1890....
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CHAPTER I. A PENNY FOR BAD NEWS.
CHAPTER I. A PENNY FOR BAD NEWS.
TAR! Ev-en’ Star! Full account o’ the fi-re!” echoes shrilly on all sides from the throats of bare-legged, paper-laden urchins, who after the manner of their kind are actively engaged in supplying the passing public of Auckland, New Zealand, with the second edition of the evening paper. Queen Street, the principal thoroughfare of the city, is crowded at this hour of the afternoon. Business at the banks and offices is over for the day, and the hot pavements are crowded with homeward-bound pedestr
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CHAPTER II. ΣΚΥΤΑ’ΛΗ.
CHAPTER II. ΣΚΥΤΑ’ΛΗ.
N a long, ceilingless room, half kitchen and half parlour, two figures are seated near an enormous fireplace, in which a glowing heap of wood ashes illuminates that end of the otherwise somewhat gloomy chamber. One figure, that of an elderly lady, is reclining in an easy chair. Her brain is evidently busy with anxious and even painful thoughts, the object of which is made evident as she turns her moist eyes, from gazing at the scintillating wonderland amongst the embers, to glance from time to t
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CHAPTER III. EUREKA.
CHAPTER III. EUREKA.
UTSIDE on the verandah a happy couple are sitting enjoying the hay-scented night wind as it blows in gentle gusts up the valley. Dick and Mollie are in that delightfully idiotic frame of mind known to the vulgar as “being spooney.” A great silver moon is shining down, as only a New Zealand moon can shine, over the forest-clad Hunua ranges in the distance and the neighbouring dewy pastures, where white-backed cattle can be seen resting for the night. The weird-voiced weka calls from the dark fern
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CHAPTER IV. PADDY’S MARKET.
CHAPTER IV. PADDY’S MARKET.
HE newly-arrived traveller in Sydney is generally pestered by the urbane and well-meaning citizens of that London of the South by three or more questions. Until he has answered these, and done so to their satisfaction,—and the correct reply is the “Open Sesame” to their hospitable homes and hearts,—his polite inquisitors will look coldly upon him. This knowledge is worth much to those of our readers who intend visiting Sydney for the first time; and we highly recommend such persons to study what
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CHAPTER V. THE SELVAGE EDGE OF CIVILIZATION.
CHAPTER V. THE SELVAGE EDGE OF CIVILIZATION.
UR next act in the drama before us begins with the foot-lights still turned down low, for another night scene is to be enacted. It is the new township of Ulysses. Some six or seven thousand miners are crowding into the one long, irregular street of a new Queensland “gold rush” township. For it is the night of the week,—pay-day night; with Sunday for an idle to-morrow on which to get sober. The new field of Ulysses—some sixty miles from the famous copper mines of Reid’s Creek—is, like many of the
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CHAPTER VI. TWO ESCAPES: A FALL AND A RISE.
CHAPTER VI. TWO ESCAPES: A FALL AND A RISE.
UR fourth chapter left our hero, like Mahommed’s coffin, “twixt earth and heaven.” Luckily, however, for our story, if not for Claude, Providence dipped her umpire’s flag, after merely a momentary hesitation, to the first-named of the opposing attractive forces, with the result that marvellously little harm happened to the chief actor in the tragedy. We mentioned the empty boxes, crates, and barrels lying in cumbersome confusion about the stony seclusion of the railway yard. It was the presence
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CHAPTER VII. MESSRS. WINZE AND CLINSKEEN.
CHAPTER VII. MESSRS. WINZE AND CLINSKEEN.
HE firm of Messrs. Winze and Clinskeen, Mining and Stock Agents, of Pitt Street, Sydney, is known as well, if not better, in “outside” wilds as even in Sydney. The establishment is one of those remarkable outcomes of Australian push and enterprise that are to be found in these colonies and nowhere else in the world. The office before us is the focussing-point of two great fields of operations,—mining and stock-raising. In the ground-glass case in the office—dedicated, as a black letter notice on
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CHAPTER VIII. THE BLOODY SKIRT OF SETTLEMENT.
CHAPTER VIII. THE BLOODY SKIRT OF SETTLEMENT.
“I had always heard the Indian (North American) spoken of as a revengeful, bloodthirsty man. To find him a man capable of feelings and affections, with a heart open to the wants and responsive to the ties of social life, was amazing.”— From the Memoirs of Henry R. Schoolcraft, the hero-explorer of “Garden of the West” fame. OR the purposes of our narrative we must turn back in our portfolio of Australian reminiscences, and present to our readers a sketch of an event that took place sixteen years
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CHAPTER IX. MURDER, MADNESS, AND MELODY.
CHAPTER IX. MURDER, MADNESS, AND MELODY.
N board the swift coastal steamer Eidermere , as she cuts through the tepid waters of the Molle passage with her knife-like stem, on her way to the northern Queensland ports. The coral-reef-sheltered expanse of waters is quite oily in appearance, perfectly calm is its mother-of-pearl surface, which, crimson, blue, and yellow with evening tints, reflects a perfect topsy-turvy picture of the purple, pine-covered, pointed islets and grand, shadowy hills of the mainland, that make this spot the most
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CHAPTER X. MISS LILETH MUNDELLA AND MR. WILSON GILES.
CHAPTER X. MISS LILETH MUNDELLA AND MR. WILSON GILES.
“Where the banana grows the animal system is indolent, and pampered at the cost of the higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.”— Emerson. T is a blazing winter day in Northern Queensland; a morning when it is quite a pleasure to turn one’s eyes from the sun-scorched, shadowless “open country” outside to the cool, thatched verandah of “Government House” (head station-house), where Mr. Wilson Giles, the owner of Murdaro run, resides. It is particularly grateful to do so to-day, for in addi
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CHAPTER XI. THE BLACK POLICE.
CHAPTER XI. THE BLACK POLICE.
ERE’S another snob trying to get us all cashiered! Confound those beastly newspapers,—just my luck!” exclaims an elderly and rather handsome man, who, sitting before his office table, has just opened an important-looking letter, headed with the royal arms printed in red ink. “Just my confounded luck. Just at this time too, of all others, when my application to be appointed Protector of Aboriginals for the district must just have reached the chief. Now I wonder what Mrs. Bigger will say if I don’
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CHAPTER XII. BILLY AND THE “HATTER.”
CHAPTER XII. BILLY AND THE “HATTER.”
IXTY miles in a southerly direction from the place where Inspector Puttis met with the adventure related in our last chapter, the figure of a man is reposing beside a silent rocky pool, in the heart of a dense jungle. The tropic vegetation around him is part of the same straggling line of “scrub-country” that covers the great, rugged shoulders of the coast range of Northern Queensland with a soft green mantle of indescribable grandeur and beauty. Enormous fig-trees ( Ficus ), with gigantic, butt
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CHAPTER XIII. CLAUDE’S LETTER TO DICK.
CHAPTER XIII. CLAUDE’S LETTER TO DICK.
“We have at various times had stories told us of the treatment the blacks are subjected to in the bush, and it behoves the Government to make strict inquiry into the whole question. By the way, where is the Protector of Aborigines, and what has he got to say in the matter? EAR DICK,—In my letter to the ‘Mater’ I have set forth all those of my experiences, up to date, that I consider of most interest to the gentle female mind, and have omitted certain others of a more painful character. For you,
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Midnight.
Midnight.
Of all the persons beneath the roof-tree of Murdaro head station house during the first part of that night, Mr. Cummercropper was the only one who was successful in wooing “the gentle sleep,” and it was not till early morning that slumber slid upon the souls of the remainder of the party. For Claude, his host, and the two fair cousins, “each and severally” have their excited brains full of a reeling panorama, called into action by memory and thought, which it is far beyond the power of slumber t
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CHAPTER XV. THE GHOST OF CHAMBER’S CREEK.
CHAPTER XV. THE GHOST OF CHAMBER’S CREEK.
EXT morning, when Claude wandered into the supper-room of the previous night, he found a couple of fat, comely young native women, in short, light-coloured frocks, relaying the cloth upon the table for a second or late breakfast. One of these girls on seeing Claude toddles up to him, and explains, in the ridiculous jargon she has been taught to consider English, that Mr. Giles and the young ladies have already partaken of breakfast and gone out. “Marmie bin go out longer Missie Lillie, um Missie
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CHAPTER XVI. LILETH’S DISAPPOINTMENT.
CHAPTER XVI. LILETH’S DISAPPOINTMENT.
T is much later than Claude’s usual hour for rising when he opens his eyes upon the morning following his midnight interview with Miss Giles. And he remains in a sort of half-dormant condition, listening to the sound of a rich contralto voice singing a martial air, to the accompaniment of a piano, at the other end of the house. The young man dreamily endeavours to make out the words of the song, but cannot. Though when it draws to a conclusion he is surprised to hear, as he fancies, in the choru
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CHAPTER XVII. EN AVANT!
CHAPTER XVII. EN AVANT!
FTER leaving Murdaro “Government House,” Claude, in company with his little follower Don, was not long in rejoining his party at the out-station. Here he found the pack-horses all ready, and Williams and Billy just concluding a lengthy confabulation as to the best route to follow. So, there being nothing to delay the immediate departure of the expedition, a start was called, and some twenty miles travelled before darkness necessitated a camp for the night. It is now three o’clock A.M. The chorus
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CHAPTER XVIII. A STATION SKETCH.
CHAPTER XVIII. A STATION SKETCH.
T is about eight o’clock P.M. , at Borbong head-station, which lies at some fifty miles’ distance from Murdaro, and the evening meal being over, half-a-dozen men are settling down to enjoy an after-dinner smoke in that sanctum of Government House, the boss’s “den.” Most of the bronzed, manly figures before us are dressed in white linen and one wears the long top-boots and spurs of a sub-lieutenant in the N.M. Constabulary. Three of the other men are passing travellers, and although quite unknown
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CHAPTER XIX. THE GRAVE.
CHAPTER XIX. THE GRAVE.
T was there he fell, boss. He struck right on top of them gibbers (stones). I caught at him, and fell too,—there’s the mark where I struck the mud by the broken stem of that cooliebar there.” It is Billy who is speaking, as, with tears in his eyes, and his affectionate heart overflowing with genuine grief, he looks up at the rugged cliffs and points out to Claude and Williams the place where Dyesart met with his fatal fall. On the ninth day out from Murdaro the expedition has reached the long bl
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CHAPTER XX. A “DISPERSING” PARTY.
CHAPTER XX. A “DISPERSING” PARTY.
NSPECTOR PUTTIS, N.M.P., is pacing the verandah of Borbong head-station house. The hour is early, and although the active little man was one of the liveliest of last night’s party of bronzed and loud-voiced men, who held wild carousal till the “wee, sma’ hours,” he is up betimes, as usual, to enjoy a cup of tea in the cool morning air, and issue instructions for the day to the “boys” of his troop. The loose verandah boards creak under his diminutive Wellington boots, as with military strut he ma
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CHAPTER XXI. FATE’S AVENGING HAND.
CHAPTER XXI. FATE’S AVENGING HAND.
AKING advantage of the storm whose parting fusillade has left Claude hors de combat for the time being, Manager Browne’s “rounding-up” party, under the skilful generalship of Inspector Puttis and Sub-Inspector Morth, has completely invested the native village upon the rocky promontory. It is made up of strange constituents, this murderous shooting party. Squatter J.P.’s are there; youthful “rouse-abouts,” some of these youngsters only a few years released from the sanctified thraldom of a Christ
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CHAPTER XXII. LAST WORDS.
CHAPTER XXII. LAST WORDS.
EAR DICK,—I have at last a few hours to myself, during which I can sit down quietly, here in my room, which overlooks the Botanical Gardens and ‘our beautiful harbour,’ and write to my relatives and friends. “I was very glad to get your letter yesterday, and learn that you are all well up to date. As for myself, I am pretty well, thank you. After getting rid of the ophthalmic troubles which seized upon my eyes whilst I was lying ill in the fly-pestered north, I went to Brisbane, where, of course
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