Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

While they were looking, Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal evidence, while Hanuman’s is not only supported by verbal evidence, but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall not. Have you the gates?’”

CHAPTER XIII

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works – such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of London. London is still obscured by gas – gas pretty widely scattered, too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps.

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House – fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.

There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor’s Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. The others were at home.

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, but he hasn’t. There isn’t any war, and there isn’t any veto in his hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

Thus the Governor’s functions are much more limited than are a Governor’s functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.

He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped for that.

Another of Sydney’s social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity of his office.

Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short.

And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher the man looked up and said —

“Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me.”

“How do you know I won’t make it worse?”

“Because you can’t. It has been at its worst all night. If you can’t change it, no harm’s done; if you do change it, it’s for the better, of course. Come.”

“All right, what will you give?”

“I’ll give you the shark, if you catch one.”

“And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line.”

“Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won’t spoil yours; for many and many a time I’ve noticed that if – there, pull in, pull in, man, you’ve got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right – he’s landed.”

It was an unusually large shark – “a full nineteen-footer,” the fisherman said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.

“Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There’s generally something in them worth going for. You’ve changed my luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven’t changed your own.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t matter; don’t worry about that. Get your bait. I’ll rob him.”

When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay, and was starting away.

“What, you are not going?”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

“But what about your shark?”

“The shark? Why, what use is he to me?”

“What use is he? I like that. Don’t you know that we can go and report him to Government, and you’ll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty? Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?”

“Oh, well, you can collect it.”

“And keep it? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is odd. You’re one of those sort they call eccentrics, I judge. The saying is, you mustn’t judge a man by his clothes, and I’m believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don’t you know; and yet you must be rich.”

“I am.”

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a “stand-up.” There was a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, “There isn’t enough to buy clothes with,” and went his way.

At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A servant put his head in and said:

“There’s a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir.”

“What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his business.”

“He won’t go, sir. I’ve tried.”

“He won’t go? That’s – why, that’s unusual. He’s one of two things, then: he’s a remarkable person, or he’s crazy. Is he crazy?”

“No, sir. He don’t look it.”

“Then he’s remarkable. What does he say he wants?”

“He won’t tell, sir; only says it’s very important.”

“And won’t go. Does he say he won’t go?”

“Says he’ll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it’s all day.”

“And yet isn’t crazy. Show him up.”

The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, “No, he’s not crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing.”

Then aloud, “Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don’t waste any words; what is it you want?”

“I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Scott! (It’s a mistake; he is crazy.. No – he can’t be – not with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?”

“Nobody that you know.”

“What is your name?”

“Cecil Rhodes.”

“No, I don’t remember hearing the name before. Now then – just for curiosity’s sake – what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?”

“The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty days.”

“Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that – sit down – you interest me. And somehow you – well, you fascinate me; I think that that is about the word. And it isn’t your proposition – no, that doesn’t fascinate me; it’s something else, I don’t quite know what; something that’s born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for curiosity’s sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your desire to bor – ”

“I said intention.”

“Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word – an unheedful valuing of its strength, you know.”

“I knew its strength.”

“Well, I must say – but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don’t seem disturbed any. (Plainly this young fellow isn’t crazy; but as to his being remarkable – well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare not. What is your scheme?”

“To buy the wool crop – deliverable in sixty days.”

“What, the whole of it?”

“The whole of it.”

“No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?”

“Two and a half million sterling – maybe a little more.”

“Well, you’ve got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?”

“The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get.”

“Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?”

“I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days.”

“You mean, of course, that you might make it if – ”

“I said ‘shall’.”

“Yes, by George, you did say ‘shall’! You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you’ve got what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it out – I am prepared – acclimatized, if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you – ”

“I don’t think – I know.”

“Definite again. How do you know?”

“Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising.”

“Oh, in-deed? Now then, I’ve got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn’t stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o’clock last night, fifty days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now.. Well, why, don’t you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, when – ”

“Because I have later news.”

“Later news? Oh, come – later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot from London by the – ”

“My news is only ten days old.”

“Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?”

“Got it out of a shark."

“Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun – raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the single person of – ”

“Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity.”

“Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report – ”

“What does your middle initial stand for, sir?”

“Andrew. What are you writing?”

“Wait a moment. Proof about the shark – and another matter. Only ten lines. There – now it is done. Sign it.”

“Many thanks – many. Let me see; it says – it says oh, come, this is interesting! Why – why – look here! prove what you say here, and I’ll put up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings with you, half and half. There, now – I’ve signed; make your promise good if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old.”

“Here it is – and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is dated ‘London,’ and is of the same date as the Times, and says, ‘Ber confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag’ – , as clean native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the day was done, poor fellow.”

“And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to deliver the goods, they will think they’ve been struck by lightning. But there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with the other one. Come along, I’ll take you to my tailor. What did you say your name is?”

“Cecil Rhodes.”

“It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and by, if you live. There are three kinds of people – Commonplace Men, Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I’ll classify you with the Remarkables, and take the chances.”

The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed.

The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun – such as it is with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young fellows scramble aboard whole – sometimes – not always. Tragedies have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of both.

The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.

CHAPTER XIV

We can secure other people’s approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.

– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.

So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne – that juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map – looks like a county, in fact – yet it is about as large as England, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as large as the State of Texas.

Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favorable to other great industries – among others, wheat-growing and the making of wine.

We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the car was clean and fine and new – nothing about it to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be described as continental.

The tickets were round-trip ones – to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip wouldn’t cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator’s shoulders.

It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies – the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable.

All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted.

Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived.

We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named. “My word!” as the Australians say, but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; towering and majestic masses of blue – a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky – made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful color – just divine.

A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order.

We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies – generally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levee in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how.