In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant

CHAPTER IX A COUNTRY OF PARADOXES

IT was the 23d of De­cem­ber, 1864, a dull, damp, drea­ry month in the north­ern hemi­sphere; but on the Aus­tralian con­ti­nent it might be called June. The hottest sea­son of the year had al­ready com­menced, and the sun’s rays were al­most trop­ical, when Lord Gle­nar­van start­ed on his new ex­pe­di­tion.

Most for­tu­nate­ly the 37th par­al­lel did not cross the im­mense deserts, in­ac­ces­si­ble re­gions, which have cost many mar­tyrs to sci­ence al­ready. Gle­nar­van could nev­er have en­coun­tered them. He had on­ly to do with the south­ern part of Aus­tralia–viz., with a nar­row por­tion of the province of Ade­laide, with the whole of Vic­to­ria, and with the top of the re­versed tri­an­gle which forms New South Wales.

It is scarce­ly six­ty-​two miles from Cape Bernouil­li to the fron­tiers of Vic­to­ria. It was not above a two days’ march, and Ayr­ton reck­oned on their sleep­ing next night at Ap­sley, the most west­er­ly town of Vic­to­ria.

The com­mence­ment of a jour­ney is al­ways marked by ar­dor, both in the hors­es and the horse­men. This is well enough in the horse­men, but if the hors­es are to go far, their speed must be mod­er­at­ed and their strength hus­band­ed. It was, there­fore, fixed that the av­er­age jour­ney ev­ery day should not be more than from twen­ty-​five to thir­ty miles.

Be­sides, the pace of the hors­es must be reg­ulat­ed by the slow­er pace of the bul­locks, tru­ly me­chan­ical en­gines which lose in time what they gain in pow­er. The wag­on, with its pas­sen­gers and pro­vi­sions, was the very cen­ter of the car­avan, the mov­ing fortress. The horse­men might act as scouts, but must nev­er be far away from it.

As no spe­cial march­ing or­der had been agreed up­on, ev­ery­body was at lib­er­ty to fol­low his in­cli­na­tions with­in cer­tain lim­its. The hunters could scour the plain, ami­able folks could talk to the fair oc­cu­pants of the wag­on, and philoso­phers could phi­los­ophize. Pa­ganel, who was all three com­bined, had to be and was ev­ery­where at once.

The march across Ade­laide pre­sent­ed noth­ing of any par­tic­ular in­ter­est. A suc­ces­sion of low hills rich in dust, a long stretch of what they call in Aus­tralia “bush,” sev­er­al prairies cov­ered with a small prick­ly bush, con­sid­ered a great dain­ty by the ovine tribe, em­braced many miles. Here and there they no­ticed a species of sheep pe­cu­liar to New Hol­land– sheep with pig’s heads, feed­ing be­tween the posts of the tele­graph line re­cent­ly made be­tween Ade­laide and the coast.

Up to this time there had been a sin­gu­lar re­sem­blance in the coun­try to the monotonous plains of the Ar­gen­tine Pam­pas. There was the same grassy flat soil, the same sharply-​de­fined hori­zon against the sky. Mc­Nabbs de­clared they had nev­er changed coun­tries; but Pa­ganel told him to wait, and he would soon see a dif­fer­ence. And on the faith of this as­sur­ance mar­velous things were ex­pect­ed by the whole par­ty.

In this fash­ion, af­ter a march of six­ty miles in two days, the car­avan reached the parish of Ap­sley, the first town in the Province of Vic­to­ria in the Wimer­ra dis­trict.

The wag­on was put up at the Crown Inn. Sup­per was soon smok­ing on the ta­ble. It con­sist­ed sole­ly of mut­ton served up in var­ious ways.

They all ate hearti­ly, but talked more than they ate, ea­ger­ly ask­ing Pa­ganel ques­tions about the won­ders of the coun­try they were just be­gin­ning to tra­verse. The ami­able ge­og­ra­pher need­ed no press­ing, and told them first that this part of it was called Aus­tralia Fe­lix.

“Wrong­ly named!” he con­tin­ued. “It had bet­ter have been called rich, for it is true of coun­tries, as in­di­vid­uals, that rich­es do not make hap­pi­ness. Thanks to her gold mines, Aus­tralia has been aban­doned to wild dev­as­tat­ing ad­ven­tur­ers. You will come across them when we reach the gold fields.”

“Is not the colony of Vic­to­ria of but a re­cent ori­gin?” asked La­dy Gle­nar­van.

“Yes, madam, it on­ly num­bers thir­ty years of ex­is­tence. It was on the 6th of June, 1835, on a Tues­day–“

“At a quar­ter past sev­en in the evening,” put in the Ma­jor, who de­light­ed in teas­ing the French­man about his pre­cise dates.

“No, at ten min­utes past sev­en,” replied the ge­og­ra­pher, grave­ly, “that Bat­man and Fal­ck­ner first be­gan a set­tle­ment at Port Phillip, the bay on which the large city of Mel­bourne now stands. For fif­teen years the colony was part of New South Wales, and rec­og­nized Syd­ney as the cap­ital; but in 1851, she was de­clared in­de­pen­dent, and took the name of Vic­to­ria.”

“And has great­ly in­creased in pros­per­ity since then, I be­lieve,” said Gle­nar­van.

“Judge for your­self, my no­ble friend,” replied Pa­ganel. “Here are the num­bers giv­en by the last statis­tics; and let Mc­Nabbs say as he likes, I know noth­ing more elo­quent than statis­tics.”

“Go on,” said the Ma­jor.

“Well, then, in 1836, the colony of Port Phillip had 224 in­hab­itants. To-​day the province of Vic­to­ria num­bers 550,000. Sev­en mil­lions of vines pro­duce an­nu­al­ly 121,- 000 gal­lons of wine. There are 103,000 hors­es spread­ing over the plains, and 675,272 horned cat­tle graze in her wide-​stretch­ing pas­tures.”

“Is there not al­so a cer­tain num­ber of pigs?” in­quired Mc­Nabbs.

“Yes, Ma­jor, 79,625.”

“And how many sheep?”

“7,115,943, Mc­Nabbs.”

“In­clud­ing the one we are eat­ing at this mo­ment.”

“No, with­out count­ing that, since it is three parts de­voured.”

“Bra­vo, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel,” ex­claimed La­dy He­le­na, laugh­ing hearti­ly. “It must be owned you are post­ed up in ge­ograph­ical ques­tions, and my cousin Mc­Nabbs need not try and find you trip­ping.”

“It is my call­ing, Madam, to know this sort of thing, and to give you the ben­efit of my in­for­ma­tion when you please. You may there­fore be­lieve me when I tell you that won­der­ful things are in store for you in this strange coun­try.”

“It does not look like it at present,” said Mc­Nabbs, on pur­pose to tease Pa­ganel.

“Just wait, im­pa­tient Ma­jor,” was his re­join­der. “You have hard­ly put your foot on the fron­tier, when you turn round and abuse it. Well, I say and say again, and will al­ways main­tain that this is the most cu­ri­ous coun­try on the earth. Its for­ma­tion, and na­ture, and prod­ucts, and cli­mate, and even its fu­ture dis­ap­pear­ance have amazed, and are now amaz­ing, and will amaze, all the SA­VANTS in the world. Think, my friends, of a con­ti­nent, the mar­gin of which, in­stead of the cen­ter, rose out of the waves orig­inal­ly like a gi­gan­tic ring, which en­clos­es, per­haps, in its cen­ter, a sea part­ly evap­orat­ed, the waves of which are dry­ing up dai­ly; where hu­mid­ity does not ex­ist ei­ther in the air or in the soil; where the trees lose their bark ev­ery year, in­stead of their leaves; where the leaves present their sides to the sun and not their face, and con­se­quent­ly give no shade; where the wood is of­ten in­com­bustible, where good-​sized stones are dis­solved by the rain; where the forests are low and the grass­es gi­gan­tic; where the an­imals are strange; where quadrupeds have beaks, like the echid­na, or or­nithorhynchus, and nat­ural­ists have been obliged to cre­ate a spe­cial or­der for them, called monotremes; where the kan­ga­roos leap on un­equal legs, and sheep have pigs’ heads; where fox­es fly about from tree to tree; where the swans are black; where rats make nests; where the bow­er-​bird opens her re­cep­tion-​rooms to re­ceive vis­its from her feath­ered friends; where the birds as­ton­ish the imag­ina­tion by the va­ri­ety of their notes and their apt­ness; where one bird serves for a clock, and an­oth­er makes a sound like a pos­til­ion crack­ing of a whip, and a third im­itates a knife-​grinder, and a fourth the mo­tion of a pen­du­lum; where one laughs when the sun ris­es, and an­oth­er cries when the sun sets! Oh, strange, il­log­ical coun­try, land of para­dox­es and anoma­lies, if ev­er there was one on earth–the learned botanist Gri­mard was right when he said, ‘There is that Aus­tralia, a sort of par­ody, or rather a de­fi­ance of uni­ver­sal laws in the face of the rest of the world.’”

Pa­ganel’s tirade was poured forth in the most im­petu­ous man­ner, and seemed as if it were nev­er com­ing to an end. The elo­quent sec­re­tary of the Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety was no longer mas­ter of him­self. He went on and on, ges­tic­ulat­ing fu­ri­ous­ly, and bran­dish­ing his fork to the im­mi­nent dan­ger of his neigh­bors. But at last his voice was drowned in a thun­der of ap­plause, and he man­aged to stop.

Cer­tain­ly af­ter such an enu­mer­ation of Aus­tralian pe­cu­liar­ities, he might have been left in peace but the Ma­jor said in the coolest tone pos­si­ble: “And is that all, Pa­ganel?”

“No, in­deed not,” re­joined the French­man, with re­newed ve­he­mence.

“What!” ex­claimed La­dy He­le­na; “there are more won­ders still in Aus­tralia?”

“Yes, Madam, its cli­mate. It is even stranger than its pro­duc­tions.”

“Is it pos­si­ble?” they all said.

“I am not speak­ing of the hy­gien­ic qual­ities of the cli­mate,” con­tin­ued Pa­ganel, “rich as it is in oxy­gen and poor in azote. There are no damp winds, be­cause the trade winds blow reg­ular­ly on the coasts, and most dis­eases are un­known, from ty­phus to measles, and chron­ic af­fec­tions.”

“Still, that is no small ad­van­tage,” said Gle­nar­van.

“No doubt; but I am not re­fer­ring to that, but to one qual­ity it has which is in­com­pa­ra­ble.”

“And what is that?”

“You will nev­er be­lieve me.”

“Yes, we will,” ex­claimed his au­di­tors, their cu­rios­ity aroused by this pream­ble.

“Well, it is–“

“It is what?”

“It is a moral re­gen­er­ation.”

“A moral re­gen­er­ation?”

“Yes,” replied the SA­VANT, in a tone of con­vic­tion. “Here met­als do not get rust on them by ex­po­sure to the air, nor men. Here the pure, dry at­mo­sphere whitens ev­ery­thing rapid­ly, both linen and souls. The virtue of the cli­mate must have been well known in Eng­land when they de­ter­mined to send their crim­inals here to be re­formed.”

“What! do you mean to say the cli­mate has re­al­ly any such in­flu­ence?” said La­dy He­le­na.

“Yes, Madam, both on an­imals and men.”

“You are not jok­ing, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel?”

“I am not, Madam. The hors­es and the cat­tle here are of in­com­pa­ra­ble docil­ity. You see it?”

“It is im­pos­si­ble!”

“But it is a fact. And the con­victs trans­port­ed in­to this re­viv­ing, salu­bri­ous air, be­come re­gen­er­at­ed in a few years. Phi­lan­thropists know this. In Aus­tralia all na­tures grow bet­ter.”

“But what is to be­come of you then, Mon­sieur Pa­ganel, in this priv­ileged coun­try–you who are so good al­ready?” said La­dy He­le­na. “What will you turn out?”

“Ex­cel­lent, Madam, just ex­cel­lent, and that’s all.”