Following the Equator, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Following the Equator, Complete


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.

All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through
thin--not thick--forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks
rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark--erysipelas convalescents, so
to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins,
built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and
the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children--rugged little
simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the
banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.

And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with
showy advertisements--mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of
"sheepdip." If that is the name--and I think it is. It is a stuff like
tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of
the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip
to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It
is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed
with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad
coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and
enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip
makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get
railroad coffee?

We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not
a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of
game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to
Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no
Aboriginals--no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one.
In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the
curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We
have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them.
It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.




CHAPTER XV.

Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably
familiar with it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to
stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming
excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was
famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga. This
was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was
out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he
soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of
space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in
unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as to which of the two long-missing
persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir
Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English
history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the
dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and
fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played
upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a
British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial
development.