text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/71

 the storekeeper has gained by the change, as, despite his huge profits on paper, the credit system and the uncertainty of the market sadly hampered his operations in practice. The Northam district is admirably suited for sub-tropical cultures, the grape production per acre being in some cases almost fabulous. The fruit is generally converted into a crude wine, which sells readily in the locality at 5s. to 6s. per gallon-a figure which leaves a large profit. Of course, if the production increased the price in the local market would fall. But there ought to be a good opening for an export trade, and at 2s. per gallon the growers would do well.

As I said before, it is from Northam that the Government railway to Yilgarn, the newly discovered region of gold-producing quartz reefs to the eastward, will proceed. A good deal of its course of something under two hundred miles will be through the barren country, but it will open up a large area of fertile and fairly well-watered territory during the first fifty miles of its course, its construction being primarily justified by the expense of horse carriage (amounting to from £16 to £19 a ton) to what there seems every probability will prove a permanent gold-field, capable of supporting a large population. The draw back to Yilgarn is the scarcity of fresh water, plenty of brackish being obtainable, which by the use of condensers is being rendered adaptable for driving the crushing machinery; whilst with greater care in the conservation of the rainfall sufficient water for drinking and domestic purposes may be available, as at Broken Hill, for even a greatly increased population.

There is another agricultural centre hereabouts which completes the trio. This is Newcastle, a nice little town on the left bank of the Avon River, eighteen miles from Northam and fifty-three from the capital. It is not favoured, like York, with being on the main line, but, like Northam, it is connected with Perth by a feeder which branches off from the Eastern Railway at Chidlow's Wells. Newcastle, as regards soil, is another York, only, if one is to believe what the inhabitants assert, more so. It is roundly stated by a good authority to be one of the finest agricultural districts in Australia; but this I cannot vouch for, as I


text:
Singer

 * The Singer, a poem by Elizabeth Akers Allen
 * The Singer, a poem by Louise Chandler Moulton
 * The Singer, a poem by Florence Earle Coates
 * The Singer, a poem by Harriet McEwen Kimball
 * The Singer, a poem by Don Marquis
 * The Singer, a poem by Alexander Pushkin
 * The Singer, a poem by Edmund Clarence Stedman

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Singer


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/72

 had not time to visit it, and can only speak generally of the fertility of the locale.

The next station of importance is at Guildford, a flourishing town at the junction of the Swan and Helena rivers, only eight miles by rail from Perth. Here farming is carried on upon fine alluvial soil, and a good deal is done in the way of viticulture, Dr. Waylen having started a vineyard there many years ago, from which he draws a supply of wine, not wanting in body and potency.

In a few minutes we were steaming into the station at long expected Perth. It does not take long to convince the visitor to Western Australia that he has come to the most conservative, and consequently the most English, of the Australian colonies. The original emigrants were persons of higher social status than the majority of the early settlers in the other colonies, and they entertained a strong sense of the virtues of caste and of the home connection, which their isolation from the other communities of the continent never offered them any temptation to exchange for sentiments of intercolonial amity. Down to the present time an Englishman is much surer of a friendly reception in Perth than a visitor from what, with an admirable insensibility to the status of their own community, they style with something of disdain "the colonies." It does not do to come to Perth without letters of introduction, unless you are already personally known to some of the local magnates. Your credentials once scrutinised, and not found wanting, you are welcomed with a hospitality of the old English sort, which takes no heed of the "dollars" of the visitor, as is too much the case in the more moneyed of the Australian capitals. The Weld Club of Perth is unique as a centre of sociability, and once you are admitted within its somewhat exclusive portals you are brought into pleasant contact with everybody who is "anybody" in the small capital of the largest colony of the Australian group.

I was not very long in perceiving that whatever may be the state of public feeling elsewhere in regard to intercolonial federation, in Western Australia it is utterly out of the question at present. It would most certainly wreck Sir John Forrest's


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/73

 Government to-morrow if he were to move in favour of adopting the decisions of the late Sydney Convention. There is, however, not the remotest chance of his doing anything so foolish. Like every other publicist of standing, from the Governor downwards, he recognises the desire of the people not to part at a moment's notice with their newly acquired treasure of self-government. The other colonies may have tired of the bauble, but the West Australians are determined to have full experience of the troubles of working out their own destinies before surrendering their fate to the control of a central Executive in which many of the colonists have infinitely less faith than in the benevolent despotism of Downing Street, which they would never have shaken off with the alternative of being incorporated in an Australian Commonwealth staring them in the face. They thoroughly endorse Sir Robert Stout's sentiments when dealing with the case of New Zealand. If the latter colony is separated by 1,100 miles of sea, they are separated by nearly the same amount of land from the nearest centre of population in Eastern Australia. If the people of Western Australia are disinclined to part with their newly-acquired political privileges, still less are they willing to give away the material advantages which the newly awakened life that is visible in all directions is likely to confer on their commercial prospects. Whilst with one hand they are inviting settlers to come and cultivate their almost limitless wheat and vine areas, they are not likely with the other to abolish the tariff restrictions which at present prevent South Australia flooding the markets of her more backward sister with the produce of her cornfields and vineyards. Whatever may be the economic notions on the subject, such a policy would be regarded by the vast majority of the colonists as nothing less than rank suicide. When her resources are developed and her infant industries firmly planted, then possibly Western Australia may reconsider her position. But in any case she will insist on conditions for coming into the Federation, of which one of the first will be the construction, at the Federal expense, of the transcontinental railway line from Adelaide to Fremantle.


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/79

Rh As vapours green, war with the light,

Faint as the sunset's golden dyes.

All mounts of bone are tombs of weal,

Each scree, a temple of king Doom;

And runnels that the suns do shun,

Are pools where offal reeks most strong

And thro' the air giant wasps do reel;

On barriers bleak, reptiles soom;

A Vulture that no shard can stun

Gawks at the multitudes gone wrong.

Where waters with the venom crawls

To oriels, where banners float

Beside a dome-thrown surf of blood

T'ward letters large, that Hell hath wrought,

Worm-like vapours skirr thro' the halls

And reach a distant, lurid moat,

Where sighs and groans upon a flood

Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought—


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/80

72 More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight;

And to the dais whereunder sit

A demon-quire that Circe taught,

Songs that echo to the isles in lake

And valley deep, ravage the night

Until Idols pall at the scene.

And stationed Mounts toward the West

Whose bones portray a ghastly lust;

And skulls that glare at the soulless night,

Point, weeping, where the foam-waves dream:

All battle-wrecks and imps haste forth

Unto the phosphorescent dust

And pyramidal shoals of light.

The poisons that the geysers spit

To apes, where Sin in splendor reigns;

And cavern'd shapes that shadows hide

Behind tapers, where snarling Doom

Glares at Set's tomb, where devils sit,

Make vague signs to the weird flames,


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/81

Rh Flit spastic breath to regions wide

And shrood each shrunken soul with gloom.

Where glozing parasites hold sway,

Seek rivers dry reveal the bones

Of ages that the Cyclops slew:

Onyx thrones that the Titans storm'd

Lie in obfuscating decay;

Eyeless skulls that abhorrent gnomes

Wield in hands that reek with the dew

That solemn Death in tombs hath worm'd,

Stare at the scene as willows sigh:

And tapers of the Mount's crown'd witch

(Whenas each carcant fades from view)

Seek shadows that the tombs have cast

Upon the conjured, wind blown sky,

Where Syrian altar-lamps make rich

The palace-domes whereon the dew

Sits like a star and beams upon the vast,

Phantasmagoric glory of Death,

Of godly helms housed in a crypt.

And where a livid beacon flares—


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/82

74 (A rock that some giant storm hath split)

In mourning robes and rasping breath,

Before a grave where devils sit,

A Queen at whom a lizard stares,

Sobs her grief and woe that tears writ

Deep into the phorphyry mount:

This, then, is Deaths home, vale and Tomb!

Where Lancers, made equal with the dust

When revolt storm'd each kingdom's fold,

And clashing wars spun Hecate round

The pungent halls of spastic Doom;

When in each Nation fought king Lust

As siffling vapours gleamed like gold,

Ten legions whom the gods forsook

Wrought havoc on this Cauldron's shore:

Then Dragon-guidons led the march

As battle-axes smote vile Lords;

Stout hears that with king Vengeance shook,

Fought with valour's shield for more gore;

Assaults that rasped each Temple's arch,

Spake conquest o'er shambling hordes.


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/83

Rh This tale on ghastly Vellum's writ,

More sypher'd woes the walls proclaim;

Where goblins fondle crumbling bones,

There lies a death-thrown monster cold.

Perturbéd at writings on yon script

As moaning airs gaunt Sorrows name,

Each ape attests in faffling tones—

Flight to the Dragons' haunted fold.

Affrighted at this fearful gaze

As coals blaze like twinkling jewels,

Night-hawks that croak at bat-faced owls

Gledge at each gnome that digged a bone

From some bleak pool, and pierce the haze

Where censers blaze. Unconqueréd ghouls

Who laugh and leer at demon howls,

Make signs unto the hell-lashed foam— Japes that the damn'd fear in each knell!

Where jargling javels stab a toad,

And mutter swift, as vypers swear;

And spectres that the cauldrons wrought,


text:
Indian-Pipe

 * Coates, Florence Earle (1909), "Indian-Pipe" in Harper's Monthly Magazine (March 1909).
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1909), "Indian-Pipe" in Lyrics of Life (1909).
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1916), "Indian-Pipe" in Poems I.

title: Indian-Pipe


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/74

 X.

entering on a more detailed description of such portions of the vast colony of Western Australia as it was possible for me to traverse in a stay of three weeks, I will make a few general observations, suggested to me as I travelled along, on the success which has attended the introduction of responsible government, and will attempt to give your readers some idea of the feeling with which the proposal to federate with the rest of the Australian colonies is regarded in this—the Cinderella of the group. Those who fought the battle of West Australian self-government during the crucial period in which the Enabling Bill was under discussion in the British Parliament, and who assisted in obtaining its concession upon an even broader basis than was at first contemplated by some of its promoters on this side of the world, have up to date no reason to be ashamed of their attitude.

As one crosses the south-western corner from the natural harbour of the colony at Albany to its less favoured rival of Fremantle, which the exigencies of the capital and the present trend of settlement will, to all appearance, compel the local parliament to convert into the main port for ocean-going shipping, one realises what a tiny area out of the total of a million odd of square miles has yet been subdued by right of actual tillage under the constitutional sceptre wielded from Perth. Looking to the pregnant fact that there is only ·04 of a man to each square mile in Western Australia, and that the


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/84

76 Glare at the storm-swept sins that tell

Of monsters that the night-winds rode

When bloody plumes stole to a lair

Beyond the confines of a ghaut.

And spacious halls where vagrants lie— Vandals to the Dawn, Night and Dusk! And vulpine labyrinths of hell

Where pirates of a star are thron'd

As dews cloak bones that pierce the sky,

Wowed witches with a gorce's lust

When vales list to a clanging bell

That some encharnel'd hybrid domed,

Sweats cesspools with the pall of fear,

Shrill sounds permeate the barren air,

Each shatter'd light before a well,

Ends its flame in short, spastic gasps.

And stars that burn but once a year,

(Veinéd Aureoles to altars where,

When sins are told unto each knell

As chanting runes are hushed with clasps

Of winds provoked by black-set night,


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/75

 larger part of even this small population is aggregated in the close vicinity of the capital, one might be inclined to think that it would have been judicious to have adopted Sir John Forrest's suggestion, and, whilst conceding responsible government to the south-west, to have reserved a large area to the north-west, and another large area to the east, under imperial control. If such a policy would have had the effect of concentrating the attention of the publicists of the colony on the more limited area allotted to their care, such a subdivision might have proved a boon and blessing to the community, as even in the more settled districts of the south-west the resources of the country are only yet in the first stages of exploitation and development. But this was scarcely feasible in view of the immense pastoral interests held in the north-west and east by the inhabitants of what may be called "Western Australia proper," and who, whilst they would have had one hand on the plough in their own colony, would have been using the other to influence territorial legislation in the reserved areas. That Western Australia will be subdivided when its population and circumstances approximate to those of Queensland does not admit of doubt, and in the mean time the interests of the inchoate states to the north west and east are not likely to suffer seriously under the sway of the Government at present centralised at Perth. From time immemorial the Britisher has reconciled himself to the anomalies of his own much-boasted Constitution on the plea that it "works well," and the same justification seems likely for the present to cover any blemishes in the almost excessively generous measure of self-government conceded to this colony by the Imperial Parliament last year. Hitherto, at any rate, there have been no symptoms of the wild "rush" to dissipate their territorial patrimony which was predicated of the colonists by Sir George Campbell and his supporters during the discussions on the Enabling Bill; neither has any justification been afforded for the sinister predictions indulged in as to the stop page of immigration under the new régime. On the contrary, there seems to be a general desire for the influx of a suitable class of immigrants—a desire which is strikingly emphasised by the fact that Western Australia has not as yet adopted the


text: Index:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/76

 stringent policy of the other colonies in reference to the introduction of Chinese.

The newly launched colony has been singularly fortunate in having its infant destinies presided over by such a Governor as Sir William Robinson. His two previous terms of office have given him an intimate knowledge of the needs of the country and the personnel of its public men, to whom his wide experience as one of the despised class of "professional Governors" has proved invaluable in their initiatory labours. Sir John Forrest, as he became on Queen's Birthday amidst the universal acclaim of the colony, would, I am convinced, be the first to admit that his premiership owed much—I was going to say most—of its success to the steady impetus imparted to it by Sir William Robinson's comprehensive and common-sense grasp of the minutiæ of constitutional government. The Carringtons, Onslows, Kintores, and Hopetouns may dazzle by the social brilliancy attached to their regimes, but the experience of Western Australia proves that there is still room for the tried capacity of trained officials in the colonial service. It would be unjust in the highest degree to overlook the fact that in his efforts to make the wheels of constitutional government work smoothly Sir William Robinson has been admirably seconded by the gentleman whose pride it must ever be to have been the first Prime Minister, as Sir Henry Parkes insists he should designate himself, of his native colony. A son of the soil, bred as well as born in Western Australia, Sir John Forrest's name is associated with some of the best exploration work undertaken within its almost limitless expanses. For his services in this line he was rewarded with the control of the Lands Department under the old regime, and he thus unites considerable official experience with the sturdy common sense which has been nurtured by many a feat of endurance and bushmanship. It is pleasant to remember that there is still an old settler down in Bunbury to whom his son's success is a matter of worthy pride. Mr. S. H. Parker, who was one of the delegates who championed the cause of responsible government at home last year, was regarded as Sir John Forrest's rival for the premier ship. He is a trained lawyer and an excellent speaker, and


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/1


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/79

 was regarded as something more than the "rising hope" of the Conservative party in this essentially Conservative colony. His heart, however, does not seem to be in politics, and unless a man is ambitious for himself he cannot expect to have a party at his back ambitious for him.

In Mr. Septimus Burt, the Attorney-General, who went home to supervise the loan arrangements of the colony, rendered necessary by the inauguration of responsible government, the Ministry possesses one of its most weighty though withal most unassuming members. He is associated with the "first families" of the colony, and may be regarded as a standing guarantee against any financial or other extravagance on the part of the Administration, the other members of which, Messrs. Shenton, Venn, and Marmion, are men of varied colonial experience, and honestly desirous of doing their duty in the station to which they have been called. In fact the Ministry as a whole seems more likely to fall into the error of doing too much than too little. It is, no doubt, desirable that they should become familiarised with the details of the working of their respective departments. But there is reason in all things, and when once they have become "initiated" they will see the wisdom of doing less work and accepting more responsibility. There is at present no real parliamentary opposition to the Ministry, but when this becomes intensified, as it is sure to be as time goes on, no doubt the pressure of work in the House will correct any harmless tendency to fussiness in the public offices. To the Legislature of the colony praise is due equally with the Executive. High-flying notions seem as much at a discount in the Lower House as one would naturally expect to find them in the nominated Upper Chamber. The thirty members returned are of the right type, men who have proved them selves centres of light and leading in their several districts, and who in combination may be expected to do as much to advance the colony generally as they have done locally in their single capacity. The Speaker of the West Australian House of Commons, Sir James Lee Steere, is a master of precedent, and would preside as competently at St. Stephen's as he does over his thirty novices in Perth. He comes of a good old


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/80

 Surrey stock, and his father, who died very recently, was formerly one of the representatives of that county in the House of Commons. Sir James is a sturdy Conservative of the best sort, and acts as a brake on the wheel of Western Australian go-aheadism with a straightforwardness and steadiness which stamp him as a true Englishman as well as an invaluable colonist.


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/2


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/3


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/81

 XI.

Western Australia from a territorial point of view, it may be pointed out that the greatest length of the colony north and south is 1,280 miles, and the greatest width from east to west 800, the whole being bounded on the west, north-west, and south by a coast-line of 3,000 miles. As virtually the whole of the close settlement is comprised within a radius of 250 miles from Fremantle, the Port of Perth, on the south-west coast, and as even within this area the greater part of the land is still unalienated by the State, it may be judged how wide a field still remains open for agricultural and pastoral settlement, albeit there is a large amount of the latter further away to the north-west, where the sheep runs are held in vast areas on the usual leasehold tenures. Out of a total acreage of 678,400,222 acres, only about 5,154,673 acres have been alienated, whilst there remains at the disposition of the Government the gigantic total of 673,245,549 acres. The amount of cultivated land in the colony is 117,833 acres, and of uncultivated 678,282,389. Of the land still available a very large quantity is, of course, worthless, and a still larger quantity of inferior quality. Then, again, the adaptability of the balance of good land for profitable cultivation must be considered in connection with its nearness to markets and accessibility to railways and other means of transport. Making all these allowances, however, there remains an immense, if scattered, area suitable for the reception of agricultural immigrants either from Europe or from the other


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/4


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/82

 colonies. Amongst the advantages of Western Australia is its climate, which for the greater part of the year is one of blue skies and bright sunshine, enrapturing, indeed, to the unaccustomed Londoner, who might well put up with the three months of somewhat excessive summer heat for the sake of the splendid spring and autumn weather. Even the summer temperature presents the important alleviations of dryness during the day time and coolness at nights. Then, again, the rainfall is plentiful on the west and south-west coasts, and regular and sufficient for at least one hundred miles inland from, say, Gantheaume Bay on the former, to the mouth of the Fitzgerald River on the latter. The summer dryness of the atmosphere is an agreeable feature even in the north-west, and renders the tropical portions of the colony sufficiently bearable, droughts of the severity of those experienced in the eastern colonies being unknown. Whilst there is plenty of room for pastoralists with capital in the north-west, the small agriculturist may get good land in a temperate latitude on lower terms than would be the case in any other colony possessing a similar quality of soil. The latter has specially good prospects from the fact that the production of cereals has not yet outrun the local demand, nor does it seem likely to do so for a long time to come, if the promise of the large increase in the consuming population is borne out by the success of the Yilgarn goldfields and other mineral developments in various parts of the colony.

At present, as I have said before, very little is done by the Government in the way of subsidising immigration. The Immigration Board, to whom under the Act of 1883 the expenditure of the funds available is entrusted, have confined their operations of late to granting free passages to labourers from Europe nominated by their friends in the colony, and to paying half the passage money for labourers nominated by colonial employers desiring imported hands. In each case the nominators are required to enter in an undertaking to indemnify the Government against any expenses incurred between the debarkation and arrival at destination of the immigrant. It is also made a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of £50, with or without twelve months' imprisonment, for any free or


text:
Page:Shakespeare's comedy of A midsummer-night's dream (Robinson).djvu/180

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.


text:
Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/5

 EDWARDS'S AUSTRALASIAN CATALOGUE

CATALOGUE OF BOOKS

RELATING TO

AUSTRALASIA

MALAYSLA, POLYNESLA, THE PACIFIC

COAST OF AMERICA AND THE

SOUTH SEAS

ON SALE AT THE PRICES AFFIXED

BY

FRANCIS EDWARDS

83 HIGH STREET, MARYLEBONE

LONDON, W.

1899


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/6


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/8


text:
Page:Shakespeare's comedy of A midsummer-night's dream (Robinson).djvu/179

 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Demetrius. These things seem small and undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. Hermia. Methinks I see these things with parted eye, When every thing seems double. Helena. So methinks: And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, Mine own, and not mine own. Demetrius. Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me, That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think The Duke was here, and bid us follow him ? Hermia. Yea; and my father. Helena. And Hippolyta. Lysander. And he did bid us follow to the temple. Demetrius. Why then, we are awake: let's follow him; And by the way let us recount our dreams. [Exeunt. Bottom. [Awaking.] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next is, "Most fair Pyramus." Heigh-ho! - Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! - God's my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was, - there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, - and methought ACT IV. 141 Sc. I.


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/260


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/259


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/258


text: Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/257


text:
Page:Edwards's Australasian Catalogue 1899.djvu/7

 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The present catalogue contains the titles of over three thousand different publications relating to Australasia, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the Pacific Ocean, all of which have been accumulated from private libraries and public sales during the last two years.

Such an extensive collection in this branch of geography never having been offered for sale before, it has been my desire that the catalogue should serve as a "Book Prices Current" on the subject. The prices are fair and reasonable, even at a time like the present when competition is keen; for, with the increase of libraries and collectors, the tendency must be upward, especially of items known to be out of print, scarce, or rare.

I believe the catalogue will also be found bibliographically useful. Compiled for the most part by an expert, Mr. E. A. Petherick, F.R.G.S., it contains a series of classified Indexes of Subjects and Authors, and many valuable and interesting notes from his long-promised and much-needed "Bibliography of Australasia and Polynesia" an abridged prospectus of which will be found on page 220.

The authorship of anonymous works where known is given in brackets thus: [Carter (Charles Rooking)]. Where the place of publication is not stated London is understood.

As the literature of Australasia is a growing one, I hope from time to time to issue supplements to the present catalogue, and shall be glad to have the names of librarians and gentlemen who collect books or pamphlets on the subject. Lists of desiderata will be carefully attended to; offers of duplicates for sale or exchange are invited.

FRANCIS EDWARDS.

83, High Street,

Marylebone, W.

May, 1899.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/83

 assisted immigrant to quit the colony within three months after his arrival, unless in cases where the amount advanced is previously repaid to the Immigration Board. Some few ship loads of female immigrants have also been from time to time imported under the auspices of the Board. Some of these importations have not proved very satisfactory, consisting, as they did, partially of penitents, whose pledges of reformation failed to withstand the temptations of the voyage, followed by the freedom from restraint experienced on their landing in Western Australia. No blame can be attributed to the Board for failures of this kind, as a depot for the new arrivals is established at Fremantle, and every care exercised for the protection of those not obstinately determined to go astray.

A batch of forty-two girls arrived on April 11, 1891, by the ship Gulf of Martaban; but as I heard some sneering remarks made with reference to their qualifications, I made special inquiries of the Governor, Mr. Shenton, the indefatigable and experienced chairman of the Immigration Board, Mr. Dale, the inspector of Charitable Institutions, and Sir James Lee Steere, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, all of whom concurred in the opinion that the girls (who were sent out under the auspices of the Honourable Mrs. Joyce and the Girls' Friendly Society) were highly respectable and likely to do well for themselves and prove a benefit to the colony. The party arrived on a Saturday, and, with the exception of two Catholics, all went to the Protestant Church together on Sunday. On the Monday the whole of them were engaged as domestic servants at wages ranging from £2 to £3 10s. per month, according to the supposed extent of their previous experience. Of the forty-two girls, three left their places almost immediately, but were quickly re-engaged. As far as I could gather, any complaints made by mistresses arose from the inexperience of the girls in making wood fires (coal being unknown), in cooking with colonial ovens, pumping water, &c. Of course, in a batch of forty-two girls all-round equability of temper was not to be expected, and the want of this in the case of one of them led to a police-court charge, which created a considerable sensation in Perth. The girl in question, Carrie


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/85

Rh Peer at the caravans in prayer;

A dirge is sung by magicians;

Each Idol squints eyes at the show,

Whilst goblins curse the eerie sight.

And Betelguese, an evil lair

With infernal, warring legions,

Careens as stars shed tears of woe.

Arcadia, its pleasing name,

An Eden where the damn'd drink wine,

Where rich fêtes greet each varlet's eye,

Each gyving hound whom Fates have doomed:

Each scyphus veils a burning flame;

A blood-stone from each dome doth shine

On poisons that in goblets lie,

Bred by sorcerers, cursed and tombed.

Then Terrors, Horrors, reign supreme!

Each vial squat before the spread,

Leer at toads in goblets crossed,

Froth skinks within each feaster's glass,

Wine changed to blood, then acrid green.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/84

 Hall, having disobeyed some command of her mistress, quarrelled with her, and left her place without giving the month's notice stipulated for on her engagement. The mistress, taking advantage of an obsolete statute, applicable enough in the old convict days, summoned the refractory maid to the local court, where, in the absence of the stipendiary magistrate, two honorary justices of much the same bent of mind as certain of their brethren in England, sentenced her to pay a fine of £4, or undergo a month's imprisonment. When those present had recovered from their astonishment at the severity of the penalty imposed, they subscribed the required amount just in time to anticipate the action of the Immigration Board, who as soon as they heard of the result sent one of their functionaries to liquidate the fine on the girl's behalf. I mention this matter as it excited a good deal of attention in Western Australia, and has been distorted into a wholesale indictment against the Gulf of Martaban contingent. For the information of servant girls thinking of emigrating I may add that 10s. per week is about the normal wage in Western Australia, although £36 per year, and even more, is paid to cooks and very superior domestics in the towns. As much as £4 per month is given in hotels, but this class of service is not desirable for respectable girls, who would find it very difficult to get employment in private service afterwards. Whilst I am on the subject of wages I may add that unskilled labourers' wages in Perth are from 5s. to 7s. per day, more commonly the latter, since railway extension under Mr. Keane's liberal auspices has rendered labour scarce and dear to an extent which would cause some of the "old-timers" of Western Australia to turn in their graves with incredulity and disgust.

As is the case in most of the Australian capitals, two-thirds of the working men of Perth have built houses on their own freeholds. Those who did so a few years ago have had their properties vastly enhanced in value by the general rise in price of town lands in Perth. Even now working men can purchase allotments of nearly a quarter of an acre little more than a mile from the city for £50, on which they can erect a decent brick cottage for, say, £150, and thus, by a payment of 9s. 11d.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/85

 per week to the Perth Building Society, become in eight years possessors of excellent freehold residences.

At present Western Australia is almost untouched by the influence of trade unionism; but this halcyon state of affairs for the employers is not likely to last long now that emigration from the other colonies is imbuing the minds of the local working men with more advanced ideas of the rights and destinies of their class. The eight hours system is adopted in a good many trades where there is no great difficulty in regard to its applicability. But even this great palladium of the workers in Australia is advocated with considerable modesty in Western Australia. I was dining with Sir John Forrest on June 1, the anniversary of the inauguration of the colony, when a deputation, representing a crowd of several thousands outside, arrived at the house to interview him on the subject. Instead, however, of enforcing on the Premier their views as to the legalisation of the eight hours system, they merely asked him for his own opinion, and apparently went away quite satisfied when he assured them that statutory interference was quite out of the question, and that, as in the other colonies, the adoption of the eight hours rule must be left to the influence of time and the friendly co-operation of employers and employed in the several trades. At present there is no public opinion in the colony to speak of in reference to any matter of political concern. Very naturally, considering its long stagnation, the people regard the material development of its immense area and equally immense resources as the main and immediate duty of the Government. This the Forrest Ministry recognise, and as long as they go forward in their present prudent fashion, and there is no hitch over finding the sinews of war, there will be nothing in the way of serious parliamentary opposition to their proposals. There is one thing that the working man who emigrates to Western Australia will not enjoy in the same full measure as would be the case were he to go to one of the other colonies, and that is the electoral franchise. Before he c1n vote for a Member of the Legislative Assembly he must either be a £100 freeholder or a leaseholder, householder, or lodger paying an annual rental of £10. Universal suffrage must, however,


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/86

 shortly be adopted as in the other colonies; and then we shall no longer witness the absurdity of Members being returned to the popular House by a score or so of electors, 249 being the highest number polled for a single candidate at the General Election last year. Though at present a nominated body, the Upper House is to become elective in five years' time. Voting papers being allowed on the top of a property qualification, Western Australia is at present the farthest removed of any colony from the one man one vote system which Sir George Grey, the great New Zealand publicist, so much desiderates. Though the election is by ballot, there is no payment of members, the Government side (Liberals though they call themselves) being as hostile as the Opposition (so called) to the reimbursement of members and the establishment of universal suffrage.

The education system, which is on the model of that established under Mr. Forster's English Act, appears to give satisfaction at present, and as the Board opens a school wherever twelve scholars between four and sixteen years of age can be got together, there is little fear of the children of settlers, except in the most out-of-the-way locations, being deprived of proper instruction. There is power to compel the attendance of children between six and fourteen residing within three miles of Government or assisted schools, and school fees are charged as follows—viz., one shilling per week per child when the parent has an income in excess of £100 per annum; sixpence in case of the children of persons receiving salaries of not more than £100 per annum, and threepence when the parent is a person employed by others at a daily or weekly wage not exceeding £75 per annum. A reduction of one-third is made when more than two of one family attend, and scholars can be admitted free on the recommendation of the District Boards. With the influx of new blood no doubt a free system all round will be substituted for the present complicated tariff, even that laggard in this matter, South Australia, having last year made her education absolutely gratuitous, despite the fact that her ex-Premier disbelieves in elementary education at all, and has carried his principle into practice in the case of his own children. All the main religious bodies are represented in


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/87

 Western Australia, the Church of England being the most numerous, the Catholics the most active, and the Salvation Army having little or no hold. A State grant of between £3,000 and £4,000 is divided annually between the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian bodies; but this is almost certain to be discontinued in the course of a year or two, the feeling against the State endowment of religion being a growing one even in Conservative Western Australia. The monetary part of the matter has all along amounted to only a paltry pittance, but the lands granted to different religious bodies for Church sites and all imaginable purposes total up a very considerable area in the aggregate, and may be a source of future difficulty, every recognised communion getting as many glebes as it wants of 100 acres.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/88

 XII.

sale and occupation of the public lands in Western Australia are still governed by the "Regulations" issued in March, 1887, which, as Sir John Forrest has often stated, were specially framed with a view of limiting lavish alienation and rendering the acquirement of the soil conditional on its improvement. For the purposes of these "regulations" the colony was divided into six divisions, viz., the South-west, the Gascoyne, the North-west, the Kimberley, the Eucla, and the Eastern.

Roughly speaking, the South-west Division includes four fifths of the present population of the colony, and comprising, as it does, the whole of the reliable coastal rain-belt from Gantheaume Bay to the mouth of the Fitzgerald River, may be regarded as covering all the territory at present available for agricultural purposes. The Eucla and Eastern Divisions comprise the vast scantily-watered area lying between this favoured region and the western boundary of South Australia, whilst the Gascoyne, North-west, and Kimberley Divisions embrace the tropical and semi-tropical portions of the colony to the north of the other three. In the pastoral divisions, as all except the South-west may be called, areas of many thousands of acres may be leased by runholders at rentals of from 2s. 6d. to £1 per 1,000 acres, and subject to varying conditions as to stocking and improvements. As I only propose to deal in detail with the suitability of the colony for agricultural settlement I shall refer to the regulations merely so far as they affect the South-western Division. Subject to such reservations as the Government may see fit to make for public purposes, and


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/89

 to the sale by public auctions of town and suburban lots, any person desiring to take up land in the South-western District may purchase a maximum amount of 1,000 acres by deferred payments, either with or without residence, and either in agricultural areas specially selected and surveyed by Government, or outside of the latter on still unappropriated and unsurveyed lands-in all cases, be it remembered, under improvement conditions of varying stringency. As the agricultural areas are laid out with proper roads and reserves for public purposes, and as the Government choice of them is at least some guarantee of their suitability for purposes of cultivation, probably, all things being equal, the new-comer would be well advised in trying his luck in an "agricultural area," especially as he need not in the first instance take up the full quantum of 1,000 acres, but is allowed subsequent opportunities of increasing his holding to the maximum extent. Any conditional purchaser under this portion of the "regulations" must be at least eighteen years of age, and is charged not less than 10s. an acre, payable by equal instalments extending over twenty years. For the first five years the purchaser merely holds a licence, and is, in fact, a probationer, with no disposable interest in the freehold. If, however, he pays the rent, fences in the land, and resides upon it during the five years, he is then granted a Crown lease for fifteen years, and if at the expiration of that time, or at any time previously thereto, he can show that he has effected improvements, exclusive of fencing, equal in value to the full purchase money, a Crown grant will be issued to him placing him in full possession of the freehold. Of course if he takes up his grant at any period anterior to the expiration of the lease he has to pay up the whole of the balance of the twenty years' rents in a lump sum.

To sum up, for an expenditure of £1,000, spread, if he likes, over twenty years, with the addition of the cost of fencing, the settler from England can become the possessor of a farm of 1,000 acres. This he must have cultivated very carelessly if, with the unearned increment of a rising colony, he does not long before the twenty years expire, besides getting a good living off it, render it worth several pounds an acre more


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/90

 than the original Government price. I should have mentioned that one of the conditions is that he must fence the tenth of his land in the first two years, the remaining three of the licence period being allowed him to complete the rest. Conditional purchasers who prefer making a free selection outside of the "agricultural areas" may do so on terms similar to those prevailing within them. Persons desiring to take up land free from residential conditions may also do so by paying a double rental and executing the same amount of improvements as those enjoined on the residential purchasers. In case a man wishes to purchase land in the South-western Division on cash terms he can acquire not more than 1,000 acres in an "agricultural area," or 5,000 acres outside of one, for a minimum price of 10s. per acre. He must, however, fence the land within three years of the date of survey, and execute improvements to the extent of 5s. an acre within seven years, or the Crown grant will not issue. Though not a pastoral division in the same sense as the other five, land can be obtained in the South-west for grazing purposes in blocks of not less than 3,000 acres, at a rental of £1 per annum for every 1,000 acres. This style of tenure is, however, to expire in 1907, when fair compensation will be given the lessees for any permanent improvements made in the interim. As these pastoral holdings (even prior to 1907) are at all times liable to the incursions of "conditional purchasers," it follows, as a matter of course, that the latter must compensate the runholders for any permanent improvements effected on the areas they may select. The value of the improvements is fixed by the Commissioner of Lands, and the conditional purchaser pays the amount in five yearly instalments with 5 per cent. interest added. Perhaps the cheapest mode of obtaining land in the South-western Division—at any rate in large blocks—is by taking it up under the regulations with regard to what is called "poisoned land," the freehold of this being obtainable for something under 6d. an acre, payable, if preferred, in twenty-one annual instalments, subject to the condition of fencing the land and eradicating the poison within three years. Of the poison plants, which are dangerous and in most cases fatal to the sheep, cattle, and horses eating them,


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/91

 four, according to Mr. Nicolay, the local historian, are small shrubs, known as the York Road, the Box, Heart Leaf, and Rock poisons. A fifth, Kandinup poison, is a small herbaceous plant with a blue flower, common near the south coast. There is little danger to stock from these plants while the grass and other herbage is plentiful, but in summer, when the poisonous shrubs present an especially green appearance, they tempt the unfortunate animals to their doom. To eat of them, with sheep and cattle, is nearly always fatal. Immediately after doing so they are seized with a species of madness and rush straight ahead, ultimately falling down and dying in a state of paralysis. With horses the effects are not nearly so serious, so long as they are not ridden immediately after feeding on the poison plants. The owners, being generally unaware of their horses having browsed upon the poison, frequently lose valuable animals. Disastrous as the ravages of the poison plants are, they are easily got rid of when the areas containing them are enclosed with fencing. Contracts for their eradication have been taken as low as 6d. per acre, and 2s. 6d. might be regarded as a fair price. Vast tracts of the poisoned country have been assimilated by the Land Corporation of West Australia, which is doing a roaring business in reselling the land in small blocks, at, I believe, about 1s. 6d. per acre, to persons who, in addition, carry out the conditions which the Government impose upon the Corporation.

In 1887 a commission was appointed by the then Governor of Western Australia, Sir F. N. Broome, to inquire into the condition of agriculture in the colony, and make suggestions for its improvement. The commissioners traversed the whole of the South-western Division, taking a vast body of evidence, their labours being conducted with so much care that they did not hand in their final report till March, 1891. This very able document, understood to have been drawn up by the chairman, Mr. H. W. Venn, now Commissioner of Railways, taken in connection with the minutes of evidence appended to it, will amply repay a perusal on the part of intending settlers, giving, as it does, in addition to a general survey of the state of agriculture throughout the South west Division, much


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/92

 information as to the climate and rainfall, the several localities, and the special cultures for which each respectively is suited. They arrive at the conclusion, which the impartial observer will endorse, that the productiveness of the different areas of the colony under a fair system of farming is in no way behind the sister colonies, and that its backwardness hitherto is in no way traceable to any inherent infertility of the soil, but is due rather to the isolation of the colony an d to the difficulty of obtaining a cash market for the products of agriculture.

The commissioners in their report, whilst they advocate a mixed system of farming, divide the country visited for purposes of convenience, into wheat, fruit-growing, and dairying areas. Taking the first of the areas, they consider the average cost of wheat production to be 2s. per bushel, which leaves a handsome profit on the present local price of 4s. Having regard, too, to the fact that the average yield of wheat in Western Australia exceeds that of South Australia to the tune of six bushels per acre, and that the wheat areas of the former possess an average rainfall of thirteen inches, the commissioners contended, with considerable show of reason, that Western Australia will ultimately be in a position to enter into profitable competition with the sister colony in the foreign corn market. It may also be remarked that the local farmers are protected from the effects of outside competition by an import duty of 4d. per bushel of 60 pounds. A vast portion of the South-western Division is admirably suited to the growing of nearly every variety of fruit-trees, especially the vine. The latter is already a good deal cultivated and with very profitable results, as I shall show later on; but of course if viticulture were gone into on a large scale the present local prices both for the grapes and the wine would be considerably lowered, and the export market have to be looked to. Dairying is certainly in its infancy in Western Australia; and even with a very gradual increase in the population—which, by the by, the latest returns assess at just under 54,000—might be most profitably carried on, the large amount of butter imported from South Australia being some measure of this, and by no means a credit to the energy of the West Australian farmers, who, however, have bad the excuse, as I


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/93

 have pointed out before, that they could make a living easier than by undertaking industries requiring capital to start and constant care and exertion to sustain them. The commissioners think that the average size of a profitable farm should be from 500 to 700 acres, and this I found was a very common opinion, but it is subject of course to considerable modifications to meet individual exigencies and capacities and climatic and other conditions; men who combine the wages of labour with the acquirement and cultivation of vastly smaller areas being amongst the most successful of the old colonists, and likely to make some of the most affluent of the new. Sir F. Broome thinks that 300 acres is quite enough for a good farm in Western Australia, and that a capital of £250 to £300 is about the right thing. Indeed, it may be taken, I think, as an axiom that about £1 per acre capital is what the pioneer farmer in Western Australia should possess. The Lands Department, I understand, are very obliging and liberal in placing what information they have about the available territory at the service of intending settlers, and even bear the expenses of their transport when inspecting likely locations. But what is now done spasmodically and without much method might, I think, be done more systematically by an Intelligence Department established for the purpose, and the expenses of which might be defrayed out of the £50,000 rather indefinitely allotted in the schedule of the new loan for immigration purposes. The idea of an Intelligence Department was suggested to me by Mr. Woodward, the Government geologist, a most capable officer, whom the administration seems utilising in a very worthy and practical manner for developing a knowledge of the mineral and other natural resources of the colony.

With regard to what constitute "improvements" under the Land Regulations, as previously explained, they must have been bonâ fide made for improving the land and increasing its carrying capacity, and must consist of wells of fresh water, reservoirs, tanks, or dams of a permanent character, and available for the use of stock, or of fences, sheds, and buildings erected for farm or shearing and station purposes, not being dwelling-houses (except where such dwelling-houses exist upon


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/94

 a pastoral lease); or of cultivation, subdivision fences, clearing, grubbing, draining, ring-barking (at not more than 2s. per acre). It may, however, be presumed that whilst the above definition of what in an official sense are recognised as improvements would be strictly construed against an outgoing Crown tenant who was wanting to be paid by an incoming conditional purchaser, for the improvements he had effected, a much more literal interpretation would be put on the term as between the Government and the conditional purchaser, when his compliance with the regulations regarding improvements came to be considered on his asking for his lease or Crown grant. There is plenty of land for the would-be conditional purchaser, without his taking up areas which are subject to the incumbrance of paying for the improvements effected by some previous occupier, but in case he should choose land so weighted it is as well to remind him that he need not pay for the improvements (the value of which is assessed by the Government) out and out, but may do so in five yearly instalments with 5 per cent. interest added.

It must always be borne in mind by the intending settler that though he may be inclined to deal with the Land Companies for the land he wants alongside of their railway lines, yet that in each case the Government frontages alternate with those of the Companies, so that he can always have his choice of Government or Company land, the former being available on the terms and conditions above stated. Then there are still large areas available alongside of the existing Government lines, and will be still larger and more tempting ones so available on the Northam to Yilgarn and Perth to Bunbury and Busselton lines, which the Government are about to commence constructing.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/95

 XIII.

in the previous chapter a summary of the land regulations of Western Australia, and spoke of the provisions with reference to the "poisoned land," as affording a possibly cheaper and easier means of acquiring a freehold than might be the case under the ordinary conditional purchase rules. The settler must, however, consider the matter in the light of accessibility to markets and means of transit; and in any case he might find it more to his advantage to pay the extra price for the fee-simple rather than "camp" in the midst of a tract of poisoned country, where if he went in for stock they might browse unawares on the noxious plants in adjacent areas not yet subjected to the necessary process of eradication, which in some exceptional instances costs many times over the amount I mentioned as the fair average expense. What needs to be borne in mind is that where the poison-plant is only sparsely present, upon what would not be regarded in the official sense as "poisoned land," it can be got rid of very cheaply, and that where pure agriculture only is gone in for, it need not be taken into consideration at all, as it will be eradicated in the ordinary process of clearing and ploughing. In fact it is my belief that the poison, like the "bunnies" in the other colonies, will only be entirely extirpated by close settlement, as the case of Mildura proves in regard to the rabbit-ridden Murray country. Taking them as a whole, the land regulations of Western Australia admirably lend themselves to the development of schemes of colonisation such


text: Page:United States Army Field Manual 3-13 Information Operations.djvu/298


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/96

 as have on various occasions been mooted in the interests of the unemployed at home. After the particulars I have given, no elaborate exposition of their elasticity and adaptability in this respect will be required. I may add, as a matter of useful in formation, that as all dealings in the public lands are now carried out under what is known in the other colonies as the "Torrens" registration system, the cost to the settlers of Crown grants and subsequent transfers is a trivial matter. In the case of the former only 30s. for preparing and recording. It is now a condition in Crown grants that one-twentieth of all agricultural lands may be resumed for purposes of State utility without compensation, except ground on which buildings have been erected or gardens laid out, or ground necessary for the efficient utilisation of any buildings.

Not wishing to be in the position of numerous preceding travellers who, after merely seeing the vicinity of Albany or sticking to the road or railway line between that town and the capital, have incontinently described the colony as "all barren," I determined to inspect at least a reasonable stretch of the average agricultural country within the coastal rain belt of the settled districts. After taking the opinion of Sir John Forrest and several other competent advisers, I decided to investigate the land along the route of the railway now in course of construction from Walkaway, some two hundred and seventy-three miles north-east of Perth, to Guildford, which lies about nine miles to the north-east of the capital on the Government's Eastern Railway line, with which it forms the point of junction.

I chose the route along the Midland Railway, as it is called, because on its expected completion next year it will supply reasonable means of communication and transit to a vast area of excellent agricultural land, which has been locked up from settlement since 1886, under the arrangements for the construction of the railway on the land grant system entered into between the Government of Western Australia and what was known as the Waddington syndicate in England. This agreement was dated February 27, 1886, and stipulated for the construction of a line, the general route of which should be from Guildford viâ Gingin, Victoria Plains, Upper Irwin, and


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/97

 Dongara, to the southern terminus of the Geraldton-Greenough (Government) line at Walkaway. The concessionaire was in return (as in the case of the West Australian Land Company and the Great Southern Railway) to receive 12,000 acres of land per mile of line constructed, to be selected by him in blocks of not less than 12,000 acres within an area of forty miles on either side of the line. From the date of the agreement the Government were precluded from otherwise alienating any land s within the forty miles until the completion of the line; and though prior to that time a good deal of land had been disposed of within the forty-mile boundary, and could not of course be affected by the agreement, the company have still a vast area of good country from which to make their pick of the 3,540,000 acres which they are entitled to select from time to time, on completion of the various sections of the railway.

As, however, half the frontage to the line in alternate blocks of not less than five miles in width and fifteen miles in depth is reserved to the Government, the latter will have a large area of good land at their disposal as well as the company, so that between the two a numerous body of settlers may be accommodated with good soil, in a temperate climate, with an average rainfall of a reliable character approaching twenty inches. The company can have a grant of 6,000 acres per mile out of their allotted quantum on the completion of each twenty-mile section of their railway, the other moiety not being absolutely transferred to them until they have performed their whole contract. There is nothing, therefore, to prevent their making an early start on a small scale with any plan of alienation and settlement on which they may decide. The syndicate which originally obtained the concession had a career of vicissitude, and the whole undertaking would have fallen through had not the scheme been fortunately adopted by Mr. Herbert W. Bond, the present managing director of the company, who, after a couple of years' negotiation with London capitalists under circumstances of difficulty which would have daunted almost any other man, at last succeeded in putting the matter on a business basis, and getting the Midland Railway Company of Western Australia, Limited, formed. The nominal capital of


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/98

 the concern is £1,240,000, in 20,000 ordinary shares of £6 each (£1 called up) and 40,000 founders' shares of £1 each. The money for starting the construction of the line was, however, mainly drawn from the proceeds of the sale of £500,000 of six per cent. first mortgage debentures, forming part of an authorised issue of £1,000,000, the whole of which was subscribed on the London market at the time, but owing to the financial depression following the issue, a portion was surrendered for non-payment of calls.

I will not entirely trust my own judgment as to the general value of the Midland Company's concession, but will quote the opinion of a gentleman not famed for giving rose-coloured reports of the properties even of his clients, as many of the latter have found to their grief. Writing on the subject towards the end of last year, Dr. Robertson says: "The district intersected by this railway, and within your area of selection, contains, I think, beyond all question the richest and most valuable agricultural land in the whole colony. Portions are of importance in a mineralogical aspect. The selections of the Railway Company will, undoubtedly, embrace the very eyes, or most valuable areas of agricultural land in the colony.

"The settlers along your line of railway are men who, as a rule, commenced with no capital, yet who have struggled bravely through many vicissitudes and years of trouble successfully, and have eventually made money. They are not a complaining class, but men of individuality and courage, sturdy yeomen, worthy of the old land from which they came. Hitherto they have been unable to till the soil in a way or to an extent that, with the convenience of a railway and enlarging markets, is now possible. Systems of husbandry hitherto unpractised will by degrees be introduced, and crops and products best suited to the soil, the locality, and the climate, be raised. This is particularly the case with cereals, vines and oranges, in the cultivation of which great ignorance prevails. In respect to vines, the absurdity of growing many varieties in one plot or locality, and of attempting to make as many varieties of wine, badly, is a feature of the eastern colonies; instead of which, greater success would assuredly reward the efforts of those who,


text:
User talk:Saint-Amant-de-Boixe

— billinghurst  sDrewth  04:59, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:Saint-Amant-de-Boixe


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/99

 by careful experiment, first ascertain the variety best suited to their land and the conditions, and confined their attention exclusively to its cultivation. To my mind the successful settler of the future will be one who is not bound by hard and fast and arbitrary lines, but one who will cultivate thoroughly and well every product that his land will produce, and for which there is a market. A farmer must combine pig and cattle rearing and dairying operations, on as large a scale as possible, along with that of growing cereals."

Granted the value of the territory, it requires to be handled in a manner at once bold and prudent—i.e., if the shareholders are to see what they ought out of their magnificent estate, and the colony to benefit as it should do by the introduction of some thousands of desirable settlers. England too, with her congested population, has a stake in the fortunes of this and other similar concerns, which are or may be shortly working on the same lines, so that even General Booth might have done worse than devote a few weeks to a careful inspection of the available parts of Western Australia when. he made his tour of the Australian continent. But if he intends to operate on the vicious residuum of the East End the reception of his project in Western Australia will be as cold as it would be in the other colonies; whilst if he means to manipulate the depressed rather than the degraded classes, and, after "emigrating" them, to supply them with the means of sustenance until they are able to support themselves, he will, as far as my cursory observations go, find himself and protégés better welcomed and better accommodated in Western Australia than in any of the sister communities.

The colony is now in much the same position as the older colonies occupied thirty or forty years ago, and has, as far as one can judge, to say the least, just as good a chance of a prosperous development as the best of them. With money to spend on public works, employment will be brisk; and, though I do not advocate the influx of men wholly without capital, it must be remembered that every man who comes to the colony with capital makes room for the arrival of men with none. The colony is just now admittedly on the rising tide, as there


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/100

 is room for the exercise of enterprise in a variety of directions  which it would be difficult to particularise, but which colonists of the right mental and physical stamp will soon find out for themselves.

These impressions I formed during my long drive across country on the route of the Midland Railway line, which, in its 300-miles course, will not only tap the agricultural resources of some of the richest unalienated lands in the settled districts of the colony, as Dr. Robertson avouches, but will complete the line of railway communication from north to south, from Northampton, via Geraldton, Perth, and Beverley, to Albany, a distance by rail of nearly 700 miles. I drove the needful distance in company with Mr. Stafford, the engineer of the railway, and with Mr. Kellett, who had recently come from England to test by boring the coal-seams which have already been discovered on the Upper Irwin, and which, if found in superior quantity and quality, may turn this portion of the Company's territory into a thriving manufacturing as well as agricultural district, and thus enhance its resources beyond the dreams of avarice, and these are pretty well developed in the modern shareholder. Thanks to the energy of Mr. Keane, the contractor for the line, who may be regarded as the industrial "king" of Western Australia, I had not to drive by road the whole of the distance which the railway is to cover. It was begun from both ends, and had been completed to a distance of some twenty miles from Walkaway on the north, and over forty from Guildford on the south. Across these distances I therefore travelled by rail, going in the first instance by steamer from Perth to Geraldton, and making my start from the northern end. It took me altogether six days to accomplish the overland journey, which traversed rich country, intersected by dreary sand-plains. If one could hazard a guess I should say there must be about 1,000,000 acres of first-class land fit for wheat-growing in the Company's concession. There is a still larger area well fitted for pasture and the growth of vines and fruit trees, whilst the timber resources of some of the inferior country should constitute a source of large ultimate profit. In spite of the competition of the Government, who are selling at


text:
User:Ali.eblis1

Hi All...!

title: User:Ali.eblis1


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/101

 10s. an acre, the West Australian Land Company are getting 15s. for their better land between Beverley and Albany, so that in all probability the Midland Company may do likewise. A large return will also come in from town-sites, which will be proclaimed at suitable intervals, and a large amount netted out of their sale in small sections for business and residence purposes. Indeed, Dr. Robertson estimates the average value of the Company's concession of over 3,000,000 acres at £1 10s. per acre.


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/102

 XIV.

order to get to Geraldton, the main port of the district which the Midland Railway of Western Australia, when completed, is to traverse, I had to proceed from Perth by railway to Fremantle, its port at the mouth of the River Swan. Fremantle is only some 3,000 behind the capital in population, and in hotel accommodation and some other matters seems to have even surpassed it. It might be thought that, with only a river length of fourteen miles separating it from the sea, Perth would have insisted on being its own port, and at all risks have cleared away the rocky bar which alone would prevent vessels of large tonnage loading and discharging at its wharves were the river channel deepened and narrowed at certain points, at a cost which need not, one would think, be prohibitive. The Perthites have not taken altogether kindly to the idea of admitting the maritime supremacy of Fremantle; but there appears to be a doubt whether in any case the largest class of ocean-going steamers could ever come up to Perth, whilst the claims of Fremantle were strongly reinforced by the reports of the late Sir John Coode. This eminent engineer, after personal inspection and the most minute soundings, came to the conclusion, even if costly sheltering works were erected, that, looking at the large quantity of sand in motion, particularly near the coast-line, the limited backwater available for scouring purposes would prove insufficient, even when aided by training


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/103

 and protective works, to keep open a deep channel through the rock barrier after the latter had been formed. Accompanying this condemnation of a scheme to which every loyal Perthite naturally inclined, Sir John made a recommendation that Fremantle should be constituted the principal harbour of the colony under plans which would, in the first instance, provide efficient harbourage for vessels drawing from 24 to 26 feet, and which by a process of extension might ultimately be made to accommodate the largest vessels of the P. and O. Company, with a depth of 34 to 36 feet. It is in the direction of Sir John Coode's project that the amount included in the schedule of the loan, of which a part has already been floated, will probably be applied, though recently the Government favoured a wholly different scheme, which was also endorsed as practicable by Sir John Coode before his death. That eminent engineer considered that fair harbourage should satisfy the wants of the present generation; but the people of Fremantle are not likely to be long content with any improvement which will still keep them in the rear of Albany as a port of entrance for ocean-going steamers, especially in view of the tempting advances which the Orient Company are believed to have made in the direction of constituting Fremantle a regular port of call on the passage between England and the Australian colonies if safe harbourage is guaranteed. I interpose these allusions to the harbour question as they formed the topic of much heated discussion between the advocates of Fremantle and all sorts of other supposititious harbours before I found myself on board the little steamer Flinders bound for Geraldton, which promising port, with its population of 1,000, we did not, however, reach by this method, the weather proving sufficiently fine to allow of our putting in at Dongara, 41 miles south of Geraldton, where we availed ourselves of the opportunity of travelling along the finished section of the Midland Railway to Walkaway, and thence by the Government line to Geraldton itself.

From the point of view of the Company the original syndicate no doubt committed a mistake in agreeing to make a line which left in the hands of the Government the key of the


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/104

 whole position—viz., the command of the outport. This the Company have not been slow to recognise, and negotiations are now, I believe, in progress for the purchase from the State of the twenty miles of line from Walkaway to Geraldton which the latter have made to meet the Company's line at Walkaway, at a cost of some £60,000. As money is not too plentiful, the Government may also find it to their advantage to hand over to the Company the construction of the projected line to Mullewa, which would tap the rich pastoral districts of the Upper Murchison, and for which a sum of £100,000 appears in the loan schedule already referred to. The main argument in favour of leaving the work to the Company is that it will mainly run through land which the Company meditate taking up under their original concession. It may be said that the tide of opinion in the abstract is against land-grant railways, and that they are objectionable in principle as tending to aggregate too much territory, and, par consequence, too much power, in a few hands, as has been done with such undesirable results in the United States. On the other hand, the indisposition of English investors to take up colonial loans is bound to have the effect of compelling the Australian Governments to look elsewhere than to public borrowing for the construction of railroads which they deem necessary to provide means of transport and to open up the public domain, whilst it would be by no means impossible to introduce clauses into these land-grant concessions rendering alienation in moderate blocks compulsory within a reasonable time.

The harbour at Geraldton, though little more than an open roadstead, is not a bad one in moderate weather, and when the £25,000 which is placed on the loan estimates for its improvement, on the lines suggested by Sir John Coode, has been expended, it will satisfy all reasonable requirements in fair weather for many years to come, though there are not wanting sanguine persons who already regard the advent of ocean mail steamers and the establishment of a large export trade in frozen meat as amongst the possibilities of the not distant future. I bore an introduction from the Premier to the Government


text: Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1873.djvu/112


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/254

224

, thou hast played strange tricks with us! and we bless the stars that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate. Leaving Paul to the instructions of Augustus Tomlinson, and the festivities of the Jolly Angler, and suffering him, by slow but sure degrees, to acquire the graces and the reputation of the accomplished and perfect appropriator of other men's possessions, we shall pass over the lapse of years with the same heedless rapidity with which they have glided over us, and

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/254


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/255

Rh summon our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus. Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read—the critics;—thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty Abigail;—not prating lackey-like on the low company thou hast met;—nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a "damnable iteration" of the same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of our story which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise in future to conduct thee among aspects of society, more familiar to thy habits;—where the Unquessed Events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of more pleasing variety, and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization.

Upon the banks of one of fair England's fairest rivers, and about fifty miles' distant from London,

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/255


text:
Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/105

 Resident, Mr. Maitland Brown, who, in addition to his functions as the judicial and official factotum of the district, has performed as many heroisms, as an explorer and a rescuer of his fellow men from multiform perils by flood, bush, and blacks, as would have entitled him to half-a-dozen Victoria Crosses had he been in the British Army. As I talked to this perfectly alert specimen of the bushman—and a gentleman withal—I could not but regard him with as much respect as one of those old Wardens of the Marches, whose fame has come down to us in song and story, but who had hardly a more difficult duty to perform than is now cast upon the Maitland Browns in all parts of the world in holding the outposts of the British Empire.

As Geraldton was to be my most northerly point of travel, I was naturally led to cast a glance at the vast regions still further north, where a handful of pastoral pioneers are feeding their flocks in regions where all the characteristic Anglo-Saxon persistency is required to meet the exigencies of isolation, climate, and temperature. This brought us to talk of the relations which existed between the new settlers and the expatriated lords of the soil, whose wrongs have been ventilated perhaps neither wisely nor well, as those affected affirm, but still doubtless with some substratum of fact, in such brochures as "Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land." Mr. Brown spoke kindly on the whole of the aborigines, amongst whom, he said, there were some of "nature's gentlemen," and expressed the view that, though there had been abuses in the past, there was very little in the shape of bondage or oppression at the present moment. Of one thing he was sure, that public opinion in the colony was thoroughly on the right side in the matter, and that the local government would not wilfully wink at acts of cruelty against the natives. The pearl fisheries of the north were, it is undoubted, the scenes of something some like native slavery, but the divers are now nearly all Malays. In this connection it may be pointed out that besides supplying an export of pearls and mother-of-pearl totalling a large amount per annum, the fisheries worked by native labour, for which they paid nothing beyond rations, in many cases provided the early


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/256

226 still stands an old-fashioned abode—which we shall here term Warlock Manor-House. It is a building of brick, varied by stone copings, and covered in great part with ivy and jasmine. Around it lie the ruins of the elder part of the fabric, and these are sufficiently numerous in extent, and important in appearance, to testify that the mansion was once not without pretensions to the magnificent. These remains of power, some of which bear date as far back as the reign of Henry the Third, are sanctioned by the character of the country immediately in the vicinity of the old manor-house. A vast track of waste land, interspersed with groves of antique pollards, and here and there irregular and sinuous ridges of green mound, betoken to the experienced eye the evidence of a dismantled chase or park, which must originally have been of no common dimensions. On one side of the house, the lawn slopes towards the river, divided from a terrace, which forms the most important embellishment of the pleasure grounds, by that fence to which has been given the ingenious and significant name of "ha! ha!" A few scattered trees of giant growth

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/256


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/257

Rh are the sole obstacles that break the view of the river, which has often seemed to us, at that particular passage of its course, to glide with unusual calmness and serenity. On the opposite side of the stream, there is a range of steep hills, celebrated for nothing more romantic than their property of imparting to the flocks that browse upon their short and seemingly stinted herbage, a flavour peculiarly grateful to the lovers of that pastoral animal which changes its name into mutton after its decease. Upon these hills the vestige of human habitation is not visible; and at times, when no boat defaces the lonely smoothness of the river, and the evening has stilled, as it were, the sounds of labour and of life, we know few scenes so utterly tranquil, so steeped in quiet, as that which is presented by the old, quaint-fashioned house and its antique grounds,—the smooth lawn, the silent, and (to speak truly, though disparagingly) the somewhat sluggish river, together with the large hills (to which we know, from simple, though metaphysical causes, how entire an idea of quiet, and even immovability peculiarly attaches itself,) and the white herds,—those most peaceful of

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/257


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/258

228 God's creatures,—that stud in white and fleecy clusters the ascent.

In Warlock House, at the time we refer to, lived a gentleman of the name of Brandon. He was a widower, and had attained his fiftieth year, without casting much regret on the past, or feeling much anxiety for the future. In a word, Joseph Brandon was one of those careless, quiescent, indifferent men, by whom a thought upon any subject is never recurred to without a very urgent necessity. He was good-natured, inoffensive, and weak; and if he was not an incomparable citizen, he was, at least, an excellent vegetable. He was of a family of high antiquity, and formerly of considerable note. For the last four or five generations, however, the proprietors of Warlock House, gradually losing something alike from their acres and their consequence, had left to their descendant no higher rank than that of a small country squire. One had been a Jacobite, and had drunk out half a dozen farms in honour of Charley over the water;—Charley over the water was no very dangerous person, but Charley over the wine was rather more ruinous;—the

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/258


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/259

Rh next Brandon had been a fox-hunter, and fox-hunters live as largely as patriotic politicians: Pausanias tells us, that the same people who were the most notorious for their love of wine, were also the most notorious for their negligence of affairs. Times are not much altered since Pausanias wrote, and the remark holds as good with the English as it did with the Phigalei. After this Brandon, came one who, though he did not scorn the sportsman, rather assumed the fine gentleman. He married an heiress, who, of course, assisted to ruin him: wishing no assistance in so pleasing an occupation, he overturned her, (perhaps not on purpose,) in a new sort of carriage which he was learning to drive, and the good lady was killed on the spot. She left the fine gentleman two sons, Joseph Brandon, the present thane, and a brother, some years younger. The elder, being of a fitting age, was sent to school, and somewhat escaped the contagion of the paternal mansion. But the younger Brandon, having only reached his fifth year at the time of his mother's decease, was retained at home. Whether he was handsome, or clever, or impertinent, or like his father about the eyes,

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/259


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/260

230 (that greatest of all merits,) we know not; but the widower became so fond of him, that it was at a late period, and with great reluctance, that he finally entrusted him to the providence of a school.

Among harlots, and gamblers, and lords, and sharpers, and gentlemen of the Guards, together with their frequent accompaniments—guards of the gentlemen—viz. bailiffs, William Brandon passed the first stages of his boyhood. He was about thirteen when he was sent to school; and being a boy of remarkable talents, he recovered lost time so well, that when, at the age of nineteen, he adjourned to the university, he had scarcely resided there a single term before he had borne off two of the highest prizes awarded to academical merit. From the university he departed on the "grand tour," at that time thought so necessary to complete the gentleman; he went in company with a young nobleman, whose friendship he had won at the university, stayed abroad more than two years, and on his return he settled down to the profession of the law.

Meanwhile his father died, and his fortune, as a

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/260


text:
Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/69

Rh Deity may be existential, as in the Eternal Son; experiential, as in the Supreme Being; associative, as in God the Sevenfold; undivided, as in the Paradise Trinity.

Deity is the source of all that which is divine. Deity is characteristically and invariably divine, but all that which is divine is not necessarily Deity, though it will be co-ordinated with Deity and will tend towards some phase of unity with Deity—spiritual, mindal, or personal.

DIVINITY is the characteristic, unifying, and co-ordinating quality of Deity.

Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.

Divinity may be perfect—complete—as on existential and creator levels of Paradise perfection; it may be imperfect, as on experiential and creature levels of time-space evolution; or it may be relative, neither perfect nor imperfect, as on certain Havona levels of existential-experiential relationships.

When we attempt to conceive of perfection in all phases and forms of relativity, we encounter seven conceivable types:

Absolute perfection in all aspects. Absolute perfection in some phases and relative perfection in all other aspects. Absolute, relative, and imperfect aspects in varied association. Absolute perfection in some respects, imperfection in all others. Absolute perfection in no direction, relative perfection in all other manifestations. Absolute perfection in no phase, relative in some, imperfect in others. Absolute perfection in no attribute, imperfection in all.

Evolving mortal creatures experience an irresistible urge to symbolize their finite concepts of God. Man's consciousness of moral duty and his spiritual idealism represent a value level—an experiential reality—which is difficult of symbolization.

Cosmic consciousness implies the recognition of a First Cause, the one and only uncaused reality. God, the Universal Father, functions on three Deity-personality levels of subinfinite value and relative divinity expression:

Prepersonal—as in the ministry of the Father fragments, such as the Thought Adjusters. Personal—as in the evolutionary experience of created and procreated beings. Superpersonal—as in the eventuated existences of certain absonite and associated beings.

GOD is a word symbol designating all personalizations of Deity. The term requires a different definition on each personal level of Deity function and must


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/261

Rh younger brother, being literally next to nothing, and the family estate (for his brother was not unwilling to assist him) being terribly involved, it was believed that he struggled for some years with very embarrassed and penurious circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was absent from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to the Continent: at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad, reappeared in town, and obtained, through his noble friend, one or two legal appointments of reputable emolument; soon afterwards he got a brief on some cause where a Major had been raising a corps to his brother officer, with the better consent of the brother officer's wife than of the brother officer himself. Brandon's abilities here, for the first time in his profession, found an adequate vent; his reputation seemed made at once, he rose rapidly in his profession, and, at the time we now speak of, he was sailing down the full tide of fame and wealth, the envy and the oracle of all young Templars and barristers, who having been starved

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/261


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/262

232 for ten years, began now to calculate on the possibility of starving their clients. At the very first commencement of his career he had, through the good offices of the nobleman we have mentioned, obtained a seat in the House of Commons; and though his eloquence was of an order much better suited to the Bar than the Senate, he had nevertheless acquired a very considerable reputation in the latter, and was looked upon by many as likely to win to the same brilliant fortunes as the courtly Mansfield—a great man, whose political principles and urbane address Brandon was supposed especially to affect as his own model. Of unblemished integrity in public life—for as he supported all things that exist with the most unbending rigidity, he could not be accused of inconsistency—William Brandon was (as we have said in a former place of unhappy memory to our hero) esteemed in private life the most honourable, the most moral, even the most austere of men; and his grave and stern repute on this score, joined to the dazzle of his eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled in great measure the rancour of party hostility, and obtained for him a

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/262


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/263

 Rh for virtues almost as high and as enviable as that which he had acquired for abilities.

While William was thus treading a noted and an honourable career, his elder brother, who had married into a clergyman's family, and soon lost his consort, had, with his only child, a daughter named Lucy, resided in his paternal mansion in undisturbed obscurity. The discreditable character and habits of the preceding lords of Warlock, which had sunk their respectability in the county, as well as curtailed their property, had rendered the surrounding gentry little anxious to cultivate the intimacy of the present proprietor; and the heavy mind and retired manners of Joseph Brandon were not calculated to counter-balance the faults of his forefathers, or to reinstate the name of Brandon in its antient popularity and esteem. Though dull and little cultivated, the squire was not without his "proper pride;" he attempted not to intrude himself where he was unwelcome, avoided county meetings and county balls, smoked his pipe with the parson, and not unoften with the surgeon and the solicitor, and suffered his daughter Lucy

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/263


text:
Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/86

78 A drunken villain who was bled

As drink his convulsed entrails tossed,

Writhes with the cramps upon the grass

And glares at the face of his god,

Whose wrinkled skin, in ghastly wrath,

Provoked at this son in revolt,

Rants his spleen to the slabs of Doom,

From whence gyte monsters with a rod,

That oft gave imps a bloody bath,

Hythe, and before their master halt;

And, then came unhung, battling gloom!

The dome cracked like a clashing star,

All lights were muffled in a shroud,

Wild winds that cought us in their fold,

Dashed wrecks unto a reeking zone.

In Thralldom's grasp we waged giant war,

The storms rasped at each cursing crowd,

From regions far there sprung a cold

That froze each hoodlum stuck in loam.

There, garbed in the wastes of a moat,

Gangrel witches scan the slime to curse


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/264

234 to educate herself, with the help of the parson's wife, and to ripen (for Nature was more favourable to her than Art) into the very prettiest girl that the whole county—we long to say the whole country—at that time could boast of. Never did glass give back a more lovely image than that of Lucy Brandon at the age of nineteen. Her auburn hair fell in the richest luxuriance over a brow never ruffled, and a cheek where the blood never slept; with every instant the colour varied, and at every variation that smooth, pure, virgin cheek seemed still more lovely than before. She had the most beautiful laugh that one who loved music could imagine,—silvery, low, and yet so full of joy! all her movements, as the old Parson said, seemed to keep time to that laugh; for mirth made a great part of her innocent and childish temper; and yet the mirth was feminine, never loud, nor like that of young ladies who have received the last finish at Highgate seminaries. Every thing joyous affected her, and at once;—air,—flowers,—sunshine,—butterflies. Unlike heroines in general, she very seldom cried, and she saw nothing charming in having the vapours. But she never looked

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/264


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/265

Rh so beautiful as in sleep! and as the light breath came from her parted lips, and the ivory lids closed over those eyes which only in sleep were silent—and her attitude in her sleep took that ineffable grace belonging solely to childhood, or the fresh youth into which childhood merges,—she was just what you might imagine a sleeping Margaret, before that most simple and gentle of all a poet's visions of womanhood had met with Faust, and ruffled her slumbers with a dream of love.

We cannot say much for Lucy's intellectual acquirements; she could, thanks to the parson's wife, spell indifferently well, and write a tolerable hand; she made preserves and sometimes riddles—it was more difficult to question the excellence of the former than to answer the queries of the latter. She worked to the admiration of all who knew her, and we beg leave to say that we deem that "an excellent thing in woman." She made caps for herself and gowns for the poor, and now and then she accomplished the more literary labour of a stray novel that had wandered down to the Manor House, or an abridgement of antient history, in which was omitted every thing

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/265


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/266

236 but the proper names. To these attainments she added a certain modicum of skill upon the spinet, and the power of singing old songs with the richest and sweetest voice that ever made one's eyes moisten, or one's heart beat.

Her moral qualities were more fully developed than her mental. She was the kindest of human beings; the very dog that had never seen her before, knew that truth at the first glance, and lost no time in making her acquaintance. The goodness of her heart reposed upon her face like sunshine, and the old wife at the lodge said poetically and truly of the effect it produced, that "one felt warm when one looked on her." If we could abstract from the description a certain chilling transparency, the following exquisite verses of a forgotten poet might express the purity and lustre of her countenance—

She was surrounded by pets of all kinds, ugly and handsome, from Ralph the raven, to Beauty the pheasant, and from Bob, the sheep-dog without a tail, to Beau, the Blenheim with blue ribbons

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/266


text:
Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/267

Rh round his neck; all things loved her, and she loved all things. It seemed doubtful at that time whether she would ever have sufficient steadiness and strength of character. Her beauty and her character appeared alike so essentially sexual, soft, yet lively, buoyant, yet caressing, that you could scarcely place in her that moral dependence, that you might in a character less amiable, but less yieldingly feminine. Time, however, and circumstance which alters and hardens, were to decide whether the inward nature did not possess some latent, and yet undiscovered properties. Such was Lucy Brandon in the year, and in that year, on a beautiful autumnal evening, we first introduce her personally to our readers.

She was sitting on a garden-seat by the river side, with her father, who was deliberately conning the evening paper of a former week, and gravely seasoning the antient news with the inspirations of that weed which so bitterly excited the royal indignation of our British Solomon. It happens, unfortunately for us—for outward peculiarities are scarcely worthy the dignity to which comedy, whether in the drama or the narrative, aspires,—that Squire Brandon possessed so few

title: Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/267