ROUGHING IT IN QUEENSLAND.* THE Danish emigrant who relates these
experiences so typical of pioneering life in a new country, tells us a little about himself in the introduction. He was born in Copenhagen, and worked at his father's trade, that of a builder, till the age of twenty-one, when, no longer able to stand the rigid control of the paternal hand, he ran away to Hamburg. He found work there for a time, and incidentally we get a sort of notion what life in a German workshop is, the life that is spent pouring out those wonderfully cheap and good articles that are the despair of the English artisan, sneer at them though he may. It was a cabinet-maker's establishment, full of shops from cellar to loft. A few sentences from the emigrant him- self will "bite the copper" of one's imagination with the vigour of an acid :— "We had to be at work at six o'clock in the morning, and to keep on till eight o'clock at night. Even on Sundays we worked from six o'clock to dinner-time. Some would keep on till it was dark on Sunday evening, and content themselves with knocking off early, as they called it. And such work ! Everybody would work as if the house were on fire. It was all piecework. The man who stood next myself had made veneered chests of drawers for thirty years, and never had made anything else. He would turn out two veneered chests of drawers in a week, and the work was faultless. These chests would. I am sure, sell readily in Bris- bane for from twelve to fifteen pounds each. He earned about nine Prussian thalers per week. On the other side of me stood a man who made German secretaires. There were nine or ten men in the shop. The master was working too. He seemed just as poor as the men. Whenever work was finished, some furniture dealer would come round and buy it. The men seemed all more or less askew in their bodies with overwork. If ever they had an ambition in their lives, it was to instil a proper sense of respect into the two apprentices!'
And these two apprentices, when their work was over, were allowed to work a couple of hours for themselves. They collected odd bits of wood and veneer, and made workboxes, for which, when finished, a dealer would give a " those beautiful workboxes which are sold all over the world," As for the life these boys led, no writer of tales ever invented hardships more cruel and continuous.
Then one day the runaway caught sight of the placard, "Free Emigration to Queensland, Australia." His knowledge of that continent was summed-up in a paragraph from his school geography :— " Australia, Travellers who come from this distant continent bring us very conflicting statements. It seems to be a land in which nature is reversed. The leaves are hanging downwards on the trees instead of upwards. Rivers run from the ocean inland. The interior seems to be one vast lake of salt water. It is the home of the kangaroo and the black swan. Altogether, but little is known about it."
He bought a ticket, a revolver, ammunition, and a long knife, and then spent his last farthing before embarking. The scene on beard an emigrant-ship is not soon forgotten by the spec- tator; however, it is by no means a thing of the past, so we may pass on. The accommodation, of course, gate the lie to the promises made to the buyers of tickets, and the Emigrant slept in his great-coat for months. The first morning, half the occupants of the emigrants' compartment, who were Germans, rushed the food the moment it appeared. "These Germans, I found out by degrees, were not at all bad fellows," says the Emigrant, "but we did not for a long time forgive them the assault on the potatoes, and I have often thought what a peculiar sign of German thrift it was." Some- thing like a mutiny nearly occurred on account of the army doctor's high-handedness; bloodshed was happily avoided at the critical moment by the lucky speech of an Icelander, Thorkill by name, counselling patience and subsequent com- plaint. This Thorkill, the Emigrant says, was an ideal man, but be had one great fault, "a certain softness, like a woman."
He claimed to know all his ancestors from the twelfth century, but was utterly unpractical; and, adds the Emigrant, "unless as a professor in ancient folk-lore, I do not know what Thor- kill was good for." They discussed the " Sagas " day and * 5fj,gj,gEsiends: being Ow Advontorros of a Danish Emigrant in Queensland (1871-1880), Elnetrated. London, T. FioluIr Unwin, night, and the Icelander arranged to teach the Emigrant the whole of the " Riimi Kronike."
When the emigrants actually disembarked, the few days of coasting had enabled them to be fed so well that complaint seemed palpably absurd. The Emigrant was speedily engaged as a carpenter for 230 a year, board and lodging. But the " rations " of the agreement the emigrants found out to mean in most cases so much mutton, flour, sugar, and tea, and for the rest, the shelter of a gum-tree. Before leaving the ship the Emigrant and Thorkill conceived a plan for making money, of a quality so excellent as to make the eye wink. This was to collect all the empty bottles and retail them, as they fondly hoped, at a shilling apiece. A seller of bananas was persuaded to part with some fruit for a "dead mariner" (an empty bottle) wrapped in paper. In the laughter which followed, these exquisite simpletons were unable to understand how neatly they bad scored. The banana-seller in revenge fooled them to the top of their bent. On landing, they engaged a black to carry the bottles to an hotel, promising him a bottle in payment. The upshot was that the Emigrant, having nearly caused the death of many Queenslanders from excessive laughter, was nearly killed himself by the black man. Then our Emigrant went to work in earnest. His term with his first employer ended in a quarrel, as the Emigrant's fellow-worker accused him of cutting the wages down, and the Emigrant, on discovering that he was paid less than the other, straightway called his employer to account, and demanded his 23 a week, which was refused. Thereafter, he did as much work as be pleased, until he was released from his agreement. The Emigrant says not much profit was made out of him, and he may, therefore, be considered to have got the better of his "boss." Then the Emigrant went to Townsville, wasted his time generally, and was victimised by a fellow-countryman over a bogus partnership, and ended the chapter by flying off at a tangent to the pearl-fisheries. The absence of all qualifications for that art caused him to be disembarked long before he reached the pearl-waters, all parties being in a good humour—especially the Emigrant, who laughed at everything—and the authorities taking the stranger for what he was.
He was now recommended to go up the Herbert River to the sugar-plantations, and so he went, pulling an oar on the fortnightly mail-boat, in lieu of passage-money, and displaying his stupidity as usual. He could not, of course, cut down trees and make waggons,—that was not his fault; but at another plantation he tried a bolder tack, and the story is too good to be omitted :— 4“ What can you do ?'—' Anything.'--' Can you cook ? Do you mean making dinners ? Yes.'—' No, I cannot do that?— ' Can you split fencing stuff ? No.'—' Can' you make brick ? '- 'No,'—' Can you chip ? What is that ? Kill weeds with a hoe,'—' I never did it before.'—' I am afraid it is difficult to find you a job. You say yon can do anything : what is it you can do ?' —I was again quite crestfallen as I said, 'I do not think I can do antathing.'—' Well, then, I cannot find you anything to do."
His companion in the boat inquired if the Emigrant had actually mentioned his trade, and ascertaining that he had not, swore volubly in French, and made the piteous complaint, "Mon Dieu! 0, mon Dieu, was any one like this infant !" The Frenchman having explained matters to the planter, that gentleman was disinterested enough to pass on the Emigrant to a neighbour whose need was greater than his own, promising that work should be forthcoming if the Emigrant had to return. As the boat passed the next plantation, the owner hailed the boat from across the river, inquiring if it were possible to get a carpenter in Cardwell. The Emigrant was compelled to stay by his oar till the next and the last stage, the police-station, was reached, and they again touched at the 'plantation on the way down. Here the Emigrant worked hard, fitting up accommodation for the expected Kanakas, a hundred in number, and making furniture for the house. He became a favourite, and such was his industry that it "began to rain tables, sofas, chairs, and bunks." He constructed a bench and sunshade in the yard, from which the planter's daughter could see him working. Then follows an account of the killing of an alligator, a feat which had long been the planter's ambition. A thorough success though it was, it took the best part of a bottle of whiskey to make the Emigrant forget the hours of waiting to lee- ward of the dead bullock that acted as bait. Once again the Emigrant brought him z,lf into ridicule. It was in this wise. The planter's family left to visit a neighbour fourteen miles away, and during the day and night of their absence the Emigrant got nervous and barricaded the house, which was built on piles, bored holes through the doors and the floors, made preparations for a long siege, and generally did credit to his character as a "new chum." The hardest trial of all came when the planter and his family returned. By-and-by the Kanakas landed, and the Emigrant and his " boss " rode to Cardwell to fetch them. The experience gained as "nigger-driver," in riding, in driving bullocks, in splitting fencing, and the making of "slab-houses," made another man of the Emigrant. He learnt one of the first necessi- ties of life in a wild country, that is, the combination of skilled labour with rough-and-ready methods. Again and again he had had to tell people he could neither make houses from growing trees, known as "slab houses," nor split fencing. It was all very well to make a chest of drawers, but in the bush men were content with an earlier stage of civilisation. The Emigrant was a Dane, or we should have remarked how eminently German was his unpracticalness,—a quality, we believe, quite as strongly developed in the German race as thrift. It was dialing residence on this sugar-plantation that the Emigrant caught the fever. Hitherto his health had been perfect,—the envy of Cardwell, in fact. People pointed to his cheeks, exclaiming that Europe was the place to live in. He complained of his food, the putrid corned-beef and bread, the dirty tea and sugar,—he could scarcely move, be it re- membered. "As I write now," says the Emigrant, "it seems to me it is enough to cause a strong man to die of slow starvation, and yet it is the ordinary average diet put before working men all over the Queensland bush twenty- one times a week." He made his complaint to the " boss's " wife, who had come to inquire after him, and he had his meals at her own table—though little enough use could he make of his opportunities—for the remainder of his time. He decided to leave, and took a friendly farewell of his employer and embarked on his downward voyage with a hundred and odd pounds in his pocket. He was still very ill, and when embarking from Cardwell on the boat to Townsville, caught cold. Now his real sufferings began. His head swelled so that he could not swallow, and his tortures exceeded those of the fever-thirst ; but he lived to reach Townsville, and was persuaded, much against his will, to leave his teeth in his head. His recovery was rapid, and his doctor charged him moderately. Work he could have had at Di a week, but the Emigrant thirsted for gold, and off he went to the Ravens- wood diggings, putting £30 into the bank, and investing the rest, all but 210, in two horses and the kit necessary for going on the "wallaby-track." At Ravenswood the Emigrant declares that the food served out in the Chinese boarding- houses, at 21 per week, was the best he ever remembers in his Queensland experiences. After a time the Emigrant sought employment in a Government building. Once more a black man fell upon him, but, in the nick of time, up .came a countryman, who fought and vanquished the negro after a terrible fight. This countryman, by-the- way, was another "Enoch Arden," only his decision was not to die, but to emigrate with his eldest son to Australia. A rush setting in for another "diggings," the Emigrant set up a shanty in the neighbourhood, and for a time prospered, but, alas ! he boasted of his bucketful of money, and a drinking bout following, he awoke to find himself robbed, and once more at the beginning. Meanwhile, the Icelander appeared, and after the catastrophe, the two camped out and prospected alone, until Thorkill's unexpected death put an end to a pleasant existence. The Emigrant tells us that the Icelander's death excited hi ra so much that he strode up and down singing the " Bjarkamsal," and almost fancying that the ancient gods were flying through the air. The succeeding chapters, dealing with the rash for the Palmer, and the incidents of travelling to a somewhat indefinite locality through bogs and rivers, the happy-go-lucky recklessness of all concerned, the coasting voyage from Townsville to Oooktown, the port for the Palmer, the crowded schooner with half its passengers sea- sick and half uproarious, and the horses dying by scores, pre- sent pictures of life as striking in some respects as those which "Rolf Boldrewood " has described for us.
It is a general sketch, a bird's-eye view, of Australian life that the Emigrant draws in his pages, but they are so frankly written that any suspicion one may feel as to his really being the unsophisticated "new chum" he makes him- self out, is speedily dissipated. He is the type of a class who, we fervently hope, will never grow less in numbers, and whose education cannot now be considered complete till they have read the Emigrant's adventures in Queensland.
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