Our good barque anchored in Launceston harbour in 1831—about the same year, by the way, in which Marcus Clarke\'s dream-ship, the Malabar, ended her eventful voyage to the same port. The writer\'s father owned and commanded the vessel. Our steerage passengers were of the same class as those of the Malabar, being a draft of convicts, in process of deportation to the strange South land, there to undergo experimental discipline, which to some meant probationary industry—the path to a prospective fortune; to others, a slave\'s dread life, a felon\'s shameful death.
Ruffians doubtless cursed and caballed among the two hundred prisoners which crowded the lower deck, but they were in a minority. A herd of luckless peasants constituted the main body; found guilty of rick-burning and machine-breaking only—crimes common enough in England, before the repeal of the corn-laws.
Their offences had been but the ignorant, instinctive protest of Labour against Capital; less dangerous far than the organised communism of the present day. Poachers and petty larcenists, with other humble criminals, completed the list. For the most part they were a timid and obedient company, cowed and unresisting, incapable of planning mutiny or revenge. Our family party consisted of two tiny sisters and myself, my mother, and our nursemaid—a resolute, sterling Englishwoman, destined in days to come to be the best friend our childhood could have found in the new world or the old. The ordinary military guard, so many rank and file, with their officers, together with the Surgeon-Superintendent, had been detailed for the duty of ensuring discipline and the safety of the ship.
322It may well have been that among the band of exiles were some unjustly sentenced, mixed up accidentally with a crowd of excited rustics engaged in unlawful deeds—wondering spectators rather than actors. Such a victim was probably the unhappy Annetts, a vacant-faced farm labourer, from Essex or Dorset, whose wife, accompanied by their two children, came daily to see him before the ship sailed.
I seem to remember the wretched group, though most probably it was my good nurse\'s description that imprinted it indelibly on my memory.
There would they sit, hour after hour, bathed in tears—he, with the irons on his limbs and the ugly prison garb; she almost a girl, with traces of rustic beauty, as he was hardly more than a boy—holding each other\'s hands and weeping silently for hours; then, sobbing in paroxysms of lamentation, both repeatedly declaring his innocence, the children wondering gravely at the strange surroundings, at times mingling their tears with those of their parents. It was a sight to touch the heart of the sternest. Then the last agonised parting, when the fainting woman was carried on shore, when the hopeless outcast watched his native land recede, instinctively aware that he gazed on it for the last time.
Is there such a physiological process as a broken heart? It would seem so, even in this world of lightly-borne sorrows and forgotten joys. He, at least, was not thus fashioned, stolid peasant as he seemed to outward view, untaught, uncared-for, born to the plough and the monotonous labour of the farm animals, which in his undeveloped intelligence he so closely resembled. But their fidelity to the heart\'s deepest feelings was rooted in his being. He never raised his head afterwards, as the phrase goes. He moved and spoke, went through the ordinary motions of humanity, as in a dream. Day by day he pined and wasted; in little more than a month, from no particular ailment, he died and found burial in that mysterious main which before his sentence he had never seen.
The only other death on board was that of the second mate, a fine young seaman named Keeling. Strange to say, he had a presentiment that drowning would be the manner of his end. He would say as much, on one occasion telling us that he was one of three brothers. Two had been lost at sea. He knew the same fate was in store for him. He even put his 323head in a bucket of water once, and held it there, \'to see how it felt.\' He was strong, active, temperate, and a smart officer. One day, in calm weather, when spearing fish from the dolphin-striker, he lost his balance and fell overboard. The ship had way on, though the breeze was light. He was a good swimmer; a boat was instantly lowered. I believe that my recollection of seeing him rise and fall upon the waves, far astern of the vessel, is accurate. The boat rapidly nears him—swimming strongly and easily supporting himself. It turns for a moment, shutting him out from sight. A man leans over to grasp him. Why do they commence to pull round in circles? Why can we not see the rescued man taken into the boat? After an interval which appears terribly long, the boat comes back to the ship without him. At the very moment of rescue a wave drove the boat stem on. The keel struck him on the head. He sank like a stone, never being visible to the boat\'s crew afterwards. Thus was his doom accomplished.
Though our passengers did not resemble those of the Malabar, we boasted a similar military force. The Surgeon-Superintendent was a much-travelled, cultured man. The Major and Subalterns in charge of the detachment were agreeable personages; fortunately they were not required to act in any military capacity beyond causing guards to be strictly kept. Had the prisoners even been other than they were, their chance in rising would have been small, having to deal with one of the most watchful, prompt, and determined men, in the captain of the vessel, that ever trod a plank. It was happily ordered otherwise. The voyage was successful and devoid of adventure. There were neither storms, mutinies, fevers, nor other disasters. And somewhere about the month of August (as we left England in April 1831) we delivered our passengers to the authorities in Launceston, in good order and condition. Our military friends quitted us after our arrival in Sydney, our final destination. My father had visited the port when an officer in the East India Company\'s service as far back as the year 1820, had been struck with the land\'s capabilities, and augured well of its future. He resolved to settle therein in the aftertime, did events shape themselves that way. By that voyage our destinies as a family were decided.
The Paris of the South was then a seaside town, numbering 324not more than thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. Described in station parlance, it was well grassed and lightly stocked. As a matter of fact there was a good deal of grass in the streets, and between Macquarie Place, which was our first location, and the Domain, the little Alderney cow, which had accompanied us on the ship, was able to pick up a good living. She and other vagrom milch kine often eluded the vigilance of the sentry, at the entrance to the Domain, where they revelled in the thick couch-grass; to be turned out at the point of the bayonet when discovered. Much of the city is changed; but much remains unchanged. Our first abode was a moderate-sized house in Macquarie Place. It possessed a second story and a garden, standing next to a tall, narrow building, occupied by Mr. Harrington, an eminent civil servant of the pre-parliamentary régime, later on Griffiths Fanning\'s office. Messrs. Montefiore, Breillat, and Co. possessed the corner house with its walled enclosure, taking in the angle of Bent Street, with a frontage also to O\'Connell Street. The wall, the house, and the store still stand, unaltered in half a century. Mr. Dalgety, then himself a junior clerk, might be seen walking to and fro from the wharves, inspecting cargo, note-book in hand. Think of that, young gentlemen in like positions, and ponder upon the mercantile monarchies which have been (and may still be) reached by perseverance, financial talent, and prudent ambition!
Chief-Justice and Mrs. Forbes, with their family, inhabited a large stone house on the opposite side of the street, also surrounded by a wall. It now forms a portion of the Lands Office buildings. Archdeacon Cowper lived on the other side, now New Pitt Street, a grass plot with two large cedars being in front of the house.
Sydney must have been then not unlike in appearance to one of the larger country towns, Bathurst or Goulburn, save and excepting always its possession of the unrivalled harbour and that fragment of Eden the Botanic Garden. There we children walked in the mornings of our first summer in Sydney. The grateful freshness of the air, the beauty of the overhanging trees, the vision of blue water and white-winged skiffs seen through flower thickets, still remains among my childhood\'s fairest memories.
At the back of our garden rose a stone wall, which supported the higher level of the allotments fronting O\'Connell 325Street. In a balconied mansion opposite lived Mr. Raymond, the Postmaster-General, with his numerous family of sons and daughters.
How few survive of that merry band of youths and maidens, whom I remember so well! After our debarkation no time was lost in sending me to school. A lady who lived conveniently close, in O\'Connell Street, first directed the pothooks and hangers, which, further developed, have since covered so many a printed page. Mr. Walter Lamb and the late Colonel Peel Raymond were among my schoolfellows. At the ripe age of seven, being according to the maternal partiality too far advanced for a dame school, I was promoted to Mr. Cape\'s Sydney Academy, in King Street, opposite to St. James\'s Church. Seventy boys more or less were there, not a few of whom have since distinguished themselves \'in arms, in arts, in song.\' William Forster, Walter Lamb, Whistler Smith, and Allan Macpherson were among my older comrades. I well remember on the day of my arrival how Forster, actuated by the hatred of injustice which characterised his after-life, fought a sanguinary battle with another oldster who had been oppressing a smaller boy. Sir James Martin was there then, or came soon afterwards. At any rate he was one of the scholars when Mr. Cape, then newly appointed Headmaster of the Sydney College, moved over and took possession of that institution upon its opening day. The Nortons, James and John, were among the pupils, with many others whom I could perhaps recall, but whose names are at present fading in the mists of the past. The Dowlings, Mitchells, David Forbes, Sir John Robertson, Mr. Dalley, with many another, were among the pupils of that most conscientious and earnest teacher. They will always acknowledge, doubtless, their indebtedness to him for a sound classical training, the groundwork of their higher education.
The late Mr. James Laidley was one of the smaller boys at that time. Our fathers had been friends in other lands. I saw Commissary-General Laidley\'s funeral—a military one—and Dick Webb, the family coachman, leading the dead officer\'s favourite chestnut mare in the procession.
On the day of my introduction came also a new boy, about the same age. His name was Hugh Ranclaud. We were placed in a class in order to test our reading, and, as the last 326comers, at the bottom of the class. The lesson commenced; the others went through their allotted portion haltingly, after the fashion of the small boy of the period. When it came to Ranclaud\'s turn, he commenced in a clear, distinct, properly-punctuated manner, much as if he had been in the habit of performing at penny readings, or acting as curate on occasion. I see (as if it were yesterday) Mr. Cape, who paused to listen, take him by the arm and march him to the head of the class. I was promoted, too, and we soon quitted that class for a higher place in the Division, from that day to be close friends and confidants in literary matters. Eager, voracious readers we both were. He was a poet as well. We used to walk about arm in arm and recite bits out of Walter Scott and Byron. Until we left school and settled in different colonies our friendship remained unbroken.
The first thing I remember after the ceremony of installation was the adjournment to the new cricket-ground granted for our use in that part of Hyde Park then known as the Racecourse, which was opposite to the College, now the Grammar School. Percy and Hamilton Stephen were at the wickets. They, with their cousins James and Frank, Alfred, Consett, and Matthew Henry were among the schoolboys of that period; Prosper and André de Mestre, with, later on, Etty (Etienne), then a little chap, like myself.
We of the old school were much gratified at the superior advantages we now enjoyed in the way of playgrounds. The free use of Hyde Park, then merely fenced and not planted, was granted to us. Below the school building was a large area, divided by a wall from the present labyrinth of terraces built on the Riley Estate, then a furze-covered paddock of pathless wilds, in which we were free to wander.
A chain-gang was at that time employed, under armed warders, in levelling the line of road which leads towards Waverley. One of the prisoners tried to escape and was shot by a warder. We boys went over. There he lay dead in his prison garb, with a red stain across his chest, \'well out of the scrape of being alive and poor,\'—only paupers were unknown then, and prisoners, of course, plentiful.
We were near enough to the Domain for the boarders to walk to \'The Fig-tree,\' that well-known spot in Wooloomooloo Bay, where so many generations of Sydney boys have learned 327to swim. The old tree (a wild one) was there long years after, and from the stone wharf, with steps considerately made in Governor Macquarie\'s time, how many a \'header\' has been taken, how many a trembling youngster pitched in by ruthless schoolmates! There was no danger, of course, and among rough-and-ready methods of teaching a useful accomplishment, it is perhaps one of the best. Mr. Cape was a good swimmer, and on the mornings when he accompanied us, these little diversions were not indulged in.
My recollections of him as a headmaster, and, indeed, in every other capacity, is uniformly favourable. He was a strict, occasionally severe, but invariably just ruler. Discriminating too, always ready to assist real workers such as Forster, Martin, George Rowley, and other exceptional performers. But for us of the rank and file, whose scholastic ambition lagged consistently behind our powers, he had neither mercy nor toleration. A thorough disciplinarian, prompt, punctual, unsparing, we knew what we had to expect. The consequence was that a standard of acquirement was reached at a comparatively early age by his scholars which with a less resolute instructor would never have been gained.
The constitution of the school was professedly in accordance with the Church of England denomination, but it was wisely ordered by the founders that no religious disability should exist. The fees were low, particularly for the day scholars. All ranks and denominations were equally represented, equally welcome. Mr. Cape himself, though inflexibly orthodox as an Anglican Churchman............