“We have at various times had stories told us of the treatment the blacks are subjected to in the bush, and it behoves the Government to make strict inquiry into the whole question. By the way, where is the Protector of Aborigines, and what has he got to say in the matter?
“Oh it’s only a nigger, you know;
It’s only a nigger, you know;
A nigger to wallop, a nigger to slave,
To treat with a word and a blow.
“It’s only a nigger, you know;
A nigger, whose feelings are slow;
A nigger to chain up, a nigger to treat
To a kick, and a curse, and a blow.
“It’s only a nigger, you know;
It’s only a nigger, you know;
But he’s also a brother, a man like the rest,
Though his skin may be black as a crow.”
“Bacca.”
From the “Lantern,” South Australia, 1889. 216
“Mount Silver,
“August 8th, 1889.
“Mr. Richard Shaw, Te Renga-renga, Drury, New Zealand.
"D
EAR DICK,—In my letter to the ‘Mater’ I have set forth all those of my experiences, up to date, that I consider of most interest to the gentle female mind, and have omitted certain others of a more painful character. For you, old man, I preserve the honour of participating in the ‘noble indignation’ which at present suffuses the soul of ‘yours regardfully,’—the outcome of my present surroundings of many most un-English institutions. For my pericardiac region is sickened and disgusted with certain ‘goings on’ in this fair colony of the British Crown, and I would fain burst into poetry—after the Whittier style—only that I am well aware that my knowledge of the properties of the hexameter is considerably less than my acquaintance with those of the lactometer.
“But ere I launch into these matters, I will roughly sketch out my doings since I posted my last letter, which I wrote at the pretty, sand-surrounded, and ‘quite too awfully’ tropical little port of Cairns.
“Australian hospitality is proverbial, but I have to withdraw myself as much as possible from the217 ‘here’s-a-hand-me-trusty-fren’ kind of thing, as I find it means participating in an unlimited number of ‘nips’ of ‘stringy bark,’—a curious combination of fusil oil and turpentine, labelled ‘whisky,’ or of a decoction of new and exceedingly virulent rum, much patronised by the inhabitants of these sugar-cane districts. However, whilst arranging the necessary preliminaries for my journey at this little inland township, I have made several acquaintances. One, a Mr. Feder,—the manager of a German-Lutheran mission station about fifty miles from here,—who, it appears, knew my Uncle Dyesart some few years back, and may prove useful to me in my search after Billy. I have also come across an Inspector of Police, by name John Bigger, who, although I have certainly not returned his advances with much warmth, for I think him a silly old swiper, is everlastingly thrusting his companionship, upon me; and, although he is apparently doing his best to make my stay here agreeable, one can have too much of a good thing, especially when the said good thing suffers rather from ‘furor loquendi,’ in other words, is a confounded old bore.
“This inspector introduced himself to me as a friend of one Inspector Puttis, whom he says was a friend of uncle’s. This Puttis sends word that Billy has disappeared from Murdaro station; but as I never mentioned the fact that I wanted to find Billy to any one here till after I received this message, I am rather at a loss to understand it altogether.
“Now my other acquaintance here—the missionary cuss I mentioned—curiously re-echoes the last words in uncle’s letter, namely, to distrust the police. And218 in faith I believe they’re a bad lot entirely, although I suppose there are some exceptions.
“It is partly in consequence of this that I have not accepted an invitation to go shooting with the inspector to-day, and am writing to you instead.
“My old miner friend got bitten by a large poisonous black spider at Cairns, and is hors de combat. So I have been obliged to leave him behind for a time with Don, who is turning out a grand little fellow. These two will follow me to Mount Silver next week, when I shall start for Murdaro station immediately. I am not wasting my time in the interim, although I itch to start, but am making myself acquainted with the ways of station-life and mining matters in this wild part of the world. If Billy arrives at the mission station, as Mr. Feder thinks he probably will, I shall be communicated with at once. But ‘how do I manage without my little henchman Don?’ you’ll be after asking. Well, that brings me to the main subject matter of this epistle. I have a second ‘boy Friday’ now; and what is more, he’s black as a crow, and, moreover, I bought him. Yes, in the year of our Lord, 1889, in the civilized street of a town in an English colony, I followed the custom of the place, and purchased the little black specimen of humanity that is now amusing a party of his aboriginal friends, over there by the town well, by imitating with a piece of stick the way I brush my teeth of a morning, which operation I noticed has amazed him muchly, and is probably indulged in by few of the whites about here.
“I travelled alone as far as this place, being anxious to get on here; and my obliging host—who talks broad Scotch, although he is by two generations a219 colonist—advised me to get a ‘boy,’ as all black servants, regardless of age, are called here, to look after my two horses. Well, to cut the story short, I paid ￡2 for little Joe to a carrier whom ‘mine host’ informed of my wants. Joe is a great help, and according to the unwritten law of the place,—which appears to be supported by what little pulpit power they have here,—my ‘boy’ is, in this free land, my property, body and soul.
“Yes, coming here from New Zealand one feels as if he had somehow descended into the slave countries of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and the odd part of it is that its very existence is unknown in England, neither in Sydney nor Brisbane to any great extent. But these places, it is true, have their own little white slaves ‘always with them,’ as my experiences amongst the newsboys, when I got little Don, has taught me.
“Although I did pander to the local custom, against which I am speaking, in buying Joe, I trust to do something good for him to cover this sin of mine, and will bring him back to New Zealand with me.
“Any one who boasts of being the ‘free-born son of an Englishman’ cannot look coolly on at the treatment of the unfortunate blacks up here in Queensland. The poor wretches one sees forced to work by brutal squatters, carriers, ‘cockatoo’ settlers, and others, have no hope to cheer them like those mentioned by your old American poet-friend, John Greenleaf Whittier:—
“‘O’er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.’
220
“No, the (five) star-drop flag of Australia, heralding the (three) star-drop (whisky) of the advancing army of locust-squatters, brings no hope, or mercy either, to the poor devils whose ancestral domains become their fields of unceasing and ‘unpaid toil.’ All the horrors depicted by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, all the sorrows sung of by the immortal Whittier, are rampant around me as I write. And it seems that it is in vain that the immorality of the horrible traffic is thundered into the ears of the various Governments—who after all are but the representatives of the squatter-kings—by various southern papers from time to time. Read the following first-rate article upon the subject, by Mr. Rose, the editor of the Brisbane Courier, the boss paper of the colony, which appeared on September 16th, last year.
“‘Communications that have lately reached us from the north show too clearly that our people have not yet been educated to the recognition of the human rights of the original possessors of Australia. A correspondent forwards descriptions of atrocities of alleged frequent occurrence in the northern districts, the bare recital of which is enough to make one’s ears to tingle. Nor are we allowed the common consolation of ignorance or sentimentalism or exaggeration on the part of our informer. For our correspondent is a well-known pressman, who has done a bit of exploiting both in Australasia and New Guinea, who admits that he has himself shot natives who would otherwise have shot him, and of whom we can readily believe that, as he says, he is “not particularly prejudiced in favour of the natives or very soft-hearted.” He even tells us that he is not himself a religious man, and yet 221 declares that he would not think the future commonly assigned to the wicked by religious people as too condign a punishment for atrocities that have come within his knowledge. His indictment touches mainly the districts lying between Cairns and Georgetown, where, he says, the blacks are being decimated, and by Government servants in the shape of black troopers and their masters, whose “dispersion” of the aboriginals in particular localities has simply come to mean their slaughter. He speaks of men being kept for the sole purpose of hunting and killing the aborigines; he gives instances of their camps being surrounded, and men, women, and children massacred for killing cattle, when, through the white man’s presence, they could no longer find game; and he tells in detail one story of the extermination of a camp simply because some blacks had been seen passing a mining station where nothing had been stolen for months. Roundly he charges the “grass dukes” and their subordinates with “murdering, abducting children for immoral purposes, and stockwhipping defenceless girls,” and he condemns “each Government that comes into power for winking at the slaughter of our black fellow-subjects of the Queen as an easy way of getting rid of the native question.” The Northern Miner asserts that this picture is not overdrawn, and that the atrocities mentioned have even been exceeded. It refers to squatters branding blacks, keeping harems of black gins, and finding their slaughtering record no bar to advancement to high office in the State. The black trooper system is, in the view of this paper, legalized murder, which reckons the life of a bullock of more account than that of a score of black fellows.222 We do not vouch for the truth of these serious charges; but, if true, the horrible demoralisation of such a system on blacks and whites alike it is difficult to over-estimate; and cry exaggeration as we may, it is clear that enough remains to call for the immediate and earnest attention of the Government. Sir Thomas McIlwraith will earn the gratitude of the colony to all time if he will but exert himself for the aborigines of Australia—whose country after all we have simply taken from them by force—as Sir Samuel Griffith exerted himself for the kanakas. Surely there is as much call for a Commission of Inquiry in the one case as in the other. The recently inaugurated society for the protection of the aborigines has its work cut out for it, and has not been formed a moment too soon. We hope that the statements we have referred to will waken our people to the fact that............