FERN VALE OR THE QUEENSLAND SQUATTER.

A NOVEL.

BY COLIN MUNRO.

IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL II.

LONDON: T. C. NEWBY, 30 WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. MDCCCLXII.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY THE CALEDONIAN PRESS,

"The National Institution for Promoting the

Employment of Women in the Art of Printing."

CONTENTS.

FERN VALE.

[Pg 1]

CHAPTER I.

"Those fellows have been up to some mischief I am certain," said Tom when the blacks departed, as described in the last chapter. "I am confident my brother has not given them anything; and if they have got any rations at Strawberry Hill, they must have stolen them. However, if you intend going over to their corroboree, I'll accompany you."

"I do intend going," said John, "for I have[Pg 2] never seen them in such force as they'll be to-night, and I am curious to see the effect. Do you know what is the nature of the ceremony of their kipper corroboree?"

"I can't exactly say," replied Tom, "their ordinary corroborees are simply feasts to commemorate some event; but the kipper corroboree has some mystery attached to it, which they do not permit strangers to witness. I believe it is held once a year, to admit their boys into the communion of men; and to give 'gins' to the neophytes, if they desire to add to their importance by assuming a marital character. I believe it is simply a ceremony, in which they recognise the transition of their youths from infancy to manhood; though they keep the proceedings veiled from vulgar eyes."

"When, then," continued John, "the kippers are constituted men, and get their gins, are their marriage engagements of a permanent nature; I mean does their nuptial ceremony, whatever it may be, effectually couple them;[Pg 3] and is it considered by them inviolable?"

"I believe," replied Tom, "the ceremony is binding on the gins, but their lords are permitted to exercise a supreme power over the liberty and destiny of their spouses. The gins are merely looked upon as so many transferable animals, and they are frequently stolen and carried off by adventurous lovers from their lawful lords and masters; and as frequently made over with the free consent of their husbands, the same as we should do with flocks and herds. Most of the quarrels among the tribes arise from such thefts; and the wills and inclinations of the gins are never for a moment considered."

After this remark the conversation of the young men turned into other channels. About sundown they prepared themselves for their visit, and mounting their horses started off to the Gibson river; which, owing to the darkness of the night, and the difficulty they experienced in threading the bush, and avoiding the fallen logs, they did not reach so quickly[Pg 4] as they had anticipated. They, however, crossed by the flats, and guided by the noise of the blacks, and the light from their fires in the scrub, they soon came upon the "camp;" where they found Dugingi, true to his promise, waiting for them.

The camp was composed of about fifty "gunyas" or huts, formed in a circle; in the midst of which were several of the natives, talking and gesticulating most vociferously and wildly. The gunyas were small conical structures of about five or six feet in diameter; formed by pieces of cane being fixed into the ground in an arched shape, so as to make ribs, which were covered with the flakey sheets of the tea tree bark, and laid perfectly close and compact, in which position they were fixed by an outer net-work of reedy fibre; making, though primitive and meagre in accommodation, a dwelling perfectly impervious to the weather. Into these burrow-like domiciles, crowd, sometimes, as many as five or six human beings, who coil themselves into a[Pg 5] mass to economize space, and generate caloric in cold nights; when they have a fire in front of the opening which serves for a door. In warmer weather, however, they generally stretch themselves under heaven, with only a blanket to cover them; and, with their feet towards the fire, a party may frequently be

seen radiating in a circle from the centre of heat.

When the camp was approached by the young men, the host of dogs, which are the usual concomitants of a black's tribe, gave warning of the visitors' presence; and Dugingi, who was by that means attracted, first removing their horses to a place of safety, led them within the mysterious periphery. As they emerged suddenly from the obscurity of the scrub into the open space where the corroboree was in full progress, they were not a little startled at the scene before them. In the centre was an immense fire; and around it, about one hundred and fifty men were assembled in a circle, except at a gap at the[Pg 6] side from which the visitors approached. Here sat, or rather squatted, the gins, the piccaninies, and the males incapacitated from senescence or infirmities. The blacks having ceased their exertions as our friends arrived, the latter had a good opportunity of surveying the picture at their leisure.

In the spot where the blacks had made their camp the ground was naturally clear, and was covered with a smooth sward; while immediately beyond the circumscribed limits of the natural clearance, the thick scrub was, to any but a black fellow, perfectly impenetrable; thus presenting to the eye of the beholder, the appearance of an umbrageous amphitheatre especially created for those savage orgies. The men were all more or less bedecked and besmeared; and, at the moment of our friends' contemplation of them, stood taking breath preparatory to the repetition of fresh exertions. The immense fire was being continually replenished by the gins, and threw a fitful glance over the whole[Pg 7] scene that struck the mind with an indescribable sensation of mingled awe, dread, and disgust. While those sensations were traversing the minds of John and Tom Rainsfield Jemmy Davis stepped forward from amidst the group, and saluted them with the greatest urbanity. But such was his metamorphosis that our friends did not, until he had declared himself by speech, recognise in the painted

savage before them an educated and civilized black.

His hair was drawn up to a tuft on the top of his head, and into it had been thrust numerous of the most gaudy parrot and cockatoo feathers. When he walked this top knot acquired an eccentric oscillation, which gave his head the appearance of a burlesque on the plumed cranium of a dignified hearse horse; and was the only part of his ornature that was of a ludicrous character. His forehead was painted a deep yellow; from his eyes to a line parallel to his nose his skin shone with a bright red; while the[Pg 8] rest of his face showed its natural dirty brown colour. His body was fancifully marked in white, delineating his ribs; with grotesque devices on his breast and back. His legs and arms were as black as charcoal could make them; and with a necklace of bones and shells, his toilet was complete. It has been facetiously stated that the New Zealander's full dress consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs; but Jemmy Davis had no such useless appendages; and, as he stood before his guests in the conviction of his costume being complete, and in the pride of conscious adornment,

he never dreamt but that his own self-gratulation was also shadowing their admiration and delight.

In a few minutes John and his companion were left alone; and the corroboree commenced afresh by the resumption of the musical accompaniments, which, as they were peculiar, we may as well describe. We have already said, the gins were squatted on the ground near the circle; and, we may now add, they had composed their ungraceful[Pg 9] forms in the oriental fashion. Some of them had their hands half open, or rather their fingers were kept close together, while the palms were made to assume a concave shape, as if for the purpose of holding water. With them in this form they struck them simultaneously on their supine thighs, with a metrical regularity, which made an unearthly hollow noise, and formed the base of their orchestral display. Others of them beat a similar measure on their waddies, or sticks; while the whole burst into a discordant vocal accompaniment, in which they were joined by the men and piccaninies in a dull and monotonous cadence. This was their song; which, to adequately describe, would be impossible. Some idea, however, may possibly

be formed of it, when we say that they all commenced in a high mournful key, in which they unintelligibly mumbled their bucolic. On this first note they dwelt for about half a minute; and descended the gamut in the same[Pg 10] metre, resting only on the flats, and expending their breath in a prolongation of the last, and deepest, note they could utter; terminating in one eructation something between a grunt and a sigh, or a concentration of the idiosyncratic articulation of the London paviers. And as they dwelt upon this note for about a minute, the combined effects of their mutterings, and the noise of their feet, were not unlike the distant fulmination of thunder.

Their dance too, was conducted totally different to the wild gestures of other savages. The participators in the ceremony, as we have already explained, stood in a semi-circular line. Slightly stooping, they swung their arms backwards and forwards before their bodies, and with their feet beat a measured tread on the ground; while they continued to contract their frames, almost into a sitting posture, and to accelerate their pendulous and stamping motions; until, with an universal convulsion, the last sigh or grunt was expatriated from their carcasses. After a dead[Pg 11] stop of some few seconds, with a recommencement of their femoral accompaniment, they erected their bodies with their voices, and proceeded de capo; presenting a scene more like a festival in pandemonium than a congregation of human beings in "this huge rotundity on which we tread."

The feelings of the young men, as they stood and watched this performance, were varied; neither of them had seen a corroboree on so grand a scale before; and they were for a time lost in wonder at an exhibition, which no description can truthfully depict. John was dreaming of the emancipation and improvement of a race, which he believed, could be made to ameliorate their condition; and felt sorrowful that, in the midst of civilisation (with its examples before their eyes, and the inculcations which had been instilled into the nature of one of their number), the blacks should be still perpetuating the emblems of their barbarity and degradation. Tom's meditations were of a different nature;[Pg 12] though he advocated kind treatment to them in the intercourses of life, he still believed them an inferior race of sentient beings; if not altogether devoid of the mental attributes of man. He, moreover, thought he read in their manner, despite all the suavity of Jemmy Davis and Dugingi, something that portended evil; and fancied he heard more than once,

his own name uttered by them in their song. It might have been only fancy, he thought; but an idea of something premeditated had seized upon his mind, and he could not divest himself of it.

Our young friends by this time, having seen quite enough to satisfy them, and being unnoticed in their position, quietly left the spot; and, having procured their horses, retraced their steps to the river. They there mounted, and having crossed the stream, returned almost silently to Fern Vale, and retired to rest. On the following morning Tom took his leave of his friend; while, almost contemporary with his departure, John's black boys, Billy and[Pg 13] Jemmy, presented themselves to resume their former life on the station. We may remark that Billy had by this time perfectly recovered from his castigation, though he, and also his companion, did not fail to stigmatize in very strong, if not in very elegant, or pure English, phraseology, the conduct of Mr. Rainsfield; and as much as insinuated that the tribe were in no very friendly way disposed towards him.

This, John Ferguson was seriously grieved to learn; for he dreaded the consequence of an open rupture between the aborigines and his neighbour. He knew, if the blacks became more than ordinarily troublesome, that Rainsfield would enlist the sympathies of his friends, and his class generally; when blood would inevitably be shed, and the poor natives hunted from the face of the earth. He therefore determined, if he should not see Tom in a day or two, to ride over and call upon Mr. Rainsfield; and while adverting to the treatment received by his black boy from him,[Pg 14] warn him of the danger, not only to himself, but to all the settlers in his neighbourhood, by his persisting in his stringent course. With this intention, a few days after the corroboree, not having seen his friend in the interval, he rode over to Strawberry Hill.

As he approached the residence of the Rainsfields, despite his struggles to suppress it, he felt his heart beat high with the anticipation of seeing Eleanor, for the first time since his meeting with Bob Smithers. John had, of late, striven hard to wean himself from what he attempted to believe was his wild infatuation; and thought that he had sufficiently schooled his mind, so as to meet her without the slightest perturbation. But he had deceived himself; and as he approached the house, and felt a consciousness of her proximity, he experienced that strange agitation over which mortals have no control. He, however, determined to avoid giving any outward indication of his mental[Pg 15] disquietude, so as not to cause any uneasiness to Eleanor from his visit; and for that purpose he stopped his horse in the bush, before he came within sight, and collected himself into a settled calmness. Having performed this little piece of training he proceeded, and was passing the huts on his way to the house, when he was accosted by Mr. Billing; who informed him that Mr. Rainsfield had desired

him to intimate, that if he, Mr. Ferguson, desired to see that gentleman, he would meet him at Mr. Billing's cottage in a few minutes. This request John thought rather singular; but he turned his horse's head to the direction of the cottage, at the door of which he alighted; and, after fastening his horse to the fence, he entered.

"You will no doubt think it exceedingly rude in me, Mr. Ferguson," exclaimed the little man, "to intercept you in your road to the house. Though you perceive me, sir, in a menial capacity, I am perfectly conversant with, as I am also possessed of the feelings of a gentleman;[Pg 16] therefore I feel a repugnance, sir, in wounding those feelings in another. You are doubtless aware, sir, we have had another marauding visitation from those insolent savages; and Mr. Rainsfield is not only greatly enraged at them, but has become, sir, extremely irascible and truculent towards myself; and has conceived a notion that you are in some way influencing and encouraging them in their depredations. The pertinacity with which they annoy him, sir, is certainly marvellous; and he is confirmed in the belief that it is in a great measure owing to your instigations; therefore he gave instructions that, in the event of your calling, I should request you to step under my humble roof, while I sent him notice of your presence. This, sir, I have done, so you may expect to

see him in a few minutes. I merely mention these circumstances, sir, not in disparagement of my employer; but to account to you for my rudeness, and exonerate myself from the imputation of any voluntary violation of[Pg 17] good breeding."

"Pray, don't mention it, Mr. Billing," replied John; "I don't imagine for a moment that you would intentionally commit any breach of decorum, even if the interruption of my passage could be termed such; but I must confess, I can't understand why Mr. Rainsfield should wish to prevent me from calling upon him in his own house." Though John said this, his heart whispered a motive for such interruption.

"I am flattered, sir, by your good opinion," said Mr. Billing, "and I thank you. I believe, sir, you're a native of the colony, and have not visited Europe; but you are a man of the world, sir, I can perceive, and will readily understand the anomalies of my position. I, who have been bred, sir, in the mercantile community of the cosmopolitan metropolis, being subjected to the petty tyrannies of a man, whom I consider mentally my inferior. I am disgusted, sir, with the incongruities of my situation, and harassed by the thought of[Pg 18] my trials being shared by Mrs. Billing (who, I assure you, sir, is an ornament to her sex); and the total absence, sir, of all those comforts, which a man who has been in the position I have been in, sir, and who has come to my years, naturally expects, tends to make this occupation distasteful to me."

John, we are ashamed to say (at the moment forgetful of his own) felt amused at the sorrows of the little man; though he smilingly assured him that he thought a man of his evident abilities was thrown away in the bush, and that he believed it would be considerably more to his advantage, if he forsook so inhospitable a pursuit, as that in which he was engaged, for something more congenial to his nature and compatible with his education.

"My dear sir," replied the enthusiastic storekeeper, "I again thank you. I perceive, sir, by your judicious remarks, you are a gentleman of no ordinary discernment. The same idea has often struck me, sir; in fact, I may say the 'wish is father to the thought;' but,[Pg 19] unfortunately, 'thereby hangs a tale.' If you have no objection to listen to me, sir, for a few minutes, I will explain the peculiarities of my position."

John having expressed himself desirous of hearing the explanation, Mr. Billing proceeded. "You must know, sir, that after finishing a sound general education at one of the public schools of London (you will forgive me, sir, for commencing at the normal period of my career), my father, who was a medical man of good practice but large family, sent me, sir, to the desk. I, in fact, entered the counting-house of my relatives, Messrs. Billing, Barlow, & Co., of Upper Thames Street, in the city of London, a firm extensively engaged in the comb and brush line, and enjoying a wide celebrity, sir, in the city and provinces. I continued at my post, sir, for years, until I obtained the situation of provincial traveller, which place I continued to fill for a lengthy period. I need hardly say, sir, that in my peregrinations my name[Pg 20] was sufficient to command respect from our friends and constituents, who naturally imagined that I must have been a partner in the firm I represented; consequently, sir, my vicissitudes were almost imaginary, and my

comfort superior to the generality of commercial travellers. I did not, of course, sir, enlighten the minds of our constituents on their error, the effects of which I every day enjoyed; more especially as the firm, from my long services, had solemnly pledged themselves to receive me into their corporate body as a partner. The mutations of even our nearest relatives, sir, are not to be depended upon; for I found in my experience, that the word of a principal is not always a guarantee. Upon urging the recognition of my claims, I found a spirit of equivocation to exist in my friends; and such conduct not agreeing, sir, with my views of integrity, I uttered some severe strictures on their scandalous behaviour, and withdrew, sir, from the connexion.