The Bushman | Page 4

they are such
"good-hearted creatures!" And so they go easily and rapidly down that
sloping path which leads to ruin and despair. What is their end? Many
of them literally kill themselves by drinking; and those who get through
the seasoning, which is the fatal period, are either compelled to become
labourers in the fields for any one who will provide them with food; or
else succeed in exciting the compassion of their friends at home, by
their dismal accounts of the impossibility of earning a livelihood in a
ruined and worthless colony; and having thus obtained money enough
to enable them to return to England, they hasten to throw themselves
and their sorrows into the arms of their sympathizing relatives.
Nothing can be more absurd than to imagine that a fortune may be
made in a colony by those who have neither in them nor about them
any of the elements or qualities by which fortunes are gained at home.
There are, unfortunately, few sources of wealth peculiar to a colony.
The only advantage which the emigrant may reasonably calculate upon
enjoying, is the diminution of competition. In England the crowd is so
dense that men smother one another.
It is only by opening up the same channels of wealth under more
favourable circumstances, that the emigrant has any right to calculate
upon success. Without a profession, without any legitimate calling in
which his early years have been properly instructed; without any
knowledge or any habits of business, a man has no better prospect of
making a fortune in a colony than at home. None, however, so
circumstanced, entertains this belief; on the contrary, he enters upon his
new career without any misgivings, and with the courage and
enthusiasm of a newly enlisted recruit.
Alas! the disappointment which so soon and so inevitably succeeds,
brings a crowd of vices and miseries in its train.

CHAPTER 2.

ST. JAGO.
The reader may naturally expect to be informed of the reasons that have
induced me thus to seek his acquaintance. In one word -- I am a
colonist. In England, a great deal is said every day about colonies and
colonists, but very little is known about them. A great deal is projected;
but whatever is done, is unfortunately to their prejudice. Secretaries of
State know much more about the distant settlements of Great Britain
than the inhabitants themselves; and, consequently, the latter are
seldom able to appreciate the ordinances which (for their own good)
they are compelled to submit to.
My own experience is chiefly confined to one of the most insignificant
of our colonies, -- insignificant in point of population, but extremely
important as to its geographical position, and its prospects of future
greatness, -- but the same principle of government applies to all the
British settlements.
A few years ago, I was the victim of medical skill; and being sentenced
to death in my own country by three eminent physicians, was
comparatively happy in having that sentence commuted to banishment.
A wealthy man would have gone to Naples, to Malta, or to Madeira;
but a poor one has no resource save in a colony, unless he will
condescend to live upon others, rather than support himself by his own
exertions.
The climate of Western Australia was recommended; and I may be
grateful for the alternative allowed me.
As I shall have occasion hereafter to allude to them incidentally, I may
mention that my two brothers accompanied me on this distant voyage.
The elder, a disciple of Aesculapius, was not only anxious to gratify his
fraternal solicitude and his professional tastes by watching my case, but
was desirous of realizing the pleasures of rural life in Australia.
My younger brother (whose pursuits entitle him to be called Meliboeus)
was a youth not eighteen, originally designed for the Church, and

intended to cut a figure at Oxford; but modestly conceiving that the
figure he was likely to cut would not tend to the advancement of his
worldly interests, and moreover, having no admiration for Virgil
beyond the Bucolics, he fitted himself out with a Lowland plaid and a
set of Pandaean pipes, and solemnly dedicated himself to the duties of a
shepherd.
Thus it was that we were all embarked in the same boat; or rather, we
found ourselves in the month of April, 1841, on board of a certain
ill-appointed barque bound for Western Australia.
We had with us a couple of servants, four rams with curling horns -- a
purchase from the late Lord Western; a noble blood-hound, the gift of a
noble Lord famous for the breed; a real old English mastiff-bitch, from
the stock at Lyme Park; and a handsome spaniel cocker. Besides this
collection of quadrupeds, we had a vast assortment of useless lumber,
which had