This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger
Adieu, thou beautiful land, Canaan of the exiles, and Ararat to many ashattered ark! Fair cradle of a race for whom the unbounded heritage ofa future that no sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar in thegolden promise—light of Time!—destined, perchance, from the sins andsorrows of a civilization struggling with its own elements of decay, torenew the youth of the world, and transmit the great soul of Englandthrough the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that can best ripenthe products of earth or form into various character and temper thedifferent families of man is "rain influences" from the heaven thatsmiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged, from the wind,or scowled on the thankless sun. Here, the hard air of the chill MotherIsle,—there, the mild warmth of Italian autumns or the breathless glowof the tropics. And with the beams of every climate, glides subtle Hope.Of her there, it may be said, as of Light itself, in those exquisitelines of a neglected poet,—
"Through the soft ways of heaven and air and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide.
All the world's bravery that delights our eyes
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestowest;
Thy nimble pencil paints the landscape as thou goest." (1)
Adieu, my kind nurse and sweet foster-mother,—a long and a last adieu!Never had I left thee but for that louder voice of Nature which calls thechild to the parent, and wooes us from the labors we love the best by thechime in the sabbath-bells of Home.
No one can tell how dear the memory of that wild Bush life becomes to himwho has tried it with a fitting spirit. How often it haunts him in thecommonplace of more civilized scenes! Its dangers, its risks, its senseof animal health, its bursts of adventure, its intervals of carelessrepose,—the fierce gallop through a very sea of wide, rolling plains;the still saunter, at night, through woods never changing their leaves,with the moon, clear as sunshine, stealing slant through their clustersof flowers. With what an effort we reconcile ourselves to the tritecares and vexed pleasures, "the quotidian ague of frigid impertinences,"to which we return! How strong and black stands my pencil-mark in thispassage of the poet from whom I have just quoted before!—
"We are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature,—we are thereamong the pitiful shifts of policy; we walk here in the light and openways of the Divine Bounty,—we grope there in the dark and confusedlabyrinth of human malice." (2)
But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes,—now a line, now aspeck; let us turn away, with the face to the Old. Amongst my fellow-passengers how many there are returning home disgusted, disappointed,impoverished, ruined, throwing themselves again on those unsuspectingpoor friends who thought they had done with the luckless good-for-noughtsforever. For don't let me deceive thee, reader, into supposing thatevery adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed,though the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from Londonand the great trading towns (who has generally more of the quick knack oflearning,—the adaptable faculty,—required in a new colony, than thesimple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class towhich I belong is one in which failures are numerous and success thee