—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Raolph Boldrewood, Gordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and one which must endure. Materials—there is no end to them! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal1 all by himself, his character and ways are so freckled2 with varieties—varieties not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic3. In his history, as preserved by the white man’s official records, he is everything—everything that a human creature can be. He covers the entire ground. He is a coward—there are a thousand fact to prove it. He is brave—there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous—oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true—the white man’s records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors4, and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on him only yesterday—there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a long life—it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm—it is of record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white man’s food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish5. He is a sociable6 animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul, but dread7 of physical pain is a weakness which he is not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little constellations8, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive9 by delicate traces which the white man’s eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model—if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians11 for seventy years; and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within certain limits this savage12’s intellect is the alertest and the brightest known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel13 that he could boil water in. He is the prize-curiosity of all the races. To all intents and purposes he is dead—in the body; but he has features that will live in literature.
Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals14 which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment15 of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness16 and accuracy of limb and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers17, and successfully dodge18 them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; “Yet he depended, with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his agility19.”
The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is about as long as a man’s arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but slopes away from the centerline like a boat’s bow. The difficulty about a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific “twist” is, that it suddenly changes its course when it is close to its target and comes straight for the mark when apparently20 it was going overhead or to one side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for half-an-hour, or less.
Mr. Chauncy once saw “a little native man” throw a cricket-ball 119 yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen yards.
We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board and make a somersault over eight horses standing21 side by side. Mr. Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had sometimes done it over fourteen. But what is that to this:
“I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an inverted22 position on the top of the head of another man sitting upright on horseback—both man and horse being of the average size. The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly on his head. The prodigious23 height of the leap, and the precision with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the hat, exceeded any feat10 of the kind I have ever beheld24.”
I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford25 athlete run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips26 by a side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know this, because I tried it myself.
One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.
Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore—dug them in the sand—wells that were “quite circular, carried straight down, and the work beautifully executed.”
Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from such a depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be.
Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the kangaroo, and other game:
“As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic27, and noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent28 by the tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal or warn him of danger. A little examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending30 and descending31 is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the night before without coming down again or not.”
Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these people. He wouldn’t have traded the dullest of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented.
All savages32 draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian aboriginal’s pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder33 of the pencil it is not likely that he has his equal among savage people.
His place in art—as to drawing, not color-work—is well up, all things considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of civilized34 art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His “corrobboree” of the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier’s Belgravian ballrooms35, with clothes and the smirk36 of civilization added; Botticelli’s “Spring” is the “corrobboree” further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. And well enough as to intention, but—my word!
All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. They were recorded by the Rev38. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had been a surgeon before he became a clergyman:
1. “In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King George’s Sound, to visit at Cape29 Riche, accompanied by a native on foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately39 place his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn guttural sound of mingled40 pain and satisfaction. This operation he repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange conduct, he only said, ‘Me carpenter-make ’em’ (‘I am mending my foot’), and then showed me his charred41 great toe, the nail of which had been torn off by a tea-tree stump42, in which it had been caught during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of cauterizing43 the wound in the primitive44 manner above described.”
And he proceeded on the journey the next day, “as if nothing had happened”—and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a surgeon and then do his own surgery.
2. “A native about twenty-five years of age once applied45 to me, as a doctor, to extract the wooden barb46 of a spear, which, during a fight in the bush some four months previously47, had entered his chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated48 the viscera to a considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I could feel a hard substance between the ribs49 below the left blade-bone. I made a deep incision50, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly digested, so to speak, by the maceration51 to which it had been exposed during its four months’ journey through the body. The wound made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without flinching52, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not materially annoy him. He was perfectly53 well in a few days.”
But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that the patient enjoyed—whatever it was:
3. “Once at King George’s Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed54 just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about two inches of the partially55 calcined bone protruded56 through the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw; and having made as presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the native told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous operation, which it appears is not uncommon57 among these people in their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth only sufficiently58 large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground. He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal59, which was replenished60 until the leg was literally61 burnt off. The cauterization62 thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid of a long stout63 stick, although he was more than a week on the road.”
But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made for him by the doctor, because “it had no feeling in it.” It must have had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think.
So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. They are marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century, now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in every way. If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have seen some of those people—but I didn’t. I would walk thirty miles to see a stuffed one.
Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the strange native animals, brute64 and human, are matters which would naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases. They are expressive65 ones. The wide, sterile66, unpeopled deserts have created eloquent67 phrases like “No Man’s Land” and the “Never-never Country.” Also this felicitous68 form: “She lives in the Never-never Country”—that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without merit: “heifer-paddock”—young ladies’ seminary. “Bail up” and “stick up” equivalent of our highwayman-term to “hold up” a stage-coach or a train. “New-chum” is the equivalent of our “tenderfoot”—new arrival.
And then there is the immortal69 “My word!” We must import it. “M-y word!” In cold print it is the equivalent of our “Ger-rreat Caesar!” but spoken with the proper Australian unction and fervency70, it is worth six of it for grace and charm and expressiveness71. Our form is rude and explosive; it is not suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but “M-y word!” is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the dead corpse72 of the thing, the soul was not there—the tones were lacking—the informing spirit—the deep feeling—the eloquence73. But the first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively74 thrilling.
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aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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succors
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| n.救助，帮助（尤指需要时）( succor的名词复数 )v.给予帮助( succor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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constellations
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| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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mathematicians
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| 数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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aboriginals
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| （某国的）公民( aboriginal的名词复数 )； 土著人特征； 土生动物（或植物） | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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suppleness
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| 柔软； 灵活； 易弯曲； 顺从 | |
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bowlers
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| n.（板球）投球手( bowler的名词复数 )；圆顶高帽 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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agility
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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wielder
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| 行使者 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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ballrooms
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| n.舞厅( ballroom的名词复数 ) | |
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smirk
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| n.得意地笑；v.傻笑；假笑着说 | |
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friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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cauterizing
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| v.（用腐蚀性物质或烙铁）烧灼以消毒( cauterize的现在分词 ) | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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barb
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| n.（鱼钩等的）倒钩，倒刺 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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incision
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| n．切口，切开 | |
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maceration
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| n.泡软，因绝食而衰弱 | |
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flinching
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的现在分词 ) | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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replenished
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| 补充( replenish的过去式和过去分词 )； 重新装满 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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cauterization
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| n.烧灼，腐蚀 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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felicitous
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| adj.恰当的，巧妙的；n.恰当，贴切 | |
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69
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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70
fervency
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| n.热情的；强烈的；热烈 | |
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71
expressiveness
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| n.富有表现力 | |
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72
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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73
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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74
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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