“Grand country, New Zealand, eh?” said a stout6 man with a brown face, grey beard, and grey eyes, who sat between the driver and another passenger on the box.
“You don't call this grand country!” exclaimed the other passenger, who claimed to be, and looked like, a commercial traveller, and might have been a professional spieler—quite possibly both. “Why, it's about the poorest country in New Zealand! You ought to see some of the country in the North Island—Wairarapa and Napier districts, round about Pahiatua. I call this damn poor country.”
“Well, I reckon you wouldn't, if you'd ever been in Australia—back in New South Wales. The people here don't seem to know what a grand country they've got. You say this is the worst, eh? Well, this would make an Australian cockatoo's mouth water-the worst of New Zealand would.”
“I always thought Australia was all good country,” mused7 the driver—a flax-stick. “I always thought—”
“Good country!” exclaimed the man with the grey beard, in a tone of disgust. “Why, it's only a mongrel desert, except some bits round the coast. The worst dried-up and God-forsaken country I was ever in.”
There was a silence, thoughtful on the driver's part, and aggressive on that of the stranger.
“I always thought,” said the driver, reflectively, after the pause—“I always thought Australia was a good country,” and he placed his foot on the brake.
They let him think. The coach descended8 the natural terraces above the river bank, and pulled up at the pub.
“So you're a native of Australia?” said the bagman to the grey-beard, as the coach went on again.
“Well, I suppose I am. Anyway, I was born there. That's the main thing I've got against the darned country.”
“How long did you stay there?”
“Till I got away,” said the stranger. Then, after a think, he added, “I went away first when I was thirty-five—went to the islands. I swore I'd never go back to Australia again; but I did. I thought I had a kind of affection for old Sydney. I knocked about the blasted country for five or six years, and then I cleared out to 'Frisco. I swore I'd never go back again, and I never will.”
“But surely you'll take a run over and have a look at old Sydney and those places, before you go back to America, after getting so near?”
“What the blazes do I want to have a look at the blamed country for?” snapped the stranger, who had refreshed considerably9. “I've got nothing to thank Australia for—except getting out of it. It's the best country to get out of that I was ever in.”
“Oh, well, I only thought you might have had some friends over there,” interposed the traveller in an injured tone.
“Friends! That's another reason. I wouldn't go back there for all the friends and relations since Adam. I had more than quite enough of it while I was there. The worst and hardest years of my life were spent in Australia. I might have starved there, and did do it half my time. I worked harder and got less in my own country in five years than I ever did in any other in fifteen”—he was getting mixed—“and I've been in a few since then. No, Australia is the worst country that ever the Lord had the sense to forget. I mean to stick to the country that stuck to me, when I was starved out of my own dear native land—and that country is the United States of America. What's Australia? A big, thirsty, hungry wilderness10, with one or two cities for the convenience of foreign speculators, and a few collections of humpies, called towns—also for the convenience of foreign speculators; and populated mostly by mongrel sheep, and partly by fools, who live like European slaves in the towns, and like dingoes in the bush—who drivel about 'democracy,' and yet haven't any more spunk11 than to graft12 for a few Cockney dudes that razzle-dazzle most of the time in Paris. Why, the Australians haven't even got the grit13 to claim enough of their own money to throw a few dams across their watercourses, and so make some of the interior fit to live in. America's bad enough, but it was never so small as that.... Bah! The curse of Australia is sheep, and the Australian war cry is Baa!”
“Well, you're the first man I ever heard talk as you've been doing about his own country,” said the bagman, getting tired and impatient of being sat on all the time. “'Lives there a man with a soul so dead, who never said—to—to himself'... I forget the darned thing.”
He tried to remember it. The man whose soul was dead cleared his throat for action, and the driver—for whom the bagman had shouted twice as against the stranger's once—took the opportunity to observe that he always thought a man ought to stick up for his own country.
The stranger ignored him and opened fire on the bagman. He proceeded to prove that that was all rot—that patriotism14 was the greatest curse on earth; that it had been the cause of all war; that it was the false, ignorant sentiment which moved men to slave, starve, and fight for the comfort of their sluggish15 masters; that it was the enemy of universal brotherhood16, the mother of hatred17, murder, and slavery, and that the world would never be any better until the deadly poison, called the sentiment of patriotism, had been “educated” out of the stomachs of the people. “Patriotism!” he exclaimed scornfully. “My country! The darned fools; the country never belonged to them, but to the speculators, the absentees, land-boomers, swindlers, gangs of thieves—the men the patriotic18 fools starve and fight for—their masters. Ba-a!”
The coach had climbed the terraces on the south side of the river, and was bowling21 along on a level stretch of road across the elevated flat.
“What trees are those?” asked the stranger, breaking the aggressive silence which followed his unpatriotic argument, and pointing to a grove2 ahead by the roadside. “They look as if they've been planted there. There ain't been a forest here surely?”
“Oh, they're some trees the Government imported,” said the bagman, whose knowledge on the subject was limited. “Our own bush won't grow in this soil.”
“But it looks as if anything else would—”
They didn't look like Australian gums; they tapered24 to the tops, the branches were pretty regular, and the boughs25 hung in shipshape fashion. There was not the Australian heat to twist the branches and turn the leaves.
“Why!” exclaimed the stranger, still staring and sniffing26 hard. “Why, dang me if they ain't (sniff) Australian gums!”
“Blanky (sniff) blanky old Australian gums!” exclaimed the ex-Australian, with strange enthusiasm.
“They're not old,” said the driver; “they're only young trees. But they say they don't grow like that in Australia—'count of the difference in the climate. I always thought—”
But the other did not appear to hear him; he kept staring hard at the trees they were passing. They had been planted in rows and cross-rows, and were coming on grandly.
There was a rabbit trapper's camp amongst those trees; he had made a fire to boil his billy with gum-leaves and twigs28, and it was the scent29 of that fire which interested the exile's nose, and brought a wave of memories with it.
“Good day, mate!” he shouted suddenly to the rabbit trapper, and to the astonishment30 of his fellow passengers.
“Good day, mate!” The answer came back like an echo—it seemed to him—from the past.
Presently he caught sight of a few trees which had evidently been planted before the others—as an experiment, perhaps—and, somehow, one of them had grown after its own erratic31 native fashion—gnarled and twisted and ragged32, and could not be mistaken for anything else but an Australian gum.
“A thunderin' old blue-gum!” ejaculated the traveller, regarding the tree with great interest.
He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silently smoking and gazing straight ahead, as if the past lay before him—and it was before him.
“Ah, well!” he said, in explanation of a long meditative33 silence on his part; “ah, well—them saplings—the smell of them gum-leaves set me thinking.” And he thought some more.
“Well, for my part,” said a tourist in the coach, presently, in a condescending34 tone, “I can't see much in Australia. The bally colonies are—”
“Oh, that be damned!” snarled35 the Australian-born—they had finished the second flask36 of whisky. “What do you Britishers know about Australia? She's as good as England, anyway.”
“Well, I suppose you'll go straight back to the States as soon as you've done your business in Christchurch,” said the bagman, when near their journey's end they had become confidential37.
“Well, I dunno. I reckon I'll just take a run over to Australia first. There's an old mate of mine in business in Sydney, and I'd like to have a yarn38 with him.”
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1
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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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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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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spunk
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| n.勇气，胆量 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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bowling
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| n.保龄球运动 | |
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sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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tapered
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| adj. 锥形的，尖削的，楔形的，渐缩的，斜的 动词taper的过去式和过去分词 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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27
flicking
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的现在分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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yarn
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| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
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