“To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage to New Caledonia.  With a view to attracting free settlers to that penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council General of the island.  Such immigrants as could be induced to cross the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea.”

You observe the combination?  It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man’s whisky.  The savage’s gentle friend, the savage’s noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift release of his poisoned pudding.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.—­[See Chapter on Tasmania, post.]

CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing is so ignorant as a man’s left hand, except a lady’s watch.

—­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, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, 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 aboriginal all by himself, his character and ways are so freckled 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 authentic.  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 succors, 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