This is Chapter XXVIII of Following the Equator. When the moment comes the man appears. Why Ed Jackson called on Commodore Vanderbilt. Their interview. Welcome to the child of his friend. A big time but under inspection. Sent on important business. A visit to the boys on the boat. Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. The aphorism does really seem true. Given the circumstances the man will appear. But the man mustn't appear ahead of time or it will spoil everything. In Robinson's case the moment had been approaching for a quarter of a century and in the meantime the future conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed the moment had arrived and the bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward. Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago. He thought it had been in print but could not remember. At any rate in substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind. A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that Memphis, Tennessee was going to be a great tobacco-entropo, the wise could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a wharf-boat, of course. There was a paved sloping wharf for the accommodation of freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharf-boat and all loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore. A number of wharf-boat clerks were needed and part of the time, every day, they were very busy and part of the time, tediously idle. They were boiling over with youth and spirits and they had to make the intervals of idleness endureable in some way and as a rule they did it by contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other. The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none himself and was easy game for other peoples, for he always believed whatever was told him. One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going fishing or hunting this time, no, he had thought out a better plan. Out of his forty dollars a month he had saved enough for his purpose in an economical way and he was going to have a look at New York. It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel, immense travel, in those days it meant seeing the world. It was the equivalent of a voyage around it in hours. At first the other youth thought his mind was affected, but when they found that he was in earnest the next thing to be thought of was what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for a practical joke. The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation and made a plan. The idea was that one of the conspirators should offer Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt and trick him into delivering it. It would be easy to do this, but what would Ed do when he got back to Memphis? That was a serious matter. He was good-hearted and had always taken the jokes patiently, but they had been jokes which did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame, whereas this would be a cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire. For with all his good nature Ed was a southerner, and the English of that was that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he could before falling himself. However, the chances must be taken it wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that. So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was signed, Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit. It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and was of good parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake. It went on to say, You may have forgotten me in this long stretch of time, but you will easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night, and how, while he was chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back, and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hatful of donuts, and the time that we—and so forth and so on, bringing in names of imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd, and of course wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting them into lively and telling shape. With all gravity, Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the question would astonish Ed, and it did. What? Do you know that extraordinary man? No, but my father does. They were schoolboys together, and if you like, I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you for my sake. Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. The three days passed, and the letter was put into his hands. He started on his trip, still pouring out his thanks, while he shook goodbye all around. And when he was out of sight, his comrades let fly their laughter in a storm of happy satisfaction, and then quieted down, and were less happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this deception began to intrude again. Moved in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business quarters, and was ushered into a large anti-room, where a score of people were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and got the letter instead. Ed was sent for a moment later, and found Mr. Vanderbilt alone, with the letter open in his hand.  By the opening sentences it seems to be a letter from an old friend. Allow me, I will run my eye through it.' He says he says, why, who is it?' He turned the sheet and found the signature. "'Alfred Fairchild, fairchild, I don't recall the name. But that is nothing, a thousand names have gone from me.' He says, ah, dear, but it's good, oh, it's rare. I don't quite remember it, but I seem to, it'll all come back to me presently.  How it carries me back! It's all dim, of course, it's a long time ago, and the names, some of the names, are wavery and indistinct, but, sure, I know it happened. I can feel it. And, Lord, how it warms my heart and brings back my lost youths! Well, well, well! I've got to come back into this work-a-day world now. Business presses, and people are waiting. I'll keep the rest for a bed to-night, and live my youth over again. And you'll thank Fairchild for me when you see him, I used to call him Alf, I think, and you'll give him my gratitude for what this letter has done for the tired spirit of a hard-worked man, and tell him there isn't anything that I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you, my lad, you are my guest. You can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit, or where you are a little while, till I get through with these people, then we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boy, make yourself as easy as to that." Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time, and never suspected that the Commodore shrewd I was on him, and that he was daily being weighed, and measured, and analyzed, and tried, and tested. Yes, he had an immense time, and never wrote home, but saved it all up to tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, No! Wait! Leave it to me! I'll tell you when to go. In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of his, consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in effective centers, and among other things his far-seeing eye had detected the convergence of that huge tobacco commerce already spoken of, toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it, and make it his own. The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said, Now you can start home, but first we will have some more talk about that tobacco matter. I know you now, I know your abilities as well as you know them yourself, perhaps better. You understand that tobacco matter, you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you also understand the plans which I have matured for doing it. What I want is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in Memphis, and be in supreme command of that important business, and I appoint you. Me?  Later you will earn increases of it, and will get them. You will need a small army of assistants. Choose them yourself, and carefully. Take no man for friendship's sake, but all things being equal, take the man you know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger. After some further talk under this head the Commodore said, Good-bye, my boy, and thank-out for me for sending you to me. When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell his great news, and thanked the boys over and over again for thinking to give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those idle times, blazing hot noon-day, and no sign of life on the wharf. But as Ed threaded his way among the freight-piles he saw a white linen figure stretched and slumber upon a pile of grain sacks under an awning, and said to himself, That's one of them! And hastened his step. Next he said, It's Charlie! It's Fairchild! Good! And the next moment laid an affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone, and Fairchild was flying for the wharf-boat like the wind. He was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning of this? He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat, turned the corner of a freight-pile, and came suddenly upon two of the boys. They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter. They heard his step and glanced up just as he discovered them. The laugh died abruptly, and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels and bales like hunted deer. When Ed was paralyzed, had the boys all gone mad? What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And so, dreaming along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard, nothing but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent, Oh Lord! and saw a white linen form plunge overboard. The youth came up coughing and strangling and cried out, Go away from here!  I didn't do it! Swear I didn't! Didn't do what? Give you the—never mind what you didn't do, come out of that. What makes you all act so? What have I done? You? Why, you haven't done anything. But—well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so for? I—er—but haven't you got anything against us? Of course not. What puts such a thing into your head? Honor bright! You haven't? Honor bright! Swear it? I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it anyway. And you shake hands with me? Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands with somebody!"  And he crawled out, and came dripping and draining to shake hands. First one, and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously, armed to the teeth, took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily forward and joined the love-feast. And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been acting, they answered evasively and pretended that they had put it up as a joke, to see what he would do. It was the best explanation they could invent at such short notice. And each said to himself, He never delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, and if he only knew it, or we were dull enough to come out and tell, then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip, and he said, Come right up on the boiler-deck and order the drinks it's my treat, I'm going to tell you all about it, and tonight it's my treat again, and we'll have oysters and a time. When the drinks were brought, and cigars lighted, Ed said, Well, when I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt, Great Scott, gracious how you scared me, what's the matter? Oh! nothing! nothing! it was a tack in the chair-seat, said one. But you all said it. However, no matter, when I delivered the letter, did you deliver it? And they looked at each other as people might who thought that maybe they were dreaming. Then they settled to listening, and as the story deepened and its marvels grew, the amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took their breath. They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat like petrifactions, and drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale was ended, and Ed said, And it's all owing to you boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful, bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had.   And, Charlie Fairchild, you shall be my first assistant and right hand, because of your first class ability, and because you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt who said it would. And here's to that great man, drink hearty! Yes, when the moment comes the man appears, even if he is a thousand miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke. XXIX Tasmania, early days. Description of the town of Hobart. An Englishman's love of home surroundings. Neatest city on earth. The museum. A parrot with an acquired taste. Glass-arrow beads. Refuge for the indigent too healthy. When people do not respect us, we are sharply offended. Yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself. Put in head Wilson's new calendar. Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict dump in old times. This has been indicated in the account of the conciliator, where reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win to permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarie Harbour and the Gates of Hell. In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, of both sexes and all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot there was a settlement of juvenile convicts, children, who had been sent thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe to expiate their crimes. In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose head stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The Derwent's shores furnish scenery of an interesting port. The historian Laurie, whose book The Story of Australasia is just out, invoices its features with considerable truth and intemperance. The marvellous picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed the early explorers. If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, defiant and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves, floored with gold and sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wildflower and fern, from the delicately graceful maiden-hair to the palm-like old man, while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth as the mast of some tall amoral, pierces the clear air to the height of two hundred and thirty feet or more. It looked so to me. Coasting along Tasman's peninsula, what a shock of pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar, with its cluster of black-ribbed, basaltic columns rising to a height of nine hundred feet. The hydra-head wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves, spouting angry fountains of foam. That is, well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were nine hundred feet high. Still they were a very fine show. They stood boldly out by themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle. But there was nothing about their appearance to suggest the heads of a hydra. They looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends tapered to the shape of a carving-knife-point. In fact, the early voyager, ignorant of their great height, might have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular. The peninsula is lofty, rocky and densely closed with scrub or brush or both. It is joined to the main by a low neck. At this junction was formerly a convict station called Port Arthur, a place hard to escape from. Behind it was the wilderness of scrub in which a fugitive would soon starve. In front was the narrow neck with a cordon of chained dogs across it and a line of lanterns and a fence of living guards armed. We saw the place as we swept by, that is, we had a glimpse of what we were told was the entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth something as a rememberance, sir. But that was all. The voyage thence up the derwent frith displays a grand succession of fairy visions in its entire length elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over the deep blue sea studded with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's edge, one is at a loss which seemed to choose for contemplation and to admire most. When the Huon and Bruni have been passed, there seems no possible chance of arrival, but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive and noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded on either hand by Mounts Nelson and Rumney. Presently we arrive at Sullivan's Cove, Hobart. It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbour, a harbour that looks like a river and is as smooth as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage. Back at the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole region for form and grouping and opulence and freshness of foliage and variety of colour and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the promontories, and then the splendour of the sunlight, the dim rich distances, the charm of the water-glimpses. And it was in this paradise that the yellow liveried convicts were landed and the core bandits quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black innocents consummated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time.  The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we struck the head of the procession of junior Englands. We were to encounter other sections of it in New Zealand presently, and others later in Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman confined in his new home resemblances to his old one, he is touched to the marrow of his being. The love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these Allied forces transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling which works this enchantment, and it compels one's homage, compels it, and also compels one's assent, compels it always, even when, as happens sometimes, one does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is pointing them out. The resemblances do exist, it is quite true, and often they cunningly approximate the originals, but, after all, in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have sampled the globe I am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the earth. There is a beauty of the fjord, and it is repeated in New Zealand and Alaska. There is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten thousand islands of the southern seas. There is a beauty of the prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth. Each of these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of its beauty, but that beauty which is England is alone. It has no duplicate. It is made up of very simple details, just grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin, and over it all a mellow dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable and all its own. Hobart has a peculiarity. It is the neatest town that the sun shines on, and I inclined to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may be, its supremacy and neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors, no rickety gates and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and unsightly sheds, no weed-grown front yards of the poor, no backyards littered with tin cans and old boots, and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no clutter on the sidewalks, no outer borders fraying out into dirty lanes and tin-patched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a comfort to the eye. The modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its comely cat asleep on the window-edge. We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who is curator of it, it has samples of half a dozen different kinds of marsupials. A marsupial is a plant-a-grade vertebrate, whose specialty is its pocket. In some countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. The first American marsupials were Stephen Gerard, Mr. Aster, and the Apostle. The principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. Rhodes and the Kangaroo. I myself am the latest marsupial. Also I might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all, but there is nothing in that. One, the Tasmanian devil, that is, I think he was one of them, and there was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills sheep. On one great sheep run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a whole year. He doesn't want the whole sheep, but only the kidney fat. This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird to support. To get the fat he drives his beak in and rips it out. The wound is mortal. This parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about by changed conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced it presently brought famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub, which had always thithered to been the parrot's diet. The miseries of hunger made the bird willing to eat raw flesh, since it could get no other food, and it began to pick remnants of meat from sheepskins hung out on the fences to dry. It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any other food, and by and by it came to prefer the kidney fat to any other detail of the sheep. The parrot's bill was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but nature fixed that matter. She altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can dig out kidney fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or anybody else for that matter, even an admiral. And there was another curiosity, quite a stunning one, I thought. Arrowheads and knives, just like those which primeval man made out of flint, and thought he had done such a wonderful thing, yes, and has been humored and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring scientists until there is probably no living with him in the other world by now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our day, and by people who have never heard of him or his works, by aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas within our time, and they not only duplicated those works of art, but did it in the brittlest and most treacherous of substances, glass, made them out of old brandy bottles flung out of the British camps, millions of tons of them. It is time for primeval man to make a little less noise now. He has had his day. He is not what he used to be. We had a drive through a blue-mea and odorous fairy-land to the refuge for the indigent, a spacious and comfortable home with hospitals et cetera for both sexes. There was a crowd there of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being suddenly set down in a new world, a weird world where youth has never been, a world sacred to age, and bowed forms and wrinkles. Out of the three hundred and fifty-nine persons present, two hundred and twenty-three were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring tales, no doubt, if they had been minded to talk. Forty-two of the three hundred and fifty-nine were past eighty, and several were close upon ninety. The average age at death there is seventy-six years. As for me, I have no use for that place. It is too healthy. Seventy is old enough. After that there is too much risk. Youth and gaiety might vanish any day, and then what is left? Death in life. Death without its privileges. Death without its benefits. There were one hundred and eighty-five women in that refuge, and eighty-one of them were ex-convicts. The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, as usual, she made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and then moved on. End of Chapter 29 This is Chapter 30 of following the equator. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Following the equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 30. A rival at Bluff, New Zealand. Where the rabbit plague began. The natural enemy of the rabbit. Dunedin. A lovely town. Visit to Dr. Hoken. His museum. A liquefied caterpillar. The unperfected tapeworm. The public museum and picture gallery. Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops. Man would have made him with an appetite for sand. Puddin had Wilson's new calendar. We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff in New Zealand early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the Middle Island, and is away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it, and the climates of the two should be alike. But for some reason or other it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but Bluff's climate is less intense. The cold weather is not very cold. The hot weather is not very hot, and the difference between the hottest month and the coldest is but seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The man who introduced the rabbit there was banqueted and lauded, but they would hang him now if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted. In the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honoured, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher. In Bluff its natural enemy is the stout, the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the air, who is caught with a rabbit in his possession, must satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment together with extinction of his peerage. In Bluff the cat found with a rabbit in its possession does not have to explain. Everybody looks the other way. The person caught noticing would suffer fine and imprisonment with extinction of peerage. This is a sure way to undermine the moral fabric of a cat. Thirty years from now there will not be a moral cat in New Zealand. Some think there is none there now. In England the poacher is watched, tracked, hunted. He dare not show his face. In Bluff the cat, the weasel, the stout, and the mongoose, go up and down, whether they will, unmolested. By a law of the legislature posted where all may read, it is decreed that any person found in possession of one of these creatures, dead, must satisfactorily explain the circumstances or pay a fine of not less than five pounds, nor more than twenty pounds. The revenue from this source is not large. Persons who want to pay a hundred dollars for a dead cat are getting rarer and rarer every day. This is bad, for the revenue was to go to the endowment of a university. All governments are more or less short-sighted. In England they find the poacher, whereas he ought to be banished to New Zealand. New Zealand would pay his way and give him wages. It was from Bluff that we ought to have cut across to the west coast and visited the New Zealand Switzerland, a land of superb scenery, made up of snowy grandeurs and mighty glaciers and beautiful lakes. And over there also are the wonderful rivals of the Norwegian and Alaskan Fjords, and for neighbour a waterfall of one thousand nine hundred feet. But we were obliged to postpone the trip to some later and indefinite time. November 6. A lovely summer morning, brilliant blue sky. A few miles out from Invercargill Passed through vast level green expanses snowed over with sheep, fine to see. The green, deep, and very vivid sometimes. At other times less so, but delicate and lovely. A passenger reminds me that I am in the England of the far south. Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davids praises. The people are scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to heaven, thinking they had arrived. The population is stated at forty thousand by Malcolm Ross, journalist, stated by an MP at sixty thousand. A journalist cannot lie. To the residents of Dr. Hawken he has a fine collection of books relating to New Zealand, and his house is a museum of Maori art and antiquities. He has pictures and prints in colour of many native chiefs of the past, some of them of note in history. There is nothing of the savage in the faces. Nothing could be finer than these men's features. Nothing more intellectual than these faces. Nothing more masculine. Nothing nobler than their aspect. The aboriginals of Australia and Tasmania looked the savage, but these chiefs looked like Roman patricians. The tattooing in these portraits ought to suggest the savage, of course, but it does not. The designs are so flowing and graceful and beautiful that they are a most satisfactory decoration. It takes but fifteen minutes to get reconciled to the tattooing, and but fifteen more to perceive that it is just the thing. After that, the undecorated European face is unpleasant and ignoble. Dr. Hawken gave us a ghastly curiosity, a lignified caterpillar with a plant growing out of the back of its neck, a plant with a slender stem four inches high. It happened not by accident, but by design, nature's design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon him by nature, a law purposely inflicted upon him to get him into trouble, a law which was a trap. In pursuance of this law he made the proper preparations for turning himself into a night moth. That is to say, he dug a little trench, a little grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himself. Then nature was ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the back of the caterpillar's neck and began to sprout and grow, for there was soil all there. He had not washed his neck. The roots forced themselves down into the worm's person and rearward along through its body, sucking up the creature's juices for sap.  And here he was now, a wooden caterpillar, with every detail of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and perpetuated, and with that stem standing up out of him for his monument, monument commemorative of his own loyalty and of nature's unfair return for it. Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X said, of course, that the caterpillar was not conscious and didn't suffer. She should have known better. No caterpillar can deceive nature. If this one couldn't suffer, nature would have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar. Not that she would have let this one go merely because it was defective. No. She would have waited and let him turn into a night moth and then fried him in the candle. Nature takes a fish's eyes over with parasites so that it shan't be able to avoid its enemies or find its food. She sends parasites into a starfish's system which clog up its prongs and swell them and make them so uncomfortable that the poor creature delivers itself from the prong to ease its misery, and presently it has to part with another prong for the sake of comfort, and finally with a third. If it regrows the prongs, the parasite returns and the same thing is repeated. And finally when the ability to reproduce prongs is lost through age, that poor old starfish can't get around any more, and so it dies of starvation. In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an unperfected tapeworm. Unperfected, that is, what they call it, I do not know why, for it transacts business just as well as if it were finished and frescoed and gilded and all that. November 9. To the Museum and Public Picture Gallery with the President of the Society of Artists. Some fine pictures there, lent by the S of A, several of them they bought, the others came to them by gift. Next to the gallery of the S of A. Annual exhibition. Just opened. Fine. Think of a town like this having two such collections as this and a society of artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a monarchy one might understand it. I mean an absolute monarchy, where it isn't necessary to vote money, but take it. Then art flourishes. But these colonies are republics, republics with a wide suffrage. Voters of both sexes, this one of New Zealand. In republics neither the government nor the rich private citizen is much given to propagating art. All over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are bought for the public galleries by the state and by societies of citizens. Living citizens, not dead ones, they rob themselves to give, not their heirs. This S of A here owns its building, built it by subscription. Clocks and Bells. Railroad service. The spirit of Wrath, not the words, is the sin, and the spirit of Wrath is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk. Put in head Wilson's new calendar. November 11 on the road. This train express goes twenty and one-half miles an hour, schedule time, but it is fast enough. The outlook upon sea and land is so interesting and the car is so comfortable. They are not English and not American. They are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the side where a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress. This is nineteenth century spirit. In New Zealand these fast expresses run twice a week. It is well to know this, if you want to be a bird, and fly through the country at a twenty-mile gate. Otherwise, you may start on one of the five wrong days, and then you will get a train that can't overtake its own shadow. By contrast these pleasant cars call to mind the Branch Road cars at Maryborough, Australia, and the passengers talk about the Branch Road and the Hotel. Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a while to a smoking carriage. There were two gentlemen there, both riding backward, one at each end of the compartment. They were acquaintances of each other. I sat down facing the one that sat at the starboard window. He had a good face and a friendly look, and I judged from his dress that he was a dissenting minister. He was along toward fifty. Of his own motion he struck a match and shaded it with his hand for me to light my cigar. I take the rest from my diary. In order to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough. He said in a most pleasant, even musical voice, but with quiet and cultured decision.  I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. He went placidly on. It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further and say, in Australasia. Bad beds? No, none at all, just sandbags. The pillows too? Yes, the pillows too, just sand, and not a good quality of sand. It packs too hard, and has never been screamed. There is too much gravel in it. It is like sleeping on nuts. Isn't there any good sand? Plenty of it. There is as good bed sand in this region as the world can furnish. Air-aided sand and loose, but they won't buy it. They want something that will pack solid and petrify. How are the rooms? Eight feet square, and a sheet of iced oil cloth to step on in the morning when you get out of the sand quarry. As to lights? Coal oil lamp. A good one? No.  I like a lamp that burns all night. This one won't. You must blow it out early. That is bad. One might want it again in the night. Can't find it in the dark. There's no trouble. You can find it by the stench. Wardrobe. Two nails on the door to hang seven suits of clothes on if you've got them. Bells. There aren't any. What do you do when you want service? Shout, but it won't fetch anybody. Suppose you want the chamber made to empty the slop jar. There isn't any slop jar. The hotels don't keep them. That is, outside of Sydney and Melbourne. Yes, I knew that. I was only talking. It's the oddest thing in Australia. Another thing I've got to get up in the dark in the morning to take the five o'clock train. Now if the boots, there isn't any. Well, the porter, there isn't any. But who will call me? Nobody. You'll call yourself. And you'll light yourself, too. There'll not be a light burning in the halls or anywhere. And if you don't carry a light, you'll break your neck. But who will help me down with my baggage? Nobody. However, I will tell you what to do. In Maryborough there's an American who has lived there half a lifetime, a fine man and prosperous and popular. He will be on the lookout for you. You won't have any trouble. Sleep in peace.  Where is your manager? I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to go to Melbourne and get us ready for New Zealand. I've not tried to pilot myself before, and it doesn't look easy. Easy. You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in Australia for your experiment. There are twelve miles of this road which no man without good executive ability can ever hope. Tell me, have you good executive ability? First rate executive ability? I—well, I think so. But that settles it. The tone of—oh, you wouldn't ever make it in the world. However, that American will point you right, and you'll go. You've got tickets? Yes, round trip, all the way to Sydney. Ah, there it is, you see. You are going in the five o'clock by Castle Main—twelve miles—instead of the seven point fifteen by Ballarat—in order to save two hours of fooling along the road. Now then, don't interrupt, let me have the floor. You're going to save the government a deal of hauling, but that's nothing. Your ticket is by Ballarat, and it isn't good over that twelve miles, and so—but why should the government care which way I go? Goodness knows. Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed the sea, as the boy that stood on the burning deck used to say. The government chooses to do its railway business in its own way, and it doesn't know as much about it as the French. In the beginning they tried idiots, then they imported the French, which was going backwards, you see. Now it runs the roads itself, which is going backwards again, you see. Why, do you know, in order to curry favour with the voters, the government puts down a road wherever anybody wants it—anybody that owns two sheep and a dog, and by consequence we've got, in the colony of Victoria, eight hundred railway stations, and the business done at eighty of them doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week. Five dollars? Oh, come. It's true! It's the absolute truth! Why, there are three or four men on wages at every station. I know it, and the station business doesn't pay for the sheep-dip to sanctify their coffee with. It's just as I say, and accommodating? Why, if you shake a rag the train will stop in the midst of the wilderness to pick you up. All that kind of politics costs, you see. And then, besides, any town that has a good many votes, and wants a fine station, gets it. Don't you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an interest in governmental curiosities? Why, you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have room for more. You haven't fifteen stations in America that are as big, and you probably haven't five that are half as fine. Why, it's perfectly elegant, and a clock. Everybody will show you the clock. There isn't a station in Europe that's got such a clock. It doesn't strike. That's one mercy. It hasn't any bell. And, as you'll have cause to remember, if you keep your reason, all Australia is simply bedammed with bells. On every quarter-hour, night and day, they jingle a tiresome chime of half a dozen notes, all the clocks in town at once, all the clocks in Australasia at once, and all the very same notes. First, downward scale, mi re do sol, then upward scale, sol si re do, down again, mi re do sol, up again, sol si re do, then the clock, say, at midnight, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, and, by that time, you're, hello, what's all this excitement about? Oh, I see, a runaway, scared by the train. Why, you wouldn't think this train could scare anything. Well, of course, when they build and run eighty stations at a loss, and a lot of palace stations and clocks like merry burrows at another loss, the government has got to economize somewhere, hasn't it? Very well, look at the rolling stock. That's where they save the money.  That's where they make their little economies, you see.  What a rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting. Then his journey in a nice train would be a grateful change. But no, that would be common sense, and out of place in a government.  Leave that American out of the account and see what would happen. There's nobody on hand to examine your ticket when you arrive. But the conductor will come and examine it when the train is ready to start. It is too late to buy your extra ticket now. The train can't wait and won't. You must climb out. But can't I pay the conductor? No. He is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must climb out. There's no other way. I tell you, the railway management is about the only thoroughly European thing here. Continentally European, I mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection, down fine. Oh yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage. The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said, Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there.  Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman. Is your friend in the ministry? No? Studying for it. End of Chapter 31 This is Chapter 32 of Following the Equator. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 32. Description of the town of Christchurch. A fine museum. Jade stone trinkets. The great Moa. The first Maori in New Zealand. Women voters. Person in New Zealand law includes woman. Taming and Ornithorincus. A voyage in the flora from Littleton. Cattle stalls for everybody. A wonderful time. The man with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds. Putin had Wilson's new calendar. It was junior England all the way to Christchurch, in fact, just a garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English park annex and a winding English brook just like the Avon, and named the Avon. But from a man, not from Shakespeare's River. Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor. They were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St Helena. It is a settled old community with all the serenities, the graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home life. If it had an established church and social inequality, it would be England over again with hardly a lack. In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things. Among others, a fine native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the details, the fine mats and rugs and things, the elaborate and wonderful wood carvings, wonderful surely, considering who did them, wonderful in design and particularly in execution. For they were done with admirable sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade and shell could furnish. And the totem posts were there, ancestor above ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over bellies containing other people's ancestors, grotesque and ugly devils every one, but lovingly carved and ably. And the stuffed natives were present in their proper places, and looking as natural as life, and the housekeeping utensils were there too, and close at hand the carved and finely ornamented war canoe. And we saw little jade gods to hang around the neck, not everybody's, but sacred to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade weapons, and many kinds of jade trinkets, all made out of that excessively hard stone without the help of any tool of iron. And some of these things had small round holes bored through them, nobody knows how it was done, a mystery, a lost art. I think it was said that if you want such a hole bored in a piece of jade now, you must send it to London or Amsterdam where the lapidaries are. Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet high, and must have been a sight to look at when it was a living bird. It was a kicker, like the ostrich. In fight it did not use its beak, but its foot. It must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a person had his back to the bird and did not see who it was that did it, he would think he had been kicked by a windmill. There must have been a sufficiency of Moas in the old forgotten days when his breed walked the earth. His bones are found in vast masses, all crammed together in huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the ground. Nobody knows how they happen to get concentrated there. Mind, they are bones, not fossils. This means that the Moa has not been extinct very long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature which has no mention in that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native legends. This is a significant detail, and is good circumstantial evidence that the Moa has been extinct five hundred years since the Maori has himself, by tradition, been in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth century. He came from an unknown land, the first Maori did, then sailed back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they removed the aboriginal peoples into the sea and into the ground, and took the land. That is the tradition, that that first Maori could come is understandable for anybody can come to a place when he isn't trying to, but how that discoverer found his way back home again without a compass is his secret, and he died with it in him. His language indicates that he came from Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't spell well, so one can't find the place on the map, because people who could spell better than he could spelt the resemblance all out of it when they made the map. However, it is better to have a map that has spelt right, than one that has information in it. In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the legislature, but they cannot be members themselves. The law extending the suffrage to them went into effect in 1893. The population of Christchurch, census of 1891, was 31,454. The first election under the law was held in November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313. Number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us that women are not as indifferent about politics as some people would have us believe. In New Zealand as a whole the estimated adult female population was 139,915. Of these 109,461 qualified and registered their names on the rolls 78.23% of the whole. Of these 90,290 went to the polls and voted 85.18%. Do men ever turn out better than that in America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's credit too. I take it from the official report. A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the people. Women were in no way molested. At home a standing argument against women's suffrage has always been that women could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments against women's suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The prophets have been prophesying ever since the women's rights movement began in 1848, and in 47 years they have never scored a hit. Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives and sisters by this time. The women deserve a change of attitude like that, for they have wrought well. In 47 years they have swept an imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of America. In that brief time these serfs have set themselves free, essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time without bloodshed. At least they never have. And that is argument that they didn't know how. The women have accomplished a peaceful revolution, and a very beneficent one. And yet that has not convinced the average man that they are intelligent, and have courage, and energy, and perseverance, and fortitude. It takes much to convince the average man of anything, and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average woman's inferior. Yet in several important details the evidence is seen to show that that is what he is.  This is woman's opportunity she has had none before. I wonder where man will be in another forty-seven years. In the New Zealand law occurs this. The word person, wherever it occurs throughout the act, includes woman. That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron with the garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one jump the political equal of her callow kid of twenty-one. The white population of the colony is six hundred and twenty-six thousand. The Maori population is forty-two thousand. The whites elect seventy members of the House of Representatives, the Maori's four. The Maori women vote for their four members. November sixteen. After four pleasant days in Christchurch we are to leave at midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorinkus, and I am taming it. Sunday seventeenth sailed last night in the flora from Littleton. So we did, I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the flora that night may forget some other things if they live a good while, but they will not live long enough to forget that. The flora is about the equivalent of a cattle-scow. But when the union company find it inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle her into passenger service and keep the change. They give no notice of their projected depredation. You innocently buy tickets for the advertised passenger boat, and when you get down to Littleton at midnight you find that they have substituted the scow. They have plenty of good boats, but no competition, and that is the trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if you have engagements ahead. It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of it, including the government's representative, who stands at the end of the stage plank to tally the passengers, and see that no boat receives a greater number than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently blind representative saw the scow receive a number which was far in excess of its privilege, and winked a politic wink, and said nothing. The passengers bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and made no complaint. It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just the same way. A few days before, the Union Company had discharged a captain for getting a boat into danger, and had advertised this act as evidence of its vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers. For thugging a captain cost the company nothing, but when opportunity offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and save a little trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passengers' safety. The first officer told me that the flora was privileged to carry 125 passengers. She must have had all of two hundred on board. All the cabins were full. All the cattle stalls in the main stable were full. The spaces at the heads of companion ways were full. Every inch of floor and table in the swill room was packed with sleeping men, and remained so until the place was required for breakfast. All the chairs and benches on the hurricane deck were occupied, and still there were people who had to walk about all night. If the flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would have been wholly without means of escape. The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, but they were morally guilty of it. I had a cattle stall in the main stable. A cavern fitted up with a long double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico partition. Twenty men and boys on one side of it, twenty women and girls on the other. The place was as dark as the soul of the union company, and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got out into the heavy seas and began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately seasick, and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my previous experiences of the kind well away in the shade, and the whales, the groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange ejaculations—it was wonderful. The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in that place, for they were too ill to leave it, but the rest of us got up by and by, and finished the night on the hurricane deck. That boat was the foulest I was ever in, and the smell of the breakfast saloon when we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency. A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship. After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee little bridal parlor of a boat, only two hundred and five tons berthin, clean and comfortable, good service, good beds, good table and no crowding. The seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable. Next morning early she went through the French Pass, a narrow gateway of rock between bold headlands, so narrow in fact that it seemed no wider than a street. The current tore through there like a mill-race, and the boat darted through like a telegram. The passage was made in half a minute. Then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what they would do with a little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked her up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid smooth bottom of sand, so gently indeed that we barely felt her touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill. The water was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct, and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing. Fishing lines were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and away again. CHAPTER XXXIII The town of Nelson, the Mangatapu Murders, the great event of the town, Virges's confession, summit of Mount Eden, Rotorua and the hot lakes and geysers, thermal springs district, Kauri Gum, Tangariwa Mountains. Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness, and one for us, the curse of labour, Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden. The whole region is a garden, accepting the scene of the Mangatapu Murders of thirty years ago. That is a wild place, wild and lonely, an ideal place for a murder. It is at the base of a vast rugged densely timbered mountain. In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate rascals, Virges, Sullivan, Levy and Kelly, ambushed themselves beside the mountain trail to murder and rob four travellers, Kempthorne, Matthew, Dudley and Dupontius, the latter a New Yorker. A harmless old laboring man came wandering along and as his presence was an embarrassment they choked him, hid him, and then resumed their watch for the four. They had to wait a while, but eventually everything turned out as they desired. That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson. The fame of it travelled far. Virges made a confession. It is a remarkable paper. For brevity, succinctness and concentration it is perhaps without its peer in the literature of murder. There are no waste words in it. There is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent to the occasion, or any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business statement. For that is what it is, a business statement of a murder, by the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever one may prefer to call him. We were getting impatient when we saw four men and a pack-horse coming. I left my cover and had a look at the men, for Levy had told me that Matthew was a small man and wore a large beard, and that it was a chestnut horse. I said, Here they come! They were then a good distance away. I took the caps off my gun and put fresh ones on.  It was arranged as I have described. The men came, they arrived within about fifteen yards when I stepped up and said, Stand, bail up! That means all of them to get together. I made them fall back on the upper side of the road with their faces up the range, and Sullivan brought me his gun and then tied their hands behind them. The horse was very quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied, Sullivan took the horse up the hill and put him in the bush. He cut the rope and let the swags, a swag as a kit, a pack, a small baggage, fall on the ground, and then came to me. We then marched the men down the incline to the creek, the water at this time barely running. Up this creek we took the men, we went, I dare say, five or six hundred yards up it, which took us nearly half an hour to accomplish. Then we turned to the right up the range, we went, I dare say, one hundred and fifty yards from the creek, and there we sat down with the men. I said to Sullivan, Put down your gun and search these men, which he did. I asked them their several names, they told me. I asked them if they were expected at Nelson. They said, No. If such, their lives would have been spared. In money we took sixty pounds odd. I said, Is this all you have? You had better tell me. Sullivan said, Here is a bag of gold. I said, What's on that pack horse? Is there any gold? When Kempthorn said, Yes, my gold is in the Port Monteur, and I trust you will not take it all. Well, I said, We must take you away one at a time, because the range is steep just here, and then we will let you go. They said, All right, most cheerfully. We tied their feet and took Dudley with us. We went about sixty yards with him. This was through a scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would be best to choke them, in case the report of the arms might be heard from the road, and if they were missed they never would be found. So we tied a handkerchief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the sash off his waist, put it round his neck, and so strangled him. Sullivan, after I had killed the old laboring man, found fault with the way he was choked. He said, The next we do, I'll show you my way. I said, I have never done such a thing before. I have shot a man, but never choked one. We returned to the others. When Kempthorn said, What noise was that? I said it was caused by breaking through the scrub. This was taking too much time, so it was agreed to shoot them. With that I said, We'll take you no further, but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can relieve the others. So with that Sullivan took De Pontius to the left of where Kempthorn was sitting. I took Matthew to the right.  He yelled. I ran from him with my gun in my hand. I sighted Kempthorn who had risen to his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him behind the right ear. His life's blood welled from him, and he died instantaneously. Sullivan had shot De Pontius in the meantime, and then came to me. I said, Look to Matthew, indicating the spot where he lay. He shortly returned and said, I had to shiv that fellow, he was not dead. A cant word, meaning that he had to stab him. Going to the road we passed where De Pontius lay and was dead. Sullivan said, This is the digger, the others were all storekeepers. This is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the others be found they'll think he'd done it and sloped, meaning he had gone. So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then left him. This bloody work took nearly an hour and a half from the time we stopped the men. Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling. That is partly true. As regarded others he was plainly without feeling, utterly cold and pitiless, but as regarded himself the case was different. While he cared nothing for the future of the murdered men, he cared a great deal for his own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to his confession. The judge on the bench characterised it as scandalously blasphemous, and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no blasphemy. He was merely a brute, and whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose the fact. His redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian Martyr at the stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made and mysteriously circumstanced. We have to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and that Burgess is moved, but we cannot suppress our natural regrets. Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August in the year of Grace 1866, to God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch who has been brought through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ to see his wretched and guilty state, in as much as hitherto he has led an awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful soldier of Christ, he has been led, and also believes that Christ will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed and bloody sins. I lie under the imputation which says, Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. On this promise I rely. We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New Plymouth, then sailed again, and reached Auckland the next day, November 20, and remained in that fine city several days. Its situation is commanding, and the sea view is superb. There are charming drives all about, and by courtesy of friends we had opportunity to enjoy them. From the grassy Crater Summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and variety of scenery. Forests closed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters, then the blue bays, twinkling and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze. It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned hot lakes and geysers, one of the chief wonders of New Zealand. But I was not well enough to make the trip. The government has a sanatorium there, and everything is comfortable for the tourist and the invalid. The government's official physician is almost overcautious in his estimates of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about rheumatism, gout, paralysis and such things. But when he is talking about the effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the whisky habit, he seems to have no reserves. The baths will cure the drinking habit no matter how chronic it is, and cure it so effectually that even the desire to drink intoxicants will come no more. There should be a rush from Europe and America to that place, and when the victims of alcoholism find out what they can get by going there the rush will begin. The Thermal Springs District of New Zealand comprises an area of upwards of 600,000 acres, or close on 1,000 square miles. Rotorua is the favourite place. It is the centre of a rich field of lake and mountain scenery. From Rotorua as a base the pleasure seeker makes excursions. The crowd of sick people is great and growing. Rotorua is the Carlsbad of Australasia. It is from Auckland that the calorie-gum is shipped. For a long time now about 8,000 tonnes of it have been brought into the town per year. It is worth about $300 per tonne, unassorted. Assorted the finest grades are worth about $1,000. It goes to America chiefly. It is in lumps, and is hard and smooth, and looks like amber. The light-coloured, like new amber, and the dark brown, like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant feel of amber, too. Some of the light-coloured samples were a tolerably fair counterfeit of uncut South African diamonds. They were so perfectly smooth and polished and transparent. It is manufactured into varnish, a varnish which answers for copal varnish and is cheaper. The gum is dug up out of the ground. It has been there for ages. It is the sap of the kauri tree. Dr. Campbell of Auckland told me he sent a cargo of it to England fifty years ago, but nothing came of the venture. Nobody knew what to do with it, so it was sold at five pounds a tonne, to light fires with. November 26, 3 p.m., sailed. Vast and beautiful harbour, land all about for hours. Tangariwa, the mountain that has the same shape from every point of view. That is the common belief in Auckland, and so it has, from every point of view except thirteen. Perfect summer weather, large school of whales in the distance. Nothing could be daintier than the puffs of vapour they spout up, when seen against the pink glory of the sinking sun, or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the deep blue shadow of a storm-cloud. Great barrier rock standing up out of the sea away to the left. Some time ago a ship hit it full speed in a fog, twenty miles out of her course. A hundred and forty lives lost. The captain committed suicide without waiting a moment. He knew that, whether he was to blame or not, the company owning the vessel would discharge him and make a devotion to passengers' safety advertisement out of it, and his chance to make a livelihood would be permanently gone. CHAPTER XXXIV The Bay of Gisburn, taking in passengers by the yard arm, the green Ballarat fly, false teeth, from Napier to Hastings by the Ballarat fly-train, Cowery Trees, a case of mental telegraphy. Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old, second-hand diamonds than none at all. Puddinhead Wilson's new calendar. CHAPTER XXVII Today we reached Gisburn, and anchored in a big bay. There was a heavy sea on, so we remained on board. We were a mile from shore, a little steam-tug put out from the land. She was an object of thrilling interest. She would climb to the summit of a billow. Real drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray, in the driving storm of spin-drift, then make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight until one had given her up, then up she would dart again, on a steep slant toward the sky, shedding niagras of water from her focusle, and this she kept up all the way out to us. She brought twenty-five passengers in her stomach, men and women, mainly a travelling dramatic company. In sight on deck were the crew, in the south-westers, yellow waterproof canvas suits, and boots to the thigh. The deck was never quiet for a moment, and seldom nearer level than a ladder, and noble were the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We rove a long line to the yard arm, hung a most primitive basket-chair to it, and swung it out into the spacious air of heaven, and there it swayed, pendulum fashion, waiting for its chance, then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was grabbed by the two men on the focusle. A young fellow belonging to our crew was in the chair, to be a protection to the lady-comers. At once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in his lap, we hoisted them into the sky, waited a moment till the roll of the ship brought them in overhead, then we lowered suddenly away, and seized the chair as it struck the deck. We took the twenty-five aboard, and delivered twenty- five into the tug, among them several aged ladies, and one blind one, and all without accident. It was a fine piece of work. There is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered and satisfactory. Now and then we step on a rat in a hotel, but we have had no rats on ship-board lately, unless, perhaps in the flora, we had more serious things to think of there, and did not notice. I have noticed that it is only in ships and hotels which still employ the odious Chinese gong that you find rats. The reason would seem to be that as a rat cannot tell the time of day by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot find out when dinner is ready. November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one spiritless loafer, and several far-gone moral wrecks who have been reclaimed by the Salvation Army, and have remained staunch people and hard workers these two years. Wherever one goes, these testimonials to the Army's efficiency are forthcoming. This morning we had one of those whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning buzz-saw noise, the swiftest creature in the world except the lightning flash. It is a stupendous force that is stored up in that little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion, we could spin from Liverpool to New York in the space of an hour, the time it takes to eat luncheon. The New Zealand express train is called the Ballarat Fly. Bad teeth in the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have teeth filled, but pull them out and put in false ones, and that now and then one sees a young lady with a full set. She is fortunate. I wish I had been born with false teeth and a false liver and false carbuncles. I should get along better. December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly, the one that goes twice a week, from Napier to Hastings, twelve miles, time, fifty-five minutes. Not so far short of thirteen miles an hour. A perfect summer day, cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation. Two or three times during the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense and beautiful forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands, not the customary roof-like slant of a hillside where the trees are all the same height. The noblest of these trees were of the cowry breed, we were told. The timber that is now furnishing the wood paving for Europe and is the best of all wood for that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of forestry were festooned and garlanded with vine cables, and sometimes the masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine of a delicate cobwebby texture. They call it the supplejack, I think. Three ferns everywhere, a stem fifteen feet high with a graceful chalice of fern fronds sprouting from its top, a lovely forest ornament, and there was a ten-foot reed with a flowing suit of what looked like yellow hair hanging from its upper end. I do not know its name, but if there is such a thing as a scalp-plant, this is it, a romantic gorge with a brook flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston North. Why to Curau? Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me sat my wife and daughter and my manager, Mr. Carlyle Smith. I sat at the head of the table and could see the right-hand wall. The others had their backs to it. On that wall, at a good distance away, were a couple of framed pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from the groupings of the figures I fancied that they represented the killing of Napoleon III's son by the Zulus in South Africa. I broke into the conversation which was about poetry and cabbage and art, and said to my wife, Do you remember when the news came to Paris of the killing of the prince? Those were the very words I had in mind. Yes, but what prince? Napoleon, Lulu. What made you think of that? I don't know. There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and they had not been mentioned. She ought to have thought of some recent news that came to Paris, for we were but seven months from there and had been living there a couple of years when we started on this trip, but instead of that she thought of an incident of our brief sojourn in Paris of sixteen years before. Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy, of mind transference, of my mind telegraphing a thought into hers. How do I know? As I telegraphed an error, for it turned out that the pictures did not represent the killing of Lulu at all, nor anything connected with Lulu. She had to get the error from my head. It existed nowhere else. End of Chapter 34. This is Chapter 35 of Following the Equator. This Liber-Vox recording is in the public domain. Following the Equator by Mark Twain, Chapter 35, Fifty Miles in Four Hours, Comfortable Cars, Town of Wauganui, Plenty of Mallories, On the Increase, Compliments to the Mallories, The Missionary Ways All Wrong, The Taboo Among the Mallories, A Mysterious Sign, Curious War Monuments, Wellington. The autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth. But he cannot stop a sneeze. Puddin had Wilson's new calendar. Wauganui, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat fly, four hours. I do not know the distance, but it must have been well along toward Fifty Miles. The fly could have spun it out to eight hours and not discomoded me, for where there is comfort and no need for hurry, speed is of no value, at least to me, and nothing that goes on wheels can be more comfortable, more satisfactory, than the New Zealand trains. Outside of America there are no cars that are so rationally devised. When you add the constant presence of charming scenery and the nearly constant absence of dust, well, if one is not content then he ought to get out and walk. That would change his spirit, perhaps. I think so. At the end of an hour you would find him waiting humbly beside the track and glad to be taken aboard again. Much horseback riding in and around this town. Many comely girls in cool and pretty summer gowns. Much Salvation Army. Lots of Maori's. The faces and bodies of some of the old ones very tastefully frescoed. Maori council house over the river, large, strong, carpeted from end to end with matting, and decorated with elaborate wood carvings, artistically executed. The Maori's were very polite. I was assured by a member of the House of Representatives that the native race is not decreasing, but actually increasing slightly. It is another evidence that they are a superior breed of savages. I do not call to mind any savage race that built such good houses, or such strong and ingenious and scientific fortresses, or gave so much attention to agriculture, or had military arts and devices which so nearly approached the white man's. These, taken together with their high abilities in boat-building, and their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts, modify their savagery to a semi-civilization, or at least to a quarter-civilization. It is a compliment to them that the British did not exterminate them, as they did the Australians and the Tasmanians, but were content with subduing them, and showed no desire to go further. And it is another compliment to them that the British did not take the whole of their choicest lands, but left them a considerable part, and then went further and protected them from the rapacities of land-sharks, a protection which the New Zealand government still extends to them. And it is still another compliment to the Maori's that the government allows native representation in both the legislature and the cabinet, and gives both sexes the vote. And in doing these things the government also compliments itself. It has not been the custom of the world for conquerors to act in this large spirit toward the conquered. The highest class white men, who lived among the Maori's in the earliest time, had a high opinion of them, and a strong affection for them. Among the whites of this sort was the author of Old New Zealand, and Dr. Campbell of Auckland was another. Dr. Campbell was a close friend of several chiefs, and has many pleasant things to say of their fidelity, their magnanimity, and their generosity.  One of them thought the missionary had got everything wrong end first and upside down. Why, he wants us to stop worshipping and supplicating the evil gods, and go to worshipping and supplicating the good one. There is no sense in that. A good god is not going to do us any harm. The Maori's had the taboo, and had it on a Polynesian scale of comprehensiveness and elaboration. Some of its features could have been importations from India and Judea. Neither the Maori nor the Hindu of common degree could cook by a fire that a person of higher caste had used, nor could the high Maori or high Hindu employ fire that had served a man of low grade. If a low grade Maori or Hindu drank from a vessel belonging to a high grade man, the vessel was defiled and had to be destroyed. There were other resemblances between Maori taboo and Hindu caste custom. Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me that the Jesuits were going to cook, poison me in my food, or kill me on the stage at night. He said a mysterious sign was visible upon my posters and meant my death. He said he saved Reverend Mr. Haas's life by warning him that there were three men on his platform who would kill him if he took his eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The same men were in my audience last night, but they saw that he was there. Will they be there again tonight? He hesitated. Then said no. He thought they would rather take a rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he had saved so many lectures in twenty years that they put him in the asylum. I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have met. December 8. A couple of curious war monuments here in Wanganui. One is in honor of white men who fell in defense of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism. Fanaticism. We Americans are English in blood, English in speech, English in religion, English in the essentials of our governmental system, English in the essentials of our civilization. And so, let us hope, for the honor of the blend, for the honor of the blood, for the honor of the race, that that word got there through lack of heedfulness and will not be suffered to remain. If you carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkleread died, or upon Bunker Hill Monument, and read it again, who fell in defense of law and order against fanaticism, you will perceive what the word means, and how mischosen it is. Patriotism is patriotism. Calling it fanaticism cannot degrade it, nothing can degrade it. Even though it be a political mistake, and a thousand times a political mistake, that does not affect it. It is honorable, always honorable, always noble, and privileged to hold its head up and look the nations in the face. It is right to praise these brave white men who fell in the Maori War. They deserve it. But the presence of that word detracts from the dignity of their cause and their deeds, and makes them appear to have spilt their blood in a conflict with ignoble men, men not worthy of that costly sacrifice. But the men were worthy. It was no shame to fight them. They fought for their homes. They fought for their country. They bravely fought and bravely fell. And it would take nothing from the honor of the brave Englishmen who lie under the monument, but add to it to say that they died in defense of English laws and English homes against men worthy of the sacrifice the Maori Patriots. The other monument cannot be rectified except with dynamite. It is a mistake all through and a strangely thoughtless one. It is a monument erected by white men to Maori's who fell fighting with the whites and against their own people in the Maori War. Sacred to the memory of the brave men who fell on the 14th of May, 1864, etc. On one side are the names of about twenty Maori's. It is not a fancy of mine. The monument exists. I saw it. It is an object lesson to the rising generation. It invites to treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism. Its lesson, in frank terms, is, desert your flag, slay your people, burn their homes, shame your nationality. We honor such. December 9. Wellington. Ten hours from one ganui by the fly. December 12. It is a fine city and nobly situated, a busy place and full of life and movement, have spent the three days partly in walking about, partly in enjoying social privileges, and largely in idling around the magnificent garden at Hutt, a little distance away, around the shore. I suppose we shall not see such another one soon. We are packing to-night for the return voyage to Australia. Our stay in New Zealand has been too brief. Still, we are not unthankful for the glimpse which we have had of it. The sturdy Maori's made the settlement of the country by the whites rather difficult. Not at first, but later. At first they welcomed the whites, and were eager to trade with them, particularly for muskets, for their pastime was internecine war, and they greatly preferred the white man's weapons to their own. War was their pastime. I use the word advisedly. They often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and when there was no quarrel. The author of Old New Zealand mentions a case where a victorious army could have followed up its advantage and exterminated the opposing army, but declined to do it, explaining naively that if we did that there couldn't be any more fighting. In another battle one army sent word that it was out of ammunition, and would be obliged to stop unless the opposing army would send some. It was sent, and the fight went on. In the early days things went well enough, the natives sold land without clearly understanding the terms of exchange, and the whites bought it without being much disturbed about the natives' confusion of mind. But by and by the Maori began to comprehend that he was being wronged. Then there was trouble, for he was not the man to swallow a wrong and go aside and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian spirit and endurance, and a notable share of military science besides, and so he rose against the oppressor to this gallant fanatic, and started a war that was not brought to a definite end until more than a generation had sped. CHAPTER XXXVI. The Poems of Mrs. Moore. The Sad Fate of William Upson. A fellow traveller imitating the Prince of Wales. A would-be dude. A rival at Sydney. Curious town names with poem. There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. Puddonhead Wilson's new calendar. Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name is pronounced Jaxon. Puddonhead Wilson's new calendar. Friday, December 13, sailed at 3 p.m. in the Mara Roa. Summer seas and a good ship. Life has nothing better. Monday, three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth. The sea, a luminous Mediterranean blue. One lulls in a long chair all day under deck awnings and reads and smokes in measureless content. One does not read prose at such a time, but poetry. I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Julia A. Moore again, and I find in them the same grace and melody that attracted me when they were first published twenty years ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since. The sentimental song-book has long been out of print, and has been forgotten by the world in general, but not by me. I carry it with me always, it and Goldsmith's deathless story.  In her time Mrs. Moore was called the sweet singer of Michigan, and was best known by that name. I have read her book through twice today with the purpose of determining which of her pieces has most merit, and I am persuaded that, for wide grasp and sustained power, William Upson may claim first place. William Upson Air, the major's only son. Come, all good people, far and near! Oh, come and see what you can hear! It's of a young man, true and brave, that is now sleeping in his grave. Now William Upson was his name, if it's not that, it's all the same, he did enlist in a cruel strife, and it caused him to lose his life. He was Perry Upson's eldest son, his father loved his noble son. This son was nineteen years of age when first in the rebellion he engaged. His father said that he might go, but his dear mother she said no. Oh, stay at home, dear Billy, she said, but she could not turn his head. He went to Nashville in Tennessee, there his kind friends he could not see. He died among strangers so far away, they did not know where his body lay. He was taken sick and lived four weeks, and oh how his parents weep. But now they must in sorrow mourn, for Billy has gone to his heavenly home. Oh, if his mother could have seen her son, for she loved him her darling son, if she could heard his dying prayer it would ease her heart till she met him there. How it would relieve his mother's heart to see her son from this world apart, and hear his noble words of love as he left this world for that above. Now it will relieve his mother's heart, for her son is laid in our graveyard. For now she knows that his grave is near. She will not shed so many tears. Although she knows not that it was her son, for his coffin could not be opened, it might be someone in his place, for she could not see his noble face. December 17 reached Sydney. December 19. In the train.  He had solidified hair, solidified with pomatum. It was all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes, made of some kind of manure apparently.  He had a low cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed and broken and unclean shirt-front. Showy studs of imitation gold, they had made black discs on the linen. Oversized sleeve-buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold. I judged that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was once. He wore a coat, which had been gay when it was young. Five o'clock tea-trousers of a light tint, and marvelously soiled. Yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends. Foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty, an imitation dude. He would have been a real one, if he could have afforded it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his expression and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine and himself a sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite to see him so enjoy his imitation langurs and arts, and heirs, and his studied daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity, just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum cake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose as the Prince and work his dreams and langurs for exhibition, and he would indolently watch the blue films curling up from his cigarette and inhale the stench and look so grateful, and would flip the ash away with the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in the most intentional way, why it was as good as being in Marlborough House itself to see him do it so like. There was other scenery in the trip, that of the Hawkesbury River in the National Park Region, fine, extraordinarily fine, with spacious views of stream and lake imposingly framed in woody hills, and every now and then the noblest groupings of mountains and the most enchanting rearrangements of the water-effects. Further along, green flats, thinly covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of small farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid stretches, lifeless and melancholy, then new castle, a rushing town, capital of the rich coal regions, approaching schoon, wide farming and grazing levels with pretty frequent glimpses of a troublesome plant, a particularly devilish little prickly pear, daily damned in the orisons of the agriculturist, imported by a lady of sentiment, and contributed gratis to the colony, blazing hot all day. December 20, back to Sydney, blazing hot again. From the newspaper and from the map I have made a collection of curious names of Australasian towns, with the idea of making a poem out of them. Tumut, Taki, Murray-Walumba, Bowerl, Ballarat, Mullingudgery, Murrundi, Waga-Waga, Wailong, Moran-Bidji, Gumuru, Walaway, Wanguri, Vanilla, Wara, Kapia, Yankalua, Yaran-Yaka, Yaka-Murundi, Kaewaka, Kumura, Taranga, Jilong, Tongareera, Kaikura, Waka-Tipu, Ohipura, White-Pinga, Gulwa, Manupara, Nankita, Maiponga, Kapunda, Kuringa, Penola, Nangwari, Kangurong, Komon, Kulwurti, Kilanula, Narakort, Mollewurti, Binum, Waluru, Wariga, Mandura, Haraki, Rangariri, Tiwamut, Taranaki, Tumba, Gungdiwindi, Jirildhari, Wangaroa, Wulangong, Wulamulu, Bambala, Kulgaradi, Bendigo, Kanamble, Kutamundra, Wulgulga, Mitagong, Jambira, Kondo-Paringa, Kuitpa, Tunkila, Oka-Paringa, Telanga, Yatala, Parawira, Mururu, Wangira, Wulandanga, Bulara, Pernati, Paramata, Tarum, Narandira, Daniliquin, Kawakawa. It may be best to build the poem now and make the weather help. A sweltering day in Australia, to be read soft and low, with lights turned down. The Bambala faints in the hot-barreled tree, where fierce mulling-gudgery smothering fires far from the breezes of Kulgaradi burn ghastly and blue as the day expires, and Mariwalamba complaineth in song for the garlanded bowers of Wulamulu and the Ballarat fly, and the lone Wulagong they dream of the gardens of Jambira. The wallaby sighs for the Murabidji for the velvety sod of the Munupara, where the waters of healing from Mullawurte flow dim in the gloaming by Yarenyaka. The Kapia sorrows for lost walloway, and scythe in secret for Murarundi. The Wangaru Wambat lamenteth the day that made him an exile from Jirildari. The Tiwamut, from Wiraga's Glade, the Nankita Swallow, the Wallaru Swan, they long for the peace of the Timura shade, and thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mitagong. The Keringa buffalo pants in the sun, the Kondaparinga lies gaping for breath, the Kongarong Kamon, to the shadow, has won, but the Kumaru sinks in the slumber of death. In the weltering hell of the Muraru Plain, the Yatala Wangari withers and dies, and the Waro Wanala, demented with pain, to the Wulgulga woodlands despairingly flies. Sweet Nangmari's desolate Kunambu wails, and the Tunkilo Kuito, in sables, is dressed, for the Wangari winds fall asleep in the sails, and the Bularu life breeze is dead in the west. My Pongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more, Yankalala Parawiri, be warned there's death in the air, Killanula, wherefore shall the prayer of Panola be scorned? Kutamundra, and Taki, and Wakatipu, Tuwumba, Kaikura are lost from Ankhaparinga to Far Umaru, all burn in this hell's holocaust. Paramata and Binam are gone to their rest, in the veil of Tapani Tarum, Kaua Kaua, Daniliquan, all that was best in the earth are but graves in a tomb. Narandara mourns, Cameron answers not when the roll of the scatheless we cry, Tangarira, Gundelwindi, Wolundunga, the spot is mute, and forlorn where ye lie. Those are good words for poetry, among the best I have ever seen. There are eighty-one in the list. I did not need them all, but I have knocked down sixty-six of them, which is a good bag, it seems to me, for a person not in the business. Perhaps a poet laureate could do better, but a poet laureate gets wages, and that is different. When I write poetry I do not get any wages. Often I lose money by it. The best word in that list, and the most musical and gurgly, is Wulamulu. It is a place near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure resort. It has eight O's in it.