"TAKE ME TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS."

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1920, Page 11

"TAKE ME TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS."

THE COUNTRY LANE WAI-K WHICH I.ED TO THE FOUNDING OF AUSTRALIA. AN AMAZING MAN. London, July 11. Mr. W. M. Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister, returned home this week. It wan Sir Joseph Banks who persuaded the British Government to send out and colonise the land. He was founding the Australian nation. "There is a jolly little picture coming down to us from a hundred yeara ago in London streets—a picture of a little native of Tahiti, brought home from his Pacific island by Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks," says My Magazine. "He would roam about London by day or night, and would inevitably be lost, but he had a sure way to find himself, i Whatever English he did not know, he [knew enough to cry out in the streets: 'Take me to Sir Joseph Banks! Take me to Sir Joseph Banks!' "And the people of London, seeing this odd little figure from the other side of the world in their streets, would take liim to Sir Joseph Banks, for they all knew Sir Joseph then, though the world was to forget him for so long.

AN EMPIRE BUILDER. "He was one of the discoverers and builders of the British Empire. If he had never lived we should probably not have colonised Australia, and there would probably have been no Anzacs fighting in France. And yet if he had had his way it would hardly have been worth while our having Australia, for steamships to go there. "Great scientist as he was, President of the Royal Society, he poohpoohed the steamship as certain scientific men in our day poohpoohed the aeroplane. 'A pretty plan,' he said, 'but it overlooks one point—that an engine must have a firm base!' He did not see any way of giving an engine a foundation at sea, though we have now given engines developing 1800 horse-power a foundation in the clouds!

AUSTRALIA'S FATHER. "He opposed steamships, but hp brought the first indiarubber into England, and so we may think of him as preparing a way for the motor-car. He may, for a while, have hindered travel to the Antipodes, yet Australia regards him as her father. "When Mungo Park wished to go to Africa it was to Sir Joseph Banks that he turned. When Jamaica needed a new food supply, the people wrote to Banks, and he sent them the bread-fruit tree. When Iceland was perishing of starvation, the Banish fleet being unable to send supplies, it was the unfailing Sir Joseph who got supplies sent to them.

XO OTHER MAN LIKE HIM. "An extraordinary man this, known in every civilised land, honored on sea and land, even during all those years when Napoleon kept the world on fire with war. AVe have had no other man quite like him. He charmed and commanded men wherever he went, and all the world looked up to him, wars or no wars, as prophet, priest, and king. And I yet we may almost say that the astonishing career of this great man turned on a late evening swim and a lonely walk home through a lane bedecked with flowers.

"He was born in Argyle Street, London, in February, 1743, the only son of a -wealthy, father, whose country home was at Beevesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire. The Bankses were an old landed house, hut a Derbyshire heiress came into the familv and added her money to the lands," so that Joseph inherited £30,000 a year.

ETON DAYS. "It was in his schooldays at Eton that there happened the incident upon which his career .may be said to have turned. The hoys were out bathing one evening, and Banks was left to find his way home alone. He walked slowly along a lane brilliant with flowers, and the sight of these glorious blossoms filled him with delight. 'How beautiful!' he thought. 'lt is surely more natural that I should be taught to know these things rather than Latin /and Greek.' Latin and Greek were his father's command, but Joseph from that hour resolved to study flowers as well. We may say that British Australia was born in that lane that night.

HOW HE LEARNED BOTANY. "To learn botany he would go about among old women who collected plants for chemists, and if they told him anything interesting he would give them sixpence. At home he found a tattered old hook on botany, with pictures which enabled him to identify flowers. When, after a short stay at Cambridge, he settled down at Oxford, he found that the University had no lecturer on botany, and he was able to get one appointed. "The Elizabethan spirit of discovery was strong within him when he left Oxford, and he set out on a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he made his first natural history collection, the first flower from the seed sown in tttfrt English lane. He had begun his task of transplanting seeds from one side of the earth to the other.

HE SAILS WITH COOK. "Most young men of liis afro, inheriting such a fortune as his, would have made the usual round of the chief cities of Europe. Banks made a grander and wider tour. Captain Cook was setting forth, in 1768, on his first great voyage, to observe the transit of Venus, and to explore the less-known parts of the southern Pacific, and Banks had influence enough to enable him to join the expedition. His grand tour was to be around the globe. He did it all on a great scale. "... At length, after a journey right round New Zealand, they reached Australia—quite, a different Australia from that which had horrified Dampier as lie approached it long before from the western side. Banks and his fellownaturalists were delighted with the new | flora which they discovered in the first i hay they entered, and to celebrate their find they named the place Botany Bay.

JUST IN TIME. "A few days after their arrival two strange ships were seen at the entrance of tJie bay. It proved to be the expedition of La Perouse. the great Frenchman, sent by his Government to take possession of Australia in the name of France. He was just too late; he found the British flae already flying, and the

gallant Frenchman, leaving his letters and journals for the English to forward to France, went his way, never to be seen alive again. "It is ono of the finest things in Barks' life that, though we were at war with France, never a ship left England for distant seas that did not carry a commission from him to seek for La Perouse, the noble rival of Captain Cook. Every sea and every ocean cranny were searched, until the tragic mystery of La Perouse and his two ships, wrecked on a coral reef, was cleared up. HE WROTE NOTHING.

"The great pity for all time is that Banks wrote not a word for publication. He became President of the Royal Society in 1778, and kept the position until his death; he formed what is now the Royal Geographical Society, and sent out many travellers. He was trustee of the British Museum; he was interested in every learned body of the day, and was consulted by kings and princes, statesmen and scientists, travellers and adventurers. His correspondence was world-wide, but not one word for publication did he write. He could not be bothered. He gave his experience to other men, and they wrote in their own name from the knowledge he had risked his life to get.

A KING OF MEN. "He built up an incomparable scientific library, and every scientist and earnest student was free to labov in it. His collections of birds, beasts, reptiles, fishes, and plants, were at tl\e disposal of all the world. He brought together rich men and deserving poor men; he helped good men in need with counsel and money. He did mare than that, for the spirit which prompted him to search for the lost La Perouse animated his nature always. He it was who persuaded the Government to allow foreign scientists to go in peace on land and sea during the Napoleonic Wars, and Napoleon's reply was to accord the freedom of the seas to Captain Cook. '•'ln his own circle Sir Joseph Banks was a king, and he wielded his sceptre for the good of knowledge everywhereOur ships were always snapping up j prizes, but, when they brought home [ collections gathered by foreign scientists, | Banks would hunt the cases down and 1 return them to their owners, even to enemy nations. "There was never anyone else quite like him. People called him an autocrat, and autocrat he >vas, but the most benevolent autocrat who ever lived.

"It is good that he did attain so commanding a position, for when Australia was lying bare, with nothing but, the remnants of a British flag upon its shores, and a few marks scored on trees to show where Cook and Banks had been, it was Banks who, by years of effort, finally persuaded the British Government. to send out and colonise the land. He did not know how great a thing lie did, but he was founding the Australian nation. ALMOST FORGOTTEN.

"He worked at science until thr> last, in spite of years of agonising illness. When, crippled by gout, he died, on June 19, IS2O. a strange thing happened. There was nothing to tell of his fanTe save a few communications he had made to scientific societies. It was as if, like Prospero in 'The Tempest,' lie had renounced the magic power with which he had commanded admiration:— "Til break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book." "His name and fame have faded, and he was only to be found here and there in the travels and descriptions of others. He who had known everybody in his generation throughout the world became himself forgotten. Over a century elapsed between the writing and the publication of his journal on his journey round the world. His papers and diaries were either locked up in museums or sold and scattered.

"But Time, which does all things well, has saved the fame of Sir Joseph Banks, and we remember him to-day as one of the men of two empires—the Empire of Britain overseas, and the empire, wider and greater yet, of knowledge everywhere."