CHAPTER I. Farewell ! A Long Farewell ! PARTING AND DEATH ! LAST VIEW OF MELBOURNE ! PORPOISE RACES !

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1851, 17 May 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHAPTER I. Farewell ! A Long Farewell ! PARTING AND DEATH ! LAST VIEW OF MELBOURNE ! PORPOISE RACES !

There is nothing so sad as parting, except meeting after long yeara, and when circumstances are wofully altered. Sometimes parting is not at all bitter ; it often partakes of joy, though there is usually a vague pain, caused by impending severance from the familiar. I once knew a farmer who was cursed with a shrewish wife, a woman whose tongue never stopped, and who was the dread of her household and her neighbours. She became ill ; and all, the husband included, hoped her " a safe deliverence" — that is for themselves. She died, and, mentally, the widower was congratulated on all hands. One night I was sitting with him in his house, anl noticing that he looked sad I said, " Surely you are not grieving over the de parted ; she, I trust, is happier than she was on carth — I am sure we are." " Well, no," said my friend, " but you see there is something I feel wanting ; I miss the old familiar growl." No wonder, therefore, that when I prepared to leave Victoria, my home for seventeen eventful years, with a doubt of again seeing its shores, a strange melancholy seized upon me. The circumstances which caused my departure were so peculiar. Seventeen years ago, a mere beardless lad, I had landed in Melbourne, my heart beating high with hope, my imagination fevered with visions of the To Be. Seventeen years had passed, seventeen restless, excited, tumultous years, and now I was to bid farewell, perhap3 a long farewell, to the land where I had known pain and pleasure, good and evil, where I had sounded the gamut of human joys and sorrows. I could say, "I have lived " — that was all. I had gained little, lost much, now I had to return to my native colony in quest of health. As I stood upon the steamer's deck and looked away upon the fading spires and domes of the Mushroom City of the South, the panorama of all I had known and suffered and enjoyed came to me in a flash, as it ia said all the acts of our life do to the dying ere the soul departs. Aud what were my feelings ? They are best ex pressed — the words written by the wise man over two thousand years ago : " Vanity of vanities ; all is vanity and vexation of spirit." The valuelessness of much that is thought priceless can only be understood at parting and at death. In this colony, whose shores were soon to vanish, in this mighty city which had grown up under my eyes, I had played no mean part. But all the struggles of the past, the keen battles for wealth and fame and position, all seemed now to me as nothing, while the quieter moments of life, its greens and greys, grew out of the mass of scarlet and gold and flame and crimson, and formed the only pictures upon which the eye of the man about to pass away from these scenes, perhaps for ever, rested. The dying and the departing alone know what is of value in life. They only know that the glare and blaze of life fade and die, and that the love and kindness and friendship they have known, the tender, human moments they have enjoyed start out into the strongest relief. Our thoughts in the houi of death or departure are not of the tinsel glory, the fights and squabbles of this world, but of whatever may have been good and tender and true in the dioramic dream of life. What a solemn thing it was, this drift, drift, out to sea, leaving behind all the work of that seventeen years, like so many ruins seen in a vanishing panorama, with but a ,dimly discerned future afar off. Surely this must resemble the bed of death, when time is given to think and reflect. It is a death in life, a birth in life ; the death of one era, the birth of another. It has been said that the loss of the greatest man makes but a hole in the water ; there is a bubble, it is gone, and the river of life flows on as if no grand barque lay wrecked under the clear, cold water. I have never been a great man in the sense the great world attaches to that word, but I had held a prominent place. But what of that now ? Here I was floating down that ditch, the Yarra, perhaps never to return, and the work of the busy city went on as ever, the factory chimneys belched forth volumes of smoke, the trains darted hither and thither every minute, shrieking as they left clouds of smoke and steam in their wake, and the rush and war of the busy city came upon the breeze. The world went on as of yore, as it will for ages, no matter who goes or comes. The great world makes me laugh at the vanity of men. Exceptional circumstances, my failing health, making a return doubtful, threw a halo of romance over my journey from Melbourne to the open sea; otherwise there is nothing in the scenery or associations to poetise the feelings. There is something noble and commanding in the view of Melbourne from the wharf, for anything commands respeot which is large and busy and important. Everywhere the great city stretches out, and through the haze created by the smoke from its many chimney stacks, each indicating a hive of industry, fine buildings and noble spires, loom forth, speaking of the grandeur of the youthful but magnificent Victorian metropolis. But as we dropped down the river the grandeur and greatness faded away, dismal, evil- smelling flats appeared, and the eye and the nose and the ear were offended on every hand. I was glad to raise my eyes from the dirty stream and its ignoble surroundings to the semi-

circle of mountains that rise in the blue distance, as a setting to the great city. Our steamer was dragged by a pretentious little tug, that $iified and snorted and kicked up a terrible rumpus, as if it was the biggest boat on the river. The small are always self-im-portant, even in the inanimate World. The steamer and the tug reminded me of an impudent terrier worrying a big Newfoundland. I was glad when the tag cast off, some ele gant language being interchanged by the two crews ; and our steamer, which, for e'a3ilycomprehended reasons, I named the "Plunger," was left alone to breast the waves of Port Phillip Bay, which now, for the evening drew on, and the sun was sinking Geelongwards, began to heave a little. I had a good view of Sandridge and Williamstown, the shipping and the now faint city, with its pall of smoke — it might be my last — and then, knowing there was nothing to see except the low coastline and the monotonous waves, I looked my last at Victoria, and turned my attention to what is never monotonous, the study of iuman nature. And, therefore, in view of this, to me ever interesting, study, I must dismiss our voyage to Sydney with a few words. We had glorious weather, the steamer only plunged badly outside the Heads and off Gabo, we duly sighted the Promontory and Gabo, and indulged in the customary guessing, as we came up the New South Wales coast, as to which town we saw was Kiama, Shoalhaven, or Wollongong, and thought we saw Sydney Heads — we were then getting tired of the sea, hourjj before they came into view. And of course we had the usual porpoise race. A voyage from Sydney to Melbourne without a porpoise exhibition would be a blank. On our trip we were afraid, at one time, that we would be defrauded of the . usual display, for we had nearly completed , the journey ere the porous piscix showed. But when wo did get into a school of them it was large — probably they had been having a fishy political meeting — and the porcine gentlemen of the briny made splendid play, running exciting races with the steamer. Their pluck was so great that I almost regretted our big puffing vessel beat them so easily. At one time, indeed, they made the pace hot, but they could not stay. Our passengers were mostly of the light-headed order and fond of raciug, so they picked out a fish and named it after a Gup horse — the Melbourne Cup was then about to be run — and great was the excitement in watching the race between two or more porpoises, named after celebrated horses, the person who had backed the winner thinking it a lucky omen. I did not take a note of the results, so I cannot say whether the " pig-fish " were of the prophetic order or not. They were certainly not of the '" Leviathan," " Adamastor," or "Oracle" type.