CHAPTER XIX.

TANDEM.

I have never been very much of a tandem driver, for having been entered upon stage coaches, and driven them for a good many hundred miles before getting hold of a tandem, I must confess I rather looked down upon it, and regarded it somewhat in the light of a toy.

The first time of my embarking in one I felt like the proverbial tin kettle to the dog's tail. There was no weight behind the horses to bring them to their collars, and they appeared to be almost drawing by my hands, like the Yankee trotters. Of course, that sensation went off after a little practice, and, though it is a team that requires careful handling, it is one exceedingly well adapted for heavy roads, as there is great strength of horse power in proportion to the load which is usually placed behind them. This not only enables one to ascend steep hills with ease, but also greatly facilitates the descent, as it is almost impossible to place a sufficient load upon only two wheels to overpower the shaft horse. It was in the act of descending hills that most coach accidents happened, by the load overpowering the wheel horses; and, of course, the load on a tandem cart can never be top heavy, which was another fertile source of accidents to coaches.

When I first tried my hand at tandem I was quartered at Chatham, and being cut off from the coaches I had been accustomed to drive, my hands itched for the double reins, and I condescended to the hitherto despised tandem; but upon my first attempt, I soon found myself brought up with the leader on one side a small tree and the wheeler on the other. Rather a humiliating position for one who thought himself a coachman! At that time, however, I little realized how much practice is required to master the science of driving, though I must confess that something short of that ought to have kept me clear of the tree.

This brings to my recollection a scene which occurred during the time I was quartered in that garrison, which throws some light on the manners and customs of military life half a century ago.

It so happened, as also occurred to Mr. Pickwick and his friends on another occasion, that a ball was held at the Assembly Rooms in Rochester, and a good sprinkling of officers from the barracks were present, among which I counted one. When the small hours of the morning were reached, and it was time to return home, another officer and I, each in full uniform, jumped on the boxes of two of what were then termed "dicky chaises," and raced nearly as fast as the old screws could gallop along the streets of Rochester and Chatham up to the barracks; and upon our arriving there the gates were thrown open, and we did not finish our race till we reached the officers' quarters.

It was, however, in the Australian colonies that I did most of my tandem driving, and as the roads in those new countries were often, to say the least of it, imperfectly made, and houses were few and far between, causing a journey of sixty or seventy miles in the day to be sometimes necessary, I found it a team by no means to be despised.

It was early in the year of 1840 that I landed at Hobart Town (now abbreviated to Hobart), from the good ship "Layton," of five hundred tons burden, after a voyage of nearly five months, which had brought out four hundred convicts, who were in those days sent out under a small military guard; and it was not long after finding myself on terra firma before the old craving took possession of me, nor long after that before it was gratified, as already a good foundation had been laid.

A dear old brother officer, many years dead, who had gone out with a previous guard, had had a tandem cart built; and he also supplied leader and harness, I finding wheeler and coachman, as he did not care for driving; so I think I had the best of it. However, both were satisfied, which is not always the case.

In that lovely island, then called Van Diemen's Land, but now Tasmania, there were many miles of roads as good as any to be found in England, constructed by convict labour, and admirably engineered over the hills. Indeed, the greater part of the one hundred and twenty miles between Hobart and Launceston was good enough for almost any pace, as I can vouch for from having driven the whole distance both ways.

I was not, however, allowed to remain in that delightful island for long, but was sent away with a detachment of two companies to the colony then called Swan River, but now changed to West Australia; and there we bid adieu to roads such as are generally understood by that word. All that was ever done there at that time was to cut off the trees, when they were in great numbers, about a foot from the ground; so anyone may imagine how the horses stumbled over one stump and the wheels bounded over another. In other places, where the trees were few and the bush thin, nothing was done unless it were what was called "blazing," which consisted of cutting off a piece of bark from some of the trees to indicate what was meant to be a road; but in many parts nothing at all had been done, and the traveller had nothing to show him the road except a few wheel marks, and was obliged to thread his way between the trees as best he could. Even in the settlements there was no attempt at macadam.

These were just the circumstances to show off a tandem to the best advantage and for finding out its merits, which I soon had an opportunity of doing, as an agricultural gathering was to be held at a place called York, about eighty miles from the capital, Perth, where we were quartered.

My old friend and I determined to make a start for the scene of festivity. The tandem cart, which had come with us, was looked over, and the harness rubbed up; but the difficulty was how to get horsed, as we had none of our own at that time. However, without very much trouble we engaged two of some sort, though one of them turned out to be as much plague as profit, as the sequel will show. He was in the lead, and for a good while we were quite unable to make him budge an inch in the right direction. At last we saddled him, and my companion mounting, armed with a good stick, began to lay about him so vigorously that the brute made off fast enough; but his rider was so intent on keeping him moving that he quite forgot to look what direction he was going in, and led the way off the road into the bush, though, indeed, there was little difference between them. I was almost falling off my box from laughter, much less was I able to make myself heard to recall him into the road. At last, however, the direction was changed and the road regained, but I don't think I have ever laughed so much before or since, so ridiculous was the scene.

Well, we managed to get as far as the first settlement on the road, about ten miles, where a good many others, all riding, had collected from different parts, and were bound to the same destination; and here we met with a Good Samaritan indeed, in the shape of a friend who had settled in the colony, and was riding a very nice quiet mare, which he most kindly exchanged with us for our leader. The only drawback to this arrangement was that she was followed by a foal at her heels, which every now and then would pass between the leader and wheeler, and it was as much as I could do to avoid injuring it.

We travelled pretty comfortably, however, in this manner for a good many miles till it became dark, when it was necessary to light the lamps, as there remained some miles to be covered before arriving at the end of the day's journey; the delay at starting having thrown us behind time.

If it was difficult to thread the way among the stumps and avoid running over the foal in the daylight, I leave the reader to judge what it was after dark; sufficient to say that we jumped and bumped first over one stump and then over another, the horses continually blundering over them as well. However, all's well that ends well, and we reached the journey's end at last for that day. A solitary hostelry it was in the midst of the bush, miles distant from any other habitation, generally little used, but on the present occasion full to overflowing. As we approached the house in the dark, voices as of quarrelling reached our ears, for it so happened that a certain naval officer, who was not usually given to falling out, but who, like many others of his craft, was safer "aloft" than on a horse's back, had just ridden up at a sharp pace to the house, and the landlord, appearing at the door with a light at the same moment, made the horse stop short, which caused the rider to be deposited on the ground, and he, thinking it had been done intentionally, was very wrathful; mine host, also becoming heated, made use of the words that had caught my ears as I drove up, which were, "If the gentleman wants a game of fives, I am his man." After a few minutes, however, peacemakers appeared upon the scene, explanations took place, and harmony was restored.

The house was so crowded that none but those who had taken the precaution to bespeak beds beforehand could get them, and, of those, I will not venture to say how many slept in the same one. The rest of us had to deposit our carcases where we could, and I got possession of a sofa, in what I suppose must be called the coffee-room, where I lay down and went to sleep, but only for a very short time, as the bugs, the most voracious I ever met with, nearly pulled me off it. I then tried the floor, but with, if possible, worse results, so, like the man in the song of the "Cork Leg," "I soon got up and was off again."

By this time I had had enough of the inside of the house, and therefore betook myself out of it, where I found some natives in their small tents made of bark, and gathering some wood and getting a light from them, I soon had a fire, and lying down by it, with the driving cushion for a pillow, passed the rest of the night in peace and comfort. Probably by this time a railway has been constructed through this country, and for all I know a grand company hotel may have taken the place of the old "Half-way House" in the bush.

These said natives always went about in those days, and probably do now--though perhaps civilization and Bryant and May may have rendered it unnecessary--well provided with a light; and it was the usual thing, when meeting them in the bush, to see one or two women carrying what was termed a fire stick, which consisted of two pieces of bark placed together, and of such a nature that it kept alight for a considerable length of time; nor, indeed, to anyone who had witnessed the labour it was to them to strike a light in their primitive fashion, would this carefulness of the household fire excite any wonder. I will endeavour to explain how they did it.

As was my frequent custom, I was passing a few days in the bush, hunting kangaroos, and the first evening upon arriving at our camping ground, we told the native, who was accompanying us as guide, that he must strike a light, but he replied, "No, white fellow make fire." We said, "Black fellow have no fire to-night if he no make it;" and after a good deal of persuasion he was prevailed upon to set to work, which he did in the following manner:--

First, he cut a sort of reed which grew upon a shrub, which went by the name of the black boy, bringing one end to a point. He then got a flat piece of stick, about a foot in length, in the middle of which he made a small hole, just large enough to hold the pointed end of the reed. Then after heaping a small quantity of the dryest old leaves he could find upon the flat stick, he inserted the point of the reed into the hole in it in an upright position, then holding the stick firm by sitting down and putting his feet upon it, he commenced to rub the reed backwards and forwards between his hands so energetically that in the space of about ten minutes or less, some smoke made its appearance, which was very soon followed by fire. It was certainly an ingenious way of striking a light, but decidedly laborious, and very primitive even in comparison with the old tinder-box and matches, which I can recollect as the only means the _civilized_ world had of obtaining a light.

Like other savages living in fine climates, where food could be obtained with little labour, they were naturally indolent, of which I had an amusing instance on one occasion.

I was walking one very hot summer clay along what, by courtesy, was called a street in Perth, which--though laid out with the view of being at some future time, and now probably is, a wide and handsome thoroughfare--consisted at that time of deep sand, when, from a native sitting basking in the sunshine on the opposite side, I was accosted in a plaintive tone with the words, "White fellow, money give it 'em." I pulled some small coin out of my pocket, and held it out in my hand for him to fetch, but instead of exerting himself to get up, he said, "Oh, white fellow bring it 'em." After this length of time I cannot charge my memory with what the result was, but suppose he had to fetch it.

It is much to the credit of the settlers in this colony that these children of nature had, at that time, and I dare say it is the same now, been always kindly treated, and so far from the advent of the white man being the signal for the diminution of the dusky one, the Aborigines, in some parts of the colony at the time I am speaking of, were actually increasing in numbers. Especially was this the case with the tribe which lived round Perth, and it was accounted for in this way.

They had a rough and ready way of maintaining the balance of power among themselves, which was that upon the death of a man in one tribe, one of his relations speared one belonging to some other adjoining tribe to keep the balance even, and as what was called the Perth tribe was supposed to be under the protection of the whites, they were left pretty much unmolested in this way.

Though averse to anything like labour, some of them made fairly good shepherds, but the same man was not allowed by his tribe to work continuously. I heard of a case in which one man regularly served a settler in the capacity of shepherd for six months in the year; that is to say, he worked for three months, after which he went away for the same length of time, sending another to fill his place; at the expiration of which time he returned to his charge for another three months. If he had taken service permanently, his tribe would have speared him, so jealous were they of their liberty, and, like many others better instructed, rejecting the good things within their reach.

I have made a long digression, which I hope has not wearied the reader, and it is time to return to the solitary hostelry in the bush, which was the only one at that time where any accommodation could be obtained for the whole journey between Perth and York.

At an early hour of the morning all the guests at the "Half-way House" were astir, comparing notes of their nocturnal experiences, and getting breakfast; and when in due time a start was effected, there was a goodly cavalcade, we two being the only ones on wheels. Riding is the universal mode of traversing the bush.

At the "Half-way House" we had met with the man from whom we had hired our horses, and he changed with us, giving us the one he was riding, so that we were enabled to return the mare and foal to our kind benefactor, and we reached our destination the same day without any further adventures.

We had been kindly asked to stay at the house of a settler close to the settlement for two or three days, and he received us with that true and genuine hospitality which so universally distinguished the residents in all parts of Australia, and nowhere more than in the colony I am now writing about. Of course, the accommodation they could offer was not particularly commodious, but the welcome was warm, and nothing that could be obtained, and no trouble that could be taken, were considered too much to make the guests comfortable.

Though accommodation was always made in the house for the guests, there were sometimes no stables, and the horses were obliged to be tethered in the bush near the house, and, consequently, no one ever thought of going from home without having a tether rope coiled round his horse's neck. Of course, in so sparsely populated a district, houses were few and far between, and, consequently, there was but little society, though a matter of twenty miles or so would not deter one resident from visiting another; and as news was scarce in these backwoods, anyone coming from the more accessible parts, and therefore a bearer of news, especially if it emanated from the "Old Country," was very acceptable.

As I remarked before, however, occasionally, at the less busy times of the year, one settler would ride over to pay a visit to a neighbour fifteen or twenty miles distant, and having arrived at his destination, after removing the saddle and bridle, and tethering his horse, would offer himself at the house, where he was certain of finding a hearty welcome.

There was a story told of one having done this who, after enjoying himself till well on in the night, and having been rather powerfully refreshed, thinking it time to return home, replaced the saddle and bridle upon his horse, but forgot all about the tether rope, and, consequently, continued riding round and round in a circle, whilst he most complacently thought he was pursuing his homeward journey.

After partaking of our good friend's hospitality for two or three days, we retraced our steps to Perth, without anything occurring worthy of note; but fully convinced, by experience, of the peculiar adaptability of tandem for travelling over bush roads. It would hardly be possible to use a four-wheel carriage under such circumstances.

In those out-of-the-way places people cannot be very particular, and are obliged to improvise things as best they can. On one occasion, when visiting a friend in the bush, I came across two others, who were driving an unusual team. I can only designate it as an "inverted pick-axe." It consisted of a horse, as usual, in the shafts of a dog-cart, with two abreast in front of him. Upon remarking on the peculiarity of the turn-out, and asking how it answered, I was told that the team was not very handy. The cause of this did not require much time to discover, for there were no coupling reins to the leaders, who were only kept together, like G O horses in a plough, by a single strap. With the help of some strong string I rigged out coupling reins, and they went on their way rejoicing.

The danger commonly alleged against tandem is that the leader can turn round and face you. I never had this happen to me, but fancy it is little to be dreaded if the coachman will not loose his thong, but keep it caught up ready to administer a good dose of double thong over the horse's face as soon as he comes within reach. If worst comes to worst, however, a two-wheeled conveyance is able to turn on its own ground, and follow the horses, even if it is in the wrong direction.