E-text prepared by Janet Kegg
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Transcriber's Note:
[~ao] as in Serr[~ao] depicts a single tilde extendingover both letters ("a" and "o").
PIONEERS IN
AUSTRALASIA
By SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
BY ALEC BALL
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW BOMBAY
Printed and bound in Great Britain
PREFACE
I have been asked to write a series of works whichshould deal with "real adventures", in parts of theworld either wild and uncontrolled by any civilizedgovernment, or at any rate regions full of dangers,of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring andheroism of white men (and sometimes of whitewomen) stood out clearly against backgrounds ofunfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations,savage tribes, dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds.These books would again and again illustrate thefirst coming of the white race into regions inhabitedby people of a different type, with brown, black, oryellow skins; how the European was received, andhow he treated these races of the soil which graduallycame under his rule owing to his superiorknowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion.The books were to tell the plain truth,even if here and there they showed the white manto have behaved badly, or if they revealed the factthat the American Indian, the Negro, the Malay,the black Australian was sometimes cruel andtreacherous.
A request thus framed was almost equivalent[6]to asking me to write stories of those pioneerswho founded the British Empire; in any case, thevolumes of this series do relate the adventures ofthose who created the greater part of the BritishDominions beyond the Seas, by their perilous explorationsof unknown lands and waters. In manyinstances the travellers were all unconscious oftheir destinies, of the results which would arisefrom their actions. In some cases they wouldhave bitterly railed at Fate had they known thatthe result of their splendid efforts was to be theenlargement of an empire under the British flag.Perhaps if they could know by now that we arestriving under that flag to be just and generous toall types of men, and not to use our empire solelyfor the benefit of English-speaking men and women,the French who founded the Canadian nation, theGermans and Dutch who helped to create BritishAfrica, Malaysia, and Australia, the Spaniards whopreceded us in the West Indies and in New Guinea,and the Portuguese in West, Central, and EastAfrica, in Newfoundland, Ceylon, and Malaysia,might—if they have any consciousness or care forthings in this world—be not so sorry after all thatwe are reaping where they sowed.
It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the taleof these early days in the British Dominions beyondthe Seas, without describing here and there theadventures of men of enterprise and daring whowere not of our own nationality. The majority,nevertheless, were of British stock; that is to say,they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps[7]here a