At the end of another drive I found myself in France listening to the soft speech of the Côte d’Or and drinking the wine of the country which might have been sent that day by telegraph. A few miles farther on we were in Ireland. I am not prepared to say that the mountain dew was actually distilled on Irish hillsides, but it was very like the original brew, and the brogue was as rich and pure as any that you would hear between Dublin and Dingle Bay.
Men and women of many nationalities were there, founding their own fortunes and helping to found those of an Empire of To-morrow, but everywhere you heard the English speech, and recognised the self-restraint and the quiet orderly manners of the Anglo-Saxon, for though these colonists had come from many lands and had known many different governments they had all come under the influence of that magical power which the Anglo-Saxon alone seems to possess, the power of making all men his fellow-citizens and friends if he can once get them on his own land and under his own flag. In Europe these people would have been enemies, actual or potential; in their own colonies they would have been discontented and home-sick, longing only for the day of their return with a trifling competence; here they were just neighbours working out their destinies side by side on a soil that was common to all, and under a rule which is perhaps the most perfect that the wit of man has yet devised for the welding together of conflicting human interests. If I could only have brought my good friend the Director of the Administration of New Caledonia to Seppeltsfield, and taken him for a six days’ driving tour through that cosmopolitan collection of townships, I think he would have understood more completely than he did what I meant when I said to him on the verandah of his house in Noumea the day before I sailed:
“The Latin nations have colonies, but they have not yet learnt how to colonise.”
[Illustration: A Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, South Australia.]
I left South Australia with a regret that was fully equalled by the pleasure with which I had taken leave of Noumea, and that is saying a good deal. From Port Adelaide we trundled round the coast in an exaggerated edition of the old steam-roller that had brought us across the Pacific. The only interesting event on the six days’ passage was a scare which the Accidental American innocently raised by developing a sore throat and a little swelling of the glands of the neck. Of course the rumour that he had brought the plague from Sydney went like wildfire through the ship, and I, as his nurse, was looked upon with undisguised suspicion. When I brought him up for a stroll on deck just before we reached Albany our fellow-passengers very kindly gave us half the deck to ourselves. I had tried to explain that the period of incubation was twelve days at the outside, and that hence, as we were nearly a month out from Sydney, we could no more have brought the plague from Port Jackson than we could have done from San Francisco; but it was no good, and when the sanitary officers came on board at Freemantle with the news that the dreaded visitor had got there before us, I think nine-tenths of the passengers would have been well content to see us walked off to quarantine.