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"What shall be my
future—where pitch my tent and start in life?" These were the absorbing
questions which now occupied my mind as the time drew near when I should be
dubbed M.D. and hold a legitimate title to exercise "my prentice hand" in
the curing or killing, as the case may be, of my trusting or mistrusting, as
the case might be, fellow-creatures.
My enterprising mother saw,
and nobly joined me in saying, there was no use in my remaining at home. The
old gentleman did not take at all kindly to that idea, he would have been
quite content to have seen the second brass plate with the "Junior" on the
door. Indeed, my mother and I had to canvass privately the friends through
whose good offices there was a prospect of procuring a commission in the
East India Company's service.
I had determineded to enter
upon that field of enterprise.
I ought in an earlier page to
have mentioned as a trait of my boyhood's character a deeply-rooted love of
travel. When a mere boy I had walked from the east to the west of Scotland
to spend my holidays at my grandmother's, and many were the pedestrian
excursions I had made through Scotland with my fishing-rod and basket, the
latter not to carry fish but to serve as a knapsack. I well remember the one
prominent and prevailing desire of my heart was, that some day I should see
the world. I believe it was this feeling which was the moving spirit in
determining me to have no second brass plate underneath my father's. I
believe it was this feeling that decided me to try for the "Company's
service." And I well know the book that first kindled this deep desire: it
was Mungo Park's Travels in Egypt, and it was the embers still slumbering
that fired me to look beyond my own home for my future career.
The description of Egypt's
vast monuments and her underground tombs made such a lasting impression on
my boyish imagination, that the desire to travel in that land never faded
away.
Ah me! it is now long, long
ago since I gratified that desire of boyhood's days, and the best part of
manhood's too have passed away. The Nile, far beyond where Belzoni's tomb
lies hidden, has been ascended, but the ruling passion is ever still strong
upon me. Other things "might cloy the appetites they feed," but to me
travelling "made hungry where most it satisfied."
But there is a clear face
opposite me now which caused the rolling stone to be at rest and gather
moss, which created new feelings and new ties, and there are two other dear
wee faces for whom I write these memoirs, proclaiming that they are my
little anchors dropped in the stream of life to hold me back so that I
cannot now go floating away hither and thither over the world to look at it.
But I digress. Let me go back
to the time of my cold attic studies.
The end of winter still found
me struggling hard to narrow the meshes of my sieve-like memory and hold in
time quantum sufficent to face my examiners, but with the spring came
a new light as to my future unlooked-for prospects opened up, and it became
a question whether I should dare this new path or continue in the beaten
track I had chosen. I had no idea, however, of letting one rope go before
getting hold of another, so I carried my midnight labours to a successful
issue, and duly became an M.D. and surgeon of The Edinburgh Schools of
Medicine.
And now rose the question,
was I to follow the profession I had chosen, or "throw physic to the dogs?"
The new path which had opened
up was one in the great new world—not the Western, but the Great South Land
of Australia.
Was I to be, or not to be, a
medical officer in the Company's service, and risk the climate of India, or
become a squatter in the plains of Australia, and make a fabulous fortune by
"growing wool?" This expression, by the way, has grown up since those days
when we made use of the more homely term of "keeping sheep." I am now
writing of the years 1838-9, when the first great excitement prevailed with
regard to Australia, and when the first great stream of emigration set out
towards that colony.
The return of some
connections of my family, who, had been early settlers there, soon turned
the scale, as far as I was concerned, in favour of my descending from the
"high estate" of M.D. to shepherd.
True, if I failed in that
walk in life I could still fall back upon my profession: But my being an M.D.
could do the sheep no possible harm, while I looked after them, which
possibly I might shoot with two strings to my bow, and be a bush doctor as
well. My late midnight studies might come in handy, with regard to the
sheep, if they were overtaken with catarrh or such-like, and there was
myself just smitten with the sheep and Australia fever, and no doctor was
going to cure me of it.
At last my dear cautious
father got bitten with the mania for Australia, and my mother, improving the
occasion, ended by talking him over to the new opening for the "only son."
The old gentleman was only too glad to get rid of the East India Company's
service, having a dread that the climate might bring his only son to an
untimely end! So he dropped into the excitement of the day—"the making a
fortune in Australia."
As for my darling old mother,
I knew she had visions of transplanting the whole family to the banks of
some beautiful river in the far-off land, and of all of us ending our days
there in some hitherto unaccomplished patriarchal manner. The dear old lady
little thought that the rivers of that land sometimes dry up. and cease to
flow for a year or two at a time, or that I should stand on the banks of one
within a year of our discussing "the making a fortune in the Antipodes," and
look down on an immense river-bed—all that was to be seen of the river being
a little green pool every two or three miles.
But I am describing the
future long before I have left my fatherland, so I had better make my start
therefrom first.
And had I not much to learn
before I left? Truly yes. My life hitherto had been purely a college one. I
had, it is true, generally passed my summer vacations with relations in the
country, where I had seen farming operations going on, in which I had helped
in a very small way. I could load a cart with sheaves of corn, and take it
to the stockyard. I could even build the stack—all save the top! I had seen
bulls, and cows, and steers, and really knew one from the other quite well;
but when I heard my country friends from Australia talking about ewes and
maiden ewes, and wethers and hoggets, I felt I was not "up in sheep" as an
intending shepherd ought to be, and that wise adage of ne sutor ultra
crepidam, would keep rising up before me n a way that forced home the
necessity of being up and doing.
Well, I was up and doing all
sorts of things, for we had decided that I was to be a squatter, and I laid
my plans accordingly, and made a rush at the acquisition of some knowledge
of the various trades which I hoped would serve me in good stead in my
future life at the Antipodes. When my eight o'clock in the morning class at
college ended with the winter session I exchanged the college for the
carpenter's shop, and I used to commence there at seven.
My studies now were a strange
mixture, as it was quite a question whether my professional or my trade
knowledge was going to serve me best in afterlife. Of course I took kindly
to the carpenter's shop, for I had always displayed a strong mechanical
bent, and was never happier than when at work at some carpentry or other. As
my college education came to an end so did my apprenticeship at the
carpenter's shop, but at the end of the spring session I had served three
months at it, and had produced a huge splendidly dovetailed tool-chest,
which was to carry an ample supply of tools for Antipodean use. It was
carpentering at early morn, then a turn at college, then a rush between
lectures to the cattle-market, and to where the cattle were slaughtered, or
how else could I have known whether sheep were skinned and pigs scalded, or
vice versa?—a most necessary knowledge when I had made up my mind to go to
the uttermost parts of the earth, and very likely might have to do
everything myself, or superintend others who knew no better! Then one
required to know how to mend a saddle-girth, and to be able to do that one
required to know how to put a bristle on the thread that had to be used. I
found it so much more easy to remember all these things that I saw, than to
remember the minute anatomy of the eye which saw them, which I had to
remember by the aid of memory alone, that I found my day studies much more
simple than my night ones. But they all came to a conclusion in early
summer. I had passed my examinations, and written a wonderful thesis (lying
unappreciated in the archives of the University to this very day), proving
how the tongue was not the organ of taste, thus complying with the last
requirement before going through the ceremony of being "dubbed." But as this
dubbing of neophytes was forbidden unless they were of the age of
one-and-twenty, and as I had not as yet attained that ripe age of green
manhood at the time of the last dubbing, and should not be forthcoming when
the next one came off, the Senatus Acadeimeus had to make a special case of
it, and allow me to be dubbed by proxy, keeping back my parchment
certificate of M.D. until after said dubbing ceremony, which came off in
August, had been gone through; But it was now only June. The time had come,
however, that was to witness my departure from the parental roof. The "only
son" bidding it farewell, starting on pilgrimage in life. The inheritance to
which he was succeeding was simply that which he could carve out for himself
in the race for life, the patrimony in hand summed up in his education of
M.D. and a five-hundred-pound note. My worthy father had come to believe so
completely ill keeping sheep" in Australia that he had raised a thousand
pounds, giving me one-half, the other to be invested by me on his account.
How call I tell all that I
felt in leaving the home of my youth before starting oil long voyage—a home
in which we had been so united, where no discordant element of
"incompatibility" had ever entered to mar the family happiness? And I was
parting from a sister to whom I was attached by all affection as deep as
that by which it was returned. Yes, if ever there was a union of two beings
who were as one ill love for each other—in sympathy of ideas and
feelings—who had no desire or wish unless shared ill the other—that union
was ours.
We also had our dreams of a
home by a beautiful river ill great far-away land; we had often together
created the spot and built the home that was to unite us once more; we had
wandered with each other along the banks of that river and through shady,
luxuriant groves.
Ah! never more were we to
wander together— our first parting was our last. It was not to be a new home
in the New World nor our old home in our "ain kintrie" that was ever to
unite us again. |
