ON THE WATCH TOWER.

Evening Star, Issue 15137, 19 March 1913, Page 2

ON THE WATCH TOWER.

[By AaiEL.] A fortnight ago I said that Mrs Wells had called the Territorials "kharki cowards who were afraid of being seen," and had predicted that the girls would boycott kharki and bestow a .n their wealth of approval on the anti-defence fellows. I have since discovered that it was not .Mrs Wells who made these remarks, and that she is in nowise responsible for them. I therefore humbly apologise to that ladv, and retract all that I said on the subject, as far as it relates to her. To have done a lady wrong pains me deeply, and if my notes this week seem feeble, "please put it down to this remorse of soul, and to the mistrust engendered in mvself bv the discovery of my own fallibility. *******

Canberra, is the undistinguished name of the capital of Australia. What's in a name? Well, in this one there is nothing whatever. It is neither historical nor literary, much less is it euphonious. If it has any meaning, it is in one of the poorest lingos m the world, that nobody will ever take ths trouble to understand. The only virtue that I see j n it j s that it is not one of the others that were suggested. However, it is something to start with a clean slate and to be perfectly neutral. There I 8 "°l, hl t0 ]ivQ Tip'to. and no standard to fall below. Canberra will be just what its people make, it, London, taken as a word, is to ua merely two syllables, but it* history and its achievements make it one_ of the grand names of the world. Pans and Berlin, New York and Chicago, UJcutta and Pekin are in the same position. As mere words they convey to us no meaning, but as cities, as great centres of human life and interest, they confront us at every turn. May not the time come when Canberra will be a sound to arrest attention, and not feel out of place "in poetry? It may; but that is a far cry. Meantime, for a few centuries it will be Cranberry, and Can Borough, and Can Borrow, and Can't Borrow, and Tin Can Borough, and all other sorts of cans, and if it escapes " Tin Pot Borough " it will be lucky. ******* Nothing is more certain that in the near future the new capital will be called Camborough, for the "n" will become"m" before "b," and "berra," will inevitably be attracted into "borough." I foresee that when Camborough has become a name to conjure by the etymologists will scout the idea that it was derived from the lingo of a vanished "breed without the law," and will write learned treatises on prophetic intention of their ancestors in nam- ] n g the city. Dr Sinik will contend that "Cam," the name of many rivers in the old time, meant crooked, and will cite the ancient classic Bacoft, formerly known as Shakespeare (Cor. 111., i.) : Men. Agrippa: This is clean cam. Brutus r Merely awry. Hence, it is evident that our witty ancestors called the headquarters of their politics the "Crooked Borough." Dr Dryasdust will reply that ancient documents in the old barbarous spelling give the first syllable as Can. An ancient writer, one Carlyle, has said that "can" was the 6ame word as "king.-" The king being in the ancient system the supremo mler— the man who can. But from all he could ascertain of the views, Messrs Fislier and O'Maily, whose names excavators had recently discovered on the foundation stones, no reference to the king was intended by them. There was also "can" used for "gan" or " began," as in the poems of one Spenser: He can let drive at him with all his power. If only the contemporary 'Hansard' had afforded an example of thi6 use of the word, he would have been certain that after the stones were laid the priestess had cried "Can Borough"—the city is begun. He would leave the suggestion to the learning of the future. Tnere is also " can," a metal vessel. Old Spenser, again, ha* " boosing can," and Bacon-Shakespeare says: "I hate it as an unfilled can." The primitive Australians were much addicted to cans—milk cans, wine cans, billy cans, and canteens. There was much, wine consumed at the stone-laying, but owing to the temperance vote he did not think they meant to call it the Booring Can city. The solution that most took his fancy was that " can" also meant to know—" Gan you these tongues perfectly?" The people of that age thought they knew everything, and especially the party then in power. He had little doubt that they meant to "all their capital the Knowing Borough. For this learned treatise Dr Drvasdust was offered the Chair 01 Etymology in the Never Never University. *******

Professor Baldwin Spencer is the leading authority in the World on the blacks of Northern and Central Australia. He has got inside of the mind of the blacks, and secured a view and an understanding of their rites and mysteries as no other man has ever done. He saw his opportunity and took it. There was a field of investigation that had scarcely been touched^—a difficult one, and somewhat repellant, no doubt. It involved his becoming a black for a time, but the reward was groat and his scientific immortality secure if he succeeded. He did succeed. All honor to him. If someone had had the nous to do the like for the Tasmanians before they perished from the earth, the science of anthropology would have been very much richer than it is to-day. I believe the boomerang is peculiar to the Australians, and is about the one idea they lia.ve contributed to the sum of human science. The womera', or the throwing stick, they had in common with other tribes all over the earth. The "bull roarer" which the professor exhibited is not peculiar to Australia, but was known to many races. Aus* tralian boys use it as a- substitute for the humming top, but they probably derived the idea, from the natives. In respect to the Northern Territory, I fear the professor will not be able to persuade whites to go_ there, much less to stay. There is something insidious about the effect of climate that a brief residence in it does not discover. ******* Speaking of climate "reminds me that the climate of St. Helena has been blamed for the disease and death of Napoleon, and that the charge is likely to lie—l mean to be sustained. There was party feeling among the doctors who ?aw the "Emperor. O'Meara and Antommarchi said the climate was killing him, while the Englishmen— Army and Navy men with no pa.rtciular qualification—said there was nothing the matter, and that his illness was " diplomatic." This controversy has Taged ever since, and has received its most important contributions within the last few months. Dr Chaplin, a distinguished F.R.C.P. and M.D. of Cambridge, has gone over the Hudson Lowe papers in the British Museum, for the purpose of judging all the reports and symptoms in the light of modern knowledge. His conclusion is that Napoleon was suffering throughout his illness of three years and seven months from a chronic ulcer of the stomach, " from the edges of which a cancer developed about seven or eight months before his death." Strange to say, Dr Chaplin's book was speedily followed by a lecture ('British Medical Journal,' January 11, 1913) practically on the same subject by A. Keith, M.D., F.R.C.S., Conservator o'f the R.C.S Museum, Hunterian Professor, and the rest.It appears that Antommarchi was not much good as a physician, but one of the best men at a post mortem then alive. He preserved certain portions 6f Napoleon's liver and gave them to O'Meara, wh& passed them to Sir Astley Cooper, who placed them m the B.C.S. Museum in 1823. There they rested beside similar fragments —William TV", and Lord Liverpool (the Premier who exiled Napoleon)—until Dr Keith discovered them the other day and put them under the microscope! What did he discover? Why, that Napoleon did die of an inflammation of the liver induced by the climate—an inflammation very common in St. Helena at the time ! Dr Keith does not deny the cancer, but he is satisfied that it was not the cause of death, and would not have been so for a year or two. So far, then, O'Meara and Antommarchi are on top, and we British, who undertook to

be gaolers for Europe, lie under the imputation of having hastened the august prisoner's end by our political bias. I supposa w© may console ourselves as Macbeth did over his wife; " She should have died hereafter!"

"Your free tuition in your newlyfangled higher shrines of indifference may go to perdition so far as Catholics are concerned." Such is the dignified deliverance of Archbishop Kelly, or O'Malley— I forget which—as reported by cable from Sydney. Now. why this reckless waste of two syllables? "if he means "go to Hell," why not say it. The shorter word has some theological and ecclesiastical standing, and why should not ecclesiastics keep it in countenance? Is "Hell" becoming vulgar with Catholics, too? If so, that would at once account for His Grace's avoidance of it. Familiar he may.be, but by no means vulgar. When, however, tho word becomes vulgar, it is because th« bottom is falling out of the thing itself—pardon me; lam in Irish company; the bottom cannot well fall out of the thing itself, seeing it has no bottom—but, there, you know what I mean. _ A truce to theology, though. Should the Archbishop ever again require a euphemism, an oratio obliqua, for the place in question, I would suggest this " illi^int" extract from a religious journal in difficulties; Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath, said: " I'll pay before I got to bed That bill I owe the printer"? If such there be, go, mark him well, For him no minstrel raptures swell, And when he dies he'll go*to—well, The place that has no winter. ******** Among my valued books is a good copy of .the first edition |of 'Livingstone's Travels' (1857). In looking through, it again I remember the pictures as the delight and wonder of my childhood. There is the one where he is in the grip of the lion, with a broken arm and a chawed shoulder, but is feeling neither pain nor fear, and is wondering whether a monse in the grip of a- cat is as comfortable, Then there are the avalanche of wild animals being driven into tho great pit ot the end of the "hopo," the buffalo cow defending her calf against a lion, and the native women with their nets of ostrich egg shells full of water. It is a great book, full of stirring incident and of insight into the minds and hearts of the native people. Its maps contain many blanks that ha,ve been filled up since. I cannot profess to be a draughtsman, but I brought home a few rough diagram sketches,' and from such pre-camera materials some of his illustrations were made by a more experienced artist." It is only 55 years since this book was published, and yet it belongs to a world of art, of geography, of political history, and of locomotion that has passed away for ever. In this book, by the by, we get a kind of prehistoric peep at the gentle Boer before any political animus arO Se to .distort the vision of the observer. ******* * As showing the acuteness of the native mmd and Livingstone's unbigoted appreciation of its humor, I give the gist of" a discussion between himself and a rain doctor: w Medical Doctor*: Hail, friend! Why you have every medicine in the country here. J Rain Doctor: And so I ought. The whole country needs the rain I am making. M.D.: I think that God alone can make rain. R.D. : So do I, and this is the way I ask him. M.D.: But he told us to pray, not to offer medicines. R.D.: Truly! But he told us differently. He made black men first, and did not love them; then he made white men, and gave them guns and powder and horses and watrgons that we knew nothing about. To us he gave only these medicines to make rain. We don't despise your many things; why shcu'd you despise our Ono thing? : M.D. : I don't despise your medicine. I only think it can't make rain. R.D.: 1 hat's the way people talk who don't understand. OUR forefathers always made rain this way. You can send away fbr your corn. You can irrigate your gardens, and do without rain, but, we must have rain for the pastures. M.D. : True, you must have rain, but can your medicines charm the clouds? Don't you often fail? R.D.: I use my medicines as you do yours. We are both doctors. You give a dose to a patient, and sometimes God cures him by it, and you take the credit. Sometimes the patient dies, but you dOn't give up your medicine for that. Sometimes God gives rain for my medicines, and I take the credit; sometimes no rain comes, but I don't give up medicines. M.D. : But I don't give medicines to clouds that are far off. You wait and see if rain won't come without your efforts. R.D.: Well, till this morning I always thought that white men were wise. Who ever heard of making trial of starvation? M.D.: Now, could you m.ike it rain in one place and not in" another? R.D. : I wouldn't think of trying I like to ree the whole country green, and the women clapping their hands and giving me their ornaments for thankfulness. M.D. : I think you deceive both yourself and them. R.D. : Well, them, there is a pair of us!