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[Illustration: MAGELLAN VISITING THE KING OF SEBU]


PIONEERS IN AUSTRALASIA

by

SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
G.C.M.G., K.C.B.

With Eight  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 which should deal
with "real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and
uncontrolled by any civilized government, or at any rate regions
full of dangers, of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring
and heroism of white men (and sometimes of white women) stood out
clearly against backgrounds of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with
strange nations, savage tribes, dangerous beasts, or wonderful
birds. These books would again and again illustrate the first coming
of the white race into regions inhabited by people of a different
type, with brown, black, or yellow skins; how the European was
received, and how he treated these races of the soil which gradually
came under his rule owing to his superior knowledge, weapons,
wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to tell the plain
truth, even if here and there they showed the white man to have
behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
Indian, the <DW64>, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes
cruel and treacherous.

A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any
case, the volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those
who created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the
Seas, by their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters.
In many instances the travellers were all unconscious of their
destinies, of the results which would arise from their actions. In
some cases they would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known
that the result of their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement
of an empire under the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by
now that we are striving under that flag to be just and generous to
all types of men, and not to use our empire solely for the benefit
of English-speaking men and women, the French who founded the
Canadian nation, the Germans and Dutch who helped to create British
Africa, Malaysia, and Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in
the West Indies and in New Guinea, and the Portuguese in West,
Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland, Ceylon, and Malaysia,
might--if they have any consciousness or care for things in this
world--be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
sowed.

It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing
here and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who
were not of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were
of British stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots,
Irish, perhaps here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or
Nova Scotians, Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were
good fellows, a few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming
features. Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great
discoveries which will for ever preserve their names from perishing;
occasionally they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say,
to change the history of the world by their revelations of new
peoples, new lands, new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold
mines. Here and there is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone,
or Gordon, dying for the cause of a race not his own. And others
again are mere boys, whose adventures come to them because they are
adventurous, and whose feats of arms, escapes, perils, and successes
are quite as wonderful as those attributed to the juvenile heroes of
Marryat, Stevenson, and the author of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.

I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers
some idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands
through which these pioneers passed on their great and small
purposes; as well as of the people, native to the soil, with whom
they came in contact. And in treating of these