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COLONIAL DISCOURSES
Series One: Women, Travel & Empire, 1660-1914
Part 1: Early travel accounts by women, and women's experiences in India, Africa, Australasia and Canada
EXTRACTS & ILLUSTRATIONS
The following pages show a
selection of extracts from the material selected for Colonial
Discourses, Series One: Part 1.
Extracts from Voyage to Russia (1739)
- Elizabeth Justice
Reel 1 - Early Travel Accounts by Women
"The Ruffians are all born
Slaves ; and are often bought, and fold : But none of them can be
carry’d out of the Country. There are of all Prices. I was
told, That there was one Lady, who had Eight Hundred of thefe
Slaves. She was looked upon as the greateft Fortune in Ruffia
.
They have Ducats, which are Pieces of Gold.
They go for Two Rubles, and Ten Copeaks ; which there would be
equal to Half a Guinea. But in England I got only Nine
Shillings for them. It is very good Gold. Their Silver is very
indifferent ...
As I have given you a Defcription of their
Winter, which is extreamly cold ; I shall alfo of their Summer,
which continues Four Months. Viz. MAY, JUNE, JULY and
AUGUST : But June, and July, are the moft feverely
hot. In thefe Two Months, they are very much troubled with what
they call Muskettoes, or named Gnats by us in England ; and when you are bit by them, your Flefh will be in Bumps ;
which will be inflam’d, and itch violently. The Method of
the People there generally take to cure it, is, To rub the Part
affected with Brandy ; but that inflamed me the more. I ufed four
Milk ; and that I found better.
The Diverfion in Summer is going upon the
Water in Barges ; and, having Mufick with them ...
Another Diverfion is going to see the Ships
launched ; which, indeed, is very enteraining ; the Emprefs being
always there. Agaift that Time, there is a convenient Place,
erected for Her Majefty and Nobility, which is covered with
Scarlet, to fee the Ship launch’d ; and there is a Collation
of Sweetmeats ; when alfo it is ufual to drink Succefs to the
Ship’s good going off ... "
An extract and illustration from India (1905) -
Illustrations by M Menpes. Text by F A Steel
Reel 10 - India
"How some of the finer gold tissues
with their raised flowers and intricate diaperings are made on
the rude looms with bits of bamboo or grass for shuttles is a
mystery. Once again, time and patience and long-inherited manual
skill come to take the place of brain. Such an expenditure of
pure labour would, with the British workman, who requires four
shillings a day at least for beef and bread, place the product
beyond the pale of any one’s purse, but with one who is
content - ay! better content than his European neighbour - to
work on half that sum a week, the production is possible - nay,
pleasurable ; since work that is not hurried work is great gain
to humanity. There is another softener of hard labour in India
which does not exist in England, and that is the dignity of being
recognised as a "great artificer." To be pointed out as
one possessed of unusual skill, as the holder of secret recipes,
as the inheritor of acquired adaptations - or adaptability, it
matters little which, - all this is also great gain. To see the
smirk on the face of some old Mahommedan zumlogi as he,
and his fathers, and his little loom are introduced to you by an
admiring populace as the best gold-tissue producers of which the
town boasts, is to learn that man does not live by bread alone -
still less by beef!"
An extract from Two Dianas in Somaliland, the record of a
shooting trip (1908) - Agnes Herbert
Reel 21 - Africa
"We had known before we started that
Somaliland is no longer the old time sportman’s paradise.
The shikar obtainable is not what it was, and every year lessens
the chances. The truth is the country is fairly shot out.
Fifteen years ago the most excellent
shooting was to be had all over ; now, unless one penetrates
right into the interior where a certain amount of danger from
warlike tribes must be looked for, there is not much hope of a
truly great and representative bag. The reserving of the Hargeisa
and Mirso as entirely protected regions has also necessarily
restricted the game area. The day of the sportsman in all Africa
was in that Golden Age when he, all untrammelled, might stalk the
more important fauna, to say nothing of the lesser, as he listed.
Now he pays heavy toll, varying with the scarcity of the quarry,
and the licences are not the least part of the expenses. Of
course the needful preservation of big game should, and
inevitably must, lead to good results, since to husband the
resources of anything is to accumulate in the long run. But the
idea of artificial preservation and legislation seems to knock
some of the elemental romance out of hunting. Anything cut and
dried seems out of place in sport of big game variety, and brings
it down to the nearer level of shooting pheasants ..."
Two extracts from Colonial Memories (1904) - Mary Anne
Barker, Lady Broome
Reel 22 - Australasia
"But certainly the strangest phase of
colonial domestics within my experience were the New Zealand maid-servants
of some thirty-five years ago. Perhaps by this time they are
"home-made," and consequently less eccentric ; but in
my day they were all immigrants, and seemed drawn almost entirely
from the ranks of factory girls ... What seriously inconvenienced
me at the far up-country station where my husband and I had made
ourselves a very pretty and comfortable home was the absolute and
profound ignorance of these damsels. They took any sort of place
which they fancied, at enormous wages, and when they had at great
cost and trouble been fetched up to their new home I invariably
discovered that the cook, who demanded and received the wages of
a chef, knew nothing whatever of any sort of cooking and
the housemaid, had never seen a broom ... One day I heard peals
of laughter from the wash-house, and found the fun consisted in
the magical way in which the little cottage-mangle smoothed the
aprons of the last couple of damsels. So I - who was extremely
ignorant myself, and had no idea how the very beginnings of
things should be taught - had to impart my slender store of
knowledge as best I could. The little establishment would have
collapsed entirely had it not been for my Scotch shepherd’s
wife, a dear woman with the manners of a lady and the knowledge
of a thorough practical housewife. What broke our hearts was that
we had to begin this elementary course of instruction over and
over again, as my damsels could not endure the monotony of their
country life longer that three or four months, in spite of the
many suitors who came a-wooing with strictly honourable
intentions."
"It must have been towards the end of
1889 that men began to hope the statement of an eminent geologist,
made years before, was going to prove true, and that "the
root of the great gold-bearing tree would be found in Western
Australia". Reports of gold, more or less wild, came in from
distant quarters, and although it was most desirable to help and
encourage explorers, there was great danger of anything like a
"rush" towards those arid and waterless districts from
which the best and most reliable news came.
Diggers used to go up the coast, as far as
they could, in the small mail steamers, and then strike across
the desert, often on foot, pushing their tools and food before
them in a wheelbarrow. Naturally, they could neither travel far
nor fast in this fashion, and there was always the water
difficulty to be dealt with. Still a man will do and bear a great
deal when golden nuggets dangle before his eyes, and some sturdy
bushmen actually did manage to reach the outskirts of the great
gold region. The worst of it was that under these circumstances
no one could remain long, even if he struck gold ; for there was
no food to be had except what they took with them. As is
generally the case in everything, one did not hear much of the
failures ; but every now and then a lucky man with a few ounces
of gold in his possession found his way back to Perth. Nearly all
who returned brought fragments of quartz to be assayed, and every
day the hope grew which has since been so abundantly justified."
An extract from Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada
(1838) - Anna Brownwell Jameson
Reel 23 - Canada
Niagara in Winter
"We now prepared to walk to the Crescent fall, and I bound
some crampons to my feet, like those they use among the Alps,
without which I could not for a moment have kept my footing on
the frozen surface of the snow. As we approached the Table Rock,
the whole scene assumed a wild and wonderful magnificence ; down
came the dark-green waters, hurrying with them over the edge of
the precipice enormous blocks of ice brought down from Lake Erie.
On each side of the Falls, from the ledges and overhanging cliffs,
were suspended huge icicles, some twenty, some thirty feet in
length, thicker than the body of a man, and in colour of a paly
green, like the glaciers of the Alps ; and all the crags below,
which projected from the boiling eddying waters, were encrusted,
and in a manner built round with ice, which had formed into
immense crystals, like basaltic columns, such as I have seen in
the pictures of Staffa and the Giant’s Causeway ; and every
tree, and leaf, and branch, fringing the rocks and ravines, was
wrought in ice. On them, and on the wooden buidings erected near
the Table Rock, the spray from the cataract had accumulated and
formed into the most beautiful crystals and tracery work ; they
looked like houses of glass, welted and moulded into regular and
ornamental shapes, and hung round with a rich fringe of icy
points. Wherever we stood we were on unsafe ground, for the snow,
when heaped up as now to the height of three of four feet,
frequently slipped in masses from the bare rock, and on its
surface the spray, for ever falling, was converted into a sheet
of ice, smooth, compact, and glassy ..."
An extract and illustration from The handbook for girl guides,
or, How girls can help build the Empire (1912) - Agnes Baden
Powell
Reel 25 - General
"The Girl Guides" is an
organization for character training which has been started much
on the lines of the "Boy Scouts" movement in principle,
but differing in detail.
Its aim is to get girls to learn how
to be women - self-helpful, happy, prosperous, and capable of
keeping good homes and of bringing up good children.
The Method of training is to give
the girls pursuits which appeal to them, such as games and
recreative exercises, which lead them on to learn for themselves
many useful crafts.
Already this training has been found
attractive to all classes, but more especially to those by whom
it is so vitally needed - the girls of the factories and of the
alleys of our great cities, who, after they leave school, get no
kind of restraining influence, and who, nevertheless, may be the
mothers, and should be the character trainers of the future men
of our nation ...
ENDURANCE. - To carry out all the duties
and work of a scout properly a girl has to be strong, healthy,
and active. And she can make herself so if she takes a little
care about it. It means a lot of exercise, like playing games,
running, walking, cycling, and so on.
PATRIOTISM. - You belong to the great
British Empire, one of the greatest empires that has ever existed
in the world.
From this little island of Great Britain
have sprung colonies all over the world - Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, Canada."
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