NEUOFFENBARUNG[MEr.01_007,001] Now that we have seen enough of the atrocities aboard the ship, whose significance can no longer be strange to you, let us leave it and go ahead. We shall first take a brief look at the land with four names, which by your reckoning lies between 131 and 171 degrees east longitude and between 10 and 30 degrees south latitude.
[MEr.01_007,002] This is necessary because you are least familiar with the nature and divisions of this land and with its climate. Look, then, at the screen you know so well.
[MEr.01_007,003] Look carefully at the land before you. It is Australia proper, South India, Oceania and Polynesia. See how the southern part still consists of pools and marshes stretching beyond sight. If you look closely enough, you will discover countless venomous monsters and vermin of every kind in them.
[MEr.01_007,004] Farther south, a multitude of ring-shaped coral islands extend almost to the region of the South Pole. For this reason the southern coast cannot be sailed round, and it is impossible to reach it by land and investigate its nature. Indeed, it is scarcely a coast at all.
[MEr.01_007,005] It is the harder to get to know this land because it consists mostly of boundless plains, broken only here and there by small, insignificant hills. There are no mountains of any consequence, apart from a few coral and slate cliffs on the coasts.
[MEr.01_007,006] The mainland of this land, as known so far, covers nearly two hundred thousand square miles and is home to some two million and sixty-odd thousand people.
[MEr.01_007,007] The most habitable districts are mostly on the east coast. Some may already be familiar to you, such as those called Karpentaria, Arehmesland, Witsland, Edelsland, Eintrachtland, Leuwiesland, Ruytsland, Flintersladd, Baudingsland and Grantsland, along with a few less familiar names that do not matter here.
[MEr.01_007,008] On this east coast there is a landing place called ‘Botanybai’. In scarcely ten years up to the present moment the English have put ashore some one hundred and seventy thousand convicts there and distributed them among the various districts.
[MEr.01_007,009] This is not the purpose of the east coast alone. Transported prisoners are now being put ashore in the west almost in preference to the east.
[MEr.01_007,010] See the river flowing into the sea here. It is called the Swan River. On its banks you can see a fair-sized town, from which colonisation is now being carried on by means of convicts brought there, but with far less success than on the east coast. Usually only the very worst scoundrels in England are sold here, in exchange for a counter-payment from the Dutch, to whom the coast belongs, so that they may cultivate this exceedingly inhospitable region.
[MEr.01_007,011] On the east coast, at Botany Bay, a town has long been built. It is called Sydney, just as the coast as a whole is called New South Wales.
[MEr.01_007,012] For the time being, keep only the western spot in mind. When we have seen our ship land at Botany Bay, we shall go here, where the torment inflicted on people is unimaginably worse than on the east coast.
[MEr.01_007,013] Before we look at these chief spectacles, I shall acquaint you more closely with the land itself. You will then more readily understand what it really means to be transported there, whether guilty or innocent.
[MEr.01_007,014] Look now at the interior of the country. You take these plains, which stretch beyond sight, to be nothing but forests of scrub.
[MEr.01_007,015] Oh no, I tell you, it is grass. You need not be surprised to see grass in places as high as three or four men.
[MEr.01_007,016] This grass resembles what is known as the water reed. The only way to eradicate it is by fire when it has dried. The fire has to be lit when the wind blows from the north, for winds from the south smother it.
[MEr.01_007,017] You would surely like to see a forest of trees too. There are very few such forests here. The trees that grow particularly in the more southerly regions are often scarcely as tall as some of the grass, and bear very little edible fruit.
[MEr.01_007,018] In the north and on the east coast there are indeed many other kinds of planting, but none of them thrives particularly well, and all gradually change their nature in noticeable ways.
[MEr.01_007,019] Pears often turn quite woody and are broader at the stalk than at the crown. The stones of cherries often grow outside the skin, and the fruit itself becomes watery. Various other crops undergo changes of this kind that may sound strange to you. The little-known snake nuts fare best, as do coconuts, Indian figs, carob and a kind of melon plum on the northern coast.
[MEr.01_007,020] Great care must be taken that these snake nuts are not pierced by a certain red insect. If a nut so pierced falls into the earth, a spurious plant of a highly poisonous kind grows from it, ten times worse than the so-called Bohonupas. As soon as its leaves have risen just one foot above the ground, they give off such a destructive poisonous vapour that they kill every animal and person that comes near them. They often lay waste to the plants within an hour's walk, so that before long even rock moss will not grow. Everything withers and becomes a kind of ash.
[MEr.01_007,021] The fortunate thing about this plant is that it grows for no more than half a year. It perishes as soon as winter comes and becomes harmless.
[MEr.01_007,022] Now that we have looked briefly at the plant life, let us take a quick look at the animals.
[MEr.01_007,023] First see how the air teems with large white eagles, which far surpass all others of their kind in strength and agility. In winter especially their rapacity is so great that farther inland they attack people like flying wolves.
[MEr.01_007,024] Besides these there is another kind of vicious bird, almost like an ostrich in appearance. They have hair in place of feathers. Some have no wings at all, while others have wings like a bat's.
[MEr.01_007,025] These birds often have legs more than a fathom long. They run so fast on them that they can easily cover ten miles in an hour. When they catch up with their prey, they strike it down with one leg and set upon the meal they have thus prepared. There are hosts of smaller and less harmful birds besides.
[MEr.01_007,026] Another creature worth noting is a four-footed mammal with a strong beak. ‘Bird-wolf’ would be its proper name. In its way this animal is more savage than any tiger.
[MEr.01_007,027] The land and the swamps are the very home of snakes and lizards of every kind. Many kinds have wings. They are not all poisonous, but all are more or less harmful.
[MEr.01_007,028] A large kind of bat is common inland. It is very poisonous and its gaze has a stupefying effect worse than that of a rattlesnake. Anyone it fixes its eyes on falls to the ground as though overcome by strong drink. If no one comes to their aid and kills the bat as it flutters up, it soon sucks the last drop of blood from them and then, sated, flies off with a shrill whistle.
[MEr.01_007,029] As for the climate, it is a veritable chameleon. Except in a few eastern and northern districts, it changes so much that in some places a person gets a taste of all five zones in a single day.
[MEr.01_007,030] In due time you will be told why everything here is arranged so strangely. For now you may remember this much: I have linked certain lands of the Earth with purposes quite different from having them violated prematurely by human greed.
[MEr.01_007,031] If people in their folly force their way into lands before they have ripened, they get what they deserve when they fare like neglected children who eat unripe fruit and poisonous berries.
[MEr.01_007,032] As I said, you will be told more about this on another occasion. Look now. While we have been ranging about this land, the ship you know has cast anchor in the harbour of Botany Bay. See, there it is! When everything is before you in a picture, you do not need a long journey to reach the appointed place.
[MEr.01_007,033] Look very carefully. I say Ephphatha again, and see, the ship has become transparent to the bottom once more. First look closely at our fair would-be wife. See how weak she is, scarcely able to rise from her seat. Now go for a moment into the captain's cabin.
[MEr.01_007,034] See how three colonists are already going through the lists with him, in the presence of the governor. Twenty names are crossed out, among them our old man's, but the fair woman's name is still there.
[MEr.01_007,035] The governor and the colonists now sign and approve the lists. The gaolers go down, release the prisoners from their chains, bind their hands behind their backs and drive them up onto the deck.
[MEr.01_007,036] See how the gaolers now enter the young woman's room too. They tell her what awaits her and strip her. She falls into a desperate faint. They bind her hands behind her back as well and drag her up on deck to the others.
[MEr.01_007,037] See how she falls before her supposed husband and begs him with all the strength a woman's heart can summon. She tells him as best she can how innocent she was when condemned to this place of horrors, and how shamefully he took advantage of her misfortune, treating her, though she had been as pure as the Sun, worse than a prostitute in a sailors' brothel in England.
[MEr.01_007,038] Look and take an example from a man who professes the Christian religion! See how grandly he orders the gaoler to stop the mouth of the screaming beast and give her thirty lashes at once unless she keeps quite still like the others.
[MEr.01_007,039] Look at the effect of her plea. Two henchmen bind her to the smaller mast with a rope across her breast and over her feet. See how shamefully and cruelly the gaoler flogs the poor unfortunate woman, without counting the blows.
[MEr.01_007,040] When the sharp whip has cut her legs from top to bottom, she is untied and lowered over the side on ropes with the other convicts into smaller boats. Still bleeding, she is taken to the wretched land and immediately assigned by the governor to the colonist concerned, to be at his disposal.
[MEr.01_007,041] Do you think they took her to a hospital there? You are mistaken. The only dressing for such wounds is permission to sit for half an hour in very shallow seawater. This is the famous cure in that country. It does help, but imagine the burning pain, especially for such a sensitive young woman.
[MEr.01_007,042] We are done here. Let us take one more quick look at what happens to these unfortunate people. See, farther inland, about a hundred miles from the coast by your reckoning, they work with their tools under several overseers and have to contend with all the evils you know a little of from the description of this land. They stand, as it were, between two fires.
[MEr.01_007,043] Truly, as your proverb has it, ‘Eat, bird, or die!’ What does one of the leading colonists care if twenty or thirty of those under him, most still in chains, are eaten by snakes, or sink into swamps that suddenly give way in the fathom-high grass? What does he care if one or another is attacked and torn to pieces by the eagles you know, or if several more die rooting out one of the poisonous plants springing up somewhere?
[MEr.01_007,044] The colonist cares little or nothing about any of this. His own household is sufficiently provided for, even without these new workers.
[MEr.01_007,045] If these new attempts to push forward gain him another considerable piece of land, he is pleased. If they come to nothing despite all these cruel efforts, he cares nothing about that either, for, as he says himself, he is provided for anyway.
[MEr.01_007,046] You may suppose that when these convicts have made a new piece of land arable, one or another of them will be granted it as a holding subject to rent.
[MEr.01_007,047] Oh no, I say. Such a colonist puts the land to quite different uses. He has work huts erected here and there, but whatever the ground yields belongs to him from A to Z.
[MEr.01_007,048] The workers have nothing but the most wretched, barely edible fare. When they do not wish to starve altogether, they catch snakes and lizards, strike off their heads, roast them over a straw fire and eat the flesh with the greatest appetite. Here again your proverb truly applies: hunger is the best cook.
[MEr.01_007,049] Sometimes some of them are so hungry that they do not even take the time to roast a snake. Once its head, skin and entrails are removed, it is eaten on the spot.
[MEr.01_007,050] A further affliction for these poor people is that, particularly in the north, they encounter Indigenous inhabitants who are good archers and drive them back with poisoned arrows, or take them prisoner and eat them raw.
[MEr.01_007,051] See, these poor people must endure such ‘pleasures’ beyond number or measure. The punishments they receive on top of them from their commanders and overseers, who are even more inhuman than the North Americans, can hardly be weighed against the afflictions of the land.
[MEr.01_007,052] See, our poor woman is here already, cutting grass. With you, mowing is an agreeable occupation. Here the workers face veritable primeval forests of grass. Within their impenetrable thickets, especially in summer, live countless fiercely stinging insects, which fall on the naked workers so that after a few days nothing remains but their connected skeletons.
[MEr.01_007,053] If the land is cleared by fire in winter, the fire often grows so fierce that the flames roll across the ground through the dry grass for hours' journey. If those who lit it cannot flee fast enough, they are either burnt entirely or severely burnt over much of their bodies.
[MEr.01_007,054] The worst of it is that if the fire goes out anywhere, the poor people who lit it often have to run for hours over the still glowing ashes to kindle it again wherever it has died out.
[MEr.01_007,055] They are allowed to strap a kind of little board to the soles of their feet. But these boards often burn away halfway across. Then it makes no difference, and the soles of their feet are often burnt down to the bone all the same.
[MEr.01_007,056] There are countless other sufferings and diseases native to this land that I have not mentioned. Of the west coast I need tell you only that people are treated there ten times more inhumanly than in the east, which is why colonisation makes such poor progress.
[MEr.01_007,057] See, the shameful greed of ‘moral’ and even ‘Christian’ people is to blame for all of this.
[MEr.01_007,058] You will easily understand without much thought that I cannot go on looking at such atrocities for long. Truly, people are already piling their sins up to the third heaven.
[MEr.01_007,059] I need tell you no more. Amen, then, for today. The eighth hour will proclaim still greater and stranger things to you.