Nevermore

by David Day

Where we forever flee

  The king’s deadly wrath

  4.

  When shall we come back

  From this eternal night?

  When shall we come back

  To the world of light?

  When shall we come back

  And these shackles sever?

  When shall we come back

  To our life forever?

  Then with a voice like thunder

  This dreadful wonder

  Ends our soul’s endeavour

  With its answer: “Never!”

  * “The Walls of Nineveh” elegy is a curious literary exercise. It is an attempt at an ancient Sumerian verse stanza form. It may be the first new poem to be composed in this form in about three thousand years.

  OUT OF DREAMTIME

  THIRD WATCH 2 A. M. MIDNIGHT

  TOOLACHE WALLABY – 1939 – Wallabia greyi

  Sir Joseph Banks – 1770

  The Endeavour Journals of Joseph Banks , Queensland, Australia

  Quadrupeds we saw but few and were able to catch few of them that we did see. The largest was calld by the natives Kangaru. It is different from any European and indeed any animal I have heard or read of except the Gerbua of Egypt, which is not larger than a rat when this is as large as a midling Lamb; the largest we shot weighd 84 lb. It may however be easily known from all other animals by the singular property of running or rather hopping upon only its hinder legs carrying its fore bent close to its breast; in this manner however it hops so fast that in the rocky bad ground where it is commonly found it easily beat my grey hound, who tho he was fairly started at several killd only one and that quite a young one.

  Sir Joseph Banks was an aristocratic gentleman and natural scientist who, in The Endeavour Journals of Joseph Banks, recorded his discoveries as part of Captain James Cook’s first expedition to the South Pacific. The Cook expedition was nominally a scientific one sent to observe the transit of Venus in the South Pacific, but sealed orders opened at sea revealed to Cook that his secret mission was to seek out “Terra Australis Incognita” – and claim it for the British Crown.

  On 20 April 1770, Captain James Cook sighted the east coast of Australia. Landing at Botany Bay, Cook then proceeded up the east coast of the continent. His ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and he had to spend seven weeks on the coast of what now is Queensland repairing the damage. It was here that Banks made an extensive collection of unique species of Australian flora and fauna, and became the first European to observe one of the many “Kangaroo” species (which includes Wallabies). The name Gangarru comes from the language of the Aboriginal Guugu Yimithirr people.

  Banks was the President of the Royal Society for 43 years and was the intellectual force behind the settlement of Australia and the historic launching of the First Fleet of colonists, soldiers and convicts in 1787-88, less than two decades after Cook’s discovery of the continent.

  John Gould – 1840

  The Mammals of Australia , Melbourne

  I never saw anything so swift of foot as the Toolache Wallaby. It does not appear to hurry itself until the dogs have got pretty close, when it bounds away like an antelope with first a short jump, and then a long one, leaving the dogs far behind. One hunter complained bitterly after a week in the bush: ‘I have had twenty runs a day with four swift dogs and not succeeded in getting one.’ Another hunter claimed to have pursued one animal on horseback for over three miles without success.

  John Gould, the artist-naturalist, was the most meticulous of Australia’s 19th century wildlife illustrators. Son of a Royal Gardener at Windsor, he initially assisted his father as a taxidermist, and eventually was appointed to the Royal Zoological Society. His expedition to Australia in 1838-40 culminated in the monumental publication of his Birds of Australia (1840-48) in 7 volumes, and Mammals of Australia (1845-63) in 3 volumes. Gould became the foremost authority on Australian birds and mammals.

  The Toolache Wallaby was considered by all to be the swiftest and most beautiful of all the Kangaroo family. It measured about five feet, nose to end of tail, and was highly valued both for its fur and as a game species. It was capable of speeds of over 45 mph. The Toolache Wallaby inhabited the open plains of South Australia, and favoured open ground “intersected by extensive salt lagoons and bordered by pine-ridges.” Relying on its speed to outrun dingoes or aboriginal hunters, its choice of open ground made it easy prey for long range rifles of white hunters. Sadly, these skin hunters with rifles were extremely successful. The animal’s magnificent skins were still being marketed in great numbers in Melbourne even in 1923 when there were only a couple of bands of a dozen left in the wild.

  The Toolache or Grey’s Wallaby scientific appellation greyi was given in honour of Sir George Grey KCB, who led two disaster-ridden expeditions into previously unexplored regions of Western Australia. He later became governor of Western Australia, then New Zealand and Cape Colony – and eventually Prime Minister of New Zealand.

  Professor F. Wood Jones – 1924

  Preservation of the Toolache Wallaby , Robe, South Australia

  By far the fleetest of all the Wallabies, and the fairest. There cannot be more than a few score of these animals left in existence; including the 14 animals protected by Mr Brown here on the Konetta Station. And yet, the poaching continues. Their beautiful pelts have been marketed in very large numbers in the sales rooms of Melbourne. Something must be done, and soon.

  Between John Gould’s observations (1852) and F. Wood Jones’ (1924), the Toolache population had dwindled from “swarms” to packs of “five or six individuals.” In 1923, there was a small band of 14 Toolache Wallabies on the Konetta Station. In May of that year, Professor Wood Jones desperately attempted to capture and transfer the animals to a safe sanctuary on Kangaroo Island. However, this failed because these spirited creatures literally ran themselves to death trying to escape their well-intentioned pursuers.

  In 1936, Bernard C. Cotton travelled to Robe, South Australia, where he made a 16mm motion film of the Toolache Wallaby kept in a fenced paddock by Mr. J. Brown. Cotton described the animal as “probably the last living representative of its species.” The remarkable film footage shows the animal running at an estimated speed of 42 miles per hour, while the voice of the narrator comments: “Note the lithe and graceful movement as portrayed by the slow motion camera.”

  This film footage is indeed that of the last Toolache Wallaby in existence. A handwritten note attached “in Mr Allan Rau’s hand who was the South Australian Museum Taxidermist states: ‘This animal died 10 July 1939 and the skin is in South Australia Museum’.”

  Other Australian marsupials’ extinctions included: the Eastern Hare-Wallaby (Lagorchestes leporides) in 1890, Gilbert’s Potoroo (Potorous gilberti) in 1900, Pig-footed Bandicoot (Chaeropus ecaudatus) in 1907, Western Barred Bandicoot (Perameles mysura) in 1910, Greater Rabbit Bandicoot or Bilby (Macrotis lagatis grandis) in 1930, and Eastern Barred Bandicoot (Perameles fasciata) in 1940.

  Australia’s smallest Kangaroo, the miniature (one foot tall) Parma White-Fronted Wallaby, was believed to have been exterminated in 1932. Its rediscovery in 1966 was greeted with some celebration. In the wake of this discovery, a local politician made a well-meaning, but somewhat puzzling, pledge on behalf of the Australian Government. “The Parma Wallaby,” he declared, “will never be allowed to become extinct again.”

  PRAYER OF THE WINABARAKU

  Toolache Wallaby or Winabaraku – 1940

  1.

  Now the All-Father thought

  There should be sky

  There should be mountains

  And there should be sea

  There should be beasts on the plain

  And birds in the trees

  There should be fish in the lakes

  And creatures in the sea

  So He made them

  And for this we give thanks

  2.

  Now the All-Father thought

  In this time and in
this place

  There should be the Winabaraku

  So He made us – and we arose

  Like a desert spring in flood time

  In the land of salt marsh

  And the stringy bark tree

  And for this we give thanks

  3.

  Now the All-Father thought

  In this time and in this place

  All He did and made

  Must come to an end

  In the land of salt marsh

  And the stringy bark tree

  So like a desert spring in drought time

  We descend to deep caverns far below

  And for this we give thanks

  THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNT

  FIRST WATCH 3 A. M. VEIL

  AMERICAN BLACK BISON – 1825

  Bison bison pennsylvanicus

  Hernando Cortez – 1581

  De Solis: History of Conquest , Mexico

  In the second Square of the same House were the Wild Beasts, captured by Montezuma’s Hunters, in strong Cages of Timber, ranged in good Order, and under Cover: Lions, Tygers, Bears, and all others of the savage Kind which New-Spain produced; among which the greatest Rarity was the Mexican Bull; a wonderful composition of divers animals. It has crooked Shoulders, with a Bunch on its Back like a Camel; its Flanks dry, its Tail large, and its Neck covered with Hair like a Lion. It is cloven footed, its Head armed like that of a Bull, which it resembles in Fierceness, with no less strength and Agility.

  Hernando Cortez’s 1521 sighting of the Bison – or American Buffalo – in Montezuma’s menagerie is the first by a European as recorded by the historian De Solis in 1724. It was probably captured in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, some 500 miles north of Montezuma’s palace in what is now Mexico City. In 1530, another Spaniard, Alvar Nunez Cabeza, was wrecked on the Gulf coast, west of the Mississippi delta, from whence he wandered westward into what is now Texas. He appears to be the first European to sight bison herds in their wild state.

  In 1542, the conquistador Coronado was the third European to record the sighting of American Buffalo. In the region of the Texas panhandle he saw for the first time what he described as “crooked-backed oxen.” It was also a notable first encounter between bison and horses. The event is described by one of Coronado’s soldiers, Castenada: “The first time we encountered these beasts, all the horses took to flight on seeing them, for they were a horrible sight. They have a broad and short face, eyes two palms from each other, and projecting in such a manner sideways that they can see a pursuer. Their beard is like that of goats, and so long that it drags the ground when they lower the head. They have, on the anterior portion of the body, a frizzled hair like sheep’s wool; it is very fine upon the croup, and sleek like a lion’s mane. Their horns are very short and thick, and can scarcely be seen through the hair. They always change their hair in May, and at this season they really resemble lions. Their tail is very short, and terminates in a great tuft. When they run they carry it in the air like scorpions.”

  Samuell Argoll – 1612

  Voyage to the New World , Virginia Colony

  And then marching into the Countrie, I found great store of Cattle as big as Kine, of which the Indians that were my guides killed a couple, which we found to be very good and wholesome meate, and are very easie to be killed, in regard they are heavy, slow, and not so wild as other beasts of the wilderness.

  The English navigator Samuell Argoll wrote of this encounter with an Eastern bison that saved his party from starvation. It is the earliest recorded sighting of the Eastern Black Bison and took place in 1612 on the banks of the Potomac River, near the present-day site of America’s capitol, Washington, D. C.

  There were once four subspecies of Bison or American Buffalo which numbered in the hundreds of millions. The tallest and largest was the now extinct Black Bison (Bison bison pennsylvanicus). Found in all the American states east of the Mississippi River, it was the first to be hunted to extinction by 1825. The second species to suffer extinction was the far western Oregon Bison (Bison bison oreganos) around 1850 – shortly after the Lewis and Clark expedition established the Oregon Trail, and opened the region (Oregon to California) west of the Rocky Mountains for settlement. The two other races, the Great Plains Bison (Bison bison bison) of America and the Wood Bison (Bison bison athabasca) of Canada, would certainly have been entirely extinguished by 1890 had it not been for an 11th hour rescue effort by the American and Canadian governments at the instigation of the handful of influential conservationists who formed the American Bison Society.

  Colonel Daniel Boone – 1770

  Frontier Journals , Kentucky

  Vast herds grazed over these lands. The buffaloes were more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browzing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage of those extensive plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw thousands in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing. Their ways are as beaten as our great roads, and no herb grows therein.

  The wildlife artist James Audubon wrote of the Black Bison of the Eastern American states in his Quadrupeds of North America: “In the days of our boyhood and youth, Buffaloes roamed over the small and beautiful prairies of Indiana and Illinois, and herds of them stalked through the open woods of Kentucky and Tennessee; but they had dwindled down to a few stragglers, which resorted chiefly to the ‘Barrens’, towards the years 1808 and 1809, and soon after entirely disappeared.

  “Their range has since that period gradually tended westward, and now you must direct your steps ‘to the Indian country’, and travel many hundreds of miles beyond the fair valleys of the Ohio, towards the great rocky chain of mountains that forms the backbone of North America, before you can reach the Buffalo, and see him roving in his sturdy independence upon the vast elevated plains, which extend to the base of the Rocky Mountains.”

  Another contemporary account of the hunting of the Eastern Black Bison by M. Ashe records the obvious reason for their demise: “The carnage of these beasts was everywhere the same. I met with a man who had killed two thousand buffaloes with his own hand, and others no doubt have done the same thing. In consequence of such proceedings not one buffalo is at this time to be found east of the Mississippi.”

  Colonel Richard Irving Dodge – 1871

  Plains of the Great West, Arkansas

  In May of 1871, I drove a light wagon from Old Fort Zara to Fort Larned, on the Arkansas. At least 25 miles of this distance was through one immense herd, composed of countless smaller herds of buffalo. The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo, moving slowly to the northward. When I had reached a point where the hills were no longer more than a mile from the road, the buffalo on the hills, turned, stared an instant, then started at full speed directly towards me, stampeding and bringing with them the numberless herds through which they passed, and pouring down upon me all the herds, in one immense compact mass of plunging animals, mad with fright, and as irresistible as an avalanche. This situation was by no means pleasant.

  In later years, Colonel Dodge reflected on the reasons for the rapid extinction of those vast migrating herds: “It was, then, the hide-hunters, who wiped out the great southern herd in four short years. The prices received for hides varied considerably, according to circumstances, but for the green or undressed article it usually ranged from 50 cents for the skins of calves to $1.25 for those of adult animals in good condition. Such prices seem ridiculously small, but when it is remembered that, when buffaloes were plentiful it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to kill from forty to sixty head a day, it will readily be seen that the chances of making very handsome profits were sufficient to tempt hunters to make extraordinary exertions.

  “Moreover, even when the buffalo were nearly gone, the country was overrun with men who had absolutely nothing else to look as a means of livelihood, and so, no matter whether the profits were great or small, so long as enough buffaloes remained to make it possible to
get a living by their pursuit, they were hunted down with the most determined persistency and pertinacity.”

  Colonel Dodge’s estimate of buffalo slaughtered in southern herd for the years 1872 to 1874 was 3,698,730 (of which more than half were killed and wasted, without taking hides or meat). By 1875, less than 10,000 survived, and these were soon gone.

  General Philip H. Sheridan – 1878

  Sheridan’s Memoirs , Indian Territories

  The Buffalo Hunters have done more in the last two years to settle the vexed Indian Question than the entire regular army in the last thirty years. They have destroyed the Indian’s commissary. Send them powder and lead, if you will, and let them kill, skin and sell until they have exterminated the buffalo.

  General Sheridan voices the deliberate policy of the American military and government of promoting the extermination of the buffalo herds of the west as a means of starving the native Indian tribes into submission.

  Congressman McCormick wrote in The New Mexican newspaper in Santa Fe that a United States federal surveying commission kept careful records of the slaughter and reported that there were two thousand hunters on the plains killing these animals for their hides. One party of sixteen hunters was reported having killed twenty-eight thousand buffaloes in the summer of 1872 in supposedly Indian Territories.

  Sheridan absolutely encouraged the poaching of buffalo and the invasion of the Indian Territories. He suggested Congress mint a medal of honour for the hunters with a dead buffalo on one side and a depressed looking Indian on the other. He was widely attributed with the saying, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”