# The Bulletin/Volume 9/Number 462/Our Chinese Ancestor

Our Chinese Ancestor.
By Arthur Gayll.
"Long after palæolithic man had passed away, a Chinese junk burst into these silent seas, with youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm, to the sound of the inspiring tom-tom. Old legends tell how the grisly apparition of these adventurous children of the Sun affrighted our peaceful Southern Ocean as it passed on its mysterious way. . . . The enterprising navigator of that pre-historic junk, scanning the future with dim prophetic eye, saw that Australia had better be left for some other active persons to do the rough work of colonisation; and after that his bland and patient Celestial descendents might come along without ruffling an eyelash, and scoop the whole institution like the merest fan-tan pool."—Vide Bulletin "History of Botany Bay":—
Touch the melancholy tom-tom To a wild and weird refrain— Let the brazen gongs and conches Swell the bold historic strain.
Tell the legend, marrow-curdling, Of that dim, phantasmal skunk Who burst through the Silent Ocean Jubilating!—in a junk!
How that cheerful apparition, With his pig-tail on his head, Scared the sleeping Austral Beauty Till the girl got up and fled.
Nob with odour-wafts of Araby, Clinging to his silken sails, Did he fool round in his cruises, As we read in other tales.
Swooped he not about the planet In a picturesque galleon, Or a shell-like shallop, guided By the echo of a tune.
Not much! No! That navigator Knew no tommy-rob like this— This disgusting Chinese person Smelt far otherwise, we wis.
Sloops there were not, neither shallops— As we said before, this skunk (Dim, phantasmal, we described him) Jubilated in a junk.
With a hideous crash of cymbals, Tom-tom music, wild and weird, This grey pre-historic horror Came, and saw, and—disappeared.
Like an Afreet, or a nightmare Born of fell back-blocks champagne, lie just came and raised the devil, Turned—and sailed away again.
Sped into the purple distance With his sails of dungaree— With his tom-toms and his fragrant Odours, not of Araby.
As regards the Austral Beauty, We may mention that the girl, When the spectre burst upon her, Rose, and lit out with a skirl.
Lit out o'er the dim horizon Where the wattle-blossom waves [Bard who couldn't work that line in Might as well be digging graves.—Ed. B.]
Skipped right out!—indeed, this spectre Might make stronger people wince. [We may remark the Austral Beauty Has been missing ever since.—Ed. B.]
So he came and so he vanished— So the misty legends run— Up the red track of the sunrise To the Offspring of the Sun.
Why he came, and why departed, Why he ever lived or died, Why he wasn't changed in childhood, We could not tell if we tried.
Who his father was, or mother— If he was an orphan boy— If some swivel-eyed young person Viewed him as her pride and joy—
If he proudly scorned the poll-tax This we know nob, neither care— Not to be deceitful persons We admit we weren't there.
It may be some Joss, pot-bellied, Yanked him to the Golden Shore By his pig-tail—all we know is He came back here never more.
Years have passed, and now we scoop him In the scuppers of our rhyme, And we send him fumigated Down the corridors of Time.
With a dainty touch we spit him In the forceps of our verse— [Whatsoever fate his crimes brought Couldn't possibly be worse.—Ed. B.]
In the coming time, when slant eyed, Pig-tailed heathens populate This the region he discovered Holding high posts in the State,
Then some yellow Dan. O'Connor, Or some slant-eyed Burdett Smith, Will remember him with honour And resuscitate this myth.
Build a statue—or a tombstone To perpetuate his fame, With an epitaph regretting That they didn't know his name.
And a carven bas-relievo Whereon the phantasmal skunk Will be pictured jubilating In his joy—likewise the junk.