The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Arthur Conan Doyle [best short novels of all time .TXT] 📗

Either a wild beast or a bandit knew best how it got there. Jenolan has few visible links with the past, but one of them is a tremendous one. It is the complete, though fractured, skeleton of a very large man—seven foot four said the guide, but he may have put it on a little—who was found partly imbedded in the lime. Many ages ago he seems to have fallen through the roof of the cavern, and the bones of a wallaby hard by give some indication that he was hunting at the time, and that his quarry shared his fate. He was of the Black fellow type, with a low-class cranium. It is remarkable the proportion of very tall men who are dug up in ancient tombs. Again and again the bogs of Ireland have yielded skeletons of seven and eight feet. Some years ago a Scythian chief was dug up on the Southern Steppes of Russia who was eight feet six. What a figure of a man with his winged helmet and his battle axe! All over the world one comes upon these giants of old, and one wonders whether they represented some race, further back still, who were all gigantic. The Babylonian tradition in our Bible says: "And there were giants in those days." The big primeval kangaroo has grown down to the smaller modern one, the wombat, which was an animal as big as a tapir, is now as small as a badger, the great saurians have become little lizards, and so it would seem not unreasonable to suppose that man may have run to great size at some unexplored period in his evolution.

We all emerged rather exhausted from the bowels of the earth, dazed with the endless succession of strange gypsum formations which we had seen, minarets, thrones, shawls, coronets, some of them so made that one could imagine that the old kobolds had employed their leisure hours in fashioning their freakish outlines. It was a memorable drive home in the evening. Once as a bird flew above my head, the slanting ray of the declining sun struck it and turned it suddenly to a vivid scarlet and green. It was the first of many parrots. Once also a couple of kangaroos bounded across the road, amid wild cries of delight from the children. Once, too, a long snake writhed across and was caught by one of the wheels of the motor. Rabbits, I am sorry to say, abounded. If they would confine themselves to these primeval woods, Australia would be content.

This was the last of our pleasant Australian excursions, and we left Medlow Bath refreshed not only by its charming atmosphere, but by feeling that we had gained new friends. We made our way on January 26th to Sydney, where all business had to be settled up and preparations made for our homeward voyage.

Whilst in Sydney I had an opportunity of examining several phases of mediumship which will be of interest to the psychic reader. I called upon Mrs. Foster Turner, who is perhaps the greatest all-round medium with the highest general level of any sensitive in Australia. I found a middle-aged lady of commanding and pleasing appearance with a dignified manner and a beautifully modulated voice, which must be invaluable to her in platform work. Her gifts are so many that it must have been difficult for her to know which to cultivate, but she finally settled upon medical diagnosis, in which she has, I understand, done good work. Her practice is considerable, and her help is not despised by some of the leading practitioners. This gift is, as I have explained previously in the case of Mr. Bloomfield, a form of clairvoyance, and Mrs. Foster Turner enjoys all the other phases of that wonderful power, including psychometry, with its application to detective work, the discerning of spirits, and to a very marked degree the gift of prophecy, which she has carried upon certain occasions to a length which I have never known equalled in any reliable record of the past.

Here is an example for which, I am told, a hundred witnesses could be cited. At a meeting at the Little Theatre, Castlereagh Street, Sydney, on a Sunday evening of February, 1914, Mrs. Turner addressed the audience under an inspiration which claimed to be W. T. Stead. He ended his address by saying that in order to prove that he spoke with a power beyond mortal, he would, on the next Sunday, give a prophecy as to the future of the world.

Next Sunday some 900 people assembled, when Mrs. Turner, once more under control, spoke as follows. I quote from notes taken at the time. "Now, although there is not at present a whisper of a great European war at hand, yet I want to warn you that before this year, 1914, has run its course, Europe will be deluged in blood. Great Britain, our beloved nation, will be drawn into the most awful war the world has ever known. Germany will be the great antagonist, and will draw other nations in her train. Austria will totter to its ruin. Kings and kingdoms will fall. Millions of precious lives will be slaughtered, but Britain will finally triumph and emerge victorious. During the year, also, the Pope of Rome will pass away, and a bomb will be placed in St. Paul's Church, but will be discovered in time and removed before damage is done."

Can any prophecy be more accurate or better authenticated than that? The only equally exact prophecy on public events which I can recall is when Emma Hardinge Britten, having been refused permission in 1860 to deliver a lecture on Spiritualism in the Town Hall of Atlanta, declared that, before many years had passed, that very Town Hall would be choked up with the dead and the dying, drawn from the State which persecuted her. This came literally true in the Civil War a few years later, when Sherman's army passed that way.

Mrs. Foster Turner's gift of psychometry is one which will be freely used by the community when we become more civilised and less ignorant. As an example of how it works, some years ago a Melbourne man named Cutler disappeared, and there was a considerable debate as to his fate. His wife, without giving a name, brought Cutler's boot to Mrs. Turner. She placed it near her forehead and at once got en rapport with the missing man. She described how he left his home, how he kissed his wife good-bye, all the succession of his movements during that morning, and finally how he had fallen or jumped over a bridge into the river, where he had been caught under some snag. A search at the place named revealed the dead body. If this case be compared with that of Mr. Foxhall, already quoted, one can clearly see that the same law underlies each. But what an ally for our C.I.D.!

There was one pleasant incident in connection with my visit to Mrs. Foster Turner. Upon my asking her whether she had any psychic impression when she saw me lecturing, she said that I was accompanied on the platform by a man in spirit life, about 70 years of age, grey-bearded, with rugged eyebrows. She searched her mind for a name, and then said, "Alfred Russell Wallace." Doctor Abbott, who was present, confirmed that she had given that name at the time. It will be remembered that Mrs. Roberts, of Dunedin, had also given the name of the great Spiritualistic Scientist as being my coadjutor. There was no possible connection between Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Roberts. Indeed, the intervention of the strike had made it almost impossible for them to communicate, even if they had known each other—which they did not. It was very helpful to me to think that so great a soul was at my side in the endeavour to stimulate the attention of the world.

Two days before our departure we attended the ordinary Sunday service of the Spiritualists at Stanmore Road, which appeared to be most reverently and beautifully conducted. It is indeed pleasant to be present at a religious service which in no way offends one's taste or one's reason—which cannot always be said, even of Spiritualistic ones. At the end I was presented with a beautifully illuminated address from the faithful of Sydney, thanking me for what they were pleased to call "the splendidly successful mission on behalf of Spiritualism in Sydney." "You are a specially chosen leader," it went on, "endowed with power to command attention from obdurate minds. We rejoice that you are ready to consecrate your life to the spread of our glorious gospel, which contains more proof of the eternal love of God than any other truth yet revealed to man." So ran this kindly document. It was decorated with Australian emblems, and as there was a laughing jackass in the corner, I was able to raise a smile by suggesting that they had adorned it with the picture of a type of opponent with whom we were very familiar, the more so as some choice specimens had been observed in Sydney. There are some gentle souls in our ranks who refrain from all retort—and morally, they are no doubt the higher—but personally, when I am moved by the malevolence and ignorance of our opponents, I cannot help hitting back at them. It was Mark Twain, I think, who said that, instead of turning the other cheek, he returned the other's cheek. That is my unregenerate instinct.

I was able, for the first time, to give a bird's-eye view of my tour and its final results. I had, in all, addressed twenty-five meetings, averaging 2,000 people in each, or 50,000 people in all. I read aloud a letter from Mr. Carlyle Smythe, who, with his father, had managed the tours of every lecturer of repute who had come to Australia during the past thirty years. Mr. Smythe knew what success and failure were, and he said: "For an equal number of lectures, yours has proved the most prosperous tour in my experience. No previous tour has won such consistent success. From the push-off at Adelaide to the great boom in New Zealand and Brisbane, it has been a great dynamic progression of enthusiasm. I have known in my career nothing parallel to it."

The enemies of our cause were longing for my failure, and had, indeed, in some cases most unscrupulously announced it, so it was necessary that I should give precise details as to this great success, and to the proof which it afforded that the public mind was open to the new revelation. But, after all, the money test was the acid one. I had taken a party of seven people at a time when all expenses were doubled or trebled by the unnatural costs of travel and of living, which could not be made up for by increasing the price of admission. It would seem a miracle that I could clear this great bill of expenses in a country like Australia, where the large towns are few. And yet I was able to show that I had not only done so, after paying large sums in taxation, but that I actually had seven hundred pounds over. This I divided among Spiritual funds in Australia, the bulk of it, five hundred pounds, being devoted to a guarantee of expenses for the next lecturer who should follow me. It seemed to me that such a lecturer, if well chosen, and properly guaranteed against loss, might devote a longer time than I, and visit the smaller towns, from which I had often the most touching appeals. If he were successful, he need not touch the guarantee fund, and so it would remain as a perpetual source of active propaganda. Such was the scheme