In 1830 some survivors of an Irish colony of 300 persons in Brazil made their way to Buenos Ayres. They had come out from Europe in the barque _Reward_ in 1829.
The banker, Thomas Armstrong, who arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1817, occupied the foremost place for half a century in the commerce of that city. He was of the ancient family of Armstrong in the King"s county, one of whose members was General Sir John Armstrong, founder of Woolwich a.r.s.enal. Having married into the wealthy family of Villanueva he became intimately connected with all the leading enterprises of the day, such as railways, banks, loans, etc. He took no part in politics, but interested himself in charities of every kind.
In 1865 another Irishman, James P. Cahill, introduced into Peru from the United States the first complete machinery for sugar growing and refining.
Still another Irishman, Peter Sheridan, was one of the chief founders of the sheep farming industry in Argentina. His family claimed descent from the same stock in Co. Cavan as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great statesman and dramatist. Sheridan died at the age of 52, in 1844, and was succeeded in the _estancia_ or sheep-farming business by his nephew, James, whose brother Dr. Hugh Sheridan had served under Admiral Brown.
The number and wealth of the Irish _estancieros_, or sheep-farmers, in Argentina have never been exactly ascertained, but after the old Spanish families they are the most important. It would be impossible to give all the Irish names to be met with. Some of them own immense tracts of land. Men whose fathers arrived in Argentina without a shilling are today worth millions. Their _estancia_ houses display all the comforts of an American or English home; their hospitality is proverbial; and most of them have built on their land fine schools and beautiful little chapels, in which the nearest Irish priest officiates.
Many of the _partidos_ or districts of the various provinces of Argentina may be compared to Irish counties, the railway stations being called after the owners of the land on which they are situated.
Among the earliest families settled in Argentina in the farming industries, we find Duggans, Torneys, Harringtons, O"Briens, Dowlings, Gaynors, Murphys, Moores, Dillons, O"Rorkes, Kennys, Raths, Caseys, Norrises, O"Farrells, Brownes, Hams, Duffys, Ballestys, Gahans, and Garaghans. Dr. Santiago O"Farrell, son of one of the earliest Irish pioneers, holds a foremost position among the distinguished lawyers of the present day. An Irish engineer, Mr. John Coghlan, gave Buenos Ayres its first waterworks. The British hospital has at present for its leading surgeon a distinguished Irishman, Dr.
Luke O"Connor. A son of Peter Sheridan, educated in England, has left the finest landscapes of South America by any artist born in America.
He died at Buenos Ayres in his 27th year, 1861. Among the public men of Irish descent, fifty years ago, in Buenos Ayres, are to be mentioned the distinguished lawyer and politician, Dalmacio Velez Sarsfield, and John Dillon, commissioner of immigration. Dillon was the first to start a brewery in Buenos Ayres, for which purpose he brought out workmen and machinery from Europe. All of his sons occupied distinguished positions. Richard O"Shee, president of the Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Ayres, was born at Seville of an old Irish family banished by William III. Among the many valuable citizens of Buenos Ayres who perished during the cholera of 1868 was Dr. Leslie, a native of Cavan, whose benevolence to the poor was unceasing. Henry O"Gorman, for some years chief of police in Buenos Ayres and afterwards governor of the penitentiary, was descended from an Irish family which went to Buenos Ayres in the eighteenth century.
His brother, Canon O"Gorman, was one of the dignitaries of the archdiocese, and director of the boys" reformatory. General Donovan, son of an Irish Dr. Donovan of Buenos Ayres, had command of one of the sections of the new Indian frontier.
The first Irish chaplain was Father Burke, a venerable friar mentioned by Mr. Love in 1820 as over 70 years of age and much esteemed. When Rivadavia suppressed the Orders in 1822, he allowed Father Burke to remain in the convent of Santo Domingo. After his death the Irish residents, in 1828, pet.i.tioned Archbishop Murray of Dublin for a chaplain. Accordingly the Rev. Patrick Moran was selected, and he arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1829. He died in the following year, and was succeeded by the Rev. Patrick O"Gorman from Dublin, who continued as chaplain during 16 years till his death in 1847.
The year 1843 is memorable for the arrival of Rev. Anthony Fahy, with whose name the advancement of the Irish in Argentina will be forever identified. This great patriarch was born at Loughrea, Co. Galway, in 1804, and made his ecclesiastical studies at St. Clement"s convent of Irish Dominicans at Rome. Being sent to the western states of America, he pa.s.sed ten years in Ohio and Kentucky, after which, on the invitation of the Irish community of Buenos Ayres and by permission of the superior of his Order, he came to the river Plate at a time when the prospects of the country and of the Irish residents were far from promising. The history of the Irish community since that time is in some measure a recital of the labors of Father Fahy. He it was who helped his countrymen to choose and buy their lands which now are of such enormous value. Their increasing numbers and prosperity in the camp districts obliged him to endow each of the provincial _partidos_ was a resident chaplain. Most of these clergymen were educated in Dublin, and soon showed their zeal not merely in religious, but also in social spheres. Irish reading-rooms, libraries, and schools sprang up and laid the foundation for the refined Irish life of the present day in those districts. Among other services, Father Fahy founded the Irish convent, bringing out some Sisters of Mercy under Mrs. Mary Evangelist Fitzpatrick from Dublin, to whom he gave it in charge. Father Fahy died in harness in 1871 of yellow fever; he attended a poor Italian woman and on returning home was at once taken ill. He lasted only three days and expired peacefully, a martyr to his sacred calling. He died so poor that Mr.
Armstrong had to discharge for him some small debts, and five others of his countrymen paid his funeral expenses. A fitting memorial of the deceased priest, the Fahy College for Irish orphan boys in Argentina, has been erected in Buenos Ayres, and a magnificent monument of Irish marble, carved in Ireland, also perpetuates his fame.
The priests, still living, who were co-workers with Father Fahy and appointed by him to various _partidos_, are Monsignor Samuel O"Reilly, deservedly beloved by his parishioners, and the Rev. Father Flannery, whose appointment to San Pedro brought a great influx of Irish farmers into that district. Among those who have gone to enjoy their eternal reward are the brothers, Rev. Michael and Rev. John Leahy, both of whom were indefatigable during the yellow fever in Buenos Ayres. Rev. Father Mulleady, Rev. Patrick Lynch, Rev. James Curran, and Monsignor Curley were also among the Irish priests of that time.
The Fahy College is entrusted to the care of the Marist Brothers, who are largely Irish. The community of Holy Cross of the Pa.s.sionist Fathers, who have as provincial the distinguished North American scholar Father Fidelis Kent Stone, is almost entirely composed of Irish and Irish-Americans. They have several establishments in various provinces of Argentina. Irish priests are to be met with all over the country. In Patagonia and the Chaco we also find a number of Protestant missionaries sent out by the Irish branch of the South American Missionary Society.
Archdeacon Dillon succeeded Father Fahy as Irish chaplain in Buenos Ayres, and, although by birth and education an Irishman, he became one of the princ.i.p.al dignitaries of the archdiocese. He was for some time professor of theology in the ecclesiastical seminary of Buenos Ayres, and accompanied Archbishop Escalada as theologian to the Vatican Council in 1869. He was the founder of the _Southern Cross_ in 1874, the Irish weekly paper which is now so ably edited by the gifted Irishman, Mr. Gerald Foley.
The first daily paper to appear in English in South America was the _Standard_, founded in 1861 by Michael G. Mulhall, the distinguished statistician, and it is still one of the leading papers in the country. In conducting it Michael G. Mulhall was joined by his brother, Edward T. Mulhall, in 1862, and for many years it was continuously under their care. The _Standard_ still remains in the Mulhall family, and has for its editor a cousin of the former editor"s, Mr. John Mulhall, who wisely directs its course. The _Argentina_, an important paper in Spanish, was founded a few years since by Edward T. Mulhall, Jr., a brilliant son of the late Edward Mulhall of the _Standard_. The _Hyberno-Argentine Review_, a new Irish weekly, is edited by another able Irishman, James B. Sheridan.
In Rio Janeiro the _Anglo-Brasilian Times_ was founded in 1864 by an Irishman, Mr. Scully, who also wrote an important book on Brazil.
Ireland had also its representatives in South American diplomacy and the making of treaties. As early as 1809 Colonel James Burke was sent by Lord Strangford, British minister at Rio, on a confidential mission to Buenos Ayres to negotiate the establishment of a separate kingdom on the river Plate, with the Princess Charlotte as queen. In 1867 Mr. Gould, an Irishman, British charge d"affaires, endeavored to mediate between the allies, Brazil and Argentina, and President Lopez of Paraguay, but without success. Stephen H. Sullivan, British charge d"affaires for Chile, signed the treaty of commerce and navigation between England and Chile on the 10th of May, 1852. He was afterwards appointed British minister at Lima, where he was murdered. The late Chilian ministers to Buenos Ayres and London, William Blest Gana and Albert Blest Gana, were the sons of an Irish Doctor Blest from Sligo, who settled in Chile. In 1859 George f.a.gan signed a treaty with General Guido for compensation of losses to British subjects during the civil wars after the Independence.
The mining industry had among its pioneers brave sons of Erin. J. O.
French went to Buenos Ayres in 1826, and after an arduous mountain journey arrived at the foot of the Cerro Morado, where he found auriferous ores. Chevalier Edmond Temple, an Irish gentleman who had served in Spain in a dragoon regiment, also landed in Buenos Ayres in 1826, and started across the Pampas, then almost uninhabited, until he came to the mountainous country where the Potosi mines were situated. In one of the defiles he lost his favorite horse, and in his book he bids a touching farewell to the friendly steed which had shared with him so many toils and dangers. Temple"s successor in the Argentine mining provinces was Major Rickard Seaver, a member of an old Co. Dublin family.
Several books of travel in South America have been published by Irish writers during the last fifty years. MacCann"s _Travels in the Argentine Provinces_, 1846-49, contains much that is valuable concerning the history and manners of the country. Major Rickard Seaver issued in 1863 an interesting narrative of his crossing the Andes. Consul Hutchinson, an Irishman, published in 1864 his book _Argentine Gleanings_, which was followed by another in 1869 called _South American Recollections_. Robert Crawford, an Irish engineer, led an expedition from Buenos Ayres in November, 1871, across the Indian Pampas and over the pa.s.s of the Planchon in the Andes, to survey an overland route to Chile, and subsequently published an interesting account of his journey. The first book printed and published in English, in South America, was the _Handbook of the River Plate_, written by Michael G. Mulhall and published by the _Standard_, in 1861. The same author also published the _Rural Code of Buenos Ayres_ in 1867, and the _Handbook of Brazil_ in 1877. In 1871 he published an account of his travels among the German colonies in Rio Grande do Sul. Twenty years ago the writer of this sketch published _Between the Amazon and the Andes_ and the _Story of the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay_. These books derive special interest from the fact that she was the first foreign woman ever seen in Cuyaba, the capital of Matto Grosso, whither she accompanied her husband, 2500 miles from either the Atlantic or the Pacific seaboard.
They arrived as far as the Diamantina Mountains, beyond Cuyaba, and saw the little rivers which form the sources of the mighty Amazon.
Casting a glance over South America, we see in every country and province evidences of Irish genius employed not only in fighting but in the development of natural resources. To quote Consul Cowper"s report to the Foreign Office in London: "The progress of Buenos Ayres is mainly due to the industrious Irish sheep farmers." No other nationality contributed so largely to the export trade of the country. At one time it was shown by the tables of Mr. Duggan and other wool exporters that the quant.i.ty of this staple industry yearly sold by Irishmen in Buenos Ayres exceeded that sold by all other nationalities. In later years the Irish sheep farmers in the province of Buenos Ayres have turned their lands into wheat lands, and the great industries of the country, sheep and cattle, have been moved to the outside camps, especially to that wonderful grazing region in the Andine valleys recently visited by Col. Roosevelt and his party. It may be interesting to mention that at the first English races ever held in South America, on November 6, 1826, the princ.i.p.al event, in which ten horses ran, was easily won by an Irish horse with the appropriate name of "Shamrock."
REFERENCES:
Beaumont: Travels In Buenos Ayres (1828); Wilson: Travels In South America (1796); Pinkerton: Travels (1808), Captain Weddell: Cape Horn and South Atlantic Surveys; Major Gillesple: Buenos Ayres and Provinces; Mrs. Williams, on Humboldt"s Travels (1826); Captain Master: At Home with the Patagonians (1891); Hadfield: Notes of Travel in Brazil and La plata (1863); Hinchcliff: South American Sketches (1862); Captain Burton: Highlands of Brazil; Ross Johnston: A Vacation in the Argentine Alps (1867); MacCann: Travels in the Argentine Provinces (1846-1849); Hutchinson: Argentine Gleanings and South American Recollections; Major Seaver: Crossing the Andes; Crawford: Across the Pampas; V. MacKenna: Life of O"Higgins; Life of Diego Rimagro; History of Santiago; History of Valparaiso; MacKenna: Archives of Spanish America, 50 vols.; Miller: Memoirs; Lives of Belgrano and San Martin; Mulhall; English In South America.
THE IRISH IN AUSTRALASIA
By BROTHER LEO, F.S.C., M.A.
Should one be called upon to give in brief the history of the Irish in the land of the Southern Cross, he could do nothing more to the purpose than to relate the story of the "Holy House of Australia."
The episode, indeed, is characteristic, not merely of the Irish in Australia, but of the Irish in every land and clime where they have striven and conquered.
On the fourteenth of November, 1817, there landed in Sydney an Irish Cistercian Father, Jeremiah F. Flynn. He had heard in Rome of the spiritual dest.i.tution of the Irish Catholics in Australia, and he secured the permission of his superiors to minister to the needs of his compatriots in the Antipodes. Shortly after his arrival he celebrated Ma.s.s in the house of an Irishman named William Davis, who had been transported for making pikes for the insurgents in the days of "98, and then, on the first opportunity that presented itself, he sought the authorization of the colonial governor to exercise the functions of his sacred ministry. Far from hospitable was the reception accorded him by Governor Macquarie. The priest was told, with the bluntness characteristic of British officialdom, that the presence of no "popish missionary" would be tolerated in the settlement, and that the profession of the Protestant form of belief was obligatory on every person in the penal colony.
With the example of the "priesthood hunted down like wolves" before him, Father Flynn saw but one consistent course to pursue. His fellow Catholics, his fellow Irishmen, were in sore need of his help; that help they must receive, even though the civil powers refused their sanction. So for several months he went about as secretly as he could, hearing confessions, offering the Holy Sacrifice, and breaking the bread of good counsel. During this trying period, Davis was his host and defender and friend. Eventually the presence of the priest was detected; he was arrested and promptly sent back to England.
Before the ship sailed he tried repeatedly to return to the house of Davis where the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in a cedar clothes-press, but the surveillance of his captors was strict and unsleeping. So in the dwelling of the convict Irishman the Sacred Species remained. Before this unwonted repository Davis kept a light ever burning day and night; and day and night crept the loyal Irishmen of the settlement to kneel in prayer before the improvised shrine. The "Holy House of Australia", as the Davis dwelling came to be known, remained the only Catholic church in the colony until 1821, when two Irish priests, Father John Joseph Therry of Cork and Father Philip Connolly of Kildare, were permitted to attend to the spiritual needs of the Irish Catholics. Their coming marked the beginning of religious toleration in Australia and the termination of the sufferings and sacrifices of the Irish colonists, several of whom had had to pay dearly for their religious convictions. Davis himself had been twice flogged and once imprisoned for refusing to attend Protestant service.
Today, on the site of the "Holy House of Australia", stands the church of St. Patrick. Davis gave the land and the sum of one thousand pounds to the church, and his fellow exiles contributed according to their means. This episode in the history of the Irish in Australia pays a touchingly eloquent tribute to the spirit of loyalty to G.o.d and country which has characterized the sons and daughters of St. Patrick everywhere whither their feet have strayed. It is the spirit which has embodied itself in the imposing cathedral of St.
Patrick in Melbourne and the splendidly equipped college of St.
Patrick in Sydney. It is the spirit which has made the Irish play so conspicuous a role in the civic and commercial history of Australasia.
Originally known as New Holland, Australia became an English penal colony after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in the United States of America. An Irish element came into the colony in the last decade of the eighteenth century when, during the Orange reign of terror, upwards of a thousand people from the west of Ireland were deported by the Ulster magistrates and by Lord Carhampton, the notorious "Satanides", who was charged with the pacification of Connacht. And during the first three decades of the nineteenth century the stream of Irish transportation flowed on. As a result of the t.i.thes agitation, the Charter and Reform movements, the Combination Laws and the Corn Laws, many more Irishmen were forced across the sea. It was not until 1868 that the convict system was permanently abolished.
It is difficult for us of a later day to realize the meaning of that word, transportation. Let us form some conception of what the Irish exiles suffered from the graphic picture painted in colors, somber but not untrue, by one who knew from firsthand experience the lot of the political prisoner. Writes Dr. Ullathorne in _The Horrors of Transportation_:
"Take any one of you, my dear readers; separate him from his wife, from his children, from all those whose conversation makes life dear to him; cast him on the ends of the earth; let him there fall amongst reprobates who are the last stain and disgrace of our common nature; give him those obscene-mouthed monsters for his constant companions and consolers; let the daily vision of their progress from infamy to infamy, until the demon that inspires them has exhausted invention and the powers of nature together, be his only example; house him, at night, in a bark hut on a mud floor, where he has less comfort than your cattle in their stalls; awake him from the troubled dreams of his wretched wife and outcast children, to feel how far he is from their help, and take him out at sunrise; work him under a burning sun, and a heartless overseer, and the threat of the lash until the night fall; give him not a penny"s wages but sorrow; leave him no hope but the same dull, dreary round of endless drudgery for many years to come; let him see no opening by which to escape, but through a long, narrow prospect of police courts, of gaols, of triangles, of death cells, and of penal settlements; let him all the while be clothed in a dress of shame, that shows to every living soul his degradation; and if he dare to sell any part of that clothing, then flog him worse than any dog! And thus, whilst severed from all kindness and all love, whilst the stern harsh voice of his task-master is grating in incessant jars within his ear, take all rest out of his flesh, and plant the thorn; take all feeling out of his heart, and leave the withered core; take all peace out of his conscience, and leave the worm of remorse; and then let any one come and dare to tell me that the man is happy because he has bread and meat. Is it not here, if ever there was such a case, where the taste of bread is a taste of misery, and where to feed and prolong life is to feed and lengthen our sorrow? And in pondering these things, do not those strong words of Sacred Scripture bring down their load of truth in heavy trouble to our thoughts, that, "Their bread is loathsome to their eye, and their meat unto their soul.""
But the bright side of the story of the Irish in Australia and New Zealand unfolds in the subsequent years. The men who had been sent forth from Erin with the brand of the convict upon them became the founders of a new commonwealth. To them were joined the numerous voluntary settlers who, attracted by the natural resources of the island-continent and especially by the gold discoveries of the fifties, migrated to Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales. When in 1858 William E. Gladstone sought to establish a new colony to be known as North Australia, he opened a fresh field for Irish initiative. As a result of his effort there stands today, on a terrace overlooking Port Curtis, the city of Gladstone, the terminal of the Australian railway system. It was here, according to Cardinal Moran, that in 1606, Ma.s.s was first celebrated in Australia, when the Spaniards sought shelter in the "Harbor of the Holy Cross." The first government resident at Gladstone was Sir Maurice Charles O"Connell, a relative of the great Liberator; he was four times acting-governor of Queensland.
The list of Irish pioneer settlers in Australasia is a lengthy one.
The name of Thomas Poynton stands out prominently. He was a New Zealand pioneer who had married an Irish girl in Sydney. The devotion of Poynton and his wife to the faith of their fathers is evidenced by the fact that he several times made the long journey from his home to Sydney to interest the church authorities in the wants of the New Zealand Irish Catholics, and that she twice made the same arduous trip to have her children baptized. Thomas Mooney has the distinction of being the first Irish pioneer in Western Australia; and yet another Irishman, Ca.s.sidy by name, carried out a policy of benevolent a.s.similation by marrying the daughter of a Maori chief.
Among the pioneer ecclesiastics were Father William Kelly of Melbourne and Father John McEncroe, a native of Tipperary and a Maynooth man, who for thirty years and more was a prominent figure in the religious and civic life of New South Wales. Father John Brady, another pioneer priest, became Bishop of Perth. Irish names occupy a conspicuous and honored place in the roster of the Australian episcopate. Notable on the list are Bishop Francis Murphy of Adelaide, who was born in Co. Meath, and Archbishop Daniel Murphy of Sydney, a native of Cork, the man who delivered the eulogy on the occasion of Daniel O"Connell"s funeral at Rome. But scant reference can here be made to the ill.u.s.trious primate of Australia, Cardinal Moran, archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911, who was such a potent force in the land of his adoption, and whose masterly _History of the Catholic Church in Australasia_ puts him in the forefront of ecclesiastical historians. On his death he was succeeded in the see of Sydney by another Irishman, Archbishop Michael Kelly of Waterford.
Archbishop O"Reily of Adelaide is a recognized authority on music, and has written several pamphlets on that subject. A Galway man, Dr.
T. J. Carr, a great educator, is now (1914) archbishop of Melbourne, and a Clare man, Dr. J. P. Clune, holds sway in Perth.
Irishmen in Australia have figured largely in the iron and coal industries, in the irrigation projects, in the manufacturing activities, and in the working of the gold mines. But they have likewise distinguished themselves in other fields of endeavor.
Prominent on the beadroll of Australian fame stand the names of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), founder of the _Nation_ newspaper in Dublin, member of the British house of commons, and afterwards premier of Victoria and speaker of the legislative a.s.sembly, and his sons, John Gavan Duffy and Frank Gavan Duffy, public-spirited citizens and authorities on legal matters. The Currans, father and son, active in the public life of Sydney, were afterwards members of the British parliament. Distinguished in the records of the Australian judiciary are Judges Quinlan, Casey, Brennan, and O"Dowd.
The Rev. J. Milne Curran, F.G.S., is a geologist who has achieved more than local fame. Other Irishmen who have loomed large in Australasian affairs are Daniel Brophy, John c.u.min, Augustus Leo Kenny, James Coghlan, Sir Patrick Buckley, Sir John O"Shannessy, and Nicholas Fitzgerald. Louis C. Brennan, C.B., who was born in Ireland in 1852, emigrated to Australia when a boy and while working in a civil engineer"s office in Melbourne conceived the idea of the "Brennan Torpedo", which he afterwards perfected, and then in 1897 sold the invention to the British Admiralty for 110,000. Another Brennan, Frank by name, is president of the Knights of Our Lady of the Southern Cross and has been a labor member of the federal parliament since 1911; a third, Christopher John, is a.s.sistant lecturer in modern literature in the University of Sydney; and a fourth, James, of the diocese of Perth, was made a Knight of St.
Silvester by Pius X. in 1912. Young Australia and New Zealand may be as the world goes, but already both have much to their credit in the domains of music, art, and literature; and here, as usual, the Irish have been to the fore. In the writing of poetry, history, and fiction the Celtic element has been especially distinguished. Not to speak of the writers mentioned elsewhere in this sketch, scores of Irish men and women have been identified with the development of an Australian literature which, though delightfully redolent of the land whence it sprang, nevertheless possesses the universal note which makes it a truly human product. Many years ago one of the most gifted of Irish-Australian singers, "Eva"" of the _Nation_, voiced a tentative plaint:
"O barren land! O blank, bright sky!
Methinks it were a n.o.ble duty To kindle in that vacant eye The light of spirit--beauty-- To fill with airy shapes divine Thy lonely plains and mountains, The orange grove, the bower of vine, The silvery lakes and fountains; To wake the voiceless, silent air To soft, melodious numbers; To raise thy lifeless form so fair From those deep, spell-bound slumbers.
Oh, whose shall be the potent hand To give that touch informing, And make thee rise, O Southern Land, To life and poesy warming?"
Mrs. O"Doherty herself, who long lived in that Queensland which she thus apostrophized, helped in no uncertain way to answer her own question. So did John Farrell, the author of the truly remarkable "Jubilee Ode" of 1897 and of a collection of poems which include the well known "How He Died." And so, long before, had the non-Catholic Irishman, Edward O"Shaughnessy, who went to Australia as a convict, but who laughed in lockstep and made music with his chains.
James Francis Hogan, author and journalist, was born in Tipperary in 1855 and shortly afterward was brought by his parents to Melbourne where he received his education. On his return to Ireland he was elected to represent his native county in parliament. He is an authority on Australian history and in his book on _The Gladstone Colony_ has given us a fine specimen of modern historical method.
With him must be mentioned Roderick Flanagan, whose _History of New South Wales_ appeared in 1862.
Other Irish names distinguished in Australasian literature are those of the New Zealand poet, Thomas Bracken; Roderick Quinn; Desmond Byrne; J.B. O"Hara; the eccentric convict-writer, George "Barrington"
Waldron; Victor J. Daley; Bernard O"Dowd; Edwin J. Brady; the Rev.
J.J. Malone; and the Rev. W. Kelly.
Finally, the Irish in Australia have done more than their share in the work of education and social service. Under Irish auspices several of the Catholic teaching congregations, including the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Nuns, were introduced, and their work has borne goodly fruit. A mighty power for good is the Hibernian Australasian Benefit Society. The organization, which was founded in 1871, has spread rapidly and has a large active membership.