  "For the Beachcomber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist." In justification of the assumption of the title of "Beachcomber," it must be said that, having made good and sufficient provision against the advent of the wet season (which begins, as a rule, during the Christmas holidays), the major portion of each week was spent in first formal and official calls, and then friendly and familiar visits to the neighbouring islands and the mainland. Duty and inclination constrained me to find out what were the states and moods of all the bays and coves of all the isles; the location and form of rocks and reefs; the character of shrubs and trees; the nature of the jungle-covered hilltops; the features of bluffs and precipices; to understand the style and manner and the conversation of unfamiliar birds; to discover where the turtle most do congregate; the favourite haunts of fishes. I was in a hurry to partake freely of the novel, and yearned for pleasure of the absolute freedom of isles uninhabited, shores untrodden; eager to know how Nature, not under the microscope, behaved; what were her maiden fancies, what the art with which she allures. But there was an excuse, rather an imperious command, for all the apparent waste of time. Before the rains came thundering on the iron roof of our little hut, the washed-out and enfeebled town dweller who gave way to bitter reflections on the first evening of his new career, could hardly have been recognised, thanks to the robustious, wholesome effects of the free and vitalising life. Fourteen, frequently sixteen, hours of the twenty-four were spent in the open air, ashore and afloat. What a glowing and absolutely authentic testimonial could be written as to the tonic influence of the misrepresented climate of the rainy belt of North Queensland on constitutions that have run down? According to popular opinion, malaria ought to have discovered an exceptionally easy prey. Ague, if the expected had happened, should have gripped and shaken me until my teeth rattled; and after alternations of raging fever and arctic cold, I ought to have gone to my long home with the fearful shapes of delirium yelling in my ears. But there are places other than Judee where they do not know everything. At the fraction of the fee of a fashionable doctor, and of the cost of following his fashionable and pleasing advice—a change to one of the Southern States—in three months one of the compelling causes for the desertion of town life had been disposed of by agreeable processes. None of the bitter, after-taste of physic remained. I knew my island, and was on terms of friendly admiration—born of knowledge of beauty spots—with all the others. I had become a citizen of the universe. During this period of utter abandonment of all serious claims upon time and exertion came the conviction that the career of the Beachcomber, the closest possible "return to Nature" now popularly advocated, has charms none other possesses. Then it was that the lotus-blossom was first eaten. Unfettered by the laws of society, with the means at hand of acquiring the few necessaries of life that Nature in this generous part of her domain fails to provide readymade, a Beachcomber of virtuous instinct, and a due perception of the decency of things, may enjoy a happy life. Should, however, he be of the type that demands a wreck or so every month to maintain his supplies of rum or gin, and other articles of his true religion, and is prepared if wrecks do not come with regularity, to assist tardy Nature by means of false lights on the shore, he will find no scope whatever among these orderly isles. The Beachcomber of tradition parades his coral islet barefooted, bullying guileless natives out of their copra, coco-nut oil and pearl-shell; his chief diet, turtle and turtle eggs and fish; his drink, rum and coco-nut milk—the latter only when the former is impossible. When a wreck happens he becomes a potentate in pyjamas, and with his dusky wives, dressed in bright vestiture, fares sumptuously. And though the ships from the isles do not meet to "pour the wealth of ocean in tribute at his feet," he can still "rush out of his lodgings and eat oysters in regular desperation." A whack on his hardened head from the club of a jealous native is the time-honoured fate of the typical Beachcomber. Flotsam and jetsam make another class of Beachcomber by stimulating the gaming instincts. Is there a human being, taking part in the rough and tumble of the world, who can honestly make confession and say that he has completely suffocated those inherent instincts of savagedom—joy and patience in the chase, the longing for excitement and surprise, the crude selfishness, the delight in getting something for nothing? Society journals have informed me that titled dames have been known to sit out long and wearisome evenings that they may obtain some paltry favour in a cotillon. And when the sea casts up its gifts on these radiant shores, I boldly and with glee give way to my beachcombing instincts and pick and choose. Never ever up to the present have I found anything of real value; but am I not buoyed up by pious hopes and sanguine expectations? Is not the game as diverting and as innocent as many others that are played to greater profit? It is a game, too, that cannot be forced, and therefore cannot become demoralising; and having no nice feelings nor fine shades, I rejoice and am glad in it. And then what strange and varied things one sees! Once a "harness-cask," hostile to every sense, came trundled by waves eager to expel it from the vicinity of these oxless but scented isles. It overcame us as we sailed by, 20 yards off, and the general necessity for temperate diet and restricted dishes came as a sweet and a comforting reflection. No marvel if the ship whence it was ejected was in bad odour among the sailors. Leaving, as it lurched along, a greasy, foul stain on the sea, it may have poisoned multitudes of uncomplaining fishes during its evil course. Occasionally a case of fruit, washed from the decks of a labouring steamer, drifts ashore. One was the means of introducing a valuable addition to the products of the island. It gave demonstration of how man may unwittingly, and even in opposition to his wit, assist in scattering and multiplying blessings on a smiling land—blessings to last for all time, and perhaps to amend or ameliorate the environment of a budding nation. Many years ago—in 1878, to speak precisely—a ship laden with fragrant cedar logs from the valley of the Daintree River—140 miles to the north— touched on Kennedy Shoal, 20 miles to the south-east of Dunk Island. Crippled though she was she managed to make Cardwell, where she was temporarily patched up, and whence she set sail for Melbourne. It was the critical month of March, and the MERCHANT—clumsy and cumbersome, but a good and safe ship given ample sea-room—before sailing many miles on her course, was caught in the coils of a cyclone, the violence of which is well remembered by old residents on the coast to this day, and was lost with all hands. She is supposed to have struck on a reef to the southward of the Palm Islands, as the bulk of her cargo was cast ashore in Ramsay Bay, Hinchinbrook Island. Portions of the wreckage were found on the Brook Islands; her figurehead—the spread eagle of the United States—and a seaman's chest were picked up on the beach here. Her windlass, with a child's pinafore entangled with it—for the skipper had taken his wife and two children to bear him company—drifted on the South Franklands, 40 miles to the north, and a large portion of the shattered hulk on a reef eastward of Fitzroy Island, 25 miles still farther up the coast. Fate did her worst for the poor MERCHANT, and not yet content, relentlessly pursued two (if not more) of the vessels which sought to recover her cedar, strewn on the treacherous sands of Ramsay Bay. Some of the logs, however, drifted to our quiet coves, and portions remain sound to this day. One more promising and accessible we beachcombed. It provided planks for a punt, besides various articles of furniture, and gave me some most practical homilies on contentment. Having found and duly salvaged that log, it was necessary to cut it up; and then I began to be thankful that pit-sawing was not forced upon me as a profession in the days of inexperienced youth. Pit-sawing is deceptive. It has the appearance of being easy, though not genteel, when others are the toilers, and in the red dust, torn by the polished steel teeth from out the heart of the dull log, do you not "inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia which the musky wings of the zephyrs scatter through the cedared groves of the Hesperides?" Is not that fragrance sufficient compensation for your toil, with the clean red planks profit over and above legitimate earnings? Yet that long saw tugs at our very heart-strings, and you know that to get a real, not merely sentimental, liking for the craft of the sawyer, you must take to it very young, before the possibilities of other occupations and pastimes have distorted your genius. This worthy lesson comes from the gentle art of Beachcombing. Again, a German barque, driven out of its course, found unexpectedly a detached portion of the Great Barrier Reef 200 miles away to the south. When the south-easters came, they pounded away so vigorously with the heavy runs of the sea that in a brief space nothing was left of the big ship save some distorted fragments of iron jammed in among the nigger-heads of coral and the crevices of the rocks. A few weeks after, portions of the wreck were deposited on Dunk Island, and the beach of the mainland for miles was strewn with timber. That wreck was the greatest favour bestowed me in my profession of Beachcomber. Long and heavy pieces of angle-iron came bolted to raft-like sections of the deck; various kinds of timber proved useful in a variety of ways. What? was I to leave it all, unclaimed and unregarded—in excess of morality and modesty—on the beach, to be honey-combed by white ants or to rot? or to honestly own up to that sentiment which is the most human of all? Without affectation or apology, I confess that I was overjoyed—that my instincts, pregnant with original sin, received a most delightful fillip. I wallowed for the time being in the luxury of beachcombing. Upon sober reflection, I cannot say that I am of one mind with the pastor of the Shetland Isles who never omitted this petition from his long prayer—"Lord, if it be Thy holy will to send shipwrecks, do not forget our island"; nor yet with the Breton fishermen, who to this day are of opinion that wreckage is the gift of God, and who therefore take everything that comes in a reverential spirit, as a Divine favour, whether casks of wine or bales of merchandise. But, after all, who am I that I should claim a finer shade of morality than those, with their sturdy widespread hands and perpetual blessing? My inherent powers of resistance to such temptations as the winds and tides of Providence put in their way have never been subject to proof. Does virtue go by default where there is no opportunity to be otherwise than virtuous? The very first pipe of port, or aum of Rhenish, or bale of silk, which comes rolling along may wrestle with my morality and so wrench and twist it as to incapacitate it for ordinary usage for months, or may even permanently disable it. And must not I, venturing to regard myself as a truthful historian, frankly admit a sense allied to disappointment when the white blazing beaches are destitute of the most trivial of temptations? No, the grating of the battered barque, upon which many a wet and weary steersman had stood, now fulfils placid duty as a front gate. No more to be trampled and stamped upon with shifty, sloppy feet—no more to be scrubbed and scored with sand and holystone; painted white, it creaks gratefully every time it swings—the symbol of security, the first outward and visible sign of home, the guardian of the sacred rights of private property, the embodiment of the exclusive. Better so than lying inert under foot on the deck of the barque thrashing through the cold grey seas of the Baltic, or scudding before the unscrupulous billows of Biscay. Moreover, what notable and precise information this derelict timber gave as to the strength and direction of ocean currents. The wreck took place on the 26th October 1900 in 18 deg. 43 min. S. lat., 147 deg. 57 min. E. long., 72 1/2 miles in a direct line from the port of Townsville, and about 200 miles from Dunk Island. She broke up, after a11 the cargo had been salvaged, early in January 1901, and on Tuesday, 5th February, at 10 a.m., the seas landed the first of the broken planks in Brammo Bay. Then for a few days the arrivals were continuous. For over 50 miles along the coast the wreckage was scattered, very little going farther north. Nothing goes south on this part of the coast. Yes, there is one exception during my experience. A veritable cataclysm coincided with a stiff north-easterly breeze, and hundreds of bunches of bananas from plantations on the banks of the Johnstone River—25 miles away—landing-stages and steps, and the beacons from the mouth of the river, drifted south. Most of the more buoyant debris, however, took the next tide back in the direction whence came. When there are eight or ten islands and islets within an afternoon's sail, and miles of mainland beach to police, variety lends her charms to the pursuit of the Beachcomber. Landing in one of the unfrequented coves, he knows not what the winds and the tides may have spread out for inspection and acceptance. Perhaps only an odd coco-nut from the Solomon Islands, its husk riddled by cobra and zoned with barnacles. The germ of life may yet be there. To plant the nut above high-water mark is an obvious duty. Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle, from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom of a staunch cutter. Once there was a goodly hammer cemented by the head fast upright on a flat rock, and again the stand of a grindstone, and a trestle, high and elaborately stayed. Cases, invariably and disappointingly empty, come and go, planks of strange timber, blocks from some tall ship. A huge black beacon waddled along, dragging a reluctant mass of iron at the end of its chain cable, followed by a roughly-built "flatty" and a huge log of silkwood. A jolly red buoy, weary of the formality of bowing to the swell, broke loose from a sandbank's apron-strings, bounced off in the ecstasies of liberty, romped in the surf, rolled on the beach, worked a cosy bed in the soft warm sand, and has slumbered ever since to the soothing hum of the wind, indifferent to the perplexities of mariners and the fate of ships. The gilded masthead truck of a smart yacht, with one of her cabin racks, bespoke of recent disaster, unknown and unaccounted, and a brand new oar, finished and fitted with the nattiness of a man-o'-war's man, told of some wave-swept deck. That which at the time was the most eloquent message from the sea came close to our door, cast up on the snowy-white coral drift of a little cove, where it immediately attracted notice. Nothing but an untrimmed bamboo staff nearly 30 feet long, carrying an oblong strip of soiled white calico between two such strips of red turkey twill. Tattered and frayed, the flags seemed to tell of the desperate appeal for help of some forlorn castaway; of a human being, marooned on a lonely sandbank on the Barrier, without shelter, food or water, but not altogether bereft of hope. BECHE-DE-MER fishers have in times past been marooned on the Reef by mutinous blacks, and left to die by slow degrees, or to be drowned by the implacable yet merciful tide. A makeshift rudder well worn bespoke strenuous efforts to steer a troubled boat to shelter, but this crude signal staff, deftly arranged, told of present agony and stress. It might have been the emblem of a tragic event that the Beachcomber single-handed was not able to investigate. As a matter of fact, it was only a temporary datum of one of His Majesty's surveying ships engaged in attempting to set the bounds of the Barrier. Rarely do we sail about without enjoying the zest of the chance of getting something for nothing. Not yet has the seaman's chest, brass-bound, with its secret compartments full of "fair rose-nobles and bright moidores," been lighted upon; but who can say? Perhaps it has come ashore but now, after leagues of aimless wanderings, and awaits in some cosy cove the next Beachcombing expedition. That from the ill-fated MERCHANT came hither years before my time, and was, in any case, pathetically unromantic. Peradventure there are many who deem this solitary existence dull? Why, it is brimful of interest and sensation. There are the tragedies of the bush to observe and elucidate; all cannot be foreseen and prevented, or even avenged. A bold falcon the other day swooped down upon a wood-swallow that was imitating the falcon's flight just above my head, and bore it bleeding to a tree-top, while I stood shocked at the audacity of the cannibal. A bullet dropped the murderous bird with its dead victim fast in the talons. There are comedies, too, and you have the wit to see them, and in these Beachcombing expeditions expectation, fairly effervesces. One lucky individual—a mere amateur—casually picked up a black-lip mother-of-pearl shell on an island some little distance away. It contained a blue pearl, the price of which gave him such a start in life, that he is now an owner of ships. May not other tides cast up on other shores other oysters whose lives have been rendered miserable by the presence of pearls? Byron says—"Even an oyster may be crossed in love." Science, more precise and frank than the frankest of poets, tells us that oysters are afflicted with tapeworms, and to kill the germ of these indecent pests, enclose them in untimely tombs, which from the human standpoint are among the most lovely and precious of gems. The assertions of the scientific are often the reverse of poetical. We are constrained to believe them, but like our poetical delusions better, and for the origin of the pearl prefer the quaint fable of the Persians to the unpleasant fact of the zoologist. A drop of water of ineffable purity falls from heaven to the sea, an oyster gapes and swallows it, the drop hardens and ripens, and becomes a pearl; and who is so devoid of the perception of purity, beauty and worth as to despise a pearl? Here about, pearls were found. We delight in them, though they prove the previous existence of a filthy ailment. Any oyster may contain a pearl, a pearl of great price—a thing of beauty, a joy for ever. Every gold-lip, every black-lip oyster, is a chance in a lottery. Was there ever a Beachcomber so pure and elevated of soul as to refuse the chances that Nature proffers gratuitously? My meagre horde includes pearls of several tints, black, pink, and white. They represent the paltriest prizes. in the lottery that no Government, however paternal, may prohibit, being mere "baroque," fit only to be pounded up as medicine for some Chinaman luxuriously sick. Yet there is a chance. Some day the great prize may be drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The Beachcomber may be perverted into—well, the next best on the list. Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets, "What a dull life! What a hopeless existence! He is out of it all!" Yes, with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound as the very sea. Kennedy Shoal has been mentioned incidentally. Some miles further north are two bare sandbanks. Prior to the year 1890 they were occupied by a BECHE-DE-MER fisherman, whose headquarters were on the chief of the South Barnard Islands—some 12 or 14 miles to the north. In fateful March of that year a cyclone swooped down on this part of the coast with the pent up fury of a century's restraint. The enormous bloodwood-trees torn out by the roots on Dunk Island testified to the force and ferocity of the storm. The sandbanks, are isolated, dreary spots, the highest portion but 2 or 3 feet above the level reached by spring tides. A cutter—THE DOLPHIN—with a crew of aboriginals, in charge of a couple of Kanakas, was anchored at the shoal, and as the cyclone worked up, the Kanakas decided that the one and only bid for life was to run before it to the mainland. It was a forlorn hope—so forlorn that four or five of the aboriginals declined to take part in it, deeming it safer to trust to the sandbank, which they imagined could never be entirely swept by the besoms of the sea. The cutter fled before the storm, only to capsize in the breakers off the mouth of the Johnstone River. Clinging to the wreck until it drifted a few miles south, the Kanakas and crew battled through the waves and eventually reached the shore. Of those who placed their faith on the sandbank not one was spared. The seas raced over it, pounded and flattened it. The men upon it were unconsidered trifles. The tall and handsome Scandinavian whose fortune thus assailed was at his home with his wife and children and brother. His yacht—THE MAUD—in the height of the storm, began to drag her anchor. He and his brother went out in a dinghy to secure her. At dusk the wife, young, petite and pretty, with strained anxiety watched the efforts of the men to beat back to shelter. Darkness came, blotting out the scene and its climax. Never after was anything seen or heard of the brothers or the yacht. And for nearly a fortnight the disconsolate wife and her little ones were alone on the island. Ten years later, on one of the two bare patches of sand, another BECHE-DE-MER smoke-house was built. While the owner a swarthy Arabian, was out on the reef miles away, a phenomenally high tide occurred. His wife—a comely girl of British descent—was alone on the shoal. She watched the rising water apprehensively, until all the sand was covered save the few feet on which the frail shelter stood. One more ripple and the floor was swamped. Then, wading and swimming, she managed to reach a punt, and so saved her life. Since then these patches of sand have not been regarded as a safe outpost even by those most venturesome of people—BECHE-DE-MER fishers. This is not an apology, but a confession; not a plea of defence, but a justification—a fair and free chronicle, a frank acknowledgment of the tributes of impartial Neptune—Neptune who gives and who takes away—who stealthily filches with tireless fingers, and who, when in the mood, robs so remorselessly, and with such awful, such majestic violence, that it were impious to whimper. Who beachcombed my three rudders, the one toilfully adzed out in one piece from the beautiful heart of a bean-tree log, another cunningly fitted with a sliding fin, and that of red cedar with famous brass mountings? Who owns the pair of ballast tanks once mine? Who the buoy deemed securely moored? Who the paddles and the rowlocks and the signal halyards, lost because of Neptune's whims and violence? Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not quite an exact art. Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return—a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the police and reluctantly claimed. A mind inclined to casuistry, could it not defend Beachcombing? Does not the law recognise it under the definition of trover? Why bother about the law and the moralities when it is all so pleasing, so engrossing, and so fair? The Beachcomber wants no extensive establishment. His possessions need never be mortgaged. The cost of living is measurable by a standard adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of a little manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates for the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit—not the profession—leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies luxuriously with time, free from all the restrictions of streets, every precious moment his very own; afloat in these calm and shallow waters there is a never-ending panorama of entertainment. Coral gardens—gardens of the sea nymphs, wherein fancy feigns cool, shy, chaste faces and pliant forms half-revealed among gently swaying robes; a company of porpoise, a herd of dugong; turtle, queer and familiar fish, occasionally the spouting of a great whale, and always the company of swift and graceful birds. Sometimes the whole expansive ocean is as calm as it can only be in the tropics and bordered by the Barrier Reef—a shield of shimmering silver from which the islands stand out as turquoise bosses. Again, it is of cobalt blue, with changing bands of purple and gleaming pink, or of grey blue—the reflection of a sky pallid and tremulous with excess of light. Or myriad hosts of microscopic creatures—the Red Sea owes to the tribe its name—the multitudinous sea dully incarnadine; or the boat rides buoyantly on the shoulders of Neptune's white horses, while funnel-shaped water spouts sway this way and that. Land is always near, and the flotsam and jetsam, do they not supply that smack of excitement—if not the boisterous hope—bereft of which life might seem "always afternoon?" These chronicles are toned from first to last by perceptions which came to the Beachcomber—perceptions which lead, mayhap, to a subdued and sober estimate of the purpose and bearing of the pilgrimage of life. Doubts become exalted and glorified, hopes all rapture, when long serene days are spent alone in the contemplation of the splendours of sky and sea, and the enchantment of tropic shores. TROPICAL INDUSTRIESWas there not an explicit contract that some of the experiences and events of a settler's life should be duly described and recorded? How to fulfil that obligation and at the same time avoid what is ordinarily regarded as the dull and prosaic, the stale, the flat, the unprofitable, is the trouble. I would gladly shirk even this small responsibility, even as greater ones have been outmanoeuvred, but a written promise unfulfilled may be troublesome to a conscience, which, when reminiscent of ante-beachcombing days, is not altogether unimpressionable. Well, the life of a settler—the man who drags his sustenance, all and every part of it, from the soil in tropical Queensland, as a mere settler very closely resembles that of others who cultivate. If an abstract of the universal experience were obtainable, it would very likely be found to go towards the establishment of a standard from which many would cheerfully desire many cheerful changes. After all, that represents a condition not altogether monopolised by settlers. Yet, when once the life is begun, how few there are who attempt to withdraw from it? It grows on the senses and faculties. It appeals to the emotional as well as to the stolid humours. The cares of this world as expounded in town life, and the sinfulness of never-to-be-acquired riches are foreign to the free, bland air which has filtered through the myriad leaves of the mountain, and which smacks so strongly of freedom. Sometimes the settler takes up studies and relieves the sameness of his duties by pastimes. One never went to his maize field, along narrow gloomy aisles through the jungle, without a net for the capture of butterflies. His humble home was as resplendent as the show-cases of a natural history museum. But he was singularly favoured. A lovely waterfall was the jewel on his estate. That was the shape of beauty that moved away the pall from his dark spirit and gave colour to his life and actions. Another took to collecting birds' eggs; another to the study of botany; another to photography. Each wreathed, according to his predilections, a flowery band to bind him to the earth, finding that even the life of a settler may be filled with "sweet dreams, and health and quiet." But the great majority seem to have taken to the scrap heap of Federal politics with such ardour that they clutch but the fag ends of the poetry of life. Many become great readers and are knowing and knowledgeable. Those who drift away from country life are for the most part men who hustle after the coy damsel fortune by searching for minerals, and just as many who have succeeded in that arduous passion settle quietly on the land. Each may and does desire amendments to and amelioration in his lot. There is still left to all the healthy impulse of achievement, the desire for something better, the noble and inspiriting virtue of discontent. Rare is a deserted home. Even the first rough dwelling of a settler possessing the slenderest resources is invested with tender sentiments. There is his home—a poor one, perhaps, but his own, and to it he clings with desperation, sees in and about it attractions and beauty where others perceive nothing but untoned dreariness, unrelieved hopelessness. His little bit of country may be remote and isolated, but Nature is warm and encouraging, and profuse of her stimulants here. She responds off-hand without pausing to reflect, but with an outburst of goodwill and purpose to appeals for sustenance. She has no despondent moods. She never lapses in prolific purposes. She may be wayward in accepting the interferences of man, but all her vigorous impulses are expended in productiveness. She cannot sulk or idle. Kill, burn and destroy her primeval jungle, and she does not give way to sadness and despair, nor are any of her infinite forces abated. Spontaneously she begins the work of restoration, and as if by magic the scar is covered with as rich and riotous a profusion of vegetation as ever. Nature needs only to be restrained and schooled and her response is an abundance of various sorts of food for man. The routine that cultivators of the soil have to obey is diverse, but the life of the dweller in the country in tropical Queensland can be asserted with perfect safety to be more comfortable than that of the average settler in any other part of Australia. There are no phases of agricultural enterprise devoid of toil, save perhaps the growing of vanilla, the very poetry of the oldest of pursuits, in which one has to aid and abet in the loves and in the marriage of flowers. But vanilla production is not one of the profitable branches of agriculture here yet. We have to deal only with things that are at present practicable. Whether the settler grows maize, or fruit or coffee, or as a collateral exercise of industry gets log timber, or raises pigs or poultry, the life has no great variations. If he farms sugar-cane, being resident within the zone of influence of a mill, he belongs to a different order—an order with which it is not intended to deal. My purpose refers only to men who do not employ labour, who have to depend almost solely upon their own hard hands. The conditions upon which the land is acquired demand personal residence during a period of five years and the erection of permanent improvements, such as fencing, thereon, and there are not many who take up a selection who are in the position to pay wages. The selector must do the clearing, and the preparation of the soil for whatever crop in his experience or the experience of others is considered the most remunerative. During this period his love for the particular piece of land by-and-by to become his own begins. More realistically than anyone else he knows the quantity of his energy and enthusiasm, his very life, the land has absorbed. It becomes part of himself even in the early days of toil, and though when in the fulness of time and the completion of conditions he may lease the land to Chinese cultivators, and become a resident landlord, he cannot leave the place even for the attraction of town life, for possibly the rent he receives does not make him independent quite. At any rate he lives on the land. The alien race does the hard work, and takes the greater portion of profit; but he enjoys the luxury of possession, and must make sacrifices accordingly. I am fearful of entering upon a description of the cultivation of maize, or bananas, or citrus fruits, or pineapples, or mangoes, or coffee, or even sweet potatoes, because experience teaches me that others know of all the details in a far more practical sense. Would it not be presumptuous for a mere idler, an individual whose enterprise and industry have been sapped by the insidious nonchalance of the Beachcomber, to tell of practical details of cultural pursuits—the enthusiasm, the disappointments, the glowing anticipations, the realisation of inflexible facts, the plain emphatic truths which others have reason to know ever so much more keenly? But it may be forgiven if I generalise and say that the minor departments of rural enterprise in North Queensland are in a peculiar stage—a stage of transition and uncertainty. Coloured labour has been depended upon to a large extent. Even the poorest settler has had the aid of aboriginals. But with the passing of that race, and prohibition against the employment of any sort of coloured labour, the question is to be asked, Can tropical products be grown profitably unless consumers are willing to pay a largely increased price—a price equivalent to the difference between the earnings of those who toil in other tropical countries and the living wage of a white man in Australia? Fruit of many acceptable varieties can be grown to perfection with little labour in immense quantities. Coffee is one of the most prolific of crops. Timber is obtainable in magnificent assortment and unrealisable quantities. Poultry and pigs multiply extraordinarily. Apart from bananas the fruit trade is shifty and treacherous. The markets are far away and inconstant, the means of transport not yet perfect. Many assert that not half the pine-apples and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the mangoes produced in North Queensland are consumed. That the quantity grown is trivial in comparison with what would be, were the demand regular and consistent, is self-evident. We want population to eat our produce, and then there will be no complaint. In the case of coffee a plentiful supply of cheap labour is essential to success. Those who by judicious treatment of the aboriginals command their services have so far made profit. A coffee plantation suggests pleasant, picturesque and spicy things. The orderly lines of the plants, in glossy green adorned for a brief space with white, frail, fugitive flowers distilling a deliciously sweet and grateful odour, the branches crowded with gleaming berries, green, pink and red, present pleasing aspect. As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffee estate has a garden-like relief. But picking berry by berry is slow and monotonous work, vexatious, too, to those mortals whose skin is sensitive to the attacks of green ants. Then comes the various processes of the removal of the pulp, first by machinery, finally by the fermentation of the still adhering slimy residuum; then the drying and saving by exposure to the sun on trays or on tarpaulins until all moisture is expelled; and the hulling which disintegrates the parchment from the twin berries; then winnowing, and finally the polishing. Do drinkers of the fragrant and exhilarating beverage realise the amount of labour and care involved before the crop is taken off and preserved from deterioration and decay? A few berries that may have become mildewed during the slow, tedious and anxious process of drying in the sun, may violate the delicate flavour and aroma which the grower has been at pains to secure and fix. In coffee it is as with many other features of rural life in Australia. The men who undertake the production are for the most part those who have gained their knowledge by personal experience on the spot. Reading and the advice of experts who have graduated in countries where climatic conditions are diverse and where the labour is cheap, yet skilled by reason of generation after generation of occupation in it, do not complete necessary knowledge. Problems have to be faced that have no theoretical nor official solution, and blunders paid for, until by the process of the elimination of mistakes the right way is discovered. Losses mount up until either patience and means are exhausted, or success crowns the application of intelligent enterprise. Then, when the coffee planter, self-taught, in each and all of the departments of culture and preparation, glories in the assurance of his capabilities to offer to the world an article of indubitable character, he discovers that the vulgar world, for the most part, prefers its coffee duly adulterated; indeed has become so warped and perverted in perception that the pure and undefiled article is looked upon with suspicion and distaste. Its flavour and aroma are quite foreign to the ordinary coffee drinker. The contaminated beverage is regarded as pure, and the genuine article is soundly condemned as an imposition, and the seller of it is liable to be accused of fraud. It is in a similar position to the good grape brandy which Victorians produce, and which drinkers of some imported stuff (described as one part cognac and three parts silent spirit) fail to recognise as real brandy. If coffee is not muddy and thick and does not possess a mawkish twang of liquorice, it is suspected. The delicate aromatic flavour, the fragrant odour, the genial and stimulant effects are now almost unknown, except in limited circles. North Queensland is capable of growing far more than sufficient coffee for the Commonwealth, but coffee is not a popular Australian beverage, and as it entirely loses its specific balsam and identity under the manipulation of manufacturers, it cannot get the chance of becoming popular. Australian wines, Australian spirits and Australian coffee might well be the popular beverages of Australians. But preference is given to foreign importations, of the genuineness of some of which there are strong grounds for suspicion; or in the case of coffee its elements are so disguised by adulteration that a revolution in public taste must take place before it can possibly find general favour. But there are other branches of tropical agriculture to which the settler may devote himself. Rubber offers belated fortune. Cotton, rice, tobacco and fibre—plants flourish exceedingly, and in the production of ginger and some sort of spices and medicinal gums, profit may be possible. The manufacture of manilla rope from the fibre of the easily cultivated MUSA TEXTILIS may be a remunerative industry. It is amply demonstrated that butter quite up to the standard of exportation is to be manufactured in tropical Queensland. No one need starve or pine for lack of wholesome appetising and nutritious food while the banana grows as it does in North Queensland, and common as it is, the banana is one of the curiosities of the vegetable world. One writer says: "It is not a tree, a palm, a bush, a vegetable, nor a herb; it is simply a herbaceous plant with the stature of tree, and is perennial." He adds that the fruit contains no seed, though he qualifies the latter statement by remarking that he has heard of fully developed seeds occasionally appearing in the cultivated fruit "when left to ripen on the tree," and further that wild varieties of the banana which propagate themselves by seed are reported to be found in some parts of Eastern Asia. A high botanical authority includes in his description of the species indigenous to Queensland, "Fruit oblong, succulent, indehiscent; seed numerous; tree-like herbs. Herbs with perennial rhizome." There are three if not more species of bananas native to Queensland, and they form a conspicuous feature of the jungle. With remarkable rapidity one of the species shoots up a ruddy symmetrical, slightly tapering stem—smooth and polished where the old leaf-sheaths have been shed—to a height of 20 and 30 feet, producing leaves 15 feet long and 2 feet broad, small and crude flowers, and bunches of dwarf fruit containing little but shot-like seeds. The energy of these plants seems to be concentrated in the production of an elegant and proud form, the fruit being a mere afterthought. But the effect of the broad pale green leaves, even when frayed and ragged at the edges in and among the dark entanglement of the jungle is so fine that the absence of edible fruit may be almost forgiven. In the most popular of the cultivated varieties, the far famed MUSA CAVENDISHII, there is little of graceful form, save the broad leaves mottled with brown. All the vitality of the plant is expended in astonishing results. A comparatively lowly plant, its productions in suitable soil are prodigious. In nine or ten months after the planting of the rhizome, it bears under favourable conditions a bunch weighing as much as 120 lb. to 160 lb. and comprising as many as forty-eight dozen individual bananas. So great is the weight that to prevent the downfall of the plant a stake sharpened at each end—one to stick in the ground and the other into the soft stem—is needed to buttress it. Before the fruit has fully developed, other shoots have appeared; but each plant bears but one bunch, and when that is removed the plant is decapitated and slowly decays, and the second and third and fourth shoots from the rhizome successively arrive at the bearing stage and are permitted to mature each its bunch and then fated to suffer immediate decapitation. And so the process goes on for five or seven years, by which time the vigour of the soil has been exhausted, and moreover the rhizomes, originally planted about a foot deep, have grown up to the surface, and are no longer capable of supporting a plant upright. Then a fresh planting of rhizomes elsewhere takes place. It must not be thought that the banana defertilises the soil. Phenomenal crops of sugar cane are produced on a "banana-sick" land. A traveller relating his tropical experiences glorifies the banana, stating that he has eaten it "ripe and luscious from the tree!" In North Queensland bananas ripening on the plant frequently split, and seldom attain perfect flavour. The ripening process takes place after the fully developed bunch is removed and hung up in a cool, shady, well-aired locality. Then the fruit acquires its true lusciousness and aroma. Other climes, other results, perhaps; but a banana, "ripe and luscious from the tree," is not generally expected in North Queensland. The fruit may mature until it falls to the ground, yellow and soft, yet lack that delicate finish, that benign essential, the craft of man bestows. It would seem that the plant has been cultivated for so long a period that it has become dependent upon man not only for its existence but for the excellence of its crowning effort. An abandoned banana grove soon disappears, for although seeds are undoubtedly produced, the occasions are so rare that the reproduction of the cultivated varieties depends solely upon the rhizome, and these very speedily deteriorate if neglected. Another feature of the banana, of which man takes full advantage, is that though the bunch be removed before the fruit is matured as to size, the ripening process proceeds, just as though there had been no untimely interference. The bananas may be small, but will, as a rule, be almost as sweetly flavoured as those allowed to develop on the plant. Yet the superfine aesthetic essence is not for the delight of those to whom the fruit is tendered after it has undergone a sea voyage. Let there be no misunderstanding with respect to the desirableness of the coastal tract of North Queensland as a territory capable of supporting a large, prosperous and healthful population. It is no part of the present purpose to extol the mineral or the pastoral districts. They lie apart. But in North Queensland agriculture is almost solely confined to the coast and is essentially tropical. The tropics represent that portion of the earth's surface wherein man may live with the minimum of exertion, where actual wants are few, and wherein ample comforts may be enjoyed by those who seek them with a quiet mind and easy understanding. Although the question may be perhaps beyond proof, it might be safely asserted that a larger proportion of men of the yeomen class, represented by those who have succeeded in tropical agriculture in North Queensland, are independent to-day, than of the men in Victoria and New South Wales, who devoted their energies to sheep-farming, wheat-growing and dairying. Out of the comparatively few sugar-cane farmers in North Queensland, a considerable percentage have acquired independence, and many wealth. Few have failed. Fortunes have been made and are being made out of sugar lands; immense profits have been earned and are being earned in the production of bananas, and from other easily grown tropical fruits, good incomes are realised. When private enterprise invests many thousands of pounds in the building of jetties and tram-lines to facilitate the shipment of fruit, evidence in support of these statements is unnecessary. |
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