Chapter VI
QUEENSLAND
FROM Sydney to Brisbane is a short run of a little over 700 miles. The mail train leaves Sydney at 6.15 p.m., and in the course of the evening reaches Newcastle, the great coal centre of the Southern Hemisphere, whence, by-the-by, a cargo of coals (for smelting purposes) was actually sent to Newcastle, England, in 1883: a case of γλαῦκ' ἐὶς Ἀθήνας which has not affected the proverb. We crossed the border at about noon next day, and for several hours steamed steadily through one of the finest stretches of agricultural land in the world—the Darling Downs—arriving at Brisbane, after mounting the hills of the Main Range, east of Toowoomba, at 10.45, p.m.. The Darling Downs are only as yet known to the outside world as the home of the squatter. Discovered in 1827, by Allan Cunningham, the explorer and botanist, who penetrated inland from the poorer granite country of the coast to the head waters of the Condamine, it was settled by the early pastoralists in 1840 and the succeeding years. They took possession, under a liberal tenure, of the entire Downs country from Warwick to Toowoomba; an expanse, measuring about 70 miles by 30, of beautifully undulating and well-watered plain, surrounded by mountainous country, the detrition from which has filled it with a strong black alluvial deposit, compared by Americans who have seen it to the characteristic black soil of their own prairies. The district as a whole comprises about four million acres of magnificent agricultural country, or a territory equal to Illinois and Missouri; and will be the home, as an enthusiastic Yankee professor of agriculture, imported to take charge of the Agricultural College at Gatton, lately wrote to his friend at Chicago, "of millions of people, and that, too, in the near future." For the present it is the great cattle and sheep ranch of the colony, carrying in 1897 about 3,000,000 sheep and 200,000 cattle. But the Acts of 1884 and 1886, which covered the redemption of great portions of the lands occupied by the squatters as their leases expired, were followed by the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act of 1894, under which many of their freehold estates in the neighbourhood, ranging from 10,000 to 150,000 acres, have been acquired by the Government for re-sale. The operation of this Act is fast transforming the territory into a great wheat, maize, and lucerne country, which is also of growing importance in dairying and fruit-culture; and, as the colony advances, will become a centre of mixed farming, in which large quantities of wheat, oats, potatoes, and malting barley will be produced, as well as butter, cheese, bacon, and fruit for exportation. Nothing could be more prosperous or more fertile than the countryside as seen from the train; and the Darling Downs, when emigration to Queensland re-commences, should repeat the history of Manitoba. Brisbane is a prosperous city of about 1 00,000 souls, and in some ways one of the most attractive settlements in Australia. The public buildings are, as usual, handsome; the hotels are perhaps better managed than is common further south; and the standard of comfort generally, as of the commissariat in particular, is distinctly high. There is an open air restaurant or kiosk in the public gardens, where a better lunch or breakfast is served on tables set out on the grass, in the shade of the trees overlooking the water, than it would be easy to obtain elsewhere in the colonies. The city is about 12 miles from the sea, facing an abrupt curve in the river, and is subject to most disastrous floods, one of which, some years ago, 'piled up' a gun-boat of Her Majesty's Navy in the Botanical Gardens, high and dry in a secure position, from which it was only rescued by the opportune though unprecedented arrival of a second flood. Brisbane has two theatres, an opera-house, an excellent service of electric tramways, and not so many mosquitoes as Perth. The colony as a whole, with an area of 668,000 square miles, stretching over 18 degrees of latitude, from New South Wales to within 11 degrees of the equator, had, at the last census, less than half-a-million of people. Her exports for 1898 amounted to £22 per head of population (as against £19 for 1897), one of the highest averages known [see Appendix F]; the altogether exceptional case of Western Australia being of course left out of account. The raw produce of her flocks and herds—wool, tallow, hides, and meat—came to £5,770,000—five and three-quarter millions sterling straight from the grass, leaving agriculture and mining out of the question. No wonder Sir Henry Norman, the late Governor, said the other day, "Humanly speaking, very little seems to be wanting for the progress of Queensland but good Government, and enterprise and industry on the part of the people." The country is divided into three sections by three lines of railway which stretch inland westward from the coast; so that, though it is possible to go north to Rockhampton by train, it is more convenient to avoid changing and go by boat. After Rockhampton there is no alternative, for Queensland has not attempted to centre her whole resources by converging lines of traffic upon her capital, but has rested content with a long series of flourishing ports up the coast. [See Return, Appendix, R] Each line serves its own back-country, with vast pastoral and other resources, and each has its subsidiary system of goldfields besides. On the 27th parallel the railway runs from Brisbane in towards South Australia and the country of the Barcoo and Cooper's Creek, with Gympie and Maryborough on the way to the north. On the 23rd parallel we have the central line, running west from Rockhampton to Longreach and the Barcaldine district, with Mount Morgan near the coast. And on the 20th parallel the Northern Railway (also east to west) connects Townsville with Hughenden, and serves Charters Towers. Beyond these, again to the north, come the ports of Cairns and Cooktown, with their back-country stretching across to the Gulf; and the scattered and neglected mineral wealth of the Palmer and the Hodgkinson Fields, as well as Chillagoe. And what these things mean it is worth while to consider. Mount Morgan, for example, a few years ago, was one of several low hills included in the selection of a farmer named Gordon, who had found it easier to secure the freehold of his property than to make it return him a profitable living. Two wandering prospectors, named Morgan, who were his guests for a night, examined the Mount, which he suspected might contain copper, at his request; found indications of gold; and acquired his farm at the price of £1 an acre, which he thought himself lucky to get. The Morgans sold a half interest in the mine for £2000, to secure machinery; and almost at once became millionaires. With a nominal capital of one million, the mine has distributed, from its handsome block of offices on the river-front at Rockhampton, nearly five million pounds in dividends, and continues to return over £300,000 per annum £30,000 a month in 1898). The output from June 1898 to May 1899 was 166,078 ounces from 204,502 tons, and the dividend for the six months ending May 1899, £175,000. A thousand miners find steady employment, and a town flourishes at the foot of the Mount. It was a hill of gold, and apparently only needs quarrying. The accepted theory is that it was a geyser, or thermal spring, of the Tertiary period; though the bed of mundic which is now being worked is said, by practical men who know Kalgoorlie, to bear many points of resemblance to the great decomposed formations of Western Australia, which may yet turn out to have their overlooked parallels in many parts of the world. Charters Towers, the premier field of the colony, was prospected in 1872. Stubley, a blacksmith, one of its pioneers, became member for his district; returned, after losing one fortune, to look for another, and died a pauper by the wayside. There are 20,000 inhabitants at Charters Towers; £13,000 weekly is distributed in wages to the miners, and fourteen millions sterling have been won since 1872. The figures for Gympie give eight millions since 1867. The once famous Palmer goldfield, during the first four and a half years of its working, gave the phenomenal yield of 839,000 ounces of gold. The field has since been almost deserted, but there are still many rich reefs which only require capital for their development. The Hodgkinson has been half tested, and deserted. "Had it stayed undiscovered until now," says Mr Jack, the Government geologist, "there would have been no half-hearted working of the mines. The agents of capitalists are running all over the world looking for mines such as have been abandoned on the Hodgkinson by the score." The treasures of Chillagoe, in copper, silver, lead, lime, and iron, have been but feebly guessed at as yet. In Rhodesia a four foot reef averaging 10 dwts. of gold per ton is, according to Mr Knight of the Times, a marvellous claim. There are sixty-eight proclaimed goldfields in Queensland, 95 per cent, of the output from which is from reefs. And reefing returns, according to the official statistics of the colony, about £300 per head for each miner actually engaged in obtaining the metal. The nominal capital of the gold mining industry of Australasia is about ninety-seven millions, of which at least seventy-six millions is British money. The nominal capital of Queensland gold mines is about six millions, of which at least three-fifths is held by Queenslanders; and which, with a bare million sterling invested in machinery, yielded dividends amounting to half a million in 1898. Queensland gold mining is a home industry, maintained by local money, which is the reason of its slow development (for local capital is not unlimited, and local men have their hands full), and the reason, also, of its good management and small waste of money; while the fact that the best mine in the Malay countries, a well-known property near Singapore, is owned in Brisbane, is one of those exceptions which sustain the rule. The gold yield for 1897 was 807,926 ounces; for 1898, 918,106; an increase of 110,180 ounces, or, say, £440,000.
The most conspicuous industry of the colony, to the traveller along the coast, is the export trade in chilled meat; and it is curious to notice that on the map attached to the handbook of the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company, apart from the names of towns, and routes of railways and steamers, nothing is marked but the sites of freezing works, boiling-down works, preserving works, and chilled meat stores. The annual cast, from about twenty million sheep and six million cattle, is about 700,000 cattle and three million sheep. The export of live cattle has been tried, and found expensive and risky; but, between freezing and tinning, and allowing for the demand from other colonies, as from New South Wales after the late drought, it is not, on reflection, strange, though the figures are large, if the number of cattle utilised has sometimes exceeded the available cast, and the export of sheep has left the colony with no great surplusage. A demand is springing up from countries so far apart as Austria, Natal and the Philippines. Receiving stores are being erected at Singapore and Colombo; the Japanese are acquiring a taste for meat; South Africa is thinking of Australian supplies to make up for the deficiency due to the rinderpest; and the American troops in Manilla are supplied with fresh Queensland beef in preference to the malarious flesh of the water-buffalo.
The vast territory of this colony, extending as it does for I 300 miles from north to south and 900 miles from east to west, with a coast line of 2,500 miles, of necessity includes great varieties of soil and climate. Upon the whole, especially towards the south, its physical features correspond roughly to those of New South Wales; the dividing range which separates the eastern from the western waters following the coast at a distance of from 100 to 300 miles inland. Although large herds of cattle are depastured on the eastward side of the range, the great stations of Queensland, both for cattle and sheep, lie on the cretaceous formation of the broad and slightly elevated inland plateau. The cattle from inland are easily distinguished at the meat works by their larger carcases; and vast flocks of sheep graze on the saline pastures of the interior, the squatter not infrequently numbering his sheep by the hundred thousand, while the grazing farmer, pursuing the same industry on a smaller scale, contents himself with a flock of ten or twenty thousand. Apart from tick, the only enemy has been drought; and this has been overcome by the discovery, denounced as a physical impossibility by all the geologists until it became an accomplished fact, that the whole of these uplands, occupying the bed of an old sea which joined the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Australian Bight and separated the continent into two islands, form a great artesian area, whose inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs are supplied from sources as yet unknown, but which are held by many to be the great mountain heights of New Guinea. Over three hundred successful bores have been put down to tap these stores, five of which were down two years ago below the 4000 ft. level, and one below 5000 ft.; four or five of which have an output of 4,000,000 gallons a piece daily; and the total flow from which is approximately 200,000,000 gallons in the twenty-four hours; so that country which a few years since it was dangerous to occupy, is now traversed for miles by the lines of rushes which follow the overflowing waters as they meander for miles over the downs, led in channels formed by huge ploughs made for the purpose. The water issues from the bores under great pressure, and usually at a temperature of from 100 to 140 degrees. The last season when disaster from drought overtook the stockmasters was in the year 1883-4, when many wealthy squatters were ruined. The sugar industry, which was originally opened up, many years ago, by Melbourne enterprise and capital, has had its vicissitudes, connected with the Kanaka, or "black-birding" trade, upon which it chiefly depends for labour. At present about £5,000,000 is invested in the business, which has been found extremely profitable to the small cane-growers as well as to the big companies; but its future will depend to some extent on the attitude adopted towards it by the Federal Commonwealth, as well as on the abolition of bounties by the nations of the European continent. The proposal that the United Kingdom should take off the duties on tea, coffee, and cocoa, and levy a like amount on beet sugar, has not unnaturally found support in Queensland. And it has been pointed out that, when sugar was put on the free list, it was produced entirely by British colonists, while tea was the product of a foreign country: exactly the reverse of present conditions. Coffee planting has not yet become a staple industry, though it has been found that in the scrub lands of northern Queensland an investment of £1000 on 20 acres will give a return of £400 per annum after the fourth year. The world's demand exceeds 500,000 tons, worth £40,000,000 sterling; but Liberian coffee, which is the variety mostly grown in Queensland and the Pacific, as well as in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, has not yet recommended itself to the British or American palate, or at least has not overcome the prejudices of the middleman. A project is afoot at Singapore, amongst the planters of the Far East, to take some common action, as was done by the Ceylon tea-planters, to bring their wares before the consumer. Java or Malay coffee has merits of its own; and certainly an enforcement of the Adulteration Act should result in a great falling off in the sale of alleged coffee extracts, and would vastly alter the quality of the brew sold at our coffee stalls. The United States have not the same objections as ourselves to adulteration; yet even there the burnt beans which are served out to troops and civilians alike might be abandoned in favour of the real article. After all, the first coffee drunk in Europe came from Java. And, while real coffee is originally as cheap as its substitutes, there is surely no reason why the working man or even the ordinary householder should be forced to drink nameless and pernicious abominations. In this matter, as in many others, the interests of tropical Queensland, if not altogether sacrificed to the prejudices, or principles, of the Labour Party in the new Commonwealth, will be found coincident with those of her northern neighbours in the British Empire. Upon the whole, it is not surprising that Queensland Government statisticians, in computing the wealth of the community, should take credit for their crown lands at 7s. 6d. per acre. The wealth per head of the United Kingdom is given by Mulhall at £247, and of the United States at £210. That of Queensland works out at £281: or, if the Crown assets, including land, and deducting the public debt, be distributed as per capita wealth, at the extraordinary figure of £615.
A few more data may be excused, as throwing some light on the prospects of possible emigrants from the old country. The population of Queensland was 472,000 at the last census, of whom 264,000 were males, and 86,000 children under 15. The regular defence force numbered 2000, giving a total, with volunteers and rifle clubs, of 4500, or, with all reserves, of 129,000 men liable to military service under such conditions as would obtain in England if the Ballot Act were enforced. The actual expenditure in these matters, taking into account the gunboat on the river, the contribution to the Federal squadron, and that towards the Federal battery on Thursday Island, amounts to 3s. per head. The population is as to about 52 per cent, native-born Australian (45 per cent, native-born Queenslander), 25 per cent. British, 11 per cent. Irish, and 5 per cent. Asiatic and Kanaka. Over 200,000 State-aided emigrants landed between 1861 and 1896. The revival in British farming, which dates from the last named year, has been followed by a decline in the departures from the old country for the United States; but those for Canada and Australia have remained stationary, while those for South Africa, owing to matters of recent history, have gone up 40 per cent. Queensland, though she doubled her population in the five years preceding 1886, has increased much more slowly since then. But she has been the first of the Australian colonies to recur to the system of encouraging immigration, setting an example which has quite recently been followed by New Zealand: and assistance towards the cost of passages, second and third class, may now be granted, through the Agent-General, to the families of small capitalists, farmers, market-gardeners, dairymen, etc. The policy of "bursting up the big estates," urged by the Radicals of Victoria in the 'eighties, has been followed by Queensland after a more peaceable fashion in the Acts of 1884, 1886, and 1894, already referred to. Grazing farms of 20,000 acres and under are granted on the resumed lands upon leases of 30 years. Practically, the only outlay required for "improvements" is for a 6-wire fence, costing, say, £30 per mile. Good young ewes may fetch from 6s. to 9s. "off shears," i.e. without wool. But the cautious flockmaster will probably, at the start, purchase 5000 aged ewes at about 2s. 6d., taking the chances, in good seasons, of getting a couple of lambings off them. The resumptions also include lands which are open to the new-comer in farms of 1280 acres or less, on a 50 years' lease, but which are easily converted into freehold at about £1 per acre. To one of these he is allowed to add a grazing homestead of not over 2560 acres, on lease, at ¾d. per acre, and a homestead selection, freehold, of 160 acres, on easy terms of residence and improvement. Further, cooperative settlements are arranged, with freeholds of 160 acres, where special facilities are given for State schools, etc.: and these are particularly suited to families, as each member can have his holding, and yet some can remain free from time to time, during the early period of struggle, to contribute to the common stock by wages earned elsewhere. To come back to the Darling Downs,—which, it will be remembered, were discovered in 1827, and leased by squatters in 1840,—the squatters' country, which had become freehold, was opened up by the railway constructed by Messrs Peto & Brassey in 1867. The land became of agricultural value, as was proved by the small holdings acquired here and there by selectors. But private owners could not afford to extend the terms of payment for the land sold over 20 years. Parliament therefore sanctioned repurchase; for resale on 20 years' terms, or £7, 12s. 10d. per annum for each £100; being £5 interest and £2, 12s. 10d. for redemption, or £152, 16s. 8d. in the end, unless the purchaser shall elect to clear off the debt sooner. The payments, of course, with the exception of the first instalment, come out of the land itself; which, besides, keeps its owner and his family in comfort during the process. A typical case of a farm of 323 acres, thus secured in 1896, gave nearly 200 acres under cultivation by the end of 1897—100 of them under wheat, and the remainder in oats, potatoes, onions, peas, beans, pumpkins, and maize. All this was done with a double-furrow plough, while fencing, wells, dwelling-house, dairy, milking-shed, and yards were in course of construction. The cottage stands in an orchard of three acres; and, with twenty cows and a score or so of pigs, there is very little difficulty in meeting the Government instalments. Close by is the steading of a farmer of another sort, who came to Queensland from Essex forty years ago, to work on a station at 15s. a week. He contrived to take up a selection, which has grown into his present fine property; some of which has been cropped for thirty-four years continuously with wheat, without manure, and some of which again, under lucerne, is valued at £50 the acre.
There are drawbacks, of course, to unmitigated agriculture; faults inherent, apparently, to a population of small farmers, unrelieved by the civilising, or supervising, influence of a landlord or larger landed class. It is often remarked by Australians that, while their upper classes of pasturalists or commercial men, and successful men generally, are largely Scotch, the colonial Irish, when not policemen, publicans, or professional politicians, are generally small and rather thriftless and disorderly selectors.
In Queensland, as we have seen, there is a large element of Irishmen (11 per cent, as against some 3 per cent, in Tasmania), who have shown a certain tendency to congregate in particular country sides, to which their inherited ideas in some measure give the prevailing tone. The Gatton murders, for example—perhaps the most horrid crime of this century—struck terror, in the early part of this year, into the rural population of the northern end of the Darling Downs district, not so very far from Brisbane itself. And in their investigation of the Gatton murders the police were baffled by a conspiracy of half-cowed and half-sympathetic country-folk, which almost seems to have imposed itself on the very relatives of the unfortunate victims. The state of society near Gatton has points in common with that obtaining in the purely agricultural parts of Gippsland, in Victoria; a district where the squatter has been improved out of existence, and where, consequently, the young bloods among the selectors, who find time heavy on their hands and seek to kill it by indulgence in petty agricultural crime, are insufficiently checked by a magistracy drawn from the storekeepers with whom they deal. The Gatton tragedy, again, drew attention, by some of its attendant circumstances, to another danger affecting the isolated homesteads of the bush—the prevalence of crimes against the female person. This is a matter seldom spoken of in the colonies, though it is at the bottom of the universal prejudice against Indian and Syrian hawkers. It finds its natural parallel in the putting away—seldom discovered and still more seldom brought home to the murderer—of the solitary "hatter," or of the prospector by his mate.
The leaflet published by the Agent-General for Queensland is interesting, and shows, in the very incoherency of its punctuation and grammar, a strong desire to attract immigrants.
"More People Wanted for Queensland," it is headed; "Free Passages for Farm Labourers and Single Women (Domestic Servants). Assistance towards actual Money Cost of Passage is now granted by the Agent-General of this British Colony to Farmers, Dairymen, Market Gardeners, Orchardists, etc., and their Families, where {sic) they may obtain Freehold Homes in a Sunny Land!
"The Queensland Government is now granting free passages to farm labourers. Single men must be between the ages of 17 and 35—married men under 45. Must be ploughmen, shepherds, and generally competent farm labourers or servants. Single women (domestic servants) must be between the ages of 17 and 35 and of good character. An application form must be filled up and signed.
"Each applicant must be approved by the AgentGeneral, and when approved for a passage will be required to pay £1 for a ship kit. This becomes the property of the passenger. Persons obtaining one of these free passages will be sent to the Colony by splendid mail steamships as ordinary 3rd class passengers. Nothing to pay back at any time. The great demand for farm and female labour being the cause of this absolute gift by the colonists of Queensland to a few hard-working British people.
"The demand is kept up by the Farm Labourers of to-day becoming the Farmers of to-morrow, and in their turn wanting to hire men. And in the case of Single Women through a large proportion leaving their situations to get married.
"Wages are high, land cheap, provisions abundant. Life is better and brighter and more hopeful for the wage-earner than in England.
"The chance has come to some of these by this offer of a free passage!
"Cheap land under Queensland Government Land Act:—
"Agricultural Homesteads:—The area to be selected varies with the quality of the land, from 160, 320, to 640 acres, at 2s. 6d. per acre, payment extending over 10 years.
"Agricultural Farms:—Areas up to 1280 acres at 10s. per acre upward, payment extending over 20 years.
"Grazing Selections:—Farms and homesteads, in areas up 20,000 acres, on 14, 21, and 28 years' lease, at annual rent of ½d. per acre upward.
"Plough your own acres! Own your own farm!
"There are upwards of 400,000,000 (four hundred million) acres of unsold land in Queensland. Hundreds of thousands of acres are open to selection and purchase at 2s. 6d. per acre, in all parts of the colony.
"Capital necessary? Yes, if you have it; come and buy Government Land and improve it; or buy with care improved farms in the market. Queensland has more railways in proportion to population than England. More constantly being made, and with the rapid development and progress taking place, every acre bought now will increase in value year by year.
"If you have no capital, do not hesitate, but come where hard work and perseverance will soon create it!
"A settler in Queensland, after a year or two's experience, can work for wages on adjoining farms or plantations to his own, and take contracts for supplying timber or cartage. It will thus be seen that a working farm man in Queensland actually requires no capital to start on a small Government selection. The first 12 months may be safely passed in a tent (the climate is so mild), while at odd times a house is being built.
"In 1897, the total quantity of land under cultivation was only 386,259 acres, of this area—
65,432 acres of Sugar yielded 97,917 Tons, equal to 1·50 Tons to the acre.
2077 acres of Barley yielded 49,840 Bushels, equal to 24·00 Bushels to the acre.
1834 acres of Oats yielded 31,496 Bushels, equal to 17·17 Bushels to the acre.
109,721 acres of Maize yielded 2,803,172 Bushels, equal to 25·25 Bushels to the acre.
8197 acres of English Potatoes yielded 18,520 Tons, equal to 2·26 Tons to the acre.
391 acres of Arrowroot yielded 2888 Tons, equal to 7·31 Tons to the acre.
311 acres of Coffee yielded 81,614 lbs., equal to 262·42 lbs. to the acre.
2196 acres of Oranges yielded 1,628,167 dozen, equal to 741·43 dozen to the acre.
"But more farmers are wanted to grow crops, especially wheat and barley, for which there is a market on the spot, Queensland not producing half enough for own consumption!
"Population, Total, 500,000 people, about half as many as in Liverpool—one English town. The people are mainly British. English character, English laws, customs, money, weights and measures. 160 acres freehold can be purchased at 2s. 6d. an acre payable in yearly instalments of 6d. an acre each year for five years. Single farm servants get £35 to £50, married couples up to £75 a year and all found; female domestic servants from £20 to £75 a year with board and lodging. Nothing to pay back. Persons obtaining a Free Passage are entirely free on arrival. Nothing to work out. Free to work at what they please, where they please, and for whom they please; twelve month's trial, and of (sic) residence in Queensland being the only condition. Government Homes at all ports of landing on the other side until hired, board and lodging in them being free of any expense. Free passes up the railways to New Arrivals. Cheapest Australian Colony to Reach. A full paid 3rd class passage by Mail Steamer can be obtained for £13, 13s. (including ship kit). Only vessels of the very highest class are engaged by the Government to carry their passengers. It is the safest and pleasantest voyage in the world."
Truly an energetic pamphlet!—which is, quite seriously, worth reading throughout. The charms of the voyage would be hard to exaggerate, since the route is through the sheltered seas of Java and New Guinea, and southwards within the Great Barrier Reef. But it is unkind of Mr Taverner, the Victorian Minister of Agriculture, to remark, in a book on his colony (which does not go in for free or for assisted immigration) that "Free land is generally worthless, and is only obtainable in inaccessible or badly-governed countries, where it can be of little value to the settler." There are distant portions of some of the Australian colonies, he remarks, where land is nominally much cheaper than in Victoria; but, when its inaccessibility and distance from market are taken into account, it is really dearer. Purchase money is paid once for all, but distance from market means paying annually a heavy tax in the shape of carriage, which would represent the annual interest upon an immense sum of money. The intending emigrant would be wise always to ask for a candid opinion of the country he meditates going to from the representative of a rival community. When agents-general fall out, the honest emigrant comes by some sidelights on the situation. After all, few men who are moderately successful in England will wish, or should be encouraged, to leave the comforts of civilization for the chances of the Bush. A woman who is not sure of getting a husband at home is perhaps in a different case.
As to the public finance, the latest Treasury returns show that the revenue of the colony, during the three months ending September 30, 1899, amounted to £1,253,000, as compared with £1,121,000 during the same period of last year. The expenditure was £653,000 as compared with £565,000.