six men in a row, hanging on to a floating house, and uttering
wild cries for help which it was impossible to afford, perished in
the waters as the house was hurled against one of the piers. The
Stanley Street swimming-baths dragged their four anchors, and
drifted on to the bridge, to be instantly broken up. Live stock,
farm produce, furniture, fencing, trees, pieces of land held together
by reeds and scrub as floating islets, were carried down the swift
stream and out to sea. Wreckage piled up against the lattice-
work of the bridge impeded the free flow of the water on the south
side, and the rush in the deep channel on the north increased in
speed. The crisis came at about four o'clock on the morning of
Tuesday, February 7th, when there was a vast accumulation of
iron and wood from houses, trees, and other objects. The destruc-
tion of the bridge started from the centre and worked its way to
the north bank. With seven separate crashes, girder after girder,
lattice after lattice, canted up, turned a somersault, and was en-
gulfed in the boiling flood, while the water dashed up to a height
of 30 to 40 feet and descended in spray rendered snow-like by the
rays of a brilliant moon. The wreckage was released and borne
away seawards with terrific force, and in a few moments a clear
stream appeared for half the distance across the river, and the
southern half of the noble Victoria Bridge stood up sheer, ghastly,
and gaunt in its survival where so much had been swept away.
In September, a temporary wooden bridge was opened for traffic,
and an entirely new structure, at an estimated cost, including
approaches, of about £12,000, has now been completed.
Queensland, occupying the north-eastern portion of the Aus-
tralian continent, and including many adjacent islands in the Pacific
Ocean and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and lying between the nth
and 20th parallels of south latitude, and the 138th and 154th
meridians of east longitude, has a maximum length of 1300 miles
from north to south, and an extreme width of about 800 miles, with
an area of nearly 670,000 square miles, making it about five and a
half times as large as the United Kingdom. In its main features
the surface of the country resembles that of New South Wales,
and may be divided into the Coast District, the Table-land, and
the Interior Plains. It is upon the first of these, lying between the
sea on the east, and a backbone of mountains running parallel
thereto at an average distance of 50 miles, that settlement has
