the same time passing suburban residences, flourishing
farms, banana-groves, cotton-fields, sugar-plantations, and
orange-orchards.

Queensland is more than five times as large as the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland, and it possesses an immense amount of
undeveloped resources of the most promising character. The sun shines
here with much more tropical ardor than in New South Wales or Victoria.
The palm takes the place of the eucalyptus to a certain extent. The
tulip-tree, rosewood, sandalwood, and satin-wood, which are not observed
further south, greet us here. The aborigines are oftener met than
elsewhere, as they prefer to live in a more temperate climate than is
found southward, and to be where they can have the country more to
themselves. They probably do not number over thirty thousand in all, and
are slowly but surely decreasing before the advance of the whites. Even
when first discovered they were but a handful of people, so to speak,
scattered over an immense territory. They have still no distinct notion
of the building of houses in which to live, or at least they adopt none,
though they have the example of the whites constantly before them. They
are very ugly, having black skins, flat noses, wide nostrils, and
deep-sunken eyes wide apart. A bark covering, much ruder than anything
which would content an American Indian, forms their only shelter, and
they often burrow contentedly under the lee of an overhanging rock or
hillside.

The Australian blacks have plenty of legends of the most barbaric
character, but by no means void of poetical features. They believe that
the earth was created by a being of supreme attributes, whom they call
Nourelle, and who lives in the sky. They entertain the idea that because
the sun gives heat it needs fuel, and that when it descends below the
horizon it procures a fresh supply for its fires. The stars are supposed
to be the dwellings of departed chiefs. The serpent is believed to
contain the spirit of a real devil. To eat the kidney of an enemy, it is
thought by them, imparts to the one who swallows it the strength of the
dead man. Any number above five, these blacks express by saying, "it is
as the leaves," not to be counted. The white man's locomotive is an
imprisoned fire-devil, kept under control by water. The lightning is the
angry expression of some enraged god.

The most peculiar weapon possessed by these aborigines is one which
originated with them, and is k