d with wheat-farms,
dairy-farms, and cattle-ranches; and finally to Brisbane, a prospering
semi-tropical town which is the capital of the Northern State of
Queensland. At Brisbane you will be able to buy fine pineapples for a
penny each, and that alone should endear it to your heart.

Thus you will have seen a good deal of the Australia of to-day. You
might have followed other routes. Coming via Canada, you would reach
Brisbane first. Taking a "British India" boat you would have come down
the north coast of Queensland and seen something of its wonderful
tropical vegetation, its sugar-fields, banana and coffee plantations,
and the meat works which ship abroad the products of the great cattle
stations.

[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL SYDNEY. PAGE 29.]

This tropical part of Australia really calls for a long book of its own.
But as it is hardly the Australia of to-day, though it may be the
Australia of the future, we must hurry through its great forests and its
rich plains. There are wild buffalo to be found on these plains, and in
the rivers that flow through them crocodiles lurk. The crocodile is a
very cunning creature. It rests near the surface of the water like a
half-submerged log waiting for a horse or an ox or a man to come into
the water. Then a rush and a meal.

If, instead of coming along the north, you had travelled via South
Africa you might have landed first at Hobart and seen the charms of dear
little Tasmania, a land of apple-orchards and hop-gardens, looking like
the best parts of Kent. But you have been introduced to a good deal of
Australia and heard much of its industries and its history. It is time
now to talk of savages, and birds, and beasts, and games, and the like.

CHAPTER III

THE NATIVES

A dwindling race; their curious weapons--The Papuan
tree-dwellers--The cunning witch-doctors.

The natives of Australia were always few in number. The conditions of
the country secured that Australia, kept from civilization for so long,
is yet the one land of the world which, whilst capable of great
production with the aid of man's skill, is in its natural state
hopelessly sterile. Australia produced no grain of any sort naturally;
neither wheat, oats, barley nor maize. It produced practically no edible
fruit, excepting a few berries, and one or two nuts, the outer rind of
which was eatable. There were no useful roots such as the potato, the
turnip, or the yam, or the taro. The native an