"When we reached the front of the working, the sight was a curious one. A dozen men—I think there must have been that number at least—were attacking the coal seam, most of them lying on their sides and digging away with picks at the lower part of it. Some of them had worked their way in two or three feet, and were almost out of sight, and I shuddered to think of the possibility that the mass above might fall upon and crush them. I asked our guide if this did not happen sometimes.

"'Unfortunately, yes,' he replied. 'It does happen now and then, and the men on whom the coal falls are more or less severely injured, and perhaps killed. We have to watch the miners constantly, to see that they do not run too great a risk. If we let them have their own way, accidents would be much more frequent than they are.'

"'Why do they burrow under the coal in that way?' I asked. 'Couldn't they get it out in some manner less dangerous than that?'

"'That is the way to which they have been accustomed,' the guide answered, 'and it is difficult to get them to change. Most of these people come from the coal-mining districts of England, and they are very conservative. Machines have been invented for doing this kind of work, and they are in use in some of the mines, but the men are opposed to them, and in some instances they have disabled or destroyed the machines.'

"Then he went on to explain that the miner makes an opening below the mass of coal in the manner that we saw, and then drills a hole some distance above it, in which to explode a charge of powder. This brings down all the coal below the locality of the explosion. Sometimes it is broken up into lumps that a man can handle, and sometimes it comes down in a single block, which requires another blast to break it up, and then the cars are brought up as near as possible. The coal is loaded into them, and pushed away to the shaft. Each man is paid according to the amount of coal he gets out, and some of them receive large wages. There are about five thousand people employed in the coal mines here, and the probabilities are that the business will be extended, and the coal product of Newcastle increased within a year or two from the present time."

From Newcastle our friends continued their journey northward to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. They traveled all the way by rail, changing trains at Stanthorpe, on the frontier. During the delay subsequent upon the change of trains, Harry made the following memorandum in his notebook:—

"It seems to me that it is a great misfortune for Australia that each colony insists upon having its own particular gauge of track, thus preventing the running of through trains without change of cars. Some day the people will find out their mistake, and I believe some of them realize it already. Dr. Whitney says that there was at one time in the United States several different gauges of track from four feet, eight inches and one half up to six feet, and that the railway managers generally agreed upon four feet, eight inches as the standard gauge. Since that agreement all other tracks have been changed to make the tracks uniform. Now any railway car can be run all over the United States, with the exceptions of a few special lines where the gauge is three feet, six inches.

"Three feet, six inches is the gauge of the railways of Queensland. That of New South Wales is four feet, eight and one half inches, while that of Victoria is five feet, three inches. In South Australia some of the lines are of five feet, three inches gauge, and others have the same gauge as the Queensland railways. The narrow gauge is especially adapted to mountain regions, and also to thinly populated districts. On lines where the business is light and the distances are not long, this gauge answers all requirements, but on many lines, especially those having considerable business, it is not at all advantageous."

During their railway ride our friends observed the strange combination of aboriginal and English names, and called Dr. Whitney's attention to it. "Here are Coolongolook and Coonabarabran," said Harry, "and next come Clarkeville and Smithville. Here are Cootramundra and Illawarra and Murrumbidgee close by Orange and Richmond. Here are Curabubula and Waggawagga, with Warwrick and Union Camp. I could go on indefinitely with those names, and it seems to me that the aboriginal ones are about as numerous as those of British origin. They are picturesque and perhaps interesting, but they are very difficult to pronounce."

"Isn't it possible that you will find the same state of things at home?" queried Dr. Whitney.

"Quite possible; I have never thought of that. Let me see."

"Why, certainly," said Ned. "Go to Maine and New Hampshire and run over some of the Indian names of lakes, rivers, mountains, and towns in those States. Think of Kennebec and Penobscot, Winnipesaukee, Pemigewasset, Passaconaway, and a good many others that I could name. I think it is an excellent policy to preserve these old names and not let them die out. Piscataqua is a much prettier name for a river than Johnston or Stiggins, and Monadnock sounds better as the name of a mountain than Pike's Peak or Terry's Cliff. The more the native names are preserved, the better I like it."

"I agree with you," replied Harry; "but I wish they would make the orthography of those native names a little easier. That's the only fault I have to find with them."

The region through which our friends traveled was devoted to agricultural and pastoral pursuits, as the numerous flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and fields of grain that they saw gave evidence. They were told that it was also rich in minerals,—the few surveys that had been made resulting in discoveries of gold, tin, silver, antimony, and other metals. Some of the passengers whom they met on the train were under the impression that Dr. Whitney was looking for a place in which to invest money, and they were very anxious that he should stop and investigate their promising properties. Several fine specimens of gold-bearing quartz rock were exhibited, and the fortunate owners of these specimens said that the ground was covered with them in the locality where they were obtained. Dr. Whitney politely declined to delay his journey, and assured his zealous acquaintances that he was not looking for any new investments.

When our friends were out of earshot of the would-be speculators, Dr. Whitney said that their statement reminded him of an incident which once occurred at a town in California, where a quartz mill was in successful operation. Harry and Ned pressed the doctor to give them the story, whereupon he related as follows:—

"There were many speculative individuals around that town who were constantly endeavoring to discover deposits of ore. One day one of these speculators was standing on a street corner, when a solemn-faced Indian came along, stopped in front of the man, and, after looking around in all directions to make sure that nobody was observing him, he produced from under his blanket a piece of gold-bearing quartz. Without saying a word, he held the bit of rock before the eyes of the speculator.

"The speculator grasped the specimen with great eagerness. Sure enough it was gold-bearing rock, and no mistake. It was generally believed in the town that the Indians knew of valuable deposits, but were very unwilling to divulge their location to the white men."

"'Where did you get this?' the speculator asked.

"The Indian made a sweep of his arm that embraced two thirds of the horizon, but said not a word.

"'Is there any more where this came from?' queried the speculator.

"'Yes; heaps, heaps more,' and the red man made a circle with his arm that might mean anything from a mole hill to a mountain.

"'Will you show me where you got this?' said the speculator.

"The Indian said nothing except to pronounce the words 'five dollar.'

"Unlike many of his associates, the speculator happened to have some money about him. He thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a five-dollar gold piece, and placed it in the extended palm of the red man.

"The latter examined the coin very carefully, even to the extent of biting it between his teeth. Then he placed it in some mysterious receptacle under his blanket and said:—

"'You with me come. You with me go share.'

"The Indian led his new partner a long walk, going out of the town on the side opposite the quartz mill, making a circuit of a mile or two among hills, and finally fetching up at the dump pile of the mill. The dump pile, it is proper to explain, is the pile of ore as it is brought from the mine to be crushed. Having reached the foot of the pile, the Indian paused and said:—

"'Me get him here. Heaps more here, too.'

"A more disgusted individual than that speculator was at that moment could rarely be found in the town. He had been completely outwitted, in fact, sold, and by a savage who couldn't read or write."

From Stanthorpe on the frontier of Queensland the country was much the same as that through which our friends had traveled from Newcastle, except that its character was more tropical the further they went northward. They reached Brisbane in the evening, and were out immediately after breakfast on the following morning to view the sights of the place, which were fewer than those of Sydney and Melbourne, as the city is not as large as either of the others mentioned. The entire population of Brisbane and its suburbs does not exceed one hundred thousand. It is named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, who was Governor of the colony at the time the city was founded. In some respects it may be called an inland city, as it lies on a river twenty-five miles from the entrance of that stream into Moreton Bay, which opens into the Pacific Ocean. It is on a peninsula enclosed by a bend in the river, so that it has an excellent water front.

Harry made note of the fact that Brisbane resembles Sydney in the narrowness of its streets, but he added that the surveyors had some excuse for restricting the amount of land reserved for the streets, inasmuch as the space between the rivers was limited. The youths were reminded of New York City when they noted that the streets of Brisbane ran from the river on one side to the river on the other, just as do the numbered streets on Manhattan Island. They had a further reminder when an island in the river was pointed out to them as the site of a prison during the convict period, just as Blackwell's Island of New York City is the location of a prison to-day.

Queen Street is to Brisbane as George Street is to Sydney or Collins Street to Melbourne. The principal shops and several of the public buildings are located along Queen Street, and our friends observed that wide verandas extended across the sidewalks from one end of the street to the other. These verandas enable pedestrians to walk in the shade at all times, a very wise provision to avoid sunstroke. It must be remembered that Brisbane is considerably nearer the Equator than either Melbourne or Sydney, and consequently has a warmer climate. Dr. Whitney said that he was reminded of New Orleans by the temperature, and on inquiry he ascertained that Brisbane is fully as warm as the great city near the mouth of the Mississippi.

There is a fine bridge of iron which crosses the river between North and South Brisbane. It is more than one thousand feet long, and has a draw in the center to permit the passage of ships. Ned and Harry strolled across this bridge when they reached the end of Queen Street, and on arriving at its farther end they turned around and retraced their steps. When back again in the principal part of the city, they continued to the end of the peninsula, where they had expected to find huge warehouses and places of business fronting the river. Instead of these edifices they found the Botanical Gardens and other parks occupying the point of land where the river makes its bend. It was an agreeable surprise to them, and they remained in and about the gardens for an hour or more.

Whenever they came to any of the public buildings during their stroll, they ascertained the name of each edifice from some by-stander or shop-keeper. They observed that all the buildings were handsome and of good construction, with the exception of the court house, which had a very low and mean appearance. The curiosity of the youths was roused by this circumstance, and Harry spoke to a good-natured cab driver to ascertain how it happened.

"That's easy to tell, when you know," the driver answered.

"Well," said Harry, "if you know, won't you kindly tell us?"

"Certainly, sir," the driver responded. "You see this is the way of it. That court house there used to be the female prison in the old times, and for years it was crowded with women that the government had sent out here to punish 'em. They were lifers, most of 'em, and I suppose they are pretty near all dead now. If any of 'em is alive, they're pretty old. Them that was kept in prison had to do hard work, making clothes and that sort of thing, but a good many of 'em went out as assigned servants to do housework, and they had to work in the fields, too; but those days is gone now, and all the prisons we have in Brisbrane in these times is for them that commits crimes right here on the spot."

"Do you mind that round building up there with the mast on it," said the cab driver, pointing to a structure that looked like a windmill with the arms of the mill removed.

"Yes, I see it," said Harry; "what about it?"

"We call it the Observatory," was the reply, "and that's what it is. That mast there is for signaling ships when they come into the harbor. In the old times there was a windmill there, where they used to grind grain into flour and meal for the convicts to eat, and I guess other folks ate it, too. When the wind blew the arm went round and round, the machinery worked, and the stones revolved and ground out the meal. Sometimes they didn't have no wind, because it didn't blow, but they had a treadmill there, and then they used to bring up a string of convicts, and put them on the treadmill to run the machinery and keep up the grinding of the grain. I suppose you know what a treadmill is?"

"I have heard about a treadmill," said Harry, "but I never saw one." Ned nodded, and said that he was in the same predicament.

"Well," said the driver, "I have seen one in the old country; I never saw the one here, because it was gone before I came to Brisbane. What I saw was a wheel in the shape of a long cylinder with twenty-four steps around the circumference of it; in fact, it didn't look much unlike the paddle-wheel of a steamboat, where the men stood to turn it. Each one of 'em was boarded off from his neighbor so that they couldn't talk to each other. There was a hand rail for them to hang on to. The weight of the prisoners' bodies on the steps caused the wheel to turn, and they sent it around about twice a minute. A man on a treadmill has got to work, he can't get out of it. If he tries to avoid stepping, he's got to hang his weight on the hand rail with his arms, and after he has tried that for a minute or so he's glad to go back to stepping again."

"I should think," said Ned, "that it would be difficult to adapt it to the weight of different individuals, and also to their height. While it might not be too much for a strong man, it might be for a weak one; and if the position of steps and rail were adapted to a tall man, they wouldn't be for a short one."

"I believe that's just the trouble they found with it in the old country," was the reply; "and it's mostly been given up there. They've got a machine in the place of it which they call 'the Crank,' which can be adapted to anybody. It's a wheel with paddles to it, and turns inside a box. They put gravel in the box, graduated to the strength of the man who is to turn it, and the prisoner's hard labor consists in turning the crank."

"It doesn't serve any useful purpose, as the treadmill does, I presume?" said Harry.

"No; there is no useful purpose about it. A man has to turn that crank because he's been sentenced to hard labor, and there's nothing else they can put him to, that's all. And they don't by any means use the treadmill all the time for turning machinery and grinding grain, or doing some other work. Most of the treadmills I ever knew anything about in the old country were just treadmills, and that was all."

Our friends were invited to visit a sugar plantation in Northern Queensland. They accepted the invitation, and one morning embarked on a steamer which took them in the direction which they wished to go. The steamer called at several places on the coast, including Rockhampton, Bowen, Mackay, Keppel Bay, and Somerset; the last-named place was their destination, and it was here that they landed.

"We utilized the time of stoppage at each port by going on shore," said Harry in his journal. "Except for the exercise of the trip, we might about as well have stayed on board, as there was very little to be seen at any of the places. The coast towns of Queensland are pretty much all alike. They have from one to two thousand inhabitants each, and though they're pretentiously laid out, they consist of little more than a single street. On the streets, other than the principal one, there are scattered houses, where the owners of land have endeavored to increase the value of their property by putting up buildings, but generally with poor success. For pavement the natural earth is obliged to answer, as most of these towns are too poor to afford anything better. The streets are very dusty in dry weather, and very muddy after a rain. At one of the places where we landed there had been a heavy shower the night before, and the main street was a great lane of mud. Ned said the street was a mile long, eighty feet wide, and two feet deep; at least, that was his judgment concerning it.

"One thing that impressed us in these towns was that hardly a man in any of them had a coat on. Everybody was in his shirt sleeves, and if he had a coat with him, he carried it on his arm. For the novelty of the thing, we took dinner at a hotel in Mackay, more with a view of seeing the people that went there, than with an expectation of a good meal. There were squatters from the back country, planters, clerks, merchants, lawyers, and doctors, all with their coats off, and we were told that this habit of going without coats is universal. One man who had lived there a good while said, 'You may go to a grand dinner party, and find the ladies dressed in the height of fashion, and the gentlemen in their shirt sleeves.' I don't wonder that they have adopted this plan, as the climate is very warm. The region is decidedly tropical, the air is damp and oppressive, and in the daytime especially the heat is almost insupportable. I wonder, though, that they don't adopt the white linen jacket for dinner purposes, just as the Europeans living in China and Japan have done.

"Somerset, where we landed, is principally a pearl-fishing station, and the pearl fishers who live there are a very rough-looking lot. The business is very profitable, those engaged in it estimating that the pearls pay all the expenses of their enterprise and a little more, while the nacre, or mother-of-pearl, the smooth lining of the shells, is a clear profit. The exportation of shells from Queensland is worth, annually, about half a million dollars. The pearl shells sell ordinarily for about one thousand dollars a ton. They are gathered by black divers under the superintendence of white men.

"These white men own the sloops and schooners devoted to the pearl fishery, and they go out with these craft, taking along a lot of black men as divers. The diving is done in the same way as in pearl fisheries all over the world, so that there is no necessity of describing it. The shells are like large oyster shells; in fact, they are oyster shells and nothing else. They are about twenty inches long, and from twelve to fifteen inches from one side to the other; so, you see, it doesn't take many oysters to make a load for a diver. The divers are paid according to the number of shells they gather, and not by fixed wages. A man familiar with the business said, that if you paid the men regular wages, you would be lucky if you got one dive out of them daily.

"I tried to ascertain the value of some of the pearls obtained here," continued Harry, "but my information was not very definite. They told me that several pearls worth five thousand dollars each had been taken, but they were not very common, the value ordinarily running from a few dollars up to one hundred or two hundred dollars each. My informant said that the best pearls were found on the coast of West Australia, but that the fishery in that locality was more dangerous than on the coast of Queensland. He said that the sea in that locality was subject to hurricanes, and sometimes an entire fleet of pearl-fishing boats would be overwhelmed and sunk, hardly a man escaping. 'These disasters,' he said, 'do not deter those who survive from taking the risk over again, and there are always plenty of black men who go out as divers there whenever a boat is ready to start.'"

To go to the sugar plantation to which our friends were invited, they had to make a journey inland, in a wagon over a rough road about forty miles long. The plantation was located on both sides of a small river, and employed, at the time of their visit, about one hundred and fifty men. One of the owners was there, and exerted himself to his fullest ability to make the strangers comfortable and have them see all that was to be seen. They visited the crushing mills and the boiling rooms, and learned a great deal about the process of manufacturing sugar from the sugar cane.

"We may say briefly," said Ned, "that the cane-stalks are crushed between rollers, and the juice is caught in vats, whence it flows in troughs or pipes to the evaporating house. Here it is boiled till it is reduced to syrup, and then it is boiled again, until it is ready for granulation. Then it is placed in perforated cylinders which revolve with tremendous rapidity. By means of centrifugal force all the moisture is expelled and the dry sugar remains behind."

Our friends visited the fields where the luxuriant cane-stalks were growing, but they were quite as much interested in the men they saw at work there as in the fields themselves. Harry remarked that the men seemed to be different from any of the Australian blacks they had yet seen in their travels.

"These are not Australian blacks at all," said their guide; "they are foreigners."

"Foreigners! Of what kind?"

"They are South Sea Islanders principally from the Solomon Islands; some of them are from the New Hebrides and some from the Kingsmill group."

"You import them to work on the plantations, I suppose?"

"Yes; that's the way of it. You see this country is too hot for white men to work in the field, just as your sugar-growing States in America are too hot for him to work in. The blacks are the only people that can stand it, and as for the Australian blacks, they're no good. There are not enough of them anyway, and even if there were, we couldn't rely upon them. An Australian black will never stay in one place for any length of time, as you have doubtless learned already. He is liable to quit at any moment, and that sort of thing we can't stand on a sugar plantation. We must have men to work steadily, and the only way we can get them is by hiring them under contract from some of the Pacific Islands."

"I think I have read about that somewhere," remarked Harry. "You send small ships out among the islands to pick up the men, and the business is called 'black-birding,' is it not?"

"Yes, that is the name of it, or rather used to be," was the reply. "Black-birding," along in the seventies, was an outrageous piece of business no better than slave-stealing on the coast of Africa. In fact, it was slave-stealing and nothing else. A schooner would appear off an island, drop anchor and wait for the natives to come out in their canoes, which they were sure to do. Then forty or fifty of them would be enticed on board, and perhaps invited one by one into the cabin, whence a door had been cut through into the hold. They were shoved along one by one until a sufficient number had been obtained and imprisoned below, and then the schooner set sail and left the island.

"Sometimes one of the officers was dressed up like a clergyman, with a white necktie, broad-brimmed hat, and blue spectacles, and wrapped in a long black cloak. He carried a large book under his arm, and was a very good counterfeit of a missionary. He was rowed to the shore, where he would inform the natives that their old friend, Rev. Dr. Williams, was on board the vessel and would like to see them, and he would very much like some fresh fruit. He explained the doctor's failure to come on shore by saying that he had fallen on deck and broken his leg the day before, and was then confined to his cabin.

"The natives would hasten to gather a large supply of fruit and take it on board the schooner. Their fruit was piled on deck, and one by one they were taken below, ostensibly to see their disabled friend, but really to shove them forward into the hold in the manner I have described. When a sufficient number had been entrapped the schooner sailed away, and there was little probability that the deceived natives would ever see their island again.

"That was the method formerly in vogue for supplying labor to the sugar plantations in Queensland. The matter became so notorious that the government investigated it and put a stop to 'black-birding.' At present the business of obtaining men from the Pacific Islands is fairly well conducted. On every ship that goes out for that purpose there is a government officer whose duty it is to see that no deception or trickery is practised, and that the contracts with the natives are fully understood on both sides before they are signed.

"We hire these people for three years, and when that period has expired we are obliged to return them to their homes. Formerly, they had the option of renewing their contracts here without going away, and a good many planters were careful to see that the men were heavily in debt at the expiration of their term of service, so that they would be obliged to engage again in order to get themselves out of debt, which they never did. Now the government regulation forbids the renewal of a contract here, and in order to have the agreement a valid one, it must be made in the island whence the man was brought. Of course this is a hardship where a man really does not want to go home, but, on the whole, it is for the best."

Harry asked how they managed to get along with the natives of the different islands, and if they proved to be good laborers.

"As to that," was the reply, "there is a great deal of difference among them. The most of them are industrious and do fairly well, but nearly all need a little urging. We don't flog them, as flogging is forbidden by law, but the overseers generally carry long, supple sticks which they know how to handle. They have to be careful, though, in using these sticks, as some of the Kanakas, as we call the South Sea Islanders, are revengeful, and they're very handy with knives.

"The men from the Solomon Islands are the worst to deal with, as they have ugly dispositions; they are inclined to resent what they believe to be an insult, and they are a strong, wiry race. They are quarrelsome among themselves, and probably their tendency to quarrel is increased by the fact that many of them are cannibals. Sometimes we miss one of these fellows, and though we hunt everywhere, it is impossible to find him. There are vague rumors that he has been eaten by his friends. The whole business is carefully concealed from us, and it is very rarely the case that we are able to get at the facts. It generally turns out, when we ascertain anything about it, that the man was killed in a fight, and was then cooked and eaten, to prevent his being wasted."

Harry remarked that the Solomon Islanders, as he saw them on the plantation, were not a prepossessing lot of people, and he would not care to be among them even for a single day.

The natives of the Kingsmill group were much more attractive in their appearance, but even they were nothing to be fond of. On the whole, neither of the youths took a liking to the laborers on the sugar plantation, and as the place was said to be infested with snakes, they were quite willing to cut their visit short and return to the coast.

THE END.

* * * * *

W. A. Wilde & Co., Publishers.

ABOVE THE RANGE. A Story for Girls. By Theodora R. Jenness. 315 pp. Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. $1.25.

An Indian story for girls. A mission school for the daughters of the Dakota tribes is most interestingly described. The strange ideas and beliefs of these wild people are woven into the thread of the story, which tells how a little white girl was brought up as an Indian child, educated at a mission school, and was finally discovered by her parents.

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THREE COLONIAL BOYS. A Story of the Times of '76. 368 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.

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The late Col. Thos. W. Knox was a famous traveler and writer of boys' books of travel and adventure. His last book (finished only ten days before his sudden death) describes a portion of the world in which he took a vast interest, and of which little is known in this country. Australia, the great island continent, the land of the kangaroo, and a country of contradictions, is most interestingly described.

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THE END