X PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



being transferred to the miserable little inadequacies that do 

 duty for tenders at such places as Rockhampton and Townsville 

 are avoided. We are now well within the tropics, the latitude 

 being 16deg. 56mins. S., and this is attested by the wealth of 

 vegetation — by stately trees festooned with trailing rattan and 

 many a swinging lliana, and coronetted with glorious fern and 

 lycopod and orchid. It is hot, but the sea breezes temper solar- 

 fervour, and the result is not unpleasant. 



Cairns lies upon the alluvium of the delta of the Barron 

 Eiver, which yields rich crops of bananas, sugar-cane, and other 

 tropical produce. Immediately behind this low land rises a ram- 

 part of rugged mountains, which are in truth but the weather- 

 frayed edges of a noble table-land. On this plateau rises the Barron 

 River, which has gnawed out a grand gorge, some 900 feet deep, 

 as steep and as impressively beautiful as many of 'the canons of 

 Western America. Along this gorge, and in places well-nigb 

 over-hanging it, the Cairns and Mareeba Railway climbs, 

 reaching an elevation of 1,325 feet in 46 miles, and passing- 

 close by the renowned Barron Falls, which come cascading down 

 a wild rock-staircase 900 feet high. The last 20 miles are along 

 the plateau. The terminus is Mareeba, and why the railway 

 stops there, for it is nowhere in particiilar, is a mystery known 

 only to politicians and tax-payers. 



This plateau, which is of basalt, runs as level as a table for 

 about 27 miles, to Atherton. On the table-land we have left 

 behind the genuine tropical vegetation, and have entered upon 

 typical Australian scenery — open forest of eucalyptus. But at 

 Atherton we come suddenly upon a total change, for a belt of 

 scrub, some four miles wide, is drawn across our path as 

 accurately margined from the open forest as if it were the skilled 

 work of the Indian Forest Department. The change is 

 startlingly sudden. One moment you are in Australia, the next 

 in equatorial Asia. Giant trees, thick underscrub, tangled bush- 

 ropes, all proclaim the tropics ; but it is Asiatic and not 

 Australian. To this subject I shall return. 



Our journey still is westward, and in about two miles from 

 Atherton we leave the plateau and begin the ascent of the 

 Herberton Range, the coach-road reaching an elevation of over- 



