i 2 6 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



present day, who are here men of business, watching the markets and the 

 seasons, eager to utilise to its utmost every crop of grass which a good 

 rain yields, and to turn it into mutton and wool, and buying and selling 

 stock so as to profit by every turn of the market. 



A good deal of the sheep farming of the colony is now carried on not 

 by individuals, but by joint-stock companies with capitals of many hundred 

 thousands of pounds. In fact, the old-time squatter — the type depicted in 

 such books as Henry Kingsley's stories — is as extinct as the dodo in 

 Queensland, so far as the sheep districts are concerned. 



The cultivation of cereals and crops such as are grown in the southern 

 colonies is only practised in Queensland on a considerable scale in the 

 district of Darling Downs, where the comparatively cool climate of the 

 inland plateau is accompanied by a sufficient rainfall to permit of ordinary 

 farming. Wheat is grown, but not to any great extent, the total area under 

 wheat in 1884 being less than 16,000 acres. The soil is very fertile, and 

 the yield of grain per acre is decidedly above the Australian average ; but 

 for some reason red rust is a perfect scourge to the farmer. 



It is on the fertile scrub land that the most successful agriculture is 

 carried on. These scrubs are generally found on the banks of rivers, 

 although in certain localities broad areas, containing hundreds of square 

 miles, are clothed with scrub. The soil is a deep alluvial deposit ; and the 

 close-growing trees on it spring straight and tall in the struggle to reach 

 the upper atmosphere and light, for the leafy roof allows no sun to penetrate 

 to the damp ground, soft with mouldering leaves, but makes a cool green 

 gloom even on the most fiery summer day. There is something very 

 solemn in the quietude of a scrub untouched by the axe of the lumberer or 

 settler. There is no undergrowth, properly speaking, though delicate little 

 ferns and fairy-like mosses nestle close to the feet of the trees. But there 

 is a wealth of parasitical life. Giant lianas twine from tree to tree, hanging 

 in great loops and folds and contortions, suggesting the idea of huge 

 vegetable monsters writhing in agony. Much more graceful are the lovely 

 shy orchids hiding in crannies, and the bolder ferns, springing from great 

 root-masses attached to the stems of the trees, the graceful shape and 

 curve of the leaves, and their pure pale-green colour, undisturbed and un- 

 dimmed by wind or sun. Among the wilderness of trees may be noticed 

 the victims of the treacherous fig, the dead trunk of the original tree still 

 visible, but enveloped in the interlacing stem of the robber, which has seized 

 it in its cruel embrace, sucked life and marrow out of it, and reared 

 triumphantly its crown of glossy green leaves far above in the bright sun- 

 light. On all these beautiful or strange or weird objects one gazes in a 

 stillness which seems to be intensified by the continuous murmur of the 

 breeze in the leafy roof— a quiet so great that one is almost startled by 

 the timid thud of the tiny scrub marsupial, which, after a gaze of fascinated 



