128 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



labourers is required on a plantation, because during the planter's harvest — the 

 crushing season, which extends over some months — a considerable number of 

 additional hands are required. In a colony where labour is well paid and work 

 abundant there is practically no floating population to furnish these temporary 

 supplies. It follows therefore that the planter must keep all the year round 

 a staff equal to his harvest requirements, and the expense of doing this, if 

 the men employed were paid at the high rate of wages current for white men, 

 would be crushing. The difficulty has been, up to the present time, solved by 

 the importation of South Sea Islanders, who are generally speaking good and 

 docile labourers, not affected by heat, and comparatively cheap. They are 

 engaged for terms of three years, at a wage in cash of £6 a year ; but their 

 employers have to feed and clothe them, and to pay for the cost of their intro- 

 duction and their return to their homes when the engagements are terminated. 

 It is reckoned that the cost of Kanaka labourers, including everything, equals 

 from £25 to ^35 a year for each 'boy' employed, though that of course is 

 very much less than the £1 a week, with food and lodging, generally paid to 

 white labourers. 



The labour trade, as the procuring of Kanakas is termed, is, however, 

 to be stopped in 1890. In spite of rigid regulations and the care exercised 

 by the Government of the colony, it is a trade which, from its very nature, 

 is liable to abuse, and it has been abused. Vessels trading to islands where 

 the natives knew nothing of the colony or of regular work endeavoured by 

 fraud and misrepresentation, and sometimes, though rarely, by actual violence 

 to procure cargoes of labourers. It must be remembered that the Queensland 

 labour trade has been ever since its establishment the bone of contention in 

 fierce party disputes, and the usual unscrupulousness of party politicians has 

 been displayed alike in attacking and defending it. 



Taking a general view of agriculture, it must be admitted that Queens- 

 landers have not, except in regard to sugar, taken advantage of their great 

 opportunities. Sugar-growing, until the recent crisis in the labour difficulty, 

 was progressing rapidly. The yield for 1885, though not officially stated, is 

 computed by reliable experts at 50,000 tons of sugar, which is nearly all of 

 a high quality, and worth probably about a million sterling. The wheat 

 yield, as has been seen, is insignificant, and even of maize — which grows 

 freely in every part of the colony — there is not enough produced to supply 

 home consumption. In the tropical coast districts some attention is being 

 paid to the cultivation of fruit for export. Pine-apples and bananas grow 

 luxuriantly in all parts of the colony, but in the north they attain great size 

 and develop a very fine flavour. These fruits, with mangoes, are now sent 

 south in yearly increasing quantities. Arrowroot growing and manufacture is 

 spreading in the districts round Brisbane, where the soil and climate seem to 

 be especially suitable to the tuber. Coffee has been grown experimentally at 

 several points on the coast, but nowhere in quantity, though the experiments 



