44 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



North Queensland that they are fed to pigs as well as 

 horses. Twenty good pines for sixpence ! — who would culti- 

 vate the fruit and market it for such remuneration ? 

 Hundreds of tons of mangoes go absolutely to waste every 

 year. The taste for this wholesome and most delicious 

 fruit has not yet become established in the large centres of 

 population of Australia. At one time the same could be 

 said of bananas ; but now the trade has become prodigious. 

 The era of the mango has yet to come. 



The original cedar hut now forms an annexe to a 

 bungalow designed, in so far as means permitted, as a 

 concession to the dominating characteristics of the clime. 

 Around the house is an acre or so given over to an 

 attempt to keep up appearances. 



Poultry are comfortably housed ; a small flock of goats 

 provides milk and occasionally fresh meat. There are two 

 horses (one a native of the island) to perform casual heavy 

 work ; the boat has a shed into which she is reluctantly 

 hauled by means of a windlass to spend the rowdy months ; 

 there is a buoy in the bay to which she is greatly attached 

 when she is not sulking in the shed or coyly submitting to 

 the caresses of the waves. 



It may have been anticipated that I would, Thoreau- 

 like, set down in details and in figures the exact character 

 and cost of every designed alteration to this scene ; but 

 the idea, as soon as it occurred, was sternly suppressed, for 

 however cheerful a disciple I am of that philosopher, far be 

 it from me to belittle him by parody. 



A good portion of the house represents the work of my 

 own unaccustomed hands. I have found how laborious an 

 occupation fencing is, and how very exasperating if barbed 

 wire is used ; that the keeping in order of even a small 

 plantation in which ill-bred and riotous plants grow with 

 the rapidity of the prophet's gourd, and which if unattended 

 would lapse in a very brief space of time into the primitive 

 condition of tangled jungle, involves incessant labour of the 

 most sweatful kind. A work on structural botany tells me 

 that " the average rate of perspiration in plants has been 



