238 



sidered to have conclusively proved that, contrary to 

 general opinion, the tropical regions of Central Australia 

 can be more effectively, and actually more cheaply developed 

 by white labour than by kanakas. Actual experience and 

 theoretical considerations therefore it is said show alike 

 that there is nothing in the climate of tropical Australia 

 to prevent its colonisation by white races. 



Professor Gregory also suggested that — 



"The northern peninsula of Western Australia, the north- 

 western corner of Queensland, and the Northern Territory," (which 

 he considered to be the weakest point in the Australian position) 

 "would together form a great tropical territory with a convenient 

 and natural boundary. Its government would train a staff expert 

 in its special tropical problems, ami in twenty years time it would 

 be possible to tell whether the colonisation of the country by a 

 white race is practicable within a reasonable time." 



Dr. Ramsay Smith, head of the department of Public 

 Health of South Australia, stated in the course of discuss- 

 ion of Mr. Macfie's paper at Adelaide in 1007 :— 



"There is nothing so far as I can find, in the whole science and 

 practice of medicine, in <how that while men, as individuals or 

 races, cannot live in the tropics. On the contrary, all the facts 

 of hygiene lend to prove that thev can." 



He also stated that science has shown that the black 

 possesses no immunity from malaria, but is in a condition 

 to pass the disease on through the medium of the mosquito 

 to the white man ; that persons whether indigenous to the 

 tropics or immigrants to those regions will develop pigment 

 naturally; that the question of white and black labour in 

 the tropics is a commercial one, not one of health, and In- 

 deprecated any attempt to support any side of a commercial 

 argument by bolstering it up with scientific fallacies and 

 illogical arguments. Other medical men with tropical 

 experience have held that mere residence in a hot dry 



