A TRAMP BY THE SHORE 
for the place enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity, during 
which pretentious banks and public buildings sprang 
up, and still stand there as if in mockery of its 
absolute deadness. The time was when they took 
fifty tons of gold from the Palmer River, but those 
days had long gone by, although there is certainly 
plenty of mineral wealth in the hinterland that is 
entirely unworked, and excellent for tin miners espe- 
cially. No effort has been made to work this, and 
it is difficult to get money for even a gold mine at 
the back of Cooktown, so much British capital has 
been lost there in wild-cat schemes. A once busy 
railway still runs fitfully to the Palmer River. 
We stayed three weeks at Cooktown, and during 
the second week we witnessed a thunderstorm that 
transcended in violence the worst I had ever seen in 
South America, and that is saying a good deal. 
After an intensely oppressive morning, a black cloud 
came up from the westward, and the storm burst 
with startling suddenness. In less than half-an-hour 
every street was a veritable river, and the lightning, 
continuous and seemingly ubiquitous, was accompanied 
by cracking and rending thunder that could only be 
described as appalling. Fortunately, no one was 
killed, and the only damage was to the roof of 
Burns’s store, which was struck by lightning. 
Save for the thunderstorm, our stay at Cooktown 
was utterly uneventful, and at the end of the third 
week we went down to Sydney and came home by 
the White Star line. 
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