4 8 4 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1881. 
course of 700 miles and carries down fertile matter 
from volcanic and other formations. To get to our 
destination we steamed back out of Cleveland Bay, 
rounded Cape Cleveland, and landed, after a night's 
•steaming, on the banks of a creek between Cape 
Bowling Green and Cape Upstart. A bujrgy and horses 
were waiting for us, and we bowled away over coun- 
try which in Ceylon would be considered impractic- 
able. From swamp covered with saline grasses (which 
cattle greedily devour and get fat on) we came to 
raised terraces of rich black soil, interspersed with 
creeks and lagoons. Most of the creeks and lagoons 
were bordered or covered with mangroves, red and 
white — the red most valuable as fuel for sugar mak- 
ing, as well as other purposes. I had five or six days 
driviug and riding over this wonderful country; of 
which we got a view from a range of carious sand- 
hills. As we journeyed, through rich grasses, several 
feet high, or just starting after being burnt by the 
blacks to enable ihem to catch their game, we started 
hundreds of kangaroo and wallaby, which, after stand- 
ing up and staring at us, bounded away to stand 
up and stare again. 
Of aquatic birds, pelicans, storks, ibises, geese, ducks, 
laughing jackasses (the great kingfisher of Queensland 
has splendid plumage), we saw immense numbers. We 
went on mangrove trees over a creek which I sup- 
pose human beings had scarcely ever before visited, 
for we could not frighten some beautiful Burdekin 
duc&s which were on the mud below us. The trees, 
other than gums and wattles, were many of them 
familiar to me. Very common on the banks of creeks 
was the tree named after Leiehaidt, which also grows 
in Ceylon. It somewhat resembles what we call " the 
country almond" in Ceylon, trees of which, by the 
way, were growing on the beach at Townsville, in- 
troduced, I was told. I saw a large lily, the fellow 
of that which grows on banks of rivers in Ceylon, and 
the beautiful place of our good friends the Grahams 
was called Liliesmere, from the abundance of water- 
lilies, pmk, white, but specially blue on the lagoon 
or rather lake beside which they reside. Here I was 
delighted to see a splendid orchard of oranges, man- 
geos, &c, which, although only five years old, is 
already bearing heavily. The question, ere long, will 
be what to do with the oranges, mangoes, pineapples, 
bananas, &c, produced so abundantly in this soil and 
climate. The long spells of dry weather, it is certain, 
greatly improve the flavour of the fruit. I never saw 
mango trees in Ceylon so loaded with fruit at five 
years old, and as for oranges, few are obtained in 
Ceylon from trees under five years old. Around Mr. 
G-raham's house were specimens of numerous foreign 
trees and plants, including the cinnamon of Ceylon and 
China, the tamarind, sisu, &c. But sugar, sugar, is 
the absorbing cry here, as much and as exclusively as 
coffee once was the cry in Ceylon. 
Mr. Jeffray, who is the head of the agency firm of 
Sloane & Co., of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and 
Townsville, had come to " the Burdekin" delta to 
see an estate of about 20,000 acres of fat alluvial, 
of which 1,000 acres are to be covered with 
sugar in the very shortest period on record in the 
annals of the enterprise. To effect this Mr. Macmillan 
(formerly Government engineer and roadmaker, born 
in Mull and educated in the Inverness Academy) 
has got a steam plough, "sulky " ploughs (on which 
a seat is prepared for the ploughman), and all kinds 
of improved implements. It was a sight to see the 
steam plough, drawn successively by two engines, nearly 
a quarter of a mile apart, tearing the virgin soil 
and throwing up three furrows. But Mr. Macmillan 
(who calls his place Ardmillan) was not satisfied. The 
.•team power was sufficient for a six-furrow plough, 
and that he was intending to get. The only draw- 
back to this grand place is possible prolonged drought, 
I such indeed as existed. But the rich deep bkek soil 
was retentive of moisture, there were heavy dew6, and 
there are wonderful facilities for cheap irrigation. By 
the way, a Frenchman, on hearing of an experiment 
in this direction, went about exclaiming : " De sugar 
on de Burdekin vill nevare be, bekase Mr. Macmillan, 
he do arrogate." But what Macmillan "arrogates" 
he will do. After years of hard work, in the course 
of which he has made his way (fighting it sometimes) 
through thousands of miles of trackless forest and 
scrub, he is as full of strength and energy as ever. 
And he is a thoroughly scientific man as well as being 
otherwise qualified to be manager for the company of 
which he, Graham and Jeffray are members. Mr. 
Graham is an Irishman, whom I had previously met 
at a lodging-house in Sydney. There we had a long 
talk about the labour question, little thinking either 
of us that we should again meet where the question 
was so practical and urgent a one. 
The sugarcane in Northern Queensland does not 
grow so much more luxuriantly than in Ceylon, 
but the proportion of saccharine matter in the 
juice must be much greater. Eight per cent is a 
good result, but in an experiment at which I assisted 
we got from 10 to 11| per cent. The intrument, 
(Beaume's) was exactly on the principle of the lacto- 
meter : a glass tube graduated. The more watery the 
juice (which was pressed from pieces of cane in a 
vice and received into a jug) the more the instru- 
ment sank. Sugarcane has its troubles as well as 
coffee. In 1875 the estates in the Mackay district 
were nearly snuffed out by a visitation of a fungus 
like red rust. But sugarcane can be uprooted and 
replanted and be ready for cutting in about 15 months, 
and there are about 100 kinds to select from. The 
Bourbon which was so liable to the rust has been 
superseded by the " Rose bamboo" and other kinds : 
at present there is no pest of consequence. As with the 
coffee in Ceylon, so, probably, with sugar here, it will 
be found that vast unbroken areas of one plant 
present conditions favourable for plagues, insect and 
fungoid. I think I mentioned in writing from the 
Mackay district (named after a Scotch sea captain 
who is said to be still engaged in the Kaneka trade) 
that the average yield of sugar per acre is 1| ton, 
and as it takes on an average 15 tons of cane to produce 
1 ton of sugar, that nieans 22| tons of cane per acre. 
Much greater weight of cane is produced per acre 
on new land redeemed from "scrub" (that is forest), 
but the percentage of sugar is not so high. The per- 
centage has been known to increase up to the 8th year. 
I think I wrote from the Mackay about the large num- 
ber of horses required to work a sugar estate. The 
ploughmen are almost all white men, the proportion 
on most estates being 20 per cent whites to 80 per 
cent blacks or "coloured persons." There, are large 
acres of available sugar lands to be had on any terms, 
and persons who have not capital to set up a mill can 
cultivate and sell cane to the manufacturers. I cannot 
now relate all the incidents of this most interesting 
journey to the grand delta of the Burdekin, some 
parts of which, I believe, we were the first to explore, 
seeing as we went fine "pockets" of land. On our 
journey back, which we made byroad (?) and rail, 
we struck the banks of the river at several points 
and admired its broad and in some places rocky bed, 
lined with casuarinas and with scarlet and white 
blossomed " bottle-brush" trees. The scarlet blos- 
somed ones gleamed out like iron wood trees when 
the foliage is young. 
The German element will here rapidly merge into the 
English, although the Germans do associate togetherand 
have their own newspapers, concerts, and so on. They 
are an industrious and thrifty people, and the English 
workmen complain of them as "living on the smell of an 
oiled rag." What with cheap German labour and cheaper 
