CHAP. IV CAIRNS 39 
on landing we walked along the pier between an avenue 
of banana bunches waiting to be shipped South ; 14,000 
bunches went by the last steamer, and the supply 
seems endless. They are grown principally by China- 
men, and hundreds of acres, I should think, are under 
cultivation around and about the town, which lies very 
low and is quite rural. In the evening I walked along 
the beach under the shade of an avenue of handsome 
trees. I did not know any of them, and I fancy the 
seed must have originally been washed there from 
some distant islands. John Chinaman is, as usual, to 
the fore here ; he grows all the vegetables and most of 
the fruit, which comes to perfection in this climate ; 
you can buy one dozen and a half grenadillas for a 
shilling, and other fruit is just as cheap. 
Mr. Walton drove me straight to the Railway Hotel, 
of which he is the proprietor, and, late at night as it 
was, they had tea prepared for me, with a comfortable 
bedroom and sitting-room, and they were altogether 
so good to me both here and later at their hotel up 
at Myola on the railway line, that I shall always 
remember them with gratitude. My next drive was 
rather an exciting one, for when almost four miles out 
of the town, a Chinaman with his baskets meeting us 
on a bridge proved too much for the horses, and off 
they started as hard as their legs would carry them. 
Over the stones, through the mangroves, on to the road 
again, and over the little rickety bridges the light buggy 
was dragged, jumping from side to side as if it entered 
into the spirit of the moment. With a mixed feeling 
of terror and excitement I wondered what and where the 
end would be, and noting quickly as we passed some 
beautiful white convolvuli, I hoped it might not be far 
from there ; and it was not either, for bang we came 
almost at that moment against a tree» a horse on either 
Digitized by LnOOQ IC 
