Cbe IRational Inrscr^vnian. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXII. ROCHESTER, N. Y.. DECEMBER, 1914. No. 12. 
NAGASAKI, JAPAN 
By James McHutchison 
July 2nd, 1914. 
O NE would think by looking at the map of the east¬ 
ern coast of Australia from Sydney to Gape York 
—the extreme northern point of Australia, that 
there was little to interest one, but on the contrary, the 
entire route—which takes a passenger steamer seven 
of them. We passed the Quetta Rock, it was under wa¬ 
ter and so named because the S. S. Quetta—a fine British 
Indian steamer located it by striking it about 20 years 
ago, some hundreds of the passengers and crew went 
down. Also we saw the spot in Torres Straits where the 
S. S. Tasman recently went ashore. Mad. Nordica, a 
famous singer, was one of the passengers and recently 
f^ative Thatch Huts, Manila, Philippine Islands. 
days to run—is between islands and the Great Barrier 
Reef acts as a sea breakwater for thousands of miles. 
We were inside of these reefs practically the entire dis¬ 
tance, like an inland sea, the water as smooth as a river. 
We stayed a day at Brisbane—the capital city of Queens¬ 
land—and at Townsville, one of Queensland’s newer, 
ports, which is the terminus of railroads which tap the 
immense cattle and sugar areas, but which has not yet 
railroad connection with the other Australian ports. 
Between Townsville and Thursday Island there are 
many small islands and reefs, also villianous looking 
sandbars, many of them barely showing above the watei 
and marked only by beacons with cross arms like tele¬ 
graph poles. Our ship had to anchor every night, for the 
channels could not be followed in the dark. This local¬ 
ity is very dangerous for navigation and many fine ships 
have met their doom here; we saw the remains of several 
died in Java as a result of her experiences. She was re¬ 
turning to Europe after being some months in the small 
hospital at Thursday Island. 
Thursday Island is one of the numerous small islands 
off the north coast of Australia, nearly all mail steamers 
make it a port of call, it is the center of the pearl fish¬ 
eries region and has a population of about 2,000 Chinese, 
Japanese, Kanakas, Papuans, and other islanders in all 
copper and black shades—also a few whites. We were 
told that the mortality among the pearl divers averaged 
20 per cent, a year, so the average life of a pearl diver is 
5 years. Life is held very cheap everywhere in the far 
east. 
It rained all the time we were there, but that didn’t 
prevent us seeing all there was to be seen. 
For practically the whole distance between Australia 
and the Philippines, right through the center of the East 
