NORTH of Keppel Bay, Flinders discovered Port Bowen, which Cook had passed without observing. To the southern headland Flinders gave the name of Cape Clinton, Colonel Clinton, commanding the 85th Regiment at Madeira, when Flinders called there, being its sponsor. From the seaward, the cape presents the appearance of a bold headland, the hills on it being from four hundred to five hundred feet in height. Port Bowen itself is a deep inlet, and affords good shelter, but is now seldom visited by vessels, although small craft trading to Broad Sound may occasionally seek shelter there. King visited the bay, where his sloop, the "Mermaid," grounded and sustained some injury, causing detention that led to a collision with the aborigines, in the course of which the explorer became familiarised with their offensive use of spear and boomerang. The latter appears to have been novel to him, as he writes as though on this occasion he had verified the exactness of a description given by Lesuer in Perron’s atlas, in which the missile is figured and described by the appropriate name of "sabre de ricochet" (rebounding sword). Lieutenant King remarks that the natives shewed themselves very bad shots with the spears, failing to hit at pretty close quarters. In one instance, a spear flung from a distance of only twelve yards missed the sailor it was aimed at. The circumstances as narrated point, however, to the conclusion that the thrower was too scared and flurried to do justice to his skill.

For some distance northward the coastal nomenclature is Cook’s, who passed Cape Townsend, Shoalwater Bay, Thirsty Sound, and Broad Sound without tarrying to particularly examine them. The last-named alone has present interest. Into it discharge sundry small creeks, navigable at high water by small craft which carry supplies for stations in the vicinity. Previous to the construction of the railway from Rockhampton inland, one of the creeks opening Broad Sound gave access to the little township of St. Lawrence, whither the copper from the Peak Downs was carried on drays and shipped for the south, and supplies were despatched to many districts now otherwise served. The township still exists, but its early prospects have been blighted, and it lives in a condition of suspended animation.

Flat-top Island, which faces the mouth of the Pioneer River, affords to its leeward an. anchorage for vessels too large to enter the stream, upon which, on the southern bank stands the town of Mackay, surrounded by one of the most extensively cultivated of the inter-tropical plantation tracts in Queensland. Mackay is the sugar emporium par excellence of Australia. The extensive area of prolific land which borders the river has been almost all brought under cultivation. Here the labour of South Sea Islanders has been availed of to the fullest extent. In 1886 there were in the district twenty-six sugar mills and three distilleries treating the produce of the cane-fields, which gave employment to a motley crew of Kanakas, Chinese, Cingalese, and Javanese, as well as Europeans. Over a quarter of a million tons of sugar have been exported from Mackay in a single season, besides corresponding quantities of molasses and rum. Considerable plantations of cocoa-nut palms also exist near the town; coffee planting has been essayed in the vicinity; tobacco-culture is a growing industry, and beautiful gardens yield prolific crops of tropical fruits introduced from every country. The population of the Mackay district is about twelve thousand.

From Flat-top Island to Cape York extends a summer sea, in all ordinary weather placid and tepid. The most inveterate sufferer from seasickness is, once entered upon this charmed and charming waterscape, relieved from qualms. The wall of coral, rising from the depths of the Pacific and known as the Great Barrier Reef, actually commences off Port Bowen, whence it is distant about one hundred and forty miles to the eastward. But farther north it approaches nearer to land, to the outlines of which its course is, broadly speaking, thenceforth parallel. Upon its exterior rampart, which rises abruptly from the ocean depths, the swell of the Pacific crashes with thunderous force, filling the air with spray and vapour which impart a peculiar and deceptive haze to the atmosphere in the vicinity. Generally, the surface of the reef is submerged at high water, but at low tide is nearly level, strewn with masses of black coral rock to which Flinders gave the appropriate name of "Negro-heads." Unequalled in extent, these vast obstructions, so terrible to early navigators, stretch from their southernmost extremity at Swain’s reefs, in latitude twenty-two degrees twenty-three minutes twelve seconds south, longitude one hundred and fifty-two degrees thirty-six minutes fifty-four seconds east, nearly one thousand miles in a general north-west by north-half-west direction, following in a great measure the sinuosities of the coast as far as the latitude of Cape Direction, whence they diverge in a northerly course to Anchor Bay, their northern extremity, in latitude nine degrees twenty-two minutes south, longitude one hundred and forty-four degrees six minutes east. Occasional channels entirely penetrate their breadth and afford access for the largest vessel from the coastal waters to the exterior ocean. But so sinuous are these passages that probabl only the widest and straightest have as yet been defined. Steam-vessels, which alone could with any degree of safety explore the inlets, have seldom occasion for such enterprises. The surface of the reefs is here and there elevated above high water by banks of drifted sand, upon which a stunted and wind-lashed growth of bushes maintains a struggling existence. But residents of the coastal towns of the north, where the Great Barrier most nearly approaches the shore, occasionally make the inner side the goal of boating excursions. There, gliding tranquilly among the shallows, while the surf outside booms with stupendous force upon the ramparts reared by the coral insect, and seems to shake the mighty foundations of the eternal deep, they admire the beauties of Nature’s vast aquarium. Striped and frilled fishes glide in shoals amidst the branching coral and waving seaweed. The beche-de-mer, or sea slug, creeps upon the submerged knolls. Many-tinted shells, volute and convolute, strew the patches of sand. Gaunt sharks, those pirates of the finny tribe, cruise in the deeper rifts, eyeing with sinister glance the intruders encastled in their inexpugnable fortress, the boat. To the tempest harried mariner in the dark watches of the night, driving with shattered hull and crippled gear from the ocean towards the seething, ghastly shroud of sky-cast spray and spume which signals the presence of these reefs, the Great Barrier is an. object of terror and despair. To the voyager in the modern steamship, steadily skirting the coast, and enjoying the shelter of the seaward rampart, and to the pleasure-seeker, in picnicking humour, shell-hunting on a still day, they are the subjects of cool curiosity or lively interest. On their ocean side lie bleaching the ribs and skeletons of many a stout vessel, and enniched in the coral crevices repose the bones of hardy seafarers of yore. The Barrier Reefs are a cemetery and a pleasure -ground. Awful in one aspect and beautiful in another, flanking a great ocean road, the world hardly presents a duplicate of their mingled syren qualities of allurement and danger.

Whitsunday Pass is a channel, not through the Great Barrier, but formed by the approximation of Whitsunday Island to the mainland, thus providing a second obstacle against the billows of the Pacific. Thus is formed a channel of stillest sea, which winds between a lofty environment of heights, wooded to their summit with a tropical profusion of pines, and jungle of creeping plants. The pass is but a type of many similar farther northward among the islets, which give to navigation along this coast a peculiar charm for passengers. At night the shores on either hand loom black and threatening, so close at times in appearance as to seem almost within leaping distance; while the lighthouse, which serves as a guide to the mariner, gleams like the eye of some solitary Cyclops inhibiting the dimly-outlined and mysterious shore.

PASSING Cape Upstart, and the bay of the same name into which one of the many mouths of the Burdekin flows, Cape Bowling Green has next to be passed by the voyager north ward. This is constituted by an extensive low level projection, which, in fact, is the delta of the Burdekin. The northern openings of this river discharge into the shoal-encumbered expanse of Bowling Green Bay, to which a scenic background is supplied by the lofty and imposing mass of Mount Elliot. This mountain, exceeding four thousand feet in altitude, and standing aloft in solitary grandeur, dominates the coastal and inland scenery over many leagues. It dwarfs Cape Cleveland, and is a chief landmark at Townsville on the shores of Cleveland Bay.

Townsville claims to be ranked as the most important and progressive town in northern Queensland. In the trade returns it figures second only to Brisbane as a seaport. It is somewhat magniloquently described in a local almanac as being ecclesiastically a city, and it is especially dear to fame as the headquarters of the North Queensland Separation League, an organisation which has branches in all the northern towns, which has invaded with its emissaries the official sanctum of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and which retains as its secretary and pamphleteer no less potent an advocate than Mr. William Coote, the first historian of Queensland, whose powerful style is apparent in a multitude of manifestoes. The object of the league is to obtain for northern Queensland that boon of separation from the southern portion which the southern portion sought and secured from New South Wales. The advocates of northern separation reiterate with great emphasis all the arguments which the Moreton Bay separationists levelled against the New South Wales anti-separationists. This convenient style of argumentation, ably handled as it is, constitutes a very trenchant weapon. It is difficult for the Moreton Bay Queenslanders to dispose of arguments which they themselves have repeatedly endorsed. Still, possession is nine points of the law, and as the south has a majority in the Legislature, the north has been unable to secure an approval of separation from the Queensland Parliament. Failing this, the leaguers appealed to Caesar-in other words, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. This arbiter has recently, after many indications of indecision, at length given the oracular utterance that he does not intend to ask the Imperial Parliament to pass an Act of separation unless he be moved thereto by the parliament of Queensland. The struggle is not, however, concluded. Should separation be secured, Townsville will powerfully urge her claims to be the capital of the new colony, the southern limit of which is designed to be the latitude of Cape Palmerston.

In addition to the political vigour of its residents, Townsville has been endowed with considerable natural beauties of situation. Cleveland Bay expands an ample sheet of water not always placid, being only partially sheltered by the bold projection of Cape Cleveland and by the lofty ridges of Magnetic Island, so named by Captain Cook in consequence of his impression, since proved to be baseless, that the island was ferruginous to an extent which caused an appreciable disturbance of the compass. The town itself is planted on both banks of Ross Creek, an insignificant and muddy stream, which suffices to afford access to wharfages, at favourable conditions of the tide, to vessels drawing not more than ten or twelve feet of water. Cleveland Bay itself is shoal over a large part of its area, and very large sums of money have been expended on the partial construction of a stone breakwater, within which an artificial harbour is to be created by dredging.

The main artery of the town is a street-it might almost be written the street-which follows the sinuosities of Ross Creek, its width somewhat restricted by the limit of level space between the creek on the south and the steep flanks on the north of Castle Hill-an abrupt, rugged double-peaked hill which towers in savage grandeur over the town, its spurs dotted with the white wooden cottages of suburban residents, who court the sea-breezes even at the cost of a daily climb. In the main street are several buildings of considerable architectural merit. The shop-fronts vie in display with those of cities farther south. The wharves and railway station are scenes of considerable, although intermittent, activity. The citizens enjoy a good water supply from wells, the flow from which is pumped into elevated reservoirs, whence it is distributed by gravitation. Gas-works also exist, and with the addition of an ice-making factory, complete the sum of the prime indications of full civilisation in a north Queensland township.

Townsville pays somewhat heavily for its picturesqueness. Castle Hill and Tower Hill, a smaller eminence, which lend so romantic an aspect to the town, likewise reflect upon it the rays of the tropical sun, storing daily and emitting nightly a prodigious heat which renders the place less tolerable for residence than several towns farther north. A population of about eleven thousand endure this warmth, however, and is eager in extenuating its severity. The roadstead is seldom without shipping, and altogether the bay and town present an aspect sufficiently bustling.

Far otherwise must have been its appearance to the first white man who lived in this region. In the year 1846 there drifted into the bay a sea-beaten raft, on which were huddled seven miserable castaways —among them a woman. They were the survivors of twenty-one souls who had on that same frame of timbers and spars, forty-two days before, escaped from the wreck on the Minerva shoal —hundreds of miles to the southeast —of the ship "Peruvian," which had sailed from Sydney in February. The raft had somehow got over the Great Barrier Reef; but of its original occupants only one-third lived to see the land. They touched shore on the southern point of Cleveland Bay. Two men had then the good fortune to die of exhaustion; the others —the captain and his wife; Miller, the sail-maker; John Morrill, a seaman, twenty two years of age, a native of Essex; and a ship’s boy managed to keep alive. The sail-maker, having found a native canoe, paddled off to the next bay’, rather than remain and die by inches of famine, and was heard of no more. The remaining unhappy wretches, barely keeping life flickering with shellfish diet, wandered vaguely about beach and bush for fourteen days, when the blacks came upon them, and in a fashion succoured them. The natives told later how they had been led to the castaways. Night after night falling stars traversed the sky, constant to one direction. These portended the presence of a hostile tribe. Thus guided, the aboriginal magi travelled a far way, and found these shipwrecked waifs. They were not, killed. Separated among different tribes, they met but seldom, but their fate was no secret to their survivor. In two years the boy died, and his remains were burnt. More years went over stricken heads while the world wagged on its way, and the captain died-worn out, heart-broken at the degradation of his hapless wife, who suffered all the and indignities incurred by a white woman cast among savages. Protected by none of their tribal laws or bars of affinity, she envied the superior delicacy of treatment reserved for the black gins. Four days after her husband sank, she, too, closed her sad eyes upon a world which had been a hell to her. And long years went on, and youths became men in the cities, and babies grew, wedded, and bore children, and James Morrill wandered with his tribe, and clambered the summit of Mount Elliot, and hunted by the reedy banks of the Mall Mall River, which on maps is called the Burdekin, and forgot for long spells that he was white, and that there was a world beyond the bush, and that ships and cities and books and thoughts existed. But anon he was startled and quickened to retrospect by queer stories which filtered from tribe to tribe; from afar at first, and then, nearer and more frequently, came to the campfire mysterious stories of white men-centaurs darting fatal flames and emitting deadly noises. Ever nearer and nearer, white men and death and destruction, till at length it is in the very hunting-grounds of the tribe, and one’s own comrades go hunting, and meet the dreaded strangers, and lie dead on the ridge; and great terror penetrates all hearts, and James Morrill’s dim recollections grow more defined, his mind revived by fear. At last, one day Jack and Jim, stockman and hut-keeper, looking out from their hut to see what the dogs are barking at, see a queer, yellow-red, naked savage the stockyard fence gesticulating violently; and they raise their rifles to bring down the vermin, whereupon the vermin finds language, and to their mighty astonishment cries aloud, "Don’t shoot! I’m a British object!" —which he was, albeit he meant "subject," the latter word being the proper expression on all occasions by members of the nation that "never, never, never shall be slaves." This was on January 23rd, 1863, a trifle less than seventeen years after Morrill’s falling into the hands of the blacks. He lived a few years among the Queenslanders, pleading with some pathos for mercy and hunting reservations for the aborigines; and having effected little in that way, he died. Of mercy there has been little, but there is one reservation in about one thousand miles of coast.

Morrill had frequently camped with his tribe on the summit of Mount Elliot. Where the gunyahs then shielded the natives from the wind, anyone standing to-day would perceive a landscape eloquent of the industrial conquests of civilised mankind. A railway from Townsville winds past the base of the mountain en route to Charters Towers, eighty miles distant, throwing off about half-way a short branch to the Ravenswood goldfield, and after reaching Charters Towers, extending westward many miles, like an index, pointing to the remote ClonCurry-another region of gold and of copper. The fame of Charters Towers has spread far beyond Australia. Its gold mines-and especially the prolific Day Dawn-have caused the name of the place to sound familiar "on ‘change" in London. The town and its environs present a peculiar appearance. Situated in the midst of a vast treeless plain, edged here and there by little rounded hills crested with outbreaks of rock, the township at first glance from a distance might be mistaken for an encampment under canvas. The little white cottages of wood and galvanised iron shine under the tropical noon like snowy tents. Amidst their densest throng arise curious masts and beams supporting wheels and gear; these are the "poppet-heads." of various gold mines. Among them is the Day Dawn, which early in 1887 was sold in London to a company for a capital sum of six hundred and forty thousand pounds. A visitor who passed through Charters Towers shortly after this sale remarks: " The whole town is given over to a mining fever. Claims are being pegged out in all directions; shafts are being sunk. Every man, woman, or child who has or saves a little money buys mining scrip." The population has attained the number of about eight thousand. The town is ugly; its scenery has no charms, but its financial prospects are decidedly alluring.

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