f sugar. No less than 9,600 tons were produced in
1886. The growth is steadily increasing, and the country will sooner
or later become the centre of a large and prosperous trade.

For the cultivation of sugar on the Herbert both British and coloured
labour is employed--British workmen in the mills, the coloured people
in cutting the cane. Wages for Englishmen range from twenty-five
shillings upwards weekly. We spoke to some of the wives of the
workmen, several of whom are recent arrivals from Lancashire. Their
dwellings are of the simplest description, made of corrugated iron or
of straw, and scattered at haphazard in a clearing in the jungle or
on the banks of the river. These pioneers of cultivation have to lead
a hard life and bear many privations--circumstances in which the
colonising qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race always come to the front.

There was an hotel and a store, and, as is usual in this sort of
place, enormous piles of broken bottles and empty cases of tinned
meats, jams, &c. It breaks my heart to see the colonists, particularly
the children, living on condensed milk, tinned meats, and canned
fruits from America, when there is so much good pasture running to
waste all round the house. In the orchards the trees are literally
broken down from the weight of their crop, while quantities of fruit
which the boughs cannot support are given to the pigs and cattle.

[Illustration: Dead Crocodile on Snag]

We had to wait a little before starting on our homeward water-way, for
the tubes of the 'Trap's' boiler began to leak, and had to be
repaired. This delay gave us an opportunity of observing some of the
inhabitants, who came to the pier to see us. They looked smart and
clean and well-to-do--quite different from those we had noticed as we
ascended the river. We stopped to take one or two photographs of
tropical scenery and of various little stations on the way down the
river. We also paused to look at the body of a dead alligator which
had been caught in a snag. He was between five and seven feet long,
and a second rather larger one lay close by. From time to time we
caught sight of parties of blacks hidden amongst the rank vegetation
of the shores, and we saw some beautiful birds, particularly a
brilliant blue kingfisher, flashing about like a jewel in the
sunlight. There was another pretty little red-beaked bird; and an
enormous black crane, about four feet high, with white tips to his
wings, and a red and