What Do You
Think Of That, Mates?" He Added, Turning To The Company.
"Won't that suit
us all?"
"Capitally!" was echoed from every side, and after sundry drinks the party
broke up; Dunmore and I hastening to make immediate preparations for our
new trip.
The Macalister River was at this time most imperfectly known; for, lying to
the extreme north of Rockingham Bay, its fertile banks had hitherto
attracted little or no attention; the great sugar industry being then
comparatively in its infancy in Queensland. A dangerous bar at its mouth,
over which heavy rollers were always breaking, made pleasure-seekers rather
shy of attempting its entry, more particularly as the muddy mangrove flats
held out small hope of aught save mosquitoes and blacks. Since then the
sugar-cane has become one of the chief sources of wealth to the colony,
and, in the search for land adapted to its growth, the Macalister was not
likely to remain long in obscurity. Along its beautiful banks were
discovered many thousands of acres of magnificent black soil country,
without a stick of timber to impede the plough, over which a furrow, miles
in length, could have been turned without an inch of deviation being
necessary.
Where the wretched bark 'gunyah' of the native stood, is now found the
well-finished house of the planter; and where the savage pastimes of the
'bora' ground once obtained, and the smoke from cannibal fires curled
slowly upwards to the blue vault of heaven, is heard the cheerful ring of
the blacksmith's hammer, the crack of the bullock-whip, as the team moves
slowly onward beneath the weight of seven-feet canes, and the measured
throb of machinery from the factory, where the crushed plant is yielding up
its sweets between the inexorable iron crushers.
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