Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/190

Rh 172 Georgina, with little rain, but having vast tracts of good black soil threaded by slight ridges of barren sandstone. Droughts are there followed by floods from thunder showers. The south-western portion is inferior to all, having heavy sand-rises between the grassy belts. Still the pastoral settlers are taking up areas there. All that dry warm west is remarkably healthy for man and beast. The productive and better-watered part between the Main Range and the Pacific has the principal population. Climate. The coast-lands, with an annual rainfall of from 40 to 130 inches, are favoured by the south-east trade-winds and the summer north-west monsoons. Dur- ing 1882 there fell at Johnstone river, 17 S., nearly 160 inches on one hundred and ninety-seven days. Northern Queensland, up to the ranges, is well watered. Central and southern districts are not so aided by the monsoons. The highlands have on their eastern side from 30 to 70 inches, but on their western only from 15 to 30. The gulf region has from 30 to 60. The southern hills have far less rain than the northern ones. The arid western area depends on occasional thunderstorms, though nature provides a grass that long resists the drought. The low south-west basin, trending to the depressed lake region of South Australia, has repeatedly seasons of intense dryness. In temperature, Brisbane has a mean of 69 between 34 and 105. The hilly districts, even in the tropics, have slight frosts in winter, but a high barometer in the dry warm weather. North Queensland has less heat than its latitude would seem to threaten. Tropical ports show a lower summer thermometer than may sometimes be seen in Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne. The western heat is stimulating in its dryness and electrical condition. The oppression on the northern coast is felt during the rainy season, though the showers cool the air. The prevalence of south-east winds off the sea mitigates the trials of summer. The dreaded "hot wind," brought southward by the usual course from central Australian deserts, descends upon the southern colonies, avoiding Queensland. Still the ordinary western breeze, passing over so great an expanse of land, while positively cold on winter nights, is sufficiently hot during the summer. In a recent year the colonial registrar-general gave the death-rate of Brisbane municipality at 13 in the thousand, Toowoomba 17, and Rockhampton 15. In the tropics it was 12 at Charters Towers and Cooktown, 15 at Towns- ville, but 29 at Mackay, where the sickly Polynesians abound. The prevalent diseases are rather from disordered liver and bowels than lungs and throat. Low fevers, seldom fatal, continue for a time in all newly opened-up country throughout Australia, as in America. Female mortality, even in the tropical ports, is considerably less than that of males. Infants, as a rule, thrive better in the colony, according to numbers, than in England. Cooktown, in lat. 16 S., is regarded by some as the sana- torium of the future. Queensland can give invalids any climate they may desire moist and equable, dry and exhilarating, warm days and cool nights, soft coast airs for bronchial affections, and more bracing ones for other consumptives. Geology. Queensland is geologically connected with New South Wales and Victoria by the great chain of hills continued through the eastern portion of Australia, from Cape York to Bass's Strait. That immense range consists largely of Palaeozoic formations with igneous rocks. The granites, porphyries, and basalts have greatly tilted and metamorphosed the sedimentary deposits of Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Oolitic ages. The width of this elevated and mineral part of the colony varies from 50 to 400 miles. Ancient formations, however, rise in the broad western plains, and everywhere indicate metallic treasures. Nearer the eastern coast granite and porpliy- ritic rocks appear in greater force than in the Dividing Range, and the voyager rarely loses sight of them all the way from Moreton Bay to Cape York. They add much to the attractiveness of the scenery, especially in Whit- sunday Passage. The old sedimentary strata consist of sandstones, limestones, conglomerates, and slates of vari- ous kinds. The Carboniferous beds are of great extent, occupying thousands of square miles (perhaps as many as 100,000), on the highlands, and on both sides of the Main Chain. It is in north and central Queensland that the mineral is found of the true Palaeozoic character, bearing the distinctive floral features of the English and New South Wales Newcastle formation. The Jurassic and Liassic rocks of the southern hilly districts are rich in cannel coal. The Wollumbilla beds are similar to the Upper Wiannamatta ones of New South Wales. The Mesozoic or Secondary formations prevail largely to the westward. Ammonites, belemnites, and ichthyosauri de- clare the same condition of things as once existed in the English midlands. The Cretaceous and Oolitic series on the western plains occupy nearly a third of Queensland, and their grassy surface is being rapidly covered with flocks of sheep. A descent below the ocean level produced the Tertiary beds. The so-called "desert sandstone" may have once covered nearly the whole of the colony, though suffering great denudation afterwards, to the decided satisfaction of settlers. It still stretches over much of the extensive plateau and both slopes. In some places it is hundreds of feet thick. The favourite Downs have got free from this arid incubus. Tertiary fresh- water beds, not marine ones, are seen towards the coast. The volcanic element is very distinguishable, and is a source of the large area of fertile soil. Throughout the ranges, and over many of the downs, basalts and lavas abound. Though no eruptive cone appears, there are hundreds of well-defined extinct craters, some being 4000 feet above sea-level, surrounded by sheets of lava and masses of volcanic ashes. The Great Barrier Reef, fol- lowing the line of the north-east coast for 1200 miles, preserves the memory of an ancient shore ; the coral animalculse built on the gradually sinking cliffs. The reefs approach the coast-line within five miles northward and one hundred southward, having an area of 30,000 square miles, and protecting eastern Queensland from the violence of Pacific storms. A narrow deep trough in the sea-bottom extends from Moreton Bay to Fiji. Within 100 miles of Cape Moreton the water is 16,000 feet in depth. While the alluvial gold and tin-workings are among the Tertiary and post-Tertiary formations, the veins and lodes of gold, silver, copper, tin, and other metals are in the solid granite, or in the ancient sediment- ary rocks, particularly in association with dioritic and other igneous intrusions. Greenstone has there some of the richest of copper lodes. The celebrated tin mines of Tinaroo are in granite mountains 3000 feet high, where Englishmen work without discomfort within the tropics. Some of the tropical coal-fields are also at a considerable elevation, though nowhere are they situated in an insalu- brious locality. The more southern coal seams are in districts as healthful as they are beautiful. The Queens- land fossils greatly resemble those of other parts of the world. Those, however, of the more recent Tertiary times indicate the presence of animals akin to existing marsu- pials, though some of the kangaroo order stood a dozen feet in height, and had the bulk of a hippopotamus. The diprotodon, 16 feet in length, may have pulled down branches or young trees for its support. The rise of land would have diminished water-supply in the interior, and caused the gradual disappearance of the gigantic marsu-