Page:The British Empire in the nineteenth century Volume VI.djvu/213

 six men in a row, hanging on to a floating house, and uttering wild cries for help which it was impossible to afford, perished in the waters as the house was hurled against one of the piers. The Stanley Street swimming-baths dragged their four anchors, and drifted on to the bridge, to be instantly broken up. Live stock, farm produce, furniture, fencing, trees, pieces of land held together by reeds and scrub as floating islets, were carried down the swift stream and out to sea. Wreckage piled up against the of the bridge impeded the free flow of the water on the south side, and the rush in the deep channel on the north increased in speed. The crisis came at about four o'clock on the morning of Tuesday, February 7th, when there was a vast accumulation of iron and wood from houses, trees, and other objects. The of the bridge started from the centre and worked its way to the north bank. With seven separate crashes, girder after girder, lattice after lattice, canted up, turned a somersault, and was in the boiling flood, while the water dashed up to a height of 30 to 40 feet and descended in spray rendered snow-like by the rays of a brilliant moon. The wreckage was released and borne away seawards with terrific force, and in a few moments a clear stream appeared for half the distance across the river, and the southern half of the noble Victoria Bridge stood up sheer, ghastly, and gaunt in its survival where so much had been swept away. In September, a temporary wooden bridge was opened for traffic, and an entirely new structure, at an estimated cost, including approaches, of about £12,000, has now been completed.

Queensland, occupying the north-eastern portion of the continent, and including many adjacent islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and lying between the nth and 20th parallels of south latitude, and the 138th and 154th meridians of east longitude, has a maximum length of 1300 miles from north to south, and an extreme width of about 800 miles, with an area of nearly 670,000 square miles, making it about five and a half times as large as the United Kingdom. In its main features the surface of the country resembles that of New South Wales, and may be divided into the Coast District, the Table-land, and the Interior Plains. It is upon the first of these, lying between the sea on the east, and a backbone of mountains running parallel thereto at an average distance of 50 miles, that settlement has