Page:The British Empire in the nineteenth century Volume VI.djvu/225

 sheltered by two islands from the winds and waves. With a popu- lation of about 4000 in the town and neighbourhood, the place largely exports cattle to New Caledonia, the French colonial island lying midway between Queensland and the Fiji Isles. Mackay, a town on the south bank of the Pioneer river, 625 miles north- west of Brisbane, has 4000 people, with over 10,000 in the suburban district, and is the centre of Queensland's chief sugar region. The buildings are good, and the port, an outlet for copper- mines and a gold-field, is being improved by engineering. Towns- mile, on Cleveland Bay, with a population of 9000, is the third port of the colony, and the most important and progressive place in northern Queensland, lying 870 miles north-west of the capital. 'It is the commercial centre of a vast area of pastoral and sugar country, also containing gold-fields at Charters Towers and elsewhere. The only natural port is an open roadstead, but an eastern breakwater, 4000 feet long, has been completed, and a western breakwater will aid in creating an artificial harbour along with dredging of the shallow bay. The gas-lit town has a good supply of water from wells, and a factory for making ice, a luxury in a place rendered very hot by reflection of the rays of a tropical sun from the adjacent Castle Hill and Tower Hill. Townsville is the see of an Anglican bishop, and has political importance as the head-quarters of the North Queensland Separation League, an influential body which commands the services of vigorous writers demanding, for the northern part of the colony, the independent political existence obtained by Queensland in regard to New South Wales. The Colonial Office in London has declined to ask the Imperial Parlia- ment for an Act of separation until the Queensland Legislature approves the claim of the League. Communication between different parts of the colony is largely effected by sea, owing to the number of excellent harbours, regu- larly visited by the large and well-appointed steamers of several lines. All the chief towns, on the coast and inland, are connected by good roads. The chief railway-lines, southern, central, and northern, have been already indicated. There are really eleven distinct systems, with no common centre, but all have a uniform gauge of 3^ feet, and are in the hands of the Government. In 1897, 2 43 miles were open, constructed at the cost of over 17 millions sterling, and having annual receipts of £1,136,861 against