of Promise were occupied by cattle, and the hinterland of the Gulf of Carpentaria was rapidly taken up for squattages. Extensive deposits" of copper ore had been discovered in the Peak Downs District, and active mining operations were proceeding.

The second Parliament met on the 22nd July, 1863, and did not dissolve until the 29th May, 1867, and, during the greater part of its term, the Hon. Robert Herbert retained the confidence of the representative legislature. On the 21st September, 1863, the Queensland Bank Act was passed, and the first bank having its headquarters in the colony was established under its provisions. The bank began business in October, but had only a brief life, being overwhelmed in the financial cataclysm of 1866.

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Just after the accomplishment of separation, a movement initiated by a public company to construct a tramway to facilitate traffic between the Darling Downs and the Bremer at Ipswich, to which point river steamers daily plied from Brisbane. This project collapsed, and the conception of a railway took its place. The starting of construction was, however, delayed for several years, owing to the contentions which arose between Brisbane and Ipswich as to the proper point of departure. At length the squatting party in Parliament, seeking to deal out a rebuff to the capital, which represented the democracy (mainly immigrant) of the colony, decided on Ipswich, and the work of construction was begun. The gauge adopted was the 3 ft. 6 in., and the line was opened from Ipswich to Grandchester on the 31st July, 1865. Brisbane obtained, as some compensation, a measure for improving the access to the town, and the river bar and the flats were dredged with the view of cutting a deep-water channel. Sugar culture was encouraged by liberal arrangements for the acquisition of plantations on the alluvial lands along the coastal rivers and creeks; and the first sugar from Queensland cane was manufactured on the 9th September, 1864. The growth of cotton was effectually stimulated by liberal bounties granted by Parliament on the export of the staple, and between 1867 and 1874 no less than 10,023,585 lb. were grown and exported. But with the increase of production in America, consequent on the termination of the Civil War and the cessation of the practice of paying bounties, it was found impossible to obtain payable results, and the cultivation died out.

The revenue of the young colony was not, of course, adequate for defraying the cost of founding its institutions and carrying out great public works, and recourse had early to be had to the money market of London, where, during the years 1861-3-4, loans had been authorised and negotiated aggregating £1,856,236.

From January, 1860, to the end of September 1865, over 46,000 immigrants had been added to the population of the colony; the Bank of Queensland, with local share-holding and a local directorate, had been established, money was plentiful and credit readily obtained, building societies had been established, and business enterprises of all kinds

were flourishing. In 1865, however, the colony was forced to repeat the bitter experience of South Australia in 1841, of New South Wales in 1842, and of New Zealand in the cold days of financial collapse that succeeded the Vogel policy of national expansion and construction of public works. There can be no doubt that the expenditure of borrowed money had been extravagant and in not a few instances unjustifiable. The waste of money on railways and in dredging was enormous, and the stoppage of this extravagance was coincident with one of those waves of depression which, from time to time, afflict the commercial operations of the world. Its effects were felt with emphatic severity in Queensland; prices of pastoral products fell; the banks stopped the granting of credit and called in their advances. Parliament naturally turned its hand against the Herbert Ministry which was driven from office. The new Ministry was led by the Hon. Arthur Macalister, and attempted to stem the torrent of disaster, but confusion reigned supreme, and after six months it was swept aside. The Hon. Robert Herbert again essayed the task of governing the country and again succumbed after three weeks' trial. On the 7th August Macalister once more accepted office amid the wildest public panic. The failures in Great Britain of the banking firm of Overend Gurney, and the great contractors, Peto, Brassey, and Betts, who had the contract for the railway then being constructed, and also for the Victoria bridge, had greatly intensified the crisis in Queensland; but it was hoped that the storm might be weathered with the help of a freshly authorised loan. The Sydney agency of the Agra and Masterman's Bank had already undertaken to make the necessary advances, when the news from London of the collapse of that institution brought total wreckage in its train. The Bank of Queensland closed its doors; investment society after investment society rapidly went to the wall, insolvencies followed each other in bewildering succession, and the whole fabric of social polity seemed to be absolutely disintegrating. The Treasury was totally depleted-trust funds, saving banks' deposits, and ordinary revenue had alike disappeared. Tenants ceased to pay their rents, and thousands were discharged from employment, or had to forego the receipt of their salaries; even the navvies engaged in railway construction were turned adrift by the contractors who could no longer pay their wages. The discharged navvies thereupon collected in a menacing body, seized a train going to Ipswich, and marched upon the city of Brisbane, heralded by rumours of the most alarming description. Reports circulated among the citizens that the malcontents had sworn to loot the shops and the banks, to burn down Government House, and to hang the Ministers of the Crown. The members of the Government were panic-stricken, and behaved as if they were demented, their abject terror serving only to augment the public alarm. The police were, however, armed, and the members of the Civil Service provided with batons, and sworn in as special constables. Many citizens were also sworn in, but the only things served out to them for the protection of the community were badges and rosettes. When the

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navvies arrived they were found to number only 125 very weary famished men; but they were speedily reinforced by many of the local unemployed. The Riot Act was read, the police loaded their rifles with ball cartridges, and the men were headed off to a vacant reserve on the flank of Windmill Hill, where they were furnished with food and addressed by the Roman Catholic Bishop and others. Employment was found for them on relief works, where they received 5s. a day and rations, and the difficulty was tided over.

This diversion gained for the Ministry a little breathing time, of which they proceeded to make immediate use. Parliamentary sanction was obtained, and £300,000 of Treasury bills at short dates, and bearing 10 per cent. interest, were issued, and realised £298,671, thus staving off the total collapse which apparently was imminent. One hundred thousand pounds of Treasury notes of £1 each, serving alike as relief to the Government and as a currency, were also put into circulation, and other devices were resorted to in order to avert financial ruin. Just prior to this great crisis, Kanakas to work on the sugar plantations were first introduced into the colony, and the germ of a disintegrating social factor was thus sown which was destined to produce unpalatable fruit in later years of development. In the month of September, 1867, a miner named James Nash, while wandering in the Wide Bay district, found indications of gold, and in a day or two had washed out sufficient of the precious metal to represent a value of some £200 or £300. The news soon became known far and wide, and the discovery was announced to the authorities. Nash led the Gold Commissioner and nearly the whole population of Maryborough tɔ the scene of his fortunate find. The whole of Queensland was in a turmoil, and thousands of impoverished settlers gathered to the new "'rush." Then was unearthed the Curtis nugget, containing £3,000 worth of gold, and a tremendous influx of diggers set in from all parts of Australia and New Zealand. The town of Gympie sprang up, and many localities in the neighbourhood were found to contain gold in alluvial deposit. The discovery was opportune, and gave a new impetus to the hopes of the colonists. The field was situated about 100 miles north of Brisbane, and has since proved one of the most important gold-producing centres of the colony.

During the Macalister régime a Stamp Duties Act was passed, also an important measure dealing with the alienation of the Crown lands; but the result of the general election failed to confirm Mr. Macalister's policy, and his Ministry was succeeded by that of the Hon. Robert R. Mackenzie, who, retaining office for a little more than a year, appealed to the country, and, on the meeting of the fourth Parliament, was defeated. In spite of the political instability, the colony was now, once more, upon the upward grade. The new Land Act gave greater facilities for settlement, and the sugar industry began to give signs of importance, and to replace the languishing cotton plantations. By the end of 1869 there were in the colony twenty-eight sugar-mills at work.

Sir George Bowen surrendered his office just on the eve of the new era of promise and financial confidence, leaving the colony on the 4th January, 1868. The Government was administered till the 14th August following by the Hon. Colonel (afterwards Sir) Maurice Charles O'Connell, President of the Legislative Council. Sir George Bowen's successor, Colonel Samuel Wensley Blackall, assumed the responsibilities of office on the 14th August, 1868.

The Hon. Charles Lilley's Ministry succeeded that of Mr. Mackenzie on the 25th November, 1868, and lasted till the end of May, 1870. During its term of office the Civil Service Act was repealed, a number of measures dealing with court procedure were passed, and amendments were made in the electoral laws. The tenure of pastoral leases was changed by making provision for the resumption, at the discretion of the Government, of lands as required for settlement, subject, however, to the approval of Parliament.

During Sir Maurice O'Connell's administration, and early in the year 1868, the Duke of Edinburgh, who was making the tour of the Australasian Colonies, paid a visit to Brisbane, and was received with great enthusiasm.

The colony continued to advance, and it owed no little of its prosperity to the successive discoveries of gold made within its borders. One after the other, the new fields afforded scope to the energies of the digger, and opened up fresh avenues for the employment of the capital of the speculator. Ravenswood, the Cape River, the Gilbert, the Etheridge, Charters Towers, and Cloncurry, are all gold-bearing areas, still worked, which were opened up about this period, and attracted population and invited investment. There was, however, the germ of future trouble which became more serious as the years went by. This was the presence among white people of an alien and coloured race. The expansion of the sugar industry had created a demand for cheap labour, available for employment on the plantations. An old South Sea whaling captain, named Robert Towns, who had accumulated great wealth in trading with the South Sea Islanders prior to settling in Sydney, was among the earliest to engage in sugar-cane growing on a large scale. He first took up a plantation on the Logan River; but is best known as the founder of Townsville. With a view to working his plantation more cheaply he quietly brought to the colony a shipload of Kanakas, as the South Sea Islanders are termed; and it was not long before other planters began to follow his example. In 1868, an attempt was made to legislate restrictively with regard to the traffic in this class of labour; but the sugar interest had become politically powerful, and the Legislature confined its action to passing an Act to regulate recruiting for labour in the South Seas, and the conditions of the contracts made with the Islanders. The early records of "black-birding" cruises, and the scandal connected with the Hopeful case, cast a cloud of suspicion upon the entire system. The ships of Her Majesty's Navy eyed with severe scrutiny the doings of the labour boats; and the white

workers in the colony resented the competition and the presence among them of an inferior and an alien race. They alleged that cheapness was the only cause of the employment of savages in a civilised community and the capitalists retorted that the work was such that Europeans could not perform it, and that the employment of Kanakas had enabled an industry to be developed, which otherwise, like the cultivation of cotton, would not have been possible-an industry, moreover, which indirectly furnished employment to large numbers of white labourers in other departments of production and distribution. Some notion of the proportions rapidly attained by the traffic in South Sea Island labour may be formed from a consideration of the fact that in 1868 (when official statistics first became available) six vessels brought 437 males and two females; in 1869 five ships brought 276 males and two females; and in 1870, nine ships brought 1,294 males and 18 females.

In the year 1869 another step was made in the progress of public instruction, provision being made under State subsidy for secondary education by the establishment of the Brisbane Grammar School. In the month of May, 1870, the Hon. Charles Lilley had no longer the command of a majority in the Legislative Assembly, and resigned. The Hon. (afterwards Sir) Arthur Hunter Palmer was thereupon summoned to form a Ministry, and two months later he obtained a dissolution. On meeting the new Parliament, Mr. Palmer found that his policy had been confirmed by a majority of the electors; and he was able to retain office until the 8th January, 1874.

Governor Blackall, the most popular and the most deeply regretted of all the representatives of Royalty who had ruled the colony, died in office on the 2nd January, 1871, and the Government was administered by the Hon. M. C. O'Connell, President of the Legislative Council, until the arrival of the Marquis of Normanby on the 12th August following. In the month of June of the same year, after a life of rather more than six months, the fifth Parliament was dissolved; but the succeeding one, opened in November, brought no change in the administration.

The Queensland National Bank, which has been a fertile source of political trouble, and in connection with which there has been such a vast amount of litigation, was founded in 1871, and was opened on the 2nd of June that year.

In the year 1872 immense deposits of tin were discovered near the south-eastern border of the colony, at a place now famous as Stanthorpe, and almost simultaneously attention was directed to the extensive lodes of copper ore on the Mount Perry Run, Burnett District. The existence of opal in the northern part of Queensland was also brought to light, followed shortly afterwards by the discovery of extensive beds of this gem on the Bulloo, in the Warrego District. The mineral discoveries at Stanthorpe and Mount Perry were only the precursors of others equally rich and extensive, and the colonists found that they were dowered with every kind of hidden wealth that only awaited