"Well, the mallee is a strange-looking plant, and I can compare it to nothing better than the frame of an umbrella turned bottom up and without any handle in the centre. It has a globular mass at its base, with a few horizontal roots, and then a long tap-root that goes down to a great depth till it reaches moisture. Above-ground there are a lot of shoots, or stalks, from a foot up to twenty feet long, each of them having a tuft of leaves at the top.
"No surface water can be found in the districts where it grows, and the scrub is just a little more than high enough to hide a man on horseback. To be lost in the scrub is very dangerous; you cannot see in any direction, there are no trees you can climb to find your bearings, water or food is not to be found, and the victim is very likely to lose his reason and die of thirst, starvation, and insanity. Terrible stories have been told us of the death of people lost in the scrub; men have gone there to search for missing friends, and both searchers and sought have never been heard of again."
FROM TENTERFIELD TO STANTHORPE.
It was after midnight when our friends reached Tenterfield, and at nine o'clock the next morning they were on the coach and dashing away towards Stanthorpe. Over the plains and hills they went at good speed, and were reminded of previous rides in the newly opened regions of the Rocky Mountains and in California. Coaching in Australia is less famous than formerly, owing to the rapid extension of the railway, but there are still many interior lines where the old system is maintained. Coaching in Australia owes its development to some enterprising Americans—Cobb & Company—who went there in the times of the gold discoveries, and established lines over all the principal roads, from the coast ports to the auriferous districts. The wonderful tales of coaching west of the Missouri River a quarter of a century ago might be repeated concerning the same business in Australia.
Doctor Bronson and his companions had no time to examine the mineral and other attractions of Tenterfield, though they were invited to do so. Gold, silver, tin, antimony, plumbago, and other minerals are found in the region round about the town, at distances varying from five up to forty miles. Some mining localities were pointed out along the coach-road, and rich specimens of gold-bearing quartz were shown by the fortunate possessors.
Cobb's coach carried them safely to Stanthorpe, sometimes called the Border Town, owing to its position on the frontier, and the Sanatorium of Queensland, in consequence of the salubrity of its climate. It is celebrated for its tin-mines, which are scattered around the neighborhood; the product varies considerably from one year to another, being affected by the scarcity or the abundance of water.
They spent the night at Stanthorpe in a fairly comfortable hotel, and at nine o'clock on the following morning left by train for Brisbane—two hundred and seven miles—where they arrived at half-past ten in the evening.
Frank and Fred were out the next morning at an early hour to see the sights of the capital of Queensland. They found it smaller than Sydney, the total population within a radius of five miles of the centre of the city being less than a hundred thousand. It is on the river Brisbane; river and city were named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, the governor of the colony of New South Wales in 1825, the year when the city was founded as a penal settlement. The river surrounds it on two sides, and gives it an excellent water frontage; from the city to the debouchement of the river into Moreton Bay is about twenty-five miles by the course of the stream, though not more than half that distance overland.