AMONG THE FOOT-HILLS.
At a station a few miles out from the city the train halted for several minutes, and gave Frank and Fred an opportunity to glance at one of these suburban farms. The house of the owner was embowered in vineyards, and close by was a field or plantation of pineapples, which grow here in great profusion, and are of delicious quality. Frank asked the name of a vine that had crept over the roof of the house and almost concealed it from sight; he learned that it was known as the passion-fruit, and was a native plant, producing a very pleasant tart fruit, which unfortunately was not then in season. There was a garden at one side of the house, and in it were all the vegetables of an English garden, including several kinds of melons, besides ginger, arrow-root, sweet-potatoes, and other tropical and semi-tropical productions. Farther back was an extensive field of sugar-cane, which was flanked on one side by a field of oats, and on the other by rows upon rows of luxuriant maize, or Indian corn.
PICKING FIGS.
"This is a wonderful region," said a gentleman who accompanied our friends, as the train moved on. "Probably there is no other place in the world where the products of the tropics and temperate zones grow so well together, and certainly there is none where they grow any better. Apples, peaches, pears, cherries, and other northern fruits are side by side with the lemon, orange, citron, pomegranate, fig, and guava. It took us a long while to find out exactly what was wanted, and during that time living was very dear in Brisbane. Now the city has a plentiful supply of fruit at very low prices, coming from the numerous gardens in its vicinity. Irrigate the soil abundantly, and it will produce almost anything in the world that you want. We send great numbers of pineapples and bananas to Sydney and Melbourne, and also to the higher country west of us.
"You already know," he continued, "that Australia is a land of contradictions, when considered from the stand-point of England or the United States. In your country the land with the heaviest timber is the best for agriculture after the wood is cleared away, but here it is often just the reverse. The largest trees which cost most money to remove are quite likely found on soil that refuses to produce grass when the land has been cleared, or if it produces grass or grain at all it is not enough to pay the cost of clearing. It is in this particular that so many of the earlier settlers ruined themselves, by expending time and money in clearing up ground that afterwards proved worthless."
