I see Kanakas for the first time-Cry of Slavery raised-' Advance Australia!'-Old Tom's Reminiscences-Friendly Advice. QUEENSLAND has of late been praised, lectured upon, and written about ad nauseam, so that, though I have enjoyed considerable experience of that colony amongst sheep, cattle, and sugar growers, I am unwilling to inflict a repetition of the dose on anyone who does me the honour to read my book, and mean therefore to confine myself entirely to the subject of the South Seas and the men who come thence to work for us as coolies, seen from a Queenslander's point of view; and on this subject I feel competent B to offer an opinion, believing myself to be the only man who has written an account of a trip undertaken in person to recruit the labour which the Queenslanders make so much use of now, and over which many people, both in the colony and in England, have raised the cry of slavery and kidnapping. Coming suddenly down into the civilised districts near Brisbane, after a long sojourn in the interior of Queensland, a sight struck us that caused me and my two black stockmen to rub our eyes, and look again. A luxuriant cane-field waved dark green over a spot which a few years before had been only covered with the everlasting gum-tree '-- Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran. Having had a long experience of the aboriginal darkie, I knew at once that the row of men working with hoes in their hands, in the heat of the sun, could never belong to any species that I had seen before; for you have but to ask an Australian native to chop a little wood, to send him stalking off in his native dignity without more words. No! these men round-limbed, broad-footed, and woolly-haired-were evidently strangers; and my boys, after a long and careful inspection, were so struck by the ridiculous FIRST GLIMPSE OF COOLIE LABOUR. 3 idea of working in the sun like that (why they could not have been greater fools had they been white men!), that they burst into yells of laughter, making the woods echo again with their shrill ha-ha-hoo, till all the Australian woodpeckers, or laughing jackasses, on the trees around laughed and shrieked in chorus. My further acquaintance with these men, far from making me feel inclined to laugh, has given me a feeling of considerable liking for them, and has shown me their immeasurable superiority over the degraded and rum-loving race which is either all that remains to us of a widely-spread and perhaps once partially-civilised nation peopling the whole of Australia, or perhaps a mere link in Mr. Darwin's chain of evidence that, after all, the best of us is not so very far removed from an ape. The South Sea Islands coolie has been and will be a person of great importance both to the Australian settlers themselves and to politicians at home; and my object in writing the present work is to show who he is, whence he comes, and how he is treated in the colony of Queensland, which has now-partly thanks to him-developed an entirely new and flourishing industry, which promises to rival, if not to surpass, sugar-growing in the West Indies. to offer an opinion, believing myself to be the only man who has written an account of a trip undertaken in person to recruit the labour which the Queenslanders make so much use of now, and over which many people, both in the colony and in England, have raised the cry of slavery and kidnapping. Coming suddenly down into the civilised districts near Brisbane, after a long sojourn in the interior of Queensland, a sight struck us that caused me and my two black stockmen to rub our eyes, and look again. A luxuriant cane-field waved dark green over a spot which a few years before had been only covered with the everlasting gum-tree '- 6 Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran. Having had a long experience of the aboriginal darkie, I knew at once that the row of men working with hoes in their hands, in the heat of the sun, could never belong to any species that I had seen before; for you have but to ask an Australian native to chop a little wood, to send him stalking off in his native dignity without more words. No! these men. round-limbed, broad-footed, and woolly-haired—were evidently strangers; and my boys, after a long and careful inspection, were so struck by the ridiculous |