four million acres of magnificent agricultural country, or a territory equal to Illinois and Missouri; and will be the home, as an enthusiastic Yankee professor of agriculture, imported to take charge of the Agricultural College at Gatton, lately wrote to his friend at Chicago, "of millions of people, and that, too, in the near future." For the present it is the great cattle and sheep ranch of the colony, carrying in 1897 about 3,000,000 sheep and 200,000 cattle. But the Acts of 1884 and 1886, which covered the redemption of great portions of the lands occupied by the squatters as their leases expired, were followed by the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act of 1894, under which many of their freehold estates in the neighbourhood, ranging from 10,000 to 150,000 acres, have been acquired by the Government for re-sale. The operation of this Act is fast transforming the territory into a great wheat, maize, and lucerne country, which is also of growing importance in dairying and fruit-culture; and, as the colony advances, will become a centre of mixed farming, in which large quantities of wheat, oats, potatoes, and malting barley will be produced, as well as butter, cheese, bacon, and fruit for exportation. Nothing could be more prosperous or more fertile than the countryside as seen from the train; and the Darling Downs, when emigration to Queensland re-commences, should repeat the history of Manitoba. Brisbane is a prosperous city of about 1 00,000 souls, and in some ways one of the most attractive settlements in Australia. The public buildings are, as usual, handsome; the hotels are perhaps better managed than is common further south; and the standard of comfort generally, as of the commissariat in particular, is distinctly high. There is an open air restaurant or kiosk in the public gardens, where a better lunch or breakfast is served on tables set out on the grass, in the shade of the trees
