sion, and it was renewed at every place they visited during their journey through the continent. Frank thought that the name of Australia Felix, which was originally applied to the Port Phillip district, should be given to the entire country, in view of the general amiability of the inhabitants and their courtesy to strangers.
Doctor Bronson and his nephews desired to make a study of "bush life," and an excellent opportunity was offered in an invitation to spend as long a time as they chose at an interior station in Queensland. Rising at an early hour one day, they took the train of the Southern & Western Railway at 5.40 a.m., and rode straight through to Roma, three hundred and seventeen miles, which they reached at ten o'clock at night. The railway continues to Morven, one hundred and ten miles distant, and from that point it will be extended in the near future—at least such is the promise—two or three hundred miles farther. The original scheme was to carry it to Point Parker, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, a distance of one thousand miles from Brisbane; but in consequence of the great expense of the undertaking, the completion of the line has been indefinitely postponed.
The railways of Queensland are on the special narrow-gauge principle, the rails being only three feet six inches apart. The gauge of New South Wales is four feet eight and a half inches, and that of Victoria five feet three inches. In South Australia the Port, North, and Southern lines, are of five feet three inches gauge, and other lines are three feet six inches or like the Queensland railways. For sparsely settled regions the narrow gauge has been found serviceable and economical, and thus far there has been no occasion for express trains at a high rate of speed. As on many of the smaller lines of the United States and other countries, the so-called "express" trains stop at all stations, and are not famous for their rapid progress.
The country through which our friends travelled was not unlike that between Newcastle and Brisbane, as already described. For some distance the railway lay along the valley of the Brisbane River, which contains some excellent farming country, with fine stretches of woodland and occasional swamps. The dividing range of mountains filled the western horizon, and the labored puffing of the locomotive at frequent intervals told that the grade was an ascending one. In the immediate vicinity of Brisbane the land is of poor quality, except in the neighborhood of the streams, and in the early days of the colony a great many settlers were ruined by attempting to establish farms where the soil was not suitable. But in spite of these early discouragements the capa-
