Identifier: glimpseofislesof00whee (find matches)
Title: A glimpse of the isles of the Pacific
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Wheeler, William Webb, 1845- (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: (St. Joseph, Mo., Hardman press)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ge road, three feet six inches; the grades are steep,and curves sharp; the Horseshoe Curve here is a fine sight.Then there are fifteen tunnels which we passed through in ourtwenty mile ride. This railroad has two hundred miles oftrack in North Queensland, and does a big freight business,transporting the products of mines along its lines. Theyhave copper, tin, gold and silver, in good paying mines;also, they raise a large amount of cane sugar, some coffee,and considerable corn (they call it maize). This is atropical country, and they grow all the tropical fruits, suchas bananas, pine-apples, etc. The country is comparativelynew and will, in time be of great importance in mining andagriculture, provided they change their laws so that theycan get colored labor to work on the plantations. Laboris scarce here now, and the country will be very slow indeveloping until the labor laws are changed. The weather is excessively hot in Cairns, but fairlypleasant when w^e got up in the mountains. 99
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< m< H pq oa o wo 01 QtxW d CD <a tt a We called at Cooktown next, named in honor of thegreat navigator. Captain Cook, who discovered all thiscountry; did not go ashore, as the harbor here is shallow,and our steamer anchored quite a distance out and tookher cargo off in lighters. The Great Barrier, as it is called, is a coral reefextending about twelve hundred miles along this coastfrom Brisbane to Thursday Island. At some places it isonly about five miles ofT the coast, and some places itis over a hundred miles. There are many openings, whereships can go through, but the ships in this trade steamalong the coast inside the coral reefs, and the water isalmost as smooth as a river. These reefs are usually outof water at low tide, but most of them are covered withwater at high tide. Along this coast, Neptune has forced up many rockPyramids, one or two hundred feet high, looking at adistance almost exactly like Egyptian Pyramids, probablyto mark the location of some great submerg

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