The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-30
THE TRAGEDY OF BRISBANE.

The twenty eight-hour railway journ- ey from Sydney to Brisbane takes one into 9 new world in typical great English-speaking commercial city. It's summer heat, great though it is but an incident to it. Brisbane, on the other hand, is a semi-tropical city, and it's l climate is it's most outstanding feature. Even the poor mans house has its
 broad verandah, for an effective bal cony Is almost a necessity of life. In the beautiful public gardens every kind | of tropical foliage fiourishes rankly. Bamboos and rubber plants and palms and bananas all find home here. In l the shops you can buy small pineapples 1 for as little as penny apiece and the early crop of mangoes for eighteenpence 1 a dozen. Mosquitoes become familiar
 acquaintances. The careless stranger losses his mosquito curtains to one side
 on an especially hot evening. He wakes next morning with patches of his face strongly resembling slices of pome- granate.
 l The Brisbane men apparently thrive on the heat, but with the women it is another story. Every Londoner whose
 business takes him down Holborn be- | tween ten and twelve in the moring knows the unearthy pale faces of the many hospital nurses, girls from Bart's Guys, the London or the Middlesex, who have been on duty in the wards all night, and now come for their morning blow of fresh air on the omnibus top be- | fore going to bed. The Brisbane women wear the same look, washed out, fragile, exhausted. And the babies-what few of them there are-seem to grow weedy. Il One searches long here for the plump and laughing little toddlekins who can be seen in every English suburban street. In the battle of tropical settle ment 1t is the women and children who
 pay and suffer.
 Brisbane is city of repose. If you try to hurry here, as people do in Lon
 don. you will break down in a month, 7
 the landlady of your hotel informs you. But you do not try. Almost before one
 has been an hour in it's streets the spirit
 of Brisbane has laid hold of you. The sun Is hot, the verandah is cool, and easy chairs are all about. Why stir?
 Half consciously, the Eastern saying
 
 than to run, better to crawl than to walk, better sit than" But here is the
 chair inviting you. Why trouble to ' finish the sentence? Then, if heaven
 has denied you a minimum of sense, the
 mind dwells pa pegs" long drinks, well
 iced, which present the shortest and
 surest cut to the cemetery known in the
 tropics.
 It is not so much the high tenpera-
 ture in Brisbane as the great humidity
 of the atmosphere which makes it so
 oppressive. Brisbane folk have few de- lusions about the permanent settlement : of white laborers in tropical regions. They are too near actuality to be the sport of theorists.
 The present year is admittedly not a ] good one in which to see the capital oi Queensland. Brisbane is scare re-
 gaining it's first breath after the terri ble disasters of the drought. For seven years this northern capital has been the : sport of fate. The lack of rain has made many rich men paupers; and the z politicians, Federal and State, have ac. l centuated disaster. European money , circles have become alarmed, and there ? has been for some time a steady with. : drawal of English capital. My orders 5 5are," said the head of one large financ.
 ial institution, that when any security falls in am to obtain the capital ant - remit it to England, no matter how l good the investment"
 l There were twenty-one million sheer l | in the State ten years ago; there ar, . only seven millions to-day. In tn, period of his success the pastoralist is z s great capitalist. He counts his invest : nents often by the hundred thousand l pounds, and his profits are gigantic. H, ] li is rarely eontcnted with his own capi : tai, but berrows to the outside limi I from the banks. Then when the rain , cease and the fiocks die, the rich man s finds inevitable ruin has hold of him. n On all sides in Brisbane you hear tale