The course of the railway suggests that the structure of the country is not unlike that which we have seen in New South Wales. 2 This is true of the Darling Downs area, but further north the map shows us a somewhat different type of country. The eastern part of the State consists in the main of a broken and irregular highland mass; the west of rolling plains, sloping gently towards the interior or the Gulf of Carpentaria; but we look in vain for a long, well-marked escarpment, such as we find further south. The mountain ridges seem to run in every direction, sometimes, as near Cairns, forming a definite coast-range, at others striking inland or running down in spurs to the sea; so that the country is split up into a number of distinct basins, each with its own group of rivers flowing in the most diverse courses. Thus, from Cairns to Brisbane a great stretch of country, broadest in the middle, narrow at both ends, drains into the Pacific; but the Burdekin and the headwaters of the Fitzroy flow for long distances parallel to the coast, before turning and breaking through the ranges to the sea. Another group in the south joins the Murray-Darling system and belongs physically to New South Wales; the rivers of the north-west and of the Cape York peninsula drain for the most part into the Gulf of Carpentaria, while a large block of country in the west and south-west is occupied by intermittent streams, which in time of flood find their way into the inland basin of Lake Eyre, in South Australia. The country has not that simplicity of relief which we found over the greater part of New South Wales, and, as we might expect, the rainfall does not show such clear and symmetrical divisions. The fall from the south-east winds is more irregular 3 and more widely distributed inland than in New South Wales; while in the north there is an area with tropical rains of a monsoon type. [Illustration: QUEENSLAND: RAINFALL.]