The railway which we have been following from Rockhampton runs almost along the Tropic. Townsville, our next landing-place, over eight hundred miles north-west of Brisbane, is well within the Tropic, yet in many ways it resembles Rockhampton and Gladstone. From this point another long line runs inland to end on a tributary of the Diamantina, about a hundred miles north-west of the terminus of the line from Rockhampton. We may notice that both these lines, after crossing the wide area of coastal drainage, reach the streams flowing into the Lake Eyre basin. They thus form real links with the interior. After Brisbane, Rockhampton and Townsville are the most important 24 ports in the State. Townsville lies on a broad open bay, and the harbour has been made at great cost by building out long 25 jetties. This has been done because here is the sole outlet for a very large area of country to the west. Here we find more meat 26 and cattle; and again at Bowen, a small port on a fine natural harbour which we passed further south, they are landing cattle for the local stockbreeders. In short, the whole of this north and north-eastern district is the home of cattle; cattle running 27 on the cleared scrub lands and pastures of the interior, or fattening on the rich alluvial lands round the creeks near the coast, where the surroundings, as we see from this picture, are 28 very different. The coast region itself has something of far greater interest than cattle. There is here a higher uniform temperature than in the uplands, and in some parts a very heavy rainfall; the result is the growth of tropical and sub-tropical plants, and of these plants one of the most interesting to us is sugar. We find sugar-cultivation in patches, all along the coast from Brisbane northwards; and a little even in the extreme north of New South Wales, since the change in climate is very gradual in the coast region. But the most important districts for sugar lie near or inside the Tropic, where the cane is grown on the rich alluvial lands of the coast plains and river valleys.