Brisbane grew slowly. There was no special attraction to induce people to leave the more populated districts of New South Wales, and bury themselves in so remote a settlement. There was the fever which attacks settlers in all newly opened settlements, the blacks were dangerous, and that the place was a station for doubly and trebly convicted felons told against it. But the rich Darling Downs came to be regarded as a pastoral paradise, and squatting occupation spread rapidly in the interior, so that its expansion told slowly but surely on the outpost. The convict establishment was in time closed. The plot of ground formerly cultivated by the convicts is now occupied partly by a fine public garden, and partly by the domain surrounding the Governor's residence. Brisbane is a fast-growing city, with a population, including the suburbs, of between 50,000 and 60,000, its growth since the census of 1881 having been so rapid that it is not possible to furnish more than an approximate estimate of the number. Originally built on a flat, partly enclosed by an abrupt bend of the river, the town has climbed the bordering ridges, crossed the stream and spread out in all directions. The principal street--Queen Street--runs across the neck of the original river-side 'pocket;' at one end it touches the wharves, at the other it meets the winding river at right angles, and the roadway is carried on by a long iron bridge across to the important suburb of South Brisbane. Queen Street, which is the combined Collins and Bourke Streets of Brisbane, promises to be a fine-looking thoroughfare. Already it possesses shops and bank buildings which may challenge comparison with those of any Australian city, and every year the older buildings are giving way to new and more imposing structures. On one side of the thoroughfare the cross-streets lead through the oldest part of the city; through blocks of buildings where fine warehouses and tumbledown hovels are strangely intermixed with the Parliament Houses, the public gardens, and the wharves. On the other side of Queen Street the same cross-streets climb steep ridges to the terraces, where high and broken ground offer cool breezy sites for streets filled with dwelling-houses. The diversified surface of the ground over which the town of Brisbane has spread itself, the broad noble river which winds through it, doubling back almost on itself, as if loth to quit the city it has called into existence, and the picturesque range of wooded hills which closes the view to the westward, constitute a scene of great beauty. An artist roaming round the town would find objects of interest everywhere. From the elevated terraces he could look down on the main town, with the river, a broad band of silver, winding through it, and his horizon would include the blue peaks of the main range to the westward, and the shimmer of the sunlight on the great land-locked sheet of Moreton Bay to the eastward.