The extended coast-line of Queensland, and the peculiar position of Brisbane in the extreme south, has prevented it from concentrating the social and commercial life of the colony, as is done by Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. It is by far the largest coast town, the centre of government, and its commerce is larger than that of all the remaining ports put together, but these ports are many of them also real capitals and commercial cities. The first important town on the coast going northward is Maryborough, on the banks of the Mary River, a town containing probably 10,000 inhabitants, and the commercial capital of a rich agricultural and mineral district, of somewhat limited extent. Maryborough disputes with Brisbane the possession of the most extensive ironworks in the colony, the demand for sugar and mining machinery having called them into existence. Rockhampton, near the mouth of the Fitzroy, is a town of equal if not greater population than Maryborough, but it is a far finer and better built city. Being the west terminus of the central system of trunk railways, it is essentially a commercial capital, and a busy, thriving place. Agricultural operations are not as yet very extensively carried on in the surrounding district, neither sugar-growing nor general cultivation having at present helped to increase the prosperity of Maryborough, nor is there any successful gold-field in the vicinity, though one phenomenally rich mine, Mount Morgan, is being worked in the neighbourhood. Rockhampton has grown and prospered by trade, and as it is the outlet for over 100,000 square miles of territory, it should have a very prosperous career before it. The towns named are the most important on the coast-line of sub-tropical Queensland. There are also the thriving little towns of Bundaberg, at the mouth of the Burnett river, the outlet for a rich tract of agricultural land, and Gladstone, a few miles to the south of the mouth of the Fitzroy. The last-named township is next after Brisbane the oldest settlement in Queensland, but it has never prospered. Hidden away at the head of a great land-locked sheet of deep water--probably after Sydney the finest natural harbour on the east coast of Australia--it slumbers peacefully without any visible trade: a bush village, supported by the stockmen employed on the neighbouring cattle stations, and occasionally galvanised into life by a promising discovery among the rich but fragmentary and erratic mineral lodes found in the volcanic country in its vicinity. These constitute all the coast towns worth mentioning.