Townsville lies on the bank of a small river or creek called Ross Creek, which when I was there was remarkable for being stocked with alligators. One could not very well, therefore, cross the creek without some danger, and at that time all the people and all the houses without a single exception, lay on the south side of the creek. Ross Creek formed, I might say, one side of the main street. Facing it lay a number of small shanties, some made of packing cases and old tin; others again, built with a view to permanency, of nicely dressed sawn timber, and looking like rich relations in contrast to their poor neighbours. This was Flinders Street, or Townsville proper. For about ten chains this row of houses ran, and facing it, on the other side of the creek, was one vast wilderness of swamp, long grass and trees. When one had passed the row of houses composing the street there were turns off to the bush in all directions, and tents, huts, or sheets of galvanized iron stood all about the street. Up behind the street were some tremendous-looking mountains, and here such people as the doctors, civil servants, &c. seemed to have fixed their abode. The most splendid views could be obtained up there right over the sea and the numerous small islands. Then the climate, which at least at that time was supposed to be somewhat unhealthy down below, was very much better on the highlands. While I was in Townsville my greatest pleasure was to take my lunch with me in a morning and then scramble up there to some place from which the best view could be had, and sit there all day. That was a cheap and harmless pleasure, but to do so at the present time would be trespass, because all the land about there is now sold at so much per foot, and no one but the owners have a right either to the soil or the air, or even the view. It seems wrong to me that it should be so. I wonder what will become of poor people when the day arrives when all the world is thus cut up into freehold property! If I had at that time invested the ten pounds I carried in my pocket in a piece of land, it would certainly have been worth thousands of pounds to-day, and I believe I might even have been worth tens of thousands. Then I might without further trouble have been myself a "leading Colonist" to-day!