Would it not be presumptuous for a mere idler, an individual whose enterprise and industry have been sapped by the insidious nonchalance of the Beachcomber, to tell of practical details of cultural pursuits—­the enthusiasm, the disappointments, the glowing anticipations, the realisation of inflexible facts, the plain emphatic truths which others have reason to know ever so much more keenly?

But it may be forgiven if I generalise and say that the minor departments of rural enterprise in North Queensland are in a peculiar stage—­a stage of transition and uncertainty.  Coloured labour has been depended upon to a large extent.  Even the poorest settler has had the aid of aboriginals.  But with the passing of that race, and prohibition against the employment of any sort of coloured labour, the question is to be asked, Can tropical products be grown profitably unless consumers are willing to pay a largely increased price—­a price equivalent to the difference between the earnings of those who toil in other tropical countries and the living wage of a white man in Australia?

Fruit of many acceptable varieties can be grown to perfection with little labour in immense quantities.  Coffee is one of the most prolific of crops.  Timber is obtainable in magnificent assortment and unrealisable quantities.  Poultry and pigs multiply extraordinarily.  Apart from bananas the fruit trade is shifty and treacherous.  The markets are far away and inconstant, the means of transport not yet perfect.  Many assert that not half the pine-apples and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the mangoes produced in North Queensland are consumed.  That the quantity grown is trivial in comparison with what would be, were the demand regular and consistent, is self-evident.  We want population to eat our produce, and then there will be no complaint.

In the case of coffee a plentiful supply of cheap labour is essential to success.  Those who by judicious treatment of the aboriginals command their services have so far made profit.  A coffee plantation suggests pleasant, picturesque and spicy things.  The orderly lines of the plants, in glossy green adorned for a brief space with white, frail, fugitive flowers distilling a deliciously sweet and grateful odour, the branches crowded with gleaming berries, green, pink and red, present pleasing aspect.  As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffee estate has a garden-like relief.  But picking berry by berry is slow and monotonous work, vexatious, too, to those mortals whose skin is sensitive to the attacks of green ants.  Then comes the various processes of the removal of the pulp, first by machinery, finally by the fermentation of the still adhering slimy residuum; then the drying and saving by exposure to the sun on trays or on tarpaulins until all moisture is expelled; and the hulling which disintegrates the parchment from the twin berries; then winnowing, and finally the polishing.  Do drinkers of the fragrant and