But there are other branches of tropical agriculture to which the settler may devote himself.  Rubber offers belated fortune.  Cotton, rice, tobacco and fibre—­plants flourish exceedingly, and in the production of ginger and some sort of spices and medicinal gums, profit may be possible.  The manufacture of manilla rope from the fibre of the easily cultivated Musa TEXTILIS may be a remunerative industry.  It is amply demonstrated that butter quite up to the standard of exportation is to be manufactured in tropical Queensland.

No one need starve or pine for lack of wholesome appetising and nutritious food while the banana grows as it does in North Queensland, and common as it is, the banana is one of the curiosities of the vegetable world.  One writer says:  “It is not a tree, a palm, a bush, a vegetable, nor a herb; it is simply a herbaceous plant with the stature of tree, and is perennial.”  He adds that the fruit contains no seed, though he qualifies the latter statement by remarking that he has heard of fully developed seeds occasionally appearing in the cultivated fruit “when left to ripen on the tree,” and further that wild varieties of the banana which propagate themselves by seed are reported to be found in some parts of Eastern Asia.  A high botanical authority includes in his description of the species indigenous to Queensland, “Fruit oblong, succulent, indehiscent; seed numerous; tree-like herbs.  Herbs with perennial rhizome.”

There are three if not more species of bananas native to Queensland, and they form a conspicuous feature of the jungle.  With remarkable rapidity one of the species shoots up a ruddy symmetrical, slightly tapering stem—­smooth and polished where the old leaf-sheaths have been shed—­to a height of 20 and 30 feet, producing leaves 15 feet long and 2 feet broad, small and crude flowers, and bunches of dwarf fruit containing little but shot-like seeds.  The energy of these plants seems to be concentrated in the production of an elegant and proud form, the fruit being a mere afterthought.  But the effect of the broad pale green leaves, even when frayed and ragged at the edges in and among the dark entanglement of the jungle is so fine that the absence of edible fruit may be almost forgiven.

In the most popular of the cultivated varieties, the far famed Musa CAVENDISHII, there is little of graceful form, save the broad leaves mottled with brown.  All the vitality of the plant is expended in astonishing results.  A comparatively lowly plant, its productions in suitable soil are prodigious.  In nine or ten months after the planting of the rhizome, it bears under favourable conditions a bunch weighing as much as 120 lb. to 160 lb. and comprising as many as forty-eight dozen individual bananas.  So great is the weight that to prevent the downfall of the plant a stake sharpened at each end—­one to stick in the ground and the other into the soft stem—­is needed to buttress it.  Before