" Only dwellers
in the tropics are capable of realising the profundity of those pregnant
words. Nowhere does plant life so thrive and so squander itself. And to
toil among all this seething, sweating vegetation! No wonder that the
trashing of sugar-cane is not a popular pastime among Britishers.
Given a quiet and contented mind, a banana-grove, a patch of sweet
potatoes, orange and mango and papaw trees, a few coffee plants; the sea
for fish, the rocks for oysters; the mangrove flats for crabs, and is it
not possible to become fat with a minimum of labour? Fewer statements
have found wider publicity than that the banana contains more nutriment
than meat. I have good reason to have faith--faith in it. In Queensland
every man has to find money for direct and indirect taxation; but apart
from the imposts upon living, moving and having being, what ready money
does a man want beyond a few shillings for tea, sugar and other luxuries,
and some few articles of essential clothing? But I am attempting to
describe a special set of circumstances, and would not have it on my
conscience that I indirectly offered encouragement even to a forlorn and
shipwrecked brother to abandon hope of becoming the prime minister of the
Commonwealth, and to enter upon a life of reckless irresponsibility such
as mine.
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