Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1894 — SCRUB LANDS OF AUSTRALIA. [ARTICLE]

SCRUB LANDS OF AUSTRALIA.

Chinese as Self-Acting Machines for Open. Ing the Country. The “lawyer vine" is the worst obstacle to the clearing of lands in Australia. li is a kind of palm that grows in feathery tufts along a pliant stalk and festoons it.-elf as a creepier upon trees. From beneath the tufts of leaves the vine throws down trailing suckers as thick as stout cords, armed with sets of sharp red barbs. These suckers sometimes throw themselves from tree to tree across a road that has not been lately used, and make it as impassable to horses as so many strands of barbed wire. When the vines escape from the undergrowth of wild ginger and tree-fern and stinging bush that fringes the scrub, and coil themselves in loose loops upon the ground, they become dangerous traps for man and’horse. In the jungle, where they weave themselves in and out of the upright growths, they form a net that at times defies every means of destruction but fire. The work of clearing ground incumbered is not light In some districts it is done by Chinamen. They are not allowed to own freehold land in the colony, but scrub land is often lea ed to them to clear and use for a certain number of years. The ground, when it is cleared, is extraordinarily rich, and they appear to recoup themselves for tneir labor with the first crops they grow upon their leaseholds. The owner afterward has it in his power to resume his land, and the Chinaman passes on to clear and use the scrub. In this way the Chinese are employed as a sort of self-acting machine for the opening of the country. They devote themselves principally to the cultivation of fruit. A walk around a Chinese garden is an instructive botanical excursion, so many and strange are the edible varieties of fruit to which one is introduced. Spices, too, and flowers flourish under the care of the Chinamen, and the fields of bananas and pineapples dotted with oranges and mango orchards, which stretch for miles beside the sugar plantations, are nearly all Chinese.