Queensland is the most recently established Australian colony, and comprises the whole north-east corner--between a fourth and a fifth--of the island. As it extends twelve degrees within the tropics, its productions partake of a different character from those of the older colonies, and sugar, corn and cotton are staples. The Tropic of Capricorn crosses the middle of the province. The southern portion has 7,000,000 sheep, but the exports of the gold, copper and tin mines exceed those of the animal and vegetable industries. The colony has the finest series of landscapes in the Exhibition, painted upon photographs, which may be recollected by those who visited the Centennial. The cases contain corals, shells--especially very fine ones of the _huitre perlière--bêche-de-mer_, so great a favorite in China for stews; dugong-hides, with the oil and soap made therefrom; silk, tobacco, manioc, fossils, furs and wool.
New Zealand has but a small show, but it is very peculiar. The Maoris are a very fine race of men, both physically and intellectually, and have many arts. The robes of New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_), and especially the feather robes, evince their aptitude and taste. They are very expert workers of wood, and their spears, canoes, feather-boxes and paddles are elaborately carved, and frequently ornamented with grotesque faces with eyes of shell. Their idols are peculiarly hideous, and have a remarkable similarity in their postures and expression to those of British Columbia in the National Museum at Washington.
The section occupied by the Cape of Good Hope is somewhat larger than that at the Centennial, but is perhaps hardly as interesting. The wars against the Kaffirs, and the want of harmony between the Dutch settlers and the dominant English race, have produced an uneasy feeling not compatible with a general interest in so distant a matter as a European exposition. The Cape, with its dependencies, has an area of 250,000 square miles and a population of nearly 750,000. Prominent in the collection are the elephants' tusks and horns of the numerous species of antelope, which are found in greater variety in South Africa than in any other part of the world. Horns of bles-boks, spring-boks, water-boks, rooi-boks, koodoos, elands, hartebeests and gnus ornament the walls, in company with those of the native buffalo and the wide-reaching horns of the Cape oxen, of which fourteen or sixteen yoke are sometimes hitched to the ponderous Dutch wagons. Hippopotamus-teeth and ostrich-feathers indicate clearly enough the section we are in. Maize has been fully acclimated in Africa, and mush and milk now form the principal food of the whole Kaffir nation. It has spread nearly all over Africa, but some central portions yet depend entirely for farinaceous food upon the seed of the sorghum and dourra. On the Zambesi corn in all stages of growth may be seen at all seasons of the year.