Arrival at Port Denison, Queensland—A lecture—Reminiscences of Captain Cook—Lecturing for charity at Cooktown—A happy escape from a coral reef—Home Island, Sunday Island, Bird Island—An American pearl-fisherman—Jubilee at Thursday Island—A new ensign for the Spray —Booby Island—Across the Indian Ocean—Christmas Island.
On the morning of the 26th Gloucester Island was close aboard, and the Spray anchored in the evening at Port Denison, where rests, on a hill, the sweet little town of Bowen, the future watering place and health-resort of Queensland. The country all about here had a healthful appearance.
The harbor was easy of approach, spacious and safe, and afforded excellent holding-ground. It was quiet in Bowen when the Spray arrived, and the good people with an hour to throw away on the second evening of her arrival came down to the School of Arts to talk about the voyage, it being the latest event. It was duly advertised in the two little papers, Boomerang and Nully Nully , in the one the day before the affair came off, and in the other the day after, which was all the same to the editor, and, for that matter, it was the same to me.
Besides this, circulars were distributed with a flourish, and the “best bellman” in Australia was employed. But I could have keelhauled the wretch, bell and all, when he came to the door of the little hotel where my prospective audience and I were dining, and with his clattering bell and fiendish yell made noises that would awake the dead, all over the voyage of the Spray from “Boston to Bowen, the two Hubs in the cartwheels of creation,” as the Boomerang afterward said.
Mr. Myles, magistrate, harbormaster, land commissioner, gold warden, etc. , was chairman, and introduced me, for what reason I never knew,