proper understanding of our own good land. The comfort given to Canada is
all in the family, and an Empire which extends from pole to pole must
needs embrace differences of climate and productions.

Do not we all take upon our shoulders the burden of Empire? Here we bear
our share stripped to the buff, while Canada bustles under an equally
honourable but heavier load. Occasionally, no doubt, the most patriotic
son of our Lady of Snows would joy in the heat of North Queensland noon;
while the sweatful North Queenslander may often pant for the superfluous
ice of his far-away cousin.

The denizens of the different parts of the Empire quite understand one
another, and realise that to be great the Empire must disregard
temperatures as it does prickly heat and chilblains. Only the casual
visitor fails in this.

Sun Days are essential to the production of sugar and bananas and
mangoes, to say nothing of pineapples and other fruits of the tropics.
When we are called upon to endure extraordinary heat, we tell one another
of the penance and find excuse for extra drinks. But neither the heat nor
the comparison of personal experiences is of the injurious nature of some
of the refreshments. The weather is not compounded of excesses, but of
means. Is it not true that few countries in the wide world would be
considered fit for habitation by human beings if the character of the
climate was estimated by its extremes?

No North Queenslander will resent records of high temperatures. He will
be quite content to be shown enjoying and flourishing in the heat in
which sugar-cane thrives, for thereby is to be proved a fact theorists
seem unable to grasp--viz., that such is the soundness and virtue of the