1 66 Barnard, In the Western Lake District. [^''^Dec^'^'' 



Western Victoria in 1857 as an Inspector of Schools. Though 

 containing several inaccuracies, it is worth reading, and from it 

 one can learn the progress made by. the various townships in 

 the fifty years' interval. He was no mean geologist, a keen 

 observer of Nature, and remarks on the Rises as follows : — 

 " The Rises are a remarkable geological feature. The basalt, 

 instead of being spread out, as on the plains, or massive, as 

 in mountains, is here reared up as waves petrified in their rise. 

 Huge barriers meet the eye on all sides, of heights from ten to 

 sixty feet, and the traveller has to thread his way between 

 them or over them as best he can. Dieffenbach rightly de- 

 scribes a similar place in New Zealand as ' a sea of rocks.' 

 . Darwin compares a similar scene he beheld to a 

 sea petrified in a storm ; but he adds, ' No sea could present 

 such irregular undulations, or could be traversed by such deep 

 chasms.' " 



It was Dr. J. G. Taylor's remarks in " Our Island Continent " 

 which had set me longing to traverse the Rises. He says • — 

 " The Stony Rises are remarkably picturesque, and furnish 

 bits for a genuine artistic study of Nature. The huge stones 

 are covered with a rich upholstering of lichens — grey, }-ellow, 

 and red. The miniature swamps and hollows are margined by 

 borders of emerald-green mosses. The grey stony places are 

 frequently masked with the abundant growth of bracken ferns, 

 from amid which the weird white trunks of slender gum-trees 

 rise, drooping over them their characteristic thin foliage.' 

 This description might still be amplified. I imagined I could 

 see in the grey piles of stones, and the pools at their bases, the 

 walls of some medifeval castle and its surrounding moat, and 

 expected to meet a party of mail -coated knights round the 

 next turn ; for, except one stretch of about a quarter of a mile, 

 the whole seven miles of the road between Ston^Tord and 

 Pirron Yallock was a real " switchback " — up and down, turning 

 first one way, then the other, so that one's interest was main- 

 tained to the last, and I felt quite sorry when I came to the 

 Pirron Yallock Creek, a stream of brown, peaty water, flowing 

 north from some marshy country into Corangamite, and found 

 that I had left the basalt behind. Traversing the road in the 

 autumn, wild flowers were few, but the varying tints of the 

 bracken — green, brown, and golden — made up for their absence. 

 In spring several Senecios and other composites would enliven 

 the scene. A casual glance among the stones revealed plants of 

 the Maiden-hair, Sickle, and Rat-tailed Ferns, while, doubtless, 

 the little pools would have afforded many captures to a pond- 

 hunter. Even though the Rises are now fairly occupied by 

 small dairy farmers, and much of the larger timber has been 



