A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



forest. The road to the Leap lies to the right of the line, falling by an easy descent ; 

 and the first promise of wonderland is given by the characteristic blue of the hills 

 beyond the huge chasm, seen occasionally through the trees. But the veil is drawn 

 abruptly when the last turn is made, and there is nothing between the spectator and 

 the vastness of the gorge. From a ledge of gray rock, thinly robed with a few wind- 

 tortured trees and scrub, the view is down into a gulf whose floor, though clothed with 

 a great forest, undulates like the face of a rolling, but unbroken sea. The tree-tops are 

 twelve hundred feet below. The Grose River runs beneath, but it is not heard, and 

 only occasionally is there a glimpse of the tall tree-ferns upon its banks, or a flash of 

 its silver current, where, after heavy rains, its flood-tide rush has torn a broader gap 

 through the leaves. Out into the gulf runs a little peninsula whose extreme point bears 

 the name of " The Pulpit," and from " The Pulpit's " ledge one may look down into 

 the abyss, or glancing across to the right, may see the precipice that bears the name 

 of Govett's Leap, so called after the surveyor who 'first discovered it. The water is 

 collected and held in a broad morass at the head of a little gully, and filtering through 

 gathers in a long shallow basin and overflows its edge, which is the lip of the gorge. 

 In summer weather it is but a fairy fall, an undine maiden's bridal wreath, a thin 



veil of silvery spray 

 and transparent water 

 shimmering upon the 

 surface of the brown 

 rock, in every nook 

 and cranny of which 

 shine wet fern-leaves 

 of a bright yet tender 

 green. It drops five 

 hundred and twenty 

 feet, breaks on a pro- 

 truding ledge at the 

 cliff's foot, and loses 

 itself in a bank of 

 ferns on the edge of 

 the forest. These 

 different waterfalls 

 though each with spe- 

 cial characteristics of 

 its own have general 

 features common to 

 them all, and the lover 



of Nature who lingers long enough at any one may saturate himself with all the inspi- 

 ration which this bold and beautiful plateau can give. There is something sacred and 

 secret about all great mountains which impresses men with the sense of their own 

 littleness, and this huge rocky mass, lying as it does in sight of a great and populous 

 city, is no incompetent interpreter of the lessons that Nature has to teach to Man. 



MOUNT WINGEN. 



