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A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



turous lover of the picturesque is baffled in his efforts to penetrate it. Deep ravines 

 separate ranges so precipitous by such narrow intervals, that a bridge four or five hun- 

 dred feet long would serve to unite the summits of opposite hills. The trees not 



unfrequently attain an 

 altitude of three hun- 

 dred feet, and rise in 

 their columnar majesty 

 as high as one hundred 

 feet before they throw 

 out their first branch. 

 At the bottom of these 

 chasms springs of de- 

 liciously pure and icily 

 cold water ripple and 

 bubble beneath the 

 overarching fronds of 

 motionless tree-ferns ; 

 the soil is completely 

 hidden by the matted 

 herbage, intermingled 

 with which are fantas- 

 tic creepers and para- 

 sites shrubs which 

 distil an aromatic odour 

 on the air, and others 



which are garnished at 





 particular seasons of 



the year, and notably 

 towards the end of the 

 summer, with lustrous 

 berries white, crim- 

 son, purple and a deli- 

 cate amber the fruit 

 of the Exocarpits cu- 

 prcssifornius, the Ari- 

 siotclia pc du n c it la r is 

 and the Drymopkzla 

 cyanocarpa of botanists, 



sylvan ornaments upon which, perhaps, more homely names will hereafter be bestowed. 

 After passing a bold projection which constitutes the wave-washed buttress of the 

 range just described, and has received the descriptive epithet of Gable, the coast begins 

 to trend steadily towards the north-west, the high lands visible from the water consisting 

 of heathy plateaux and grass-tree plains about five hundred feet above the level of the 

 sea. Some two miles beyond Moonlight Head a change occurs in the formation of such 



CAPE NELSON. 



