TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



385 



single stream. Up to the present time no extinct craters have been discovered in this 

 mountainous region, which has been only partially explored, and Mr. Howitt believes they 

 will have to be sought for in the country to the north and north-west of the highlands 

 of Bogong and Dargo. Many of the creeks and gullies draining the plateaux are repre- 

 sented to be auriferous, but the gold appears to be thinly distributed over so wide an 

 area as to preclude its being mined, except on a large scale. 



As the tourist toils laboriously to the summit of one of the more accessible of these 

 mountains in a secluded portion of the range, amidst the awful silence of a forest 

 peopled with patriarchal trees, he is oppressed by a feeling of solitude which 



MOUNT FEATHERTOP. 



has in it something of solemnity. He stands face to face, moreover, with an antiquity 

 which is almost incalculable. Each of the sylvan giants, which dwarf his own stature to 

 that of a pigmy, belongs to an epoch so remote that all dynasties, all political institu- 

 tions, all living literatures and all social organizations seem to be things of yesterday in 

 comparison. When these trees were self-sown our savage ancestors were clothed in skins, 

 were feeding on roots, were hoveling in caves. For tens of thousands of times did the 

 sun rise and set, the moon wax and wane, the stars come forth in glittering myriads 

 after night-fall ; and all the beautiful processes of Nature went on, in their majestic 

 order and regularity, unhelped and unhindered by man. Silently the young tree put 

 forth its tender germ ; silently the sapling lifted itself upward to the light ; and silently, 

 century after century, the aspiring column rose among its fellows, until, attaining an 



