39 o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



cold embrace, and a purling brook of the purest water gliding past cottage gardens 

 which never lose their verdure. A way-side inn with its broad verandah, where the local 

 gossips gather after the labours of the day are over ; a wheelwright's shop, where the 

 roaring of the forge is a pleasant thing to listen to, and the red glare of the flames, 

 is comforting to look at on a chilly winter evening ; a general store with a highly 

 miscellaneous stock of merchandise ; a State school of limited dimensions, a dozen or 

 two of weather-board cottages, form the constituents of this isolated hamlet ; but it is 

 linked with the larger life and the restless activities of the metropolis, seventy or eighty 

 miles distant, by a daily coach, the morning departure and evening arrival of which 

 occasion a momentary ripple upon the otherwise stagnant mill-pond of the monotonous 

 lives led by these secluded folk : after which gentle excitement the place relapses into 

 its habitual repose. 



A curious feature of the Great Dividing Range is that due north of Port Phillip 

 Bay it recedes inland, where its course bears a general resemblance to the curvature of 

 that inlet. The general altitude of the mountains diminishes as they approach the west, 

 and Mount Macedon, although so conspicuous by its height and bulk, does not attain 

 a greater eminence than three thousand three hundred and twenty-four feet. Sixteen 

 miles to the westward of it the range throws off a northern spur about twenty-five 

 miles in length, terminating just beyond Sandhurst. On each side of the main range 

 are numerous detached hills, some of them between two thousand four hundred and two 

 thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, and their complete isolation as in the 

 cases of Mounts Blackwoocl, Franklin, Warrenheip and Buninyong gives them an 

 imposing character. Beyond Lexton, where the range begins to be known as the 

 Pyrenees, the hills have combined to form a beautiful amphitheatre, triangular in shape, 

 and less than a mile across in its widest part. The Sugarloaf forms its apex, and in 

 the green hollow of this romantic spot the waters of the Avoca take their rise and 

 find an outlet to the north. Near Ararat the Pyrenees, after making a sharp bend to 

 the north-west, and an equally abrupt detour to the south-west, branch off into two 

 arms, and then come to an end. One of these is known as the Black Range, and the 

 other reaches an altitude of two thousand and twenty feet at Mount Ararat. 



Little more than a mile from the farthest outpost of the southern limit, and 

 separated from it by a marsh, lies the most easterly spur of the Grampians, or Serra 

 Range, in the midst of which the Rivers Wannon, Glenelg and Wimmera take their 

 rise. There is one main range, upwards of fifty miles in length and forty in breadth, 

 with four subsidiary ranges, all having a meridional direction, and attaining their greatest 

 elevation in Mount William, three thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven feet above 

 the sea-level. The sedimentary rocks of which they are composed are estimated to cover 

 an area of one thousand two hundred and twenty miles ; and these rocks for seven 

 hundred and eighty miles are one vast mass of freestone of the purest quality. Some- 

 thing like fifteen hundred feet of it are exposed in natural section ; for on the eastern 

 face of the range there are majestic cliffs and massive escarpments rising as high as 

 three thousand two hundred feet, in one place, above the level of the sea ; which one 

 would almost expect to find flowing at their base ; and from it, indeed, they were originally 

 upheaved. But now they lift themselves above billows of foliage, and overlook a 



