TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



395 



summit. It bears, indeed, a striking resemblance to Port Jackson, and does not yield to 

 it in variety or in loveliness, while, perhaps, it can boast of a still greater number of 

 coves and inlets. There are the same exquisitely curved lines, and the same grace of 

 form and freshness of tint in the timber, which present themselves in that famous 

 harbour. In some places the trees are grouped in compact masses ; in others they 

 alternate with lawny interspaces of soft turf, or a thick carpet of bracken, or a tangled 



LAKE TYERS. 



undergrowth of scrub, with here and there a patch of bare limestone protruding from 

 the soil, and indicating its formation. Ascending the Nowa Nowa arm of the Lake, 

 which is navigable by a steam-launch for a distance of nearly twenty miles, there opens 

 out a fresh promontory, wooded to the water's edge, and another inlet framed in foliage 

 and falling back to a natural amphitheatre, around which rise tier on tier of stately 

 trees, calmly contemplating their replications in the unruffled mirror at their feet. Then, 

 again, comes a gully densely packed with tree-ferns, acmcnas and the pittosporni 

 nndulatuni ; and at almost every turn in the perpetual windings of its course the 

 vessel enters an apparently land-locked bay, from which no outlet is immediately visible 

 until it shoots round a leafy knoll, and the traveller finds himself confronted by another 

 vision of sylvan loveliness. Nor can he fail to be struck by the special characteristics 

 of the trees which drape the banks their symmetry and the equability of their develop- 

 ment showing that they have grown up in a calm untroubled atmosphere, exempt from 

 the turbulence of the wind which raves amone the mountains to the northward, and 



