396 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



howls along the sea-shore only a few miles off. At Erica Cliffs the vegetation assumes 



a tropical luxuriance of growth, while Oberon's Retreat frowns upon the Lake like the 



ruins of a dismantled fortress, and near it is a green recess in which Titania, with all 

 her dainty following, might prosecute her revels, 



And plant her court upon a verdant mound, 

 Fenced with umbrageous woods and groves profound, 

 In absolute seclusion from any mortal eye. 



For the purposes of the landscape painter Lake Tyers is seen at its best when 

 the sun has newly arisen above the horizon, or is sinking towards it, so that the level 

 rays reveal golden vistas on one side of the water, while the opposite shore is veiled 

 in shadow ; and if there be no zephyr to shiver the surface of the otherwise placid 

 mirror into a thousand wrinkles, every object is reflected in it with such startling 

 distinctness of form and minuteness of detail that one scarcely knows where the land 

 ends or the water begins. So, too, with respect to colour the amber of the eastern 

 and the ruby and the orange of the western sky are literally repeated on that smooth 

 expanse, and the clouds that languidly float across the azure dome above have their 

 duplicated motion in the waters of the lake below. The Tooloo arm, a name which is 

 the native equivalent of a cul dc sac, extends eight miles in a north-westerly direction, 

 and is bordered by high, undulating and thickly-wooded banks. It has deep inlets, some 

 of them walled in by overhanging rocks, and it terminates in a winding river, which 

 approaches it under cover of lofty cliffs tapestried with creepers and crowned with trees, 



among which the pittospontni 

 is conspicuous for the beauty 

 of its form and the vivid ver- 

 dure of its foliage. 



Lake Corangamite lies in 

 the midst of entirely different 

 scenery, three hundred and 

 eighty feet above the level of 

 the sea. Its waters are salt, 

 and they cover an area of 

 ninety square miles. It is 

 about sixteen miles long, with 

 a breadth of eight miles in 

 its widest part. Situated at 

 the junction of four counties 

 Grenville, Hampden, Heytes- 

 buryand Polwarth it forms the 

 centre of a cluster of lakes and 

 lagoons, nearly fifty in number, 

 five of which Colac, Elinga- 

 mite, Terang, Purrumbete and 



Connewarren are fresh, while the others are nearly all salt or brackish. Lakes Elingamite, 

 Terang and Purrumbete occupy the craters of extinct volcanoes, the original magnitude of 



A FARM .NEAR LAKE TYERS. 



