TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 399 



scrub. It owes its existence, like the two just described, to a stream flowing into it 

 from the south, but it has no ascertained outlet to the north. In form it bears a 

 striking resemblance to a bean which has just begun to germinate, and it is surrounded 

 by almost an uninterrupted zone of sand-hills. It has a cluster of small islands near its 

 western shore, and is as liable to a remarkable shrinkage of its waters during a season 

 of prolonged drought as the lakes previously mentioned. This is the characteristic also 

 of Lake Buloke, which lies fifty miles due south of Lake Tyrrell, and has an area 

 of eleven thousand acres. Into it are poured the waters of the Avon and the 

 Richardson, without any apparent channel for their outflow ; but there are periods in 

 which this shallow reservoir becomes a muddy hollow, sun-baked and lined and interlined 

 with cracks and fissures. Indeed, it may be asserted of the Victorian lakes on the north 

 side of the Great Dividing Range that permanence and picturesqueness are qualities 

 which Nature has denied them. 



RIVERS. 



As in New South Wales, so in Victoria, there are two water-sheds the one flowing 

 from the southern and the other from the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range ; 

 the streams which take their rise in the latter emptying themselves into the Murray 

 except in the case of some that disappear in the porous soil of the north-western 

 districts of scrub and sand while those springing from the opposite side of the ridge 

 find their way direct to the sea. In many instances the little rills which afterwards 

 grow into important rivers, and obtain an outfall at points two hundred miles asunder, 

 begin to ooze out of the mountain tops within a few hundred yards of each other. 

 The Murray, from Forest Hill, near the source of one of its tributaries, to the one 

 hundred and forty-first meridian of east longitude, forms the boundary line of the two 

 colonies, and receives in its progress the waters of the Mitta Mitta, the Kiewa, the 

 Ovens, the Goulburn and the Loddon, as well as those of about a dozen creeks, each 

 of which helps to swell its volume at certain seasons of the year. 



The more important of the streams which flow southward are the Genoa, the 

 Snowy, the Buchan, the Brodribb, the Nicholson, the Tambo, the Mitchell, the Avon, 

 the Macallister, the Thomson, the Latrobe, the Yarra, the Werribee, the Moorabool, 

 the Barwon, the Gellibrand, the Hopkins, the Eumeralla, the Wannon and the Glenelg. 

 That part of the colony which lies eastward of the one hundred and forty-fifth parallel 

 and southward of the railway line from Seymour to the Murray, may be said to abound 

 in water-courses. In this region the mountains reach their greatest altitude ; in this region 

 also occurs the heaviest rain-fall, amounting to fifty inches per annum in some places, and 

 ranging from thirty to fifty over a large area of heavily-timbered ranges ; and in this 

 region a single river like the Yarra, for example will receive the contributions of a 

 hundred affluents before emerging from the highlands in which it has its birth. 



The Murray drains an area, in this colony alone, of upwards of forty thousand 

 square miles, and is navigable by steamers from Wodonga to its outlet in Lake Alexan- 

 drina, though the depth of water in it fluctuates materially from time to time and from 

 year to year. In the early summer, when the snow begins to melt on Mount Kosciusko 

 and the neighbouring ranges, the River will sometimes rise bank-high ; and during the 



