TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



401 



These rich bottom lands resemble, indeed, a bank of deposit in which Nature has been 

 storing up, for a long succession of centuries, a fund of wealth for many generations of 

 agriculturists to draw upon; and here, if anywhere, the words of Jerrold are true: "If 

 you tickle the ground with a hoe, it will laugh with a harvest." The orchards and 



gardens of the dis- 



^^fc_ tr ' ct resem ble in their 



fruitfulness those of 

 the English county 

 of Kent ; and as the 

 tourist voyages down 

 the Gippsland Lakes 

 in a steam-boat he 

 finds at the principal 

 stopping-places men, 

 women and children 

 offering for sale the 

 fruit then in season, 

 as large in size and 

 as luscious in quality 

 as he is accustomed 



to see taking the 



THE SNOWY RIVER. 



THE LATROBE RIVER. 



chief prizes at the 

 horticultural shows 

 in Melbourne and 

 elsewhere. Of the 

 hop-gardens which 

 formerly beautified 

 the banks of the 

 Tambo and the Mit- 

 chell in their lower reaches comparatively few remain, as the cultivation of that plant 

 has been abandoned in favour of more remunerative products; and this must be a source 

 of regret to every lover of the picturesque,-- for where they still exist they lend a charm 

 to the scenery which no other objects can supply. When the flower is perfected, and the 

 vines are full of leaf, the effect of these long, narrow aisles, with a cluster of slender 

 pillars on every " hill," and each pillar wreathed with the most complex and delicate 

 foliage, so graceful in curve and so endless in diversity of line, with tendrils reaching across 

 the avenues to form a fretted vault, is simply matchless; and the scene at hopping-time 



