THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. AZ 
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thick spurs covered with low scrub with light foliage, forming a 
pleasing contrast with the mighty forest behind. 
The next morning we passed through Forster, and saw Mr. Barry 
the line repairer, and obtained from him much useful information as 
to the Promontory tracks. After leaving Forster, the track lay 
across heathy plains, sloping towards Corner Inlet. On our left, 
behind us, rose the wooded ranges we had passed through, from 
which ran a long barren spur on our right, which culminated in bald 
hills of considerable height, and then died down into the isthmus 
which joins the Promontory to the mainland. Innumerable creeks 
containing a peaty water, rising in this range and running to Corner 
Inlet, crossed our path, with an occasional belt of small timber. 
Before us rose the misty mountains of the Promontory. Then we 
gradually left the hills behind us, and found ourselves upon the 
sandy isthmus between Corner Inlet and Shallow Inlet, and by sun- 
down had reached the homestead of Yanakie Station. It is nine- 
teen miles from Forster to Yanakie, and there is no house by the 
way. Here we were very kindly entertained by Mr. Miller, Mr. 
McHaffie’s manager, who insisted upon taking us in, notwithstanding 
our travel-stained appearance, and accommodating us for the night. 
After breakfast the next morning, he put us upon the way to the 
beach. After about half a mile of hummocky country, interspersed 
with she-oaks, we came upon a region of sand dunes, pure sand 
white as snow, without a particle of vegetation, rising into hillocks 
some fifty feet high, of curious shapes, from the tops of which the 
sand was blown into a cloud like smoke. Inthe hollows the ground 
was a little firmer, a thin incrustation of lme being apparently 
deposited over the sand. The transition from the heathy pastures 
of Yanakie to these utterly barren dunes was very sudden. In some 
places vegetation could be seen struggling with the sand along a 
narrow border—a bush or a hillock or a tree with the tips of its 
leayes just above the top of a hummock or heap of sand, in other 
places the vegetation, yet uninjured, stretches to the very foot of 
the sand dune by which it will be soon engulphed. Thousands of 
acres of Yanakie Station have teen swallowed up by these dunes, 
and they threaten to cover the whole of it. After passing for about 
two miles and a half across this sandy waste, we came out near the 
beach. We had now before us seven miles of hard, smooth, white 
sand, the blue sea rolling in on our right in long white breakers, a 
range of rugged hummocks upon our left, and before us, at the end 
of the beach rose the granite mountains of .the Promontory, tinted 
according to their distance with different shades of blue and violet. 
There was a fresh breeze off the sea, filling the air with white spray. 
Off the coast were fantastic islands, mere knobs of granite poking 
their heads above the water. Sea birds ran along the sand before us, 
rising into the air screaming, as we came near. There could not be 
