Rome and Victoria. 157 



Tower Hill, fee, as well as Obsidian, the volcanic glass. 

 Plionolite is plentifully distributed. 



Western Yictoria presents more basalt than Rome, and 

 we have many examples of prismatic or columnar basalt. 

 At our Wannon Falls, 160 feet deep and 100 wide, the 

 prisms behind the water, in their broken aspects, are like the 

 shifting glasses of a kaleidoscope. The columnar reaches 

 thirty feet upon ten feet of amorphous basalt at the Hopkins 

 Falls. In measuring some of the rhomboids there, I found 

 them ten inches by six. Reference need not be made to the 

 picturesque Falls of Lai- Lai, the Coliban, fee. The depth of 

 our deposits varies greatly. Near Belfast I was shown a 

 spot where the basalt was forty-eight feet thick, while 

 alongside, on a little flat, it was four feet. 



Though unable to trace the sources of all of our basaltic 

 streams, some may be distinctly indicated. The Wannon 

 outburst ra,n out at the Smoky River, forty miles north-west 

 of Portland. From the Anakies, two streams descended to 

 the sea. The courses from Mounts Ecles, Napier, Rouse, 

 and Clay, are well defined, and were very considerable in 

 volume. The lava from Napier flowed fifty miles south- 

 ward, and nearly parallel to the lines of Rouse and Ecles. 

 There is very little lava about Mount Gambler, It is 

 curious to find Mr. Surveyor Tyers referring to our basaltic 

 plains, in 1838, after this manner : — "The nearer the coast 

 they are considered m.ore fertile. The extreme fertility of 

 basaltic soils, according to geologists, is to be attributed to 

 the carbonized materials produced during the igneous fusion 

 of the rock." 



There are, however, some points of dissimilarity between 

 the two countries. There is nothing in Rome like our 

 Mount Porndon, toward the Cape Otway country, which 

 struck me as simply a pumice cone. When I ascended 

 Mount Vesuvius, and only then, did I see its parallel. But 

 there is another peculiarity in the country around Porndon — • 

 the Stony Rises. These petrified waves of lava I saw near 

 the Darlot's Creek, Portland Bay, as well as near Lake 

 Corangamite, and even, to a small extent, by Mount Fyans. 

 These singular phenomena much astonished me. At Mount 

 Porndon there wei'e vast basaltic caverns, with chambers 

 of immense extent. Under Mount Ecles and Mount Napier 

 the ridges are like the Bay of Biscay surges, tumbling in 

 all directions. In the Stony Rises, south of Corangamite, 

 toward the Curdles River, a district fifteen miles by twelve, 



