160 The Volcanic Rocks of 



structed 2250 years ago, drains the overplus of water to the 

 Tiber. Who that gazed upon that charming scene, gaily set 

 off in autumnal tints, could realise the wild tempest of 

 horrors which once raged there ! 



The Bank of Albano put me more in mind of our own 

 Tower Hill than any other place. Both are gardens of 

 delight. Both have seams of lava and lime in their tufa- 

 ceous beds. There were the little caves answering to our 

 wombat holes. There the jet black basalt pierced the ash- 

 heap, as I had seen in our craterform lakes. There was the 

 white-spotted mineral, so conspicuous in the bold Mount 

 Clay of Portland. The bank was even higher than ours of 

 Tower Hill, though not so long. The sides were not so 

 precipitous as those of Mount Gambler, down which I dared 

 not venture ; nor did the water look so dark as that of the 

 Devil's Inkstand. Lake Keilambete has walls as long and 

 as oval, but not so elevated, as Lake Albano. One of the 

 basins, not far from Timboon, has a great resemblance to the 

 Roman one. Elingamite, in our southern stony desert, has 

 few points of resemblance but its tufa sides. It put me 

 more in mind of Mount Schanck in its basin appearance ; 

 though that Devil's Punchbowl, naked outside, is covered 

 with fern on its inner and precipitous slopes. 



The Albano water is fresh and deep. We, in Victoria, are 

 favoured with fresh and salt water craters. Purrumbete, 

 south of Colac, has delicious water. I listened to the splash 

 of oars in that secluded region, and saw a fair lady rowing a 

 pretty aboriginal child. Keilambete is quite salt, though I 

 tasted of a fresh stream which gurgles out near the edge of 

 the other water. The lake is two hundred feet deep. 

 BuUen Merri, three hundred feet deep, is fresh, while its 

 saline neighbour, Gnotuk, at a few yards distance, does not 

 reach its level of surface by fifty feet. Lake Keilambete 

 knows only a difference of eighteen inches between its 

 winter and summer level ; and lakes Terang and Wangoon, 

 with fresh water, have little more. The depth of fresh water 

 Lake Power, formerly known as the Devil's Inkstand, is two 

 hundred and sixty feet, and is not, as was once supposed, 

 unfathomable. The oldest inhabitant believed there was no 

 bottom in our Lake Wangoon, near Warrnambool, until 

 some one tried its bottom with a line. 



Most of our Victorian craters which discharged ashes are 

 converted into lakes, while those that discharged basaltic lavas 

 are dry. The South Australian Schanck, although of ash, 



