Home and Victoria. 161 



contains no water. No high range is near, and the whole 

 country around is of cavernous limestone, with its subter- 

 ranean streams. Mount Elephant crater, rising nearly seven 

 hundred feet above the plain, has occasionally water. I was 

 struck with the luxuriant verdure there contrasted with the 

 parched-up grass of the country around it. 



Two of our craters resemble the Monte Cavo hollow, in 

 which Hannibal had his camp. Our Mount Noorat is three 

 miles across its shaggy basin, though scoria cones rise up 

 within the crater, and a huge blister-like rock nearly blocks 

 up the side through which the lava poured. It is 250 

 feet deep, and Leura 300 ; though the latter has been so 

 shattered as to have but a thin shred of a wall remaining. 

 The Roman craters were mostly broken down on the side 

 exposed to Rome, having given that quarter the benefit of 

 their discharge. Leura is fallen on the west side, Wangoon 

 on the west, Napier on the south-west, Purrumbete and 

 Noorat on the south and south-west. Mount Shadwell, 

 which has, like Albano, discharged both ash and lava, has 

 lost half its wall, and its reddened sides exhibit considerable 

 oxidization, affording splendid soil for the farmer. 



Napier, though one of our loftiest craters, 1440 feet, is but 

 half the height of Monte Cavo, though just the elevation of 

 Albano. Its crater discharged lava, which about there towers 

 in fantastic forms. Its narrow ledge is gained with difficulty, 

 and is not, like Cavo, adorned with ruins of an ancient 

 temple ; though within its drear basin the natives were 

 wont to hold their most solemn moonlight corrobories. 

 Superstition has her tales of the craters of Victoria as well 

 as Italy, though priests have not sacrificed within their 

 gloomy recesses. 



Though not dignified as craters, there are several Roman 

 hills of a scoriaceous or tufaceous character, which are 

 rounded and closed at the top, but which may be more than 

 suspected of disturbance in olden times. Such too are our 

 numerous Mammeloidal hills to the west and north-west of 

 Ballarat. Some, like Mount Cavern, have a portion of the 

 top open, sufficient to indicate their former mischievous 

 propensities. While a few exhibit a tendency to the crater 

 of elevation, or blistering up from below, others show a 

 collapsing after their explosion, as though glad to conceal 

 the ghastly chasm from which such devastation issued. 

 They are all, as far as I have observed, much older than the 

 regular extinct craters, judging from the decomposed con- 



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