2;8 
" swish " like a column of cold damp fog driven by a sudden blast. 
And then the winds from the south-east turned the storm away along 
the valley to the north, and the " Lion of the Skies " vanished slowly 
in the distance, his deep-toned voice maldng the mountains tremble, 
and his fierce eyes flashing electric fire. "We camped all night on 
the summit. What wonder that in such a place, " obscurely through 
the brain swept awful thoughts," 
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, 
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll ! 
We were denizens of the upper air. With Goethe we knew the 
" Stars silent above us ; Graves silent below us." The fauna and 
flora of this strange mountain, according to De Yis, are the oldest 
on the Australian continent. It is the Ararat of the Pacific. Here 
are plants found hitherto only on the summits of the Himalayas. 
Ah heaven ! why cannot some fossil relate to us the story of the 
vanished Ages from the death silence of his stone mausoleum ? I 
gazed on the storm, and in imagination saw " a Spirit with a dreadful 
countenance check his dark chariot by the craggy gulf," and some 
Idsean Ganymede pour out his celestial rain of wine from an exhaust- 
less urn upon the grateful earth ! Eound the base of this mountain 
once roamed the giant Diprotodon and the colossal Nototherium . 
Iguanas 30 feet in length crawled through the primeval vegetation on 
the plains below, and the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo, crunched the 
bones of his herbivorous victims in the dark secluded caves. Around 
us was the silence of departed Time, of voiceless Eternities, of worlds 
beyond the morning stars ! I seemed to see the shadows of the unborn 
Centuries reflected on the azure mirror of the night, and shadows of 
the past vanishing like misty spectres in the impenetrable gloom. In 
the tree-tops we heard the wailing of the " huge winds that sweep 
from Ursa Major to the tropics and equators, dancing their giant 
waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity." And they 
play wild Memnonian music on the mountain's grand old ^olian harp 
of pines ! 
I have, &c., 
A. MESTON. 
