yond tier, height above height,
the great wooded ranges go rolling away westward, till on the lofty
sky-line they are crowned with a gleam of everlasting snow. To the
eastward they sink down, breaking into isolated forests, fringed peaks,
and rock-crowned eminences, till with rapidly straightening lines they
disappear gradually into broad grey plains, beyond which the Southern
Ocean is visible by the white reflection cast upon the sky.

All creation is new and strange. The trees, surpassing in size the
largest English oaks, are of a species we have never seen before. The
graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the very grass
itself, are of species unknown in Europe; while flaming lories and
brilliant parroquets fly whistling, not unmusically, through the gloomy
forest, and over head in the higher fields of air, still lit up by the
last rays of the sun, countless cockatoos wheel and scream in noisy
joy, as we may see the gulls do about an English headland.

To the northward a great glen, sinking suddenly from the saddle on
which we stand, stretches away in long vista, until it joins a broader
valley, through which we can dimly see a full-fed river winding along
in gleaming reaches, through level meadow land, interspersed with
clumps of timber.

We are in Australia. Three hundred and fifty miles south of Sydney, on
the great watershed which divides the Belloury from the Maryburnong,
since better known as the Snowy-river of Gipps-land.

As the sun was going down on the scene I have been describing, James
Stockbridge and I, Geoffry Hamlyn, reined up our horses on the ridge
above-mentioned, and gazed down the long gully which lay stretched at
our feet. Only the tallest trees stood with their higher boughs glowing
with the gold of the departing day, and we stood undetermined which
route to pursue, and half inclined to camp at the next waterhole we
should see. We had lost some cattle, and among others a valuable
imported bull, which we were very anxious to recover. For five days we
had been passing on from run to run, making inquiries without success,
and were now fifty long miles from home in a southerly direction. We
were beyond the bounds of all settlement; the last station we had been
at was twenty miles to the north of us, and the occupiers of it, as
they had told us the night before, had only taken up their country
about ten weeks, and were as yet the furthest pioneers to the southward.

At this time Stock