ome lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like
monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From
a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire
dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy.
No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains.
Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings--Mount
Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes in
places

"Made green with the running of rivers,
And gracious with temperate air,"

the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful
grandeur of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant
ferocity, and is steeped in bitterness.

Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in
the midst of early morning, her history looms vague and gigantic. The
lonely horseman riding between the moonlight and the day sees vast
shadows creeping across the shelterless and silent plains, hears strange
noises in the primeval forest, where flourishes a vegetation long dead
in other lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim
utilitarian civilisation which bred him shrinks into insignificance
beside the contemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an age
in which European scientists have cradled his own race.

There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the poetry which
lives in the trees and flowers of Australia differs from those of other
countries. Europe is the home of knightly song, of bright deeds and
clear morning thought. Asia sinks beneath the weighty recollections of
her past magnificence, as the Suttee sinks, jewel burdened, upon the
corpse of dread grandeur, destructive even in its death. America swiftly
hurries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable even as one of her own
giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa, and the creeper-tangled
groves of the Islands of the South, arise, from the glowing hearts of a
thousand flowers, heavy and intoxicating odours--the Upas-poison which
dwells in barbaric sensuality. In Australia alone is to be found the
Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to
write. Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers
without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not
yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness
acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monst