Atlas Page 103
By James Smith

WITHIN the circumference of a radial line of fifty or sixty miles, drawn from King William the Third Mountain to all points of the compass, are comprised a labyrinth of ranges, the whole of the lakes, the great plains, the sources of the most important rivers, including the Derwent, the Murray, and the Gordon, and with a single exception, every mountain which reaches an altitude of four thousand seven hundred feet and upwards. Most of the ranges run from north to south, and vary from ten to fifteen miles in length. In one instance that of the mountain system whose domes or pinnacles bear the honoured names of Tyndall, Sedgwick, Lyell, Owen, Huxley, Jukes, and Darwin —the distance from the most northerly to the most southerly peak is upwards of five and twenty miles; the continuity of the chain being broken only by three narrow gaps. A longitudinal line one hundred miles in length, and bisecting the King William Range half-way from its starting point, would pretty accurately define the boundary of the mountainous country to the west, and of the lake region to the east. Extensive plains predominate in the latter, with here and there an isolated hill upon which, in four separate instances, the discoverer has bestowed the name of Sugar-loaf, with the addition of his own. But on the other side of this imaginary line the counties of Montague, Franklin, and Montgomery, are thickly embossed with ranges, while all the intervening valleys, whether broadening out into extensive flats or narrowing into deep ravines, are watered by streams or creeks, most of which pour their waters into the Gordon, a river taking its rise in Lake Richmond and emptying itself into one of the southern arms of Macquarie Harbour.

King William Range, however, with its triple crests absurdly enough named after as many English monarchs, divides two watersheds, and some of the sources of the Derwent come from its eastern slopes. So also do the main springs of the Gordon, which runs parallel with the Derwent for thirty miles or so, and then after passing through the appropriately designated Valley of Rasselas, makes a sharp angle at the Great Bend near the small settlement of Huntly, and pursues its course to the westward. The loftiest of the three peaks which have just been referred to, is four thousand three hundred and sixty feet high, or nearly two hundred feet higher than Mount Wellington, to which its fluted escarpments cause it to bear a certain resemblance. Its massive buttresses are clothed with forests which are literally pathless and perfectly impenetrable on the higher levels; for the vapour-laden atmosphere, chilled and condensed by contact with the lower temperature of the lofty trees, precipitates itself in misty rain or heavy shower, and the perennial moisture maintains a luxuriant undergrowth of tangled shrubs and creepers. On both sides of its broad base, the streams which have their birth among its unexplored recesses relieve the sombre grandeur of the landscape by interposing bright reflections of argent cloud and azure sky, while the rugged features of the mountain itself are softened when repeated in the waters of a still lagoon, with nothing to break the smoothness of its glassy surface but the stately movements of an occasional pair of black swans so unaccustomed to the intrusion of a human being in their solitudes as to regard him with more of curiosity than apprehension.

In the brief twilight, before the outlines of the mountain ridge have lost their sharpness, and when the details of the mass are becoming indistinct, is easy to imagine that its "looming bastions" are the work of human hands, and that the dark cliff is crowned by a ruined fortress erected by a forgotten race at some far distant epoch, like the mysterious storehouses and colossal images on Easter Island. The adventurous tourist who penetrates into this secluded region wishes it were so —wishes he could see some object to connect him with his race either in the past or in the present; for there is something oppressive in the feeling of solitude that takes possession of the mind —in the absence of all association with human interests, human activities, and human emotions. The sentiment which the scene inspires is one of awe, accompanied by a sense of forlornness and of alienation. And this is deepened and intensified at night, when the mountain seems to come nearer to the little group gathered round the camp-fire, and to wear a more grim and gruesome aspect as the moonlight shimmers on its scarred cliffs, and the wind sobs, and the forest sighs, and the reeds and rushes in the lagoon shiver in the cool night breeze; and, acted upon by the solemnising influences of the time and place, the traveller feels as much cut off from his kind as if he and his companions had just alighted from some mysterious voyage upon an otherwise unpeopled world.

Ten miles to the westward of the mountain chain which wears its triple crown with so much dignity, the remarkable range bearing the fanciful appellation of the Frenchman’s Cap dominates the whole of the surrounding landscape; its highest points attaining an altitude of four thousand seven hundred and fifty-six feet. The bald cone or culminating peak of this gigantic mass of naked rock resembles the base of an enormous monolith shattered by some convulsion of nature which has strewn the fragments in the seams and fissures that gape like deep mounds upon the sloping shoulders of the Titan. Under certain conditions of the atmosphere it resembles a hooded figure, wrapped in the folds of a voluminous cloak, and stretching forth its arms as if it would embrace the lower eminences whose jagged peaks and rounded cupolas it seems to dwarf by its superior elevation. But the Cap never looks more beautiful than when the snow lies soft and thick upon its massive summit, effacing the ruggedness of its outlines, obliterating the scars of time, and enveloping it in a robe of spotless ermine, while above and behind it glitters the steel-blue sky, and around it gather the subsidiary mountains of the range, dark with their garniture of dusky forest, or picturesque with their crags of brown and russet rock. And when this fleecy garment is dissolved by the sunshine of the spring or early summer, hundreds of tiny cataracts leap into life and hurry down the narrow grooves and channels graven them by the liquefied snows of tens of thousands of preceding springs, murmuring a music of their own as they flow darkling underneath thick canopies of fern-tree fronds or groves of musk and sassafras, or the loftier vaults formed by the interlacing foliage of stately myrtle trees, and eventually pouring their waters into one of the numerous affluents of the Franklin, which eventually loses itself in the river Gordon. But before reaching the first-named stream its tributary has to its way through a narrow winding gorge, the precipitous sides of which consist in places of immense masses of rugged rock, the faces of which are variously tinted with mosses and lichens, while a few trees, bent and contorted by the violence of the wind sweeping down the ravine, obtain a precarious foothold in the crevices and fissures where their roots are slowly and steadily disintegrating the rock from which they draw their scanty nourishment. But in general the walls of the gorge, steep as they are, are clothed with timber mostly of an Alpine character, including -something like eighty varieties of cotyledonous trees, none of them less than thirty feet high, while some reach six, eight, and even ten times that altitude.

The nomenclature of the ranges and ridges in the surrounding country has been borrowed from all ages and from all countries; any attempt to retain native names having been somewhat unhappily abandoned. The twin founders of Rome are commemorated by Mounts Romulus and Remus. Five English statesmen have had their names transferred to as many rivers —the Canning, the Huskisson, the Mackintosh, the Stanley, and the Brougham. The Crimean War has been commemorated by the Raglan Range, and by the streams which have received the appellation of Cardigan, Scarlett, Balaclava, Alma, and Inkerman respectively; while Ida, Pelion, and Olympus recall to recollection the classic hills of Greece; and Lake Undine brings to mind the beautiful creation of Baron Fouqué.

The geological formation of nearly the whole of the western portion of the island differs entirely from that of the midland and eastern countries, producing, of course, a corresponding variation in the aspect of the country. It belongs almost entirely to the Silurian age, with here and there an outcrop of granite, syenite, and curate porphyry, an occasional eruption of Silurian limestone, with tertiary deposits on the north-western coast, and along the eastern shore of Macquarie Harbour —these belonging to the Miocene epoch in the last-named locality.

The counties of Lincoln, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, the lake districts of Tasmania and the core of the island, belong to the greenstone formation, and a considerable portion of their area consists of plateaux, in some places more than three thousand feet above the level of the sea. This extensive district, which can be reached without much difficulty from Tunbridge on the main line of railway, is circumscribed on the north-east by the Great Western Mountains, which curve round from the upper waters of the River Mersey, fifteen miles to the westward of. Deloraine, to Mount Franklin, about ten miles from Ross, the length of the curve being little less than seventy miles. The lakes of the western slopes of that extended tier serve as reservoirs for the supply of numerous rivers flowing chiefly to the southward. Of these beautiful sheets of water the Great Lake is the largest, being fifteen miles in length, fro north to south, and five miles broad in places. Owing to its peculiar configuration it has the appearance of three distinct lakes, and its shores are broken up into so many inlets and promontories that to follow its circumferential line from beginning to end would necessitate a journey of upwards of a hundred miles. Its smooth expanse is dotted by five wooded islets, which are the chosen haunt of wild fowl, and its southern arm is the nesting-place of black swans innumerable. Here, too, is the outlet of the River Shannon, a voluminous stream at all times, and in the rainy season a rushing torrent. A score or so of miniature lakes are scattered over the broken country to the westward, and some of these, not to speak of lagoons, are passed in making for Lake St. Clair, which is separated from the other by an interval of thirty miles. When it is reached its surpassing beauty proves to be an ample compensation for the roughness of the journey. It is like a vast sapphire set in a cluster of emeralds. Covering an area of about ten thousand acres, and having an average breadth of two miles and a length from north to south of nine, it seems to be indebted for its existence and formation to the damning tip by volcanic action of a huge trough lying between some mountain ranges, of which Ida and Olympus are the more salient members. The outflow of this natural reservoir, like that of the Great Lake, is at its southern extremity, where it constitutes the principal source of the Derwent. Another is supplied by the by-wash of Lake Echo, twenty miles due east of Lake St. Clair, but known there as the River Dee. Not more than six miles long, and nowhere exceeding three miles in width, Lake Echo is perhaps the loveliest of the group, partly because of its exquisite colour and partly by reason of the two picturesque islands which seem to float upon its sheeny surface, of the numerous bays which everywhere indent its shores, and of the heavily-timbered uplands which come sloping down, so gracefully to the water’s edge.

Whatever may be the mineral wealth of Tasmania —and there is every indication that this is very great indeed —it may be confidently asserted that it is insignificant in comparison with the incalculable value, for irrigation purposes hereafter, of the water which has been stored in such abundance in the very heart of the island, and at such an altitude above the areas to which it will one day be conducted. What the unknown benefactors of Ceylon did for that island when they constructed the stupendous tanks, of which the largest enclosed an expanse of water equal in extent to the Lake of Geneva, that has nature accomplished for the island of Tasmania by establishing these marvellous reservoirs upon so lofty and central a plateau. The supply of the precious element is there; its distribution is simply a question of capital, enterprise, and engineering skill.

Lying on the western edge of this great plateau, and encircling at its eastern extremity a somewhat remarkable natural amphitheatre, the Eldon Range presents an exception to most of the mountain chains in the western portion of the island; its axial line being from east to west, instead of from north to south. It is also the watershed of streams flowing in opposite directions; and covers an area of country nearly fifteen miles in length, and from two to three in breadth. In point of elevation its highest peak ranks third among the mountains of Tasmania, namely four thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine feet; and its geological structure resembling that of Ben Lomond and the Cradle Mountain —its two superiors in altitude —it wears the same cliff-like aspect; its agglomerate mass of pillars rises abruptly and almost perpendicularly out of a waving sea of foliage, and its ridges bear a fantastic similitude to the battlements of some stupendous fortress, designed and executed on a scale of colossal grandeur. The foot-hills of the range slope down to the margin of a small lake known as Lake Augusta, which serves as a mirror for the mountain.

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