DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 37
By James Smith

VICTORIA - RIVERS.

As in New South Wales, so in Victoria, there are two watersheds —the one flowing from the Southern and the other from the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range; the streams which take their rise in the latter emptying themselves into the Murray —except in the case of some that disappear in the porous soil of the north-western districts of scrub and sand —while those springing from the opposite side of the ridge find their way direct to the sea. In many instances the little rills which afterwards grow important rivers, and obtain an outfall at points two hundred miles asunder, begin to ooze out of the mountain tops within a few hundred yards of each other. The Murray, from Forest Hill, near the source of one of its tributaries, to the one hundred and forty-first meridian of east longitude, forms the boundary line of the two colonies, and receives in its progress the waters of the Mitta Mitta, the Kiewa, the Ovens, the Goulburn and the Loddon, as well as those of about a dozen creeks, each of which helps to swell its volume at certain seasons of the year.

The more important of the streams which flow southward are the Genoa, the Snowy, the Buchan, the Brodribb, the Nicholson, the Tambo, the Mitchell, the Avon, the Macallister, the Thomson, the Latrobe, the Yarra, the Werribee, the Moorabool, the Barwon, the Gellibrand, the Hopkins, the Eumeralla, the Wannon and the Glenelg. That part of the colony which lies eastward of the one hundred and forty-fifth parallel, and southward of the railway line from Seymour to the Murray, may be said to abound in watercourses. In this region the mountains reach their greatest altitude; in this region also occurs the heaviest rainfall, amounting to fifty inches per annum in some places, and ranging from thirty to fifty over a large area of heavily-timbered ranges; and in this region a single river —like the Yarra, for example —will receive the contributions of a hundred affluents before emerging from the highlands in which it has its birth.

The Murray drains an area, in this colony alone, of upwards of forty thousand square miles, and is navigable by steamers from Wodonga to its outlet in Lake Alexandrina, though the depth of water in it fluctuates materially from time to time and from year to year. In the early summer, when the snow begins to melt on Mount Kosciusko and the neighbouring ranges, the river will sometimes rise bank high; and during the rainy season, when its waters are swollen by those of the Murrumbidgee, the Billabong, the Lachlan and the Darling, they overflow the low-lying country in various places, filling up back-water creeks and forming extensive lagoons. Steamers freighted with wool and other pastoral produce lend a character of unwonted animation to the great waterway at such a time, and squatters occupying stations in the far interior of New South Wales, hundreds of miles distant from the river’s junction with its main affluents, gladly avail themselves of the facilities afforded by the stream for the conveyance of their products to port —facilities which are apt to be interrupted by long and trying intervals, during the too frequent periods of protracted drought.

In the south-east of Victoria, the rivers which head from the northern slope bear a strong general resemblance to each other. They take their rise in the mysterious recesses of mountains so thickly clothed with timber and so inaccessible that the sanctuaries of Nature have remained for centuries unprofaned by human foot, but it almost impossible to indicate with any degree of accuracy the precise fountain-head of either of these rivers. A score of, little rills, issuing from moist crevices high up among the hills, will trickle down their furrowed sides and mingle their waters in a runnel that glides beneath a grove of tree-ferns in a narrow gorge impenetrable to the sunlight. The stream will receive continual accessions in its course, and each will increase its velocity until at the higher end of a ravine, the precipitous walls of which approach so nearly that the trees which have found a precarious foothold in their clefts mingle their foliage overhead, the stream springs over a ledge of porphyritic or basaltic rock and is partly dissipated in foam before it reaches its sombre channel, one, two, or three hundred feet below. And then, as if it had gained impetuosity, by its descent, it swirls around the boulders which impede its onrush to the distant plains, surging against the trunks of the trees that have fallen across its path, undermining the roots of others, and breathing a sense of refreshing coolness into the atmosphere which envelops the motionless verdure that tapestries its banks. Sometimes —as in the case of the Genoa and Snowy Rivers, the Tambo and the Mitchell —these mountain-born streams are flanked by sinuous ranges from their hidden birthplaces until they come within a few miles of the sea ; so that, for forty, leagues or more, they disclose a succession of romantic landscapes, having a certain correspondence in their broader features and more salient characteristics, but presenting an endless variety of detail.

The principal source of one of the rivers just named —the Tambo —is near Mount Leinster, on the southern slope of the Bowen Mountains, and on the opposite side rises the Limestone Creek, which some explorers suppose to be the real commencement of the River Murray, flowing northward for something like a hundred miles through country, not less romantic than that which has been described above. When the Tambo, the Nicholson, the Mitchell and the Avon emerge from the fastnesses amidst which they have pursued their devious course in a southerly direction,

Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined,
Round hills with fluttering tree-tops feathered,

their progress becomes more sedate and measured, as if they had exchanged the impetuosity of youth for the seriousness of maturity. They no longer hasten seaward, but expatiate leisurely with "many a winding bout," through alluvial plains of great fertility. These rich bottom lands resemble, indeed, a bank of deposit in which nature has been storing up, for a long succession of centuries, a fund of wealth for many generations of agriculturists to draw upon; and here, if anywhere, the words of Jerrold are true: "If you tickle the ground with a hoe, it will laugh with a harvest." The orchards and gardens of the district resemble in their fruitfulness those of the English county of Kent; and as the tourist journeys down the Gippsland lakes in a steamboat, he finds at the principal stopping-places men, women and children offering for sale the fruit then in season, as large in size and as luscious in quality as he is accustomed to see taking the chief prizes at the horticultural shows in Melbourne and elsewhere. Of the hop gardens which formerly beautified the banks of the Tambo and the Mitchell in their lower reaches, comparatively few remain, as the cultivation of that plant has been abandoned in favour of more remunerative products; and this must be a source of regret to every lover of the picturesque, for, where they still exist, they lend a charm to the scenery, which no other objects can supply. When the flower is perfected, and the vines are full of leaf, the effect of these long, narrow aisles, with a cluster of slender pillars on every "hill," and each pillar wreathed with the most complex and delicate foliage, so graceful in curve and so endless in diversity of line, with tendrils reaching across the avenues to form a fretted vault, is simply matchless; and the scene at hopping time —when the uprooted poles are laid upon the crossbars of the "bins," and the nimble fingers of women are busily occupied in shredding the golden flowers, and children busy themselves in the heaped up bines, and the air is filled with the subtle aroma of the hop —is more picturesque than any vintage, except, perhaps, in Tuscany. And even when

The tented winter field is broken up
Into that phalanx of the summer spears
That soon shall wear the garland,

the spire-like piles of packed poles are interesting features in the landscape, because they are eloquent of the bounteous crop that has been gathered in, and suggest the verdure and beauty of the coming spring.

The Avon, which takes its rise in the county of Tanjil, flows in a south-westerly direction through the fertile plains of Gippsland until it enters Lake Wellington at the same northerly point at which the smaller stream called the Perry joins it. The Thomson flows along the foot of a lateral chain of hills springing from Mount Lookout. Where this ends, it unites its waters with those of another stream —the Aberfeldy —which has pursued a parallel course on the opposite or eastern side of the same range, and having been reinforced by the Macallister —a tributary that has drained a considerable tract of mountainous country to the north —the Thomson empties itself into the Latrobe, about three miles to the south of Sale. The Latrobe rises among the southern slopes of the great spur, which branches off abruptly, near Mount Matlock, running down in a south-easterly direction, and almost in a straight line, as far as Mount Baw Baw: it then doubles back again so as to form two sides of an acute triangle, within which is enclosed some of the most beautiful scenery in Victoria, and afterwards pursues a sinuous course until it terminates in the huge masses of the Dandenongs.

At the apex of this triangle, on its inner side, there is an elevated plateau; and almost under the shadow of Mount Baw Baw the waters of the Yarra take their rise. At that elevation, magnificent forests of beech trees appear to have supplanted the eucalyptus, to a very great extent at least, and add greatly to the charm of the landscape. At the birthplace of the river, upon which the natives bestowed the title of the Everflowing, numbers of little streams of pure cold water, which

—sparkle out among the fern
To bicker down a valley,

combine to form a rivulet not more than twenty feet wide. Through a shallow valley, shadowy, with stately beeches and tall tree-ferns, the brook goes singing on its way until, all of a sudden, it finds an outlet into a valley at a much lower level, and with a succession of leaps, by which it forms a series of fine cascades as pleasant to the eye as to the ear, it effects a descent of something like a thousand feet. After this, its course lies along the bottom of a deep ravine, the precipitous sides of which, varying in height from one to two thousand feet, are heavily timbered, the trees springing from a matted undergrowth of scrub. About fifteen miles below the falls, the river reaches a small mining township which has received the name of Reefton. This is the highest point of the stream at which there are any inhabitants, or wherewith there is regular communication. For the next thirty miles of its serpentine course, the scenery upon its banks is extremely picturesque. It hurries along over boulders, and shingle and "bubbles into eddying bays, and babbles on the pebbles," receiving numerous tributaries which come tumbling down the steep slopes, completely hidden from view by the over-arching fronds of the fern-trees, but betraying their presence by the wonderful vividness and rank luxuriance of the masking vegetation. The stream, although generally from sixty, to a hundred feet wide, is rarely more than three or four feet deep. On its northern bank, the ranges rise to a height of between two and three thousand feet just below the point at which it effects a junction with Badger Creek, the Yarra emerges into a level, open country, and soon afterwards receives the waters of the Watts. These come down through a deep, narrow valley lying between Mount Juliet and the Dividing Range; but the sources of this pure perennial stream have been only partially explored, owing to the steep and rugged character of the mountains in this region, and the extraordinary density, of the undergrowth in the forests by which they are covered. The forests themselves are remarkable as the habitat, among others, of the Eucalyptus amygdalina, originally figured and described by Labillardiere. It reaches a greater altitude than any other known tree upon the face of the globe. Baron von Mueller, the Government botanist for the colony of Victoria, whose "Eucalyptographia" promises to become a standard authority on the subject, states that he himself has obtained approximate heights of four hundred feet for this tree at the Black Spur, a few miles beyond Fernshaw, in these ranges; that measurements up to one hundred and ten feet were procured by Mr. A. W. Howitt in Gippsland; and that Mr. R. Boyle ascertained the length of a tree of this kind which had fallen in the Dandenong Ranges to be four hundred and twenty feet, or within thirty feet of the height of the Great Pyramid. Another measurement showed that the length of the stem up to the ramification of the first branch, where it had a diameter of four feet, was not less than two hundred and ninety-five feet. Some of these giants of the forests have circumference of one hundred and thirty feet close to the ground; and upon a square mile of land as many as a hundred trees have been counted, none of which have been less than forty feet in circumference at their base. This variety is remarkably rapid in its growth, and has been known to reach a height of sixty feet in nine years, besides being one of the hardiest members of its species. Its foliage is exceptionally rich in oils of great value, both medicinally and economically, as not less than five hundred ounces have been distilled from one thousand pounds of the fresh leaves of the Eucalyptus amygdalina with their stalklets and branchlets. These forests are also the home of the Eucalyptus globulus, the most precious gift, perhaps, which the flora of Australia has presented to the Old World. The seeds of this tree, the leaves of which are literally for "the healing of the nations," were first sent to Italy, for plantation in the Pontine Marshes, by Dr. Goold, the late Archbishop of Melbourne, in 1869, and thus was commenced a movement which seems destined to combat and conquer malaria in all its European haunts.

The minor streams which flow into the sea or its inlets in the south-western portion of Gippsland —such as the Albert, the Tarra, the Agnes, the Morwell, the Powlett, the Bass, the Tarwin, the Franklin, the Tarago, the Buneep, and the Moe drain the lower part of the county of Buln Buln, as also that of Mornington; the Lang Lang and the Tarago creeping sluggishly through a wide-spreading marsh of not less than seventy thousand acres in extent, and bearing the native name of the Kooweerup Swamp.

To the westward of the Yarra, the Plenty takes its rise in the ranges which were first crossed by Hume and Hovell in the year 1824, and received the name of the former, but they are now generally known as the Plenty Ranges. They form an integral portion, however, of the Great Divide, and the stream just spoken of flows into a reservoir constructed by throwing an embankment across the valley, and serves as one of the main sources of water supply to the city of Melbourne and its belt of populous suburbs. About forty miles distant, in a straight line to the westward, the Saltwater River heads back to the Cordillera, and receiving many creeks in its serpentine course, accomplishes a journey of a hundred miles before it discharges itself into the Yarra, a few miles above the head of Hobson’s Bay.

A little to the northward of Mount Wilson, which forms part of a spur thrown off by the Great Dividing Range, Werribee takes its rise, and flows through a highly picturesque country, like its principal affluent, the Lerderberg, until it reaches Bacchus Marsh; below this it begins to groove a deep channel through a wide spreading champaign, across which its tortuous course is clearly defined by an irregular avenue of trees, eventually finding an outlet in Port Phillip Bay not many miles to the eastward of the outfall of the Little River, the unimportance of which is sufficiently denoted by its expressive name.

The right branch of the Moorabool has its origin close to the sources of the Werribee; while the left, locally known as the Lal Lal Creek, heads to the Great Dividing Range, a few miles to the north-east of Ballarat. The two streams effect a junction five miles to the eastward of a township bearing the poetical name of Elaine; and the river, pursuing a southerly direction, skirting the Steiglitz Ranges, flows through some romantic scenery, with high cliffs rising like a gigantic wall upon one side of the stream, until it merges its separate existence in that of the Barwon, which absorbs also the waters of the Yarrowee. The latter comes down from the north, and has its birth in the auriferous region of which Ballarat is the centre, whence it takes a north-easterly direction as far as Inverleigh, the point of junction with the Yarrowee; shortly afterwards it curves round to the south-east, and ultimately discharges its waters into Lake Connewarre, having an outlet to the ocean through the Barwon Heads.

The Erskine, the Barrum, the Parker, the Calder, the Aire, and the Gellibrand all have their sources in the Coast Ranges, and empty themselves into the ocean —the first at Loutit Bay and the last at Point Ronald. Rising, as a general rule, at a great altitude, their downward course lies through gorges heavily timbered with peppermint, box, messmate, ironbark, blue gum, beech and blackwood —some of them two hundred feet high except in positions which are much exposed to the south-easterly gales, where stunted scrub and ti-tree take the place of the noble trees that flourish in more sheltered situations; while tree-ferns ascend to the very summits of the secondary spurs. Beautiful cascades are of frequent occurrence, those on the Erskine River, which are easily accessible from Lorne, being the most notable in this respect.

The Hopkins, which enters the sea about a mile to the eastward of Warrnambool, takes its rise on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat, and receives, in its southward progress, the waters of a dozen tributaries, the most important of these being Mount Emu Creek, which heads to the Great Dividing Range. The Hopkins is a favourite stream with anglers. It flows through a pretty country, and the scenery upon its banks is agreeably diversified —now presenting high cliffs, tapestried with shrubs and creepers; now a sylvan landscape and anon undulating pastures, sprinkled with sleek cattle or fleecy sheep, and then a rising township, with its cottages clustering round a primitive church; or a country mansion, like that of Hopkins Hill, framed in a stately zone of trees, and not unworthy to emulate the country houses which lend such a charm to rural England.

The Eumeralla serves as a natural drainage channel for a considerable body of water which accumulates in Buckley’s Swamp, about seven miles to the north-east of Mount Napier. Thence it flows in a south-westerly direction through a thick forest of eucalpytus and banksia, with high land of trap formation on either side, until it reaches the township of Macarthur, where it is joined by the Breakfast and Blackfellow Creeks, and flows southerly from this point through a marsh; country; this is in some places seven miles wide, and during a very rainy season the marshes become a series of lagoons dotted with small islands. On approaching within a mile of the sea coast, it bends abruptly round to the east, and running parallel with the beach for something like seven miles, it discharges its waters into Lake Yambuk, which also receives those of the Shaw, an unimportant stream rising near Harton Hills, twenty miles to the northward in a straight line.

The Wannon flows from the eastern slopes of the northern extremity of the Serra Range, and pursues a southerly course until it sweeps round the base of Mount Sturgeon, when it doubles back in a north-westerly direction as far as the township of Cavendish. There it is again deflected to the southward, and augmented by many tributaries, it reaches a ridge of rock about a mile from Redruth. Below the ridge there is a sudden change in the country, and the river, leaping over a ledge, worn smooth by the slow erosion of the waters during innumerable centuries, plunges in one bright, broad, translucent sheet into a pool a hundred feet beneath, where it whirls and eddies amidst the masses of rock which break it up into many foaming torrents, and greatly add to the picturesqueness of the scene. Four or five miles from Redruth, the Wannon effects a junction with the Grange Burn, rising a little to the eastward of the county boundaries of Villiers and Normanby, and thenceforward the course of the combined streams is north-westerly until the Wannon merges its identity in the Glenelg, the most westerly, and perhaps the most circuitous, of all Victorian rivers.

This stream meanders for upwards of two hundred and fifty miles before it reaches its outfall at Nelson. After emerging from the mountainous region, the Glenelg takes a northerly direction through grassy flats, sprinkled with stunted timber and banksia heath for about seven miles, and then makes a sudden bend to the south-west for upwards of twenty miles, when, its course being obstructed by a low range, describes a semi-circle to Balmoral, at which point it sweeps round to the north-east for a dozen miles or so, and once more folds back upon itself and pursues a south-westerly path, with capricious windings, through high banks, clothed for the most part with timber, until it absorbs the waters of Power’s Creek, flowing into it from the westward. Here it commences its southward career, but still erratically, and augmented by the Stokes and the Crawford and the Glenaulin Creek, it flows down to within a few miles of the ocean, starts off in a westerly direction, and once more curves round to the east before emptying itself into the sea.

The Wimmera is the most westerly of those Victorian rivers which belong to its northern water-shed, and may be grouped with the Avon and the Avoca on account of their common characteristics, for each fails to find its way to the Murray, which is the reservoir of the whole of the streams to be spoken of hereafter. Taking its rise in the neighbourhood of Ben Nevis, and augmented in volume by a number of creeks from the Pyrenees and the Grampians, the Wimmera flows in a north westerly direction until in the vicinity of Longernong it sends off a branch, locally known as the Yarriambiack Creek, which eventually disappears in the mallee scrub surrounding Lake Corong. Beyond Horsham the main stream bends round to the north, flows into and out of Lake Hindmarsh, goes by the name of Outlet Creek, between this and Lake Albacutya, resumes that appellation in quitting the latter, and disappears amidst the sand hills which emboss the surface of the and plain beyond the last named lake. The Avon, which heads to Mount Navarre, and receives the Richardson —a river that ceases to flow entirely during seasons of protracted drought —runs into Lake Buloke, four miles north of Donald, and this is subject to the same infirmity as its tributaries, as it is sometimes dry for years together. The Avoca, which takes its rise in the amphitheatre formed by the Great Dividing Range in the neighbourhood of Ben Major, and has one of the most beautiful birthplaces a lover of the picturesque could desire to see, flows through an equally beautiful country during the earlier portion of its course. The valleys are bright with verdure, and the hills in some places are table-topped, in others softly rounded, and carpeted with succulent grasses; while here and there, among the recesses of the ruggeder of the mountains, are hidden deep romantic ravines —masses of rock piled up in fantastic confusion —and caves in which hermits or bushrangers might find all the seclusion they could desire. By-and-by, however, as the Avoca flows northward, its banks become less and less picturesque until, at a point almost twenty miles due south of the junction of the Loddon with the Murray, the stream dwindles down to a mere thread of water, and then disappears.

The Loddon is an aggregation of between twenty and thirty creeks, all of them taking their rise in the Great Dividing Range or in the northerly spurs which it throws off, and, after pursuing an erratic course through the county of Talbot, it begins to flow in a direction almost due north, serving as a boundary line between the counties of Bendigo and Gambier, on its right bank, and those of Gladstone and Tatchera on its left. Augmented on its way by the waters of Moonlight Creek and Murrabit River, it flows into the Murray near Swan Hill. It is likely, hereafter to play an important part in the artificial irrigation of the surrounding district. This will also be the case with the Campaspe, which takes its rise in the Dividing Range a little to the westward of Mount Macedon, and having received the waters of the Coliban at Kimbolton, flows through the spacious plains which spread out thence to the Murray, into which it discharges itself at Echuca. The source of the Goulburn must be sought in the vicinity of Mount Matlock, and from its rise in this romantic region, until it reaches Avenel, the course of the river lies through some of the grandest scenery in Victoria. Ranges of heavily-timbered mountains flank it on both sides, leaving in some places a narrow and tortuous hollow through which the stream winds in an endless succession of curves. At other times a valley widens out and offers a soil of wonderful richness for the enterprising husbandman to exploit. And all the tributaries of the Goulburn —the Jamieson, the Howqua, the Seven Creeks and. the Broken River have their birthplaces in the midst of labyrinthine ranges, and lend an additional beauty to scenery which it would be difficult to over praise. There is no limit to the variety of form assumed by these intermediate mountain chains, or to the apparently innumerable shades of colour which they wear, from the faint vapoury blue of the distant peaks, to the imperial purple in which some of the nearer mountains robe themselves when the sunlight is withdrawn from them, and they lift their massive shoulders up against the western sky, which is all aglow with the amber radiance of the declining luminary. The air is full of aromatic odours; and excepting that you now and then catch the chime of a far distant waterfall, the silence that prevails in these sylvan solitudes is only invaded by the sharp metallic notes —like the percussion of a small steel hammer on a small steel anvil —of the bell-birds, conveying the never-failing assurance that a stream is not far off. For

Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers
Are the voices of bell-birds to thirsty far-comers;
When fiery December sets foot in the forest,
And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,
Pent in the ridges for ever and ever,
The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river
With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose torrents
Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents.

The Ovens River, like its affluents —the King, the Buffalo and the Buckland —heads to the St. Bernard Mount, its eastern and western branches rising on the opposite sides of the same ridge, and effecting a junction at Harrietville. Until it reaches Bright, this river traverses a region of remarkable grandeur, dominated by one of the highest mountains in Victoria. From Bright the valley of the Ovens widens out, especially on the right bank, and the rich pastures, both here and in the open country beyond Myrtleford, are noted for their fine grazing qualities. The King River, which joins the Ovens at Wangaratta, also flows through similar country, and between the two streams lie the far-famed Oxley Plains.

The sources of the Kiewa, at the foot of Mount Hotham, are separated only by a mountain range on the left from those of the eastern branch of the Ovens River, and by another mountain range to the right from those of one of the main affluents of the Mitta Mitta. The whole region, in fact, from the New South Wales border line to the east, and the slopes of the Dandenong ranges to the west, is that of the maximum rainfall in Victoria, averaging nowhere less than forty and in some places exceeding fifty inches per annum. A line drawn from Mount Kosciusko in the neighbouring colony to Mount Minda, thence down to Cape Patterson, thence following in an easterly direction to Genoa Peak, where it trends upward to the border line, would represent approximately the boundaries of the rainy zone of Victoria. Within these limits are its noblest mountain ranges, nearly all of them clothed with forests to their very summits, and thus constituting catchment areas of enormous extent and value. Eleven rivers, to say nothing of creeks innumerable, take their departure from the southern slopes of the mountain system comprehended within this space; and five important streams, without reckoning the Murray, flow from it to the northward, and swell the volume of the latter. The Kiewa, after winding its way between high ranges and sweeping past Mount Feathertop, receiving a host of petty tributaries in its progress —some of which pour into it from the massive shoulders of Mount Bogong —enters into a tolerably broad depression four or five miles south of Mullindolingong, a valley only encroached upon by the buttress-like spurs thrown out by two parallel ranges, one of which follows its course to within a few miles of the Murray, while the other stops short at the point ‘where the Yakandandah Creek runs into the Kiewa; the latter joining the Murray at Wodonga.

The Mitta Mitta takes its rise in the county, of Bogong, and bearing the name of Livingstone Creek, in the earlier stage of its existence, the stream, which is here upwards of two thousand feet above the level of the sea, flows past the mining township of Omeo, and hence pursues a northerly course, receiving near Hinnomunjie the overflow of Lake Omeo. On both sides, the Mitta Mitta absorbs a great number of tributaries, the more important of which are the Dark River on its right and the Victoria, Bundarrah and Big Rivers on its left bank, while its waters are augmented by those of half a hundred creeks. From Hinnomunjie to Magorra there is an almost uninterrupted chain of hills, running down both banks of the river with narrow valleys edging in among the foot hills, which sometimes spread out like a fan, and in others like the fingers of the hand. Waterfalls abound in this picturesque region, and the country far away to the right and left is one succession of lofty, ranges, some of which radiate to all points of the compass from a central peak, as is the case with those which have Mount Gibbo for their ganglion; while others throw out long lateral branches to the eastward only, from a prolonged and sinuous spine, as is the case with the majestic range to which Mounts Wills, Bogong and Towanga belong, and have only a few short piers, as it were, to the west. Many magnificent gorges and ravines are hidden away, in this little known region, and the Mitta Mitta, after traversing it from south to north, for a distance of one hundred and fifty, miles, finally flows into the Murray only a few miles from the outfall of the Kiewa.

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