AN AUTUMN TRIP TO TASMANIA.

Press, Volume XLVII, Issue 7700, 4 November 1890, Page 6

AN AUTUMN TRIP TO TASMANIA.

We&kf Press.

From the Mersey we took passage in the .steamer Mangana for Bma l Btff. w>d Circular Head. The view of the coast from the sea is singularly pleasing ana picturesque: the outline of the land la soft and undulating, falling to the sea in low bluffs and crags of black basalt;, while the tops are either brilliantly green with grass or covered with gum forest, and far inland isolated small ranges of mountains peep up above the outline of the table land. Several villages are seen on the coast at the mouths of rivers, such are the Don, the Forth, the Leven, the Penguin, and the Ingliss. At Emu Bay we took in so many potatoes that there was hardly room to move ia the steamer, and on our arrival at Circular Head in the early morning there were 1000 bags more waiting to be shipped. Handed at Circular Head, which is a village nestling under the shelter of a very singular-looking hill, called in slang language the Nut. The Nut had once been an island, bnt is now united to the peninsula of the mainland by sandy flats covered with rich pasture. The Nufc, thus nearly surrounded by deep sea, is a flat-topped mass of basalt rock, with vertical or very steep sides, and 430 feet high; it looks like an old fortress, and in warlike countries like the New Zealand of the Maoris it would have been nearly impregnable. Oα Sunday morning I climbed up the easily-accessible slope, and sat enjoying the view for a long time. The top is a fiat of nearly 100 acres, nearly level* and covered with tussock and English grass, with a few bushes of honeysuckle, which are little trees with very dark green leaves and rough scored bark. There is a noble view from the top from east to north: round to the west is the blue sea; at the west is seen the long outline of several islands which form the western entrance ot Bass's Strait. Then the long, low and distant outline of the west coast of Tasmania, indicating an immense etretch of level land. In the south the distant outline of the land rises into low, long ridges, and to the S.E. into distant isolated ranges. To the east is the hilly coastline we had sailed along: the above refers to the distant horizon. Closer by there are downs or low tablelands of the richest basalt land. A peninsula, seven miles long and one mile wide, stretches out into the sea like a finger, and attached to the east side of it is the Nut, on which I stand. The peninsula is bounded on either side by what is known as the east and west inlet, being miles of beach of bright yellow sand, which afford travellers a fine gallop, and children amusement in gathering the numbers of pretty shells on these beaches. On the peninsula I look down on the finest piece of land in Tasmania, brilliantly green with pasture, dotted with aps of trees and .fine dwelling-houses, Eivided up with fences in which are toughed potato fields. On the mainland", as far as the eye can distinguish clearly, the singular feature of this land is Been in dense forests of dead trees, their white and leaflet trunks standing on the ground like a thicket of hop poles. There are che ringed or "rung" trees on cultivated land.andalthoughopenfieldscannotbeseen by reason of trunks and intervening bush, yet there is a great quantity of cult i- ! vated land of which Circular Head Iβ the central depot, and this district is considered the finest in Tasmania. The soil is preternaf uraliy red, so much so that everything else partakes of the same i colour; the cattle and.horses are red from their hoofs to their bellies, and are smeared with red dust all over their hides ;. the ducks, geese, and fowls are red, and the dngs shockingly so; the potatoes are red, and %o are their cultivators, ana all implements. From the Nut the little village called Stanley looks very pretty, situated on the low green land which joins the peninsula to the Nut; it enjoys the fresh sea breezes on both sides, is overlooked by the black cliffs of the Nut, and the green pastures of the peninsula. It had a convenient little port with a jetty built sixty years ago, under shelter of the Nut, but Nature, which favours Stanley in everything, has seen fit to be unkind in the matter of the port, which is silted up, so the people are very unhappy and raise piteous outcries unto Jupiter to help them to a good harbour. On the Nut were a number of fine sheep,: and I wondered how they got water, as they are surrounded on this elevated paddock by precipices, but I found on the top a sloping hole which had been dug, and at the bottom, 20ft below the surface, was a quantity of what must be called water from the poverty of the English . language, but I cannot conceive of any living thing drinking " it and surviving. However, the said hole afforded mc a view of the process by which bard, black basalt rock is turned to the richest chocolate red soil. The surface is red soil, below is a reddish brown clay, lower still a grayish brown stoney earth, with lumps of undecomposed basalt in it, and this passes insensibly into the basalt rock. Such is the process by which the black rock weathers into chocolate soil. , The time required to transform trap-rock into, potato soil for the use of man is 00 years; readers will please fill in the figures to their liking. The wide sweep of the bay of Scott Inlet, with its hard yellow sand beach, forms the high road from the country districts to the port, and on week days strings of carts, drawn bj long teams of bones, are seen winding round the outline of the bay, men and women on horseback going to or coming from the distant farm land, greyhounds and collies careering after the horses ; and altogether the aspect of Stanley is fresh breezes, brilliant sunshine, green fields, thriving people, and bucolic abundance. 1 could not help noticing the J fresh complexions and good looks OS the children and girls, and found, on enquire. ' ing, that some of the choicest specimens i of this production were reared amid the half-cleared bush of the distant west coast farms, where the marsupial wolf and the sanguinary devil pursue the bounding kangaroo and hopping wallaby over the prostrate trunks of the farms. On these lovely yelow beaches I observed numbers of a small crab,, biueleh ■ purple in colour, with its face sharp like i the ram of an Ironclad; when undisturbed ! this crab is always busily employed! in forming sand pellets, with the reault that the whole beach below H. W.M. looks as if it were thickly strewn with' pearl barley. The crab gathers the sand in its little nippers, raises, it and rolls II about on its boat-stem shaped face, then drops to the ground a completely round little ball of sand; I could not discover what object it had, in this labour; when i disturbed it burrows under the sand with Seat rapidity, leaving only a little damp 11 to show where ifc has disappeared. There are numbers of the great black crow in this neighbourhood, and indeed all over the country icie the most noticeable bird; its loud cawing is heard everywhere, it has a persistent argumentative caw as if it were trying hard to talk, and I was I amused to see a number of them on the. beach feeding on crabs and sea insects. They kept up an incessant loud cawing, and one or two of the largest every now and then bowed their heads to the ground and cawed out the words ,a half .past four," the four in a deep long note. Ground larks and the beautiful crimson breast robins are numerals, and on the. beach little parties of dottrels run along the sand looking, in the distance, like mice. Having finished my business st Circular Head, we took a buggy and drove to Table Cape. "The: road passes, at first through ten miles of flat forest land, the soil being a sandy loam, but.it is despised in the north-west of Tasmania, where no one will look at anything bub chocolate soil. Then we ascend some lo wfhilis of qaartzite rock, with white sandy soil, which is really of little value. Hens I saw still in flower numbers of the beautiful pink heath; the land is covered with small white gum. manuka, honeysuckle trees, and prickly mimosa, called " prickly I Moses f the undergrowth is of different 1 kinds of rushes, spear grass, button grass, &c.; but I observed no pasture grasses. At about eighteen miles from Stanley wa pass the Detention river, a© called from Lady Franklin having been detained here by floods. It has a fine, well-kept bridge over it, and it is a wide, still river of, the Mask water, so common in Tasffisalan rivers, Wβ then pass through and between gome lew wooded hills, and coon after the "rung "tres§» appear, showing that •we ere agate Iβ chocolate aoflL We atop at jbo fine farm of Mr Dallas for breakfast. At this place there Is a large district of good land, which is being rapidly settled and cleared, and tigero era forests at fine, timber aU round the district. Proceeding on ear journey we pass through low hills o* miserable oaartsie© reek, js»'*oil being white sand with peat on the surface. This qu&rtsite rock, so common, in soma parts of Tasmania, Is white sandstone, which appears to have beea subjected to pressure sod heat until the sand &&s partially crystallised and formed afjSagfi gritty aaartz : its weathering and disintegration forms a soil of white or pale' yellow sand, on which beach, button grass, a small stunted reed, and various species of rushes grow, aoddeeaylQg, form a top soli of spongy p«tf» Weaeoa, however, passed

Into a; t«7 floe forest ot grand Iα ¥£&Sr places M iollirom slates and shales. This fine foseal) Iβ being cleared in a few places, and bash fires hare spread and in* nSieb of thab near the road. I saw Qere numberiefc&rußg and dead trees along the-- road, which were higher thaa any tree* I ever remember to have seen. Wβ fcheo p&sa through a tract of hilly country covered with forests, the rocks of which are qaarfczite and hard slates, but aa we approach Table Cape the red soil again appears, and with it signs of settlement anfi cultivation, the fields as usual bristling with dead trees. Table Cane is formed by an elevated ridge or plateau of basalt which projects far into the sea, qu?fce flat on top, 400 ft high and covered with the finest soil; part of it ia still in bush of gum and wattle, but it is rapidly being brought into cultivation, and for miles inland che country is covered with farms and comfortable cottages. The river Flowerdale flows Rear the foot of this ridge, over which there is a fine bridge. From Table Cape the road passed over undulating country of basalt or shales mostly cleared and settled by prosperous farmers. At eight miles on we descend to the valley of the Ingliss river, and stop at the pretty sea-aide town of Wynyard. This is a thriving town, rapidly growing in wealth and size, pleasantly situated on Sat loamy land at the mouth of the river with cottages and villas extending along 'the sea -beach towards the cast, and the beautiful quiet blue sea of Bass's Straits in front. Behind the town is au extensive fiat forming the valley of the river Ingliss, composed or sandy loam, which the people are Just beginning to discover is productive of good grass and potatoes. There are low ridges of basaltic red soil here and there iv this flat ;in the bush is a singular isolated mass of black trap-rock standing up to a height of 40 feet; the sea beach presents curious traces of by-gone volcanic action. Extensive reefs and Hat masses of rock line the shore and project far into the sea; this rock is a hard sandstone, in which are embedded numerous water-worn pebbles, boulders, andangular fragments of hard sandstone or qaartzite. An overflow of hot basalt has apparently passed over this mud, baking it into a hard stone and causing the confined moisture to turn to steam, which has filled the stone with blow holes. Iv places one may notice where the mud has been covered with beds of sand and shingle, and the whole has been roasted or fused into a solid rock with the mud on which it lay when the hot lava passed over it. None of .the basalt is to be aeen, and ie may be supposed that when the redhot stone flowed into the eea and covered the mud it was rendered so vesicular by the steam that it toon decayed and wore away, leaving the more durable baked mud now turned into very hard stone. All the sea beach along thie N.W. coast of Tasmania shows signs of former volcanic activity; sheets ot basalt have flowed, presumably from some point inland towards the sea, cutting through or overlaying the older slate sandstone or shale rock?, and forming hard promontories projecting into the sea. Some of their basalt weathers into the red soil, others resist all disintegration. The Tasmanlans I distinguish them by calling one basalt, the other greenstone, but I could nob perceive what, constitutes the difference.

The drive from v\ yayard to Emu Bay presents as pretty a piece of Taamauiaa scenery ac any I tjeve seen. The country is hilly and wooded, but with numerous villages, farms, and clearings, and the road skins the sea shores most of the distance. The coast Is rocky, but often the roads are flat and sloping into the sea, presenting curious and i uteres tiug geological sections, being generally hard slates or sandstones highly tilted, and the wavy, curved, or contorted strata are marked out by being scrubbed by the sea, which has worn away the softer layers andlefc the harder standing up. ' These waves form charming bays and coves, of tea enclosing patches of clear sea-water, where the naturalist, the bather, or the little boy with his boat would be equally delighted. These dark, rugged shores are alternated with beaches of dright yellow sand such as Ariel sang of in Shakespeare. This pretty coast is the home of the retired Indian officer who, like the old lion which retires to a shady cove to die, seeks the cool and healthy shores of Bass's Straits, and under the fragrant gum and odorous wattle, fanned by the soft gales from Auatr&ly the blest, he lays his turbulent spirit to rest. The town of Buraie, at Kmu Bay, is a rapidly growing town, prettily situated at the foot of the hills which form the table land extending inland, facing the sea, with a great projecting poinc and breakwater ronnlug its port, and beautiful sandy beaches on each side of it. The town combiues the aspects of & pretty seaside village with the business character of a pore, which forms the terminus of the Mount railway and the entrepdt of a rich and thriving farming district. Facing the warm rays of the northern sun ■ft receives the balmiest breezes from the sea, but it* sheltered by the hills from the colder blasts, and as a sentimental friend of mlue remarked, it is like a dove nestling in a woman's breast (