NATURE IN AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9452, 24 August 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

NATURE IN AUSTRALIA.

The aspect and spirit of nature in Australia is most curious and suggestive. The Australian forests are funereal and stern, and seem to stifle in their black gorges a story of sullen despair. No leaves fall from the trees, but from the melancholy gum strips of white bark hang and rustle. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of cockatoos stream out shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the. mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The aborigines aver that, when night comes, from the bottomless depths of some lagoon a misshapen monster rises, dragging his loathsome length along the ooze. From a corner ofthe 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. In"Australia alone Is t-o be found the grotesque, the weird, the strange scribblings of nature learning how to write. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard gumtrees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and he who feels its desolation aright begins to comprehend why free Esau loved hie heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt.—Pall Mall Gazette.