Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/211

( 186 ) wilds of Port Philip on our first arrival. Here Contemplation, with her musing sister Melancholy, might find an undisturbed retreat. Often at the calm hour of evening I have wandered through the woods,

The last hymn of the feathered choiristerschoristers [sic] to the setting sun, and the soft murmurs of the breeze, faintly broke the death-like silence that reigned around; while the lightly trodden path of the solitary savage, or the dead ashes of his fire, alone pointed out the existence of human beings. In the course of a very few weeks the scene was greatly altered; lanes were cut in the woods for the passage of the timber carriages; the huts of