Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 144.djvu/119

1888.] number of definite and and severe concussions – say half-a-dozen to a dozen – for each revolution of the wheel. You marvel at the contrivances of nature which carry you through with every joint and vertebra intact, and it was some little satisfaction to me to observe that the driver usually liked it even less than I did. To be sure, he had the possible dislocation of his coach-springs as well as of the personal machine to think of. It is, however, a handy and effective road where timber is unlimited and labour dear, and lasts well. One I made acquaintance with, which is sixteen or eighteen years old, and I fear likely to last some time longer, runs through a remarkable district to the north of Melbourne, which the Government, with wise foresight, has appropriated for the. sake of the water-supply, with the collateral purpose of a timber reserve. Although within 25 or 30 miles of Melbourne, the rainfall of this district is far greater than around the capital. It is watered by some very pretty streams, looking as if intended by nature for trout streams, which indeed they will some day be, for trout have been successfully introduced, though the people say they are shy and very hard to catch, which for the present is perhaps just as well. Meanwhile the great natural interest of the district lies in the damp valleys, which contain the giant eucalypti (chiefly E. amygdalina), the tallest trees in the world, said to be, some of them, 400 feet high. Splendid sticks they are certainly, running up some 200 feet without a branch, and the largest I saw 50 feet in girth. The wonder is, whence they derive the materials for such a mass of solid timber, for they grow very close together, and the intervening space is covered with smaller trees and undergrowth, including most beautiful tree-ferns. I think the height strikes you most forcibly when you try to sketch, and find how small a proportion of the whole tree you can get into the picture. But the effect in some of the larger valleys, notably on the road from Marysville towards the Yarra, where the great steep hillsides which form either slope of the valley are clothed with these magnificent trees, rising up, one series beyond another, for hundreds of feet – in fact, as far as the eye can reach – is very grand. The district will no doubt become a very general summer resort for the people of Melbourne, and its amenities will be developed, to that end, by the Administration. This recognition of the duty on the part of Government, in these new and rising countries, to provide in various ways for the comfort and welfare of the people – in short, to make the world a pleasanter place to live in than, for the great majority, it has hitherto been – is a pleasant feature to dwell on, and a hopeful; and, comparatively speaking, how easy the task! All our experience and mistakes to guide them, and infinitely larger resources than now remain to us to work with. Unlimited land! One feels a little envious, remembering the difficulty, at home, of providing a few acres of pleasure-ground or breathing-space, even for a great town; while the notion of national parks on a large scale, such as these young countries are establishing, is in our case too wild even for a dream. The thought of these vast areas of unoccupied but available land can hardly fail to recall the mistake made by our statesmen of the day in not retaining some sort of right