Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/119

Rh display of lollipops, it struck even such unobserving travellers as ourselves that the designation, like the name of the hamlet itself, Margate, had been prematurely assumed.

We resumed our walk. For several miles the road passes a very uninteresting tract of country. The soil is a miserable white loam, producing only stringy-bark trees, derisively called "bull's wool" by bushmen, from the peculiar texture of the bark. They were much scorched by bush fires. At two miles from Margate we crossed a small stream called the Snug River, which discharges its waters into a little inlet, that is so secluded as to have acquired this name. At a short distance from hence are the remains of a once excellent edifice, built originally by the district magistrate, which the destructive bush fires of January, 1854, destroyed, the brick walls excepted. It was then an inn; and at an outhouse, which has since been made habitable, the business has been re-commenced. The landlord, Mr. Haines, had a lamentable tale of misfortune to tell us; but the burning of his premises and furniture was hardly so distressing as his account of the misconduct of the vagabond sawyers and splitters of the neighbourhood, who, under pretence of giving assistance, robbed him of everything they could rescue from the fire.

The last four or five miles of the journey, to Oyster Cove we found the road passing over a succession of high and pretty steep hills, from some points of which we caught an occasional view of a very beautiful landscape; though, from the frequent intervention of trees, it was not seen to the greatest advantage. Now and then only, where an opening occurred, could we get a fair view of it; but, at th every few points where trees were few, we greatly admired the varied and magnificent picture that lay before us. The dusky eminences of South Bruny, stretched along the horizon, terminating in the south east in the bold and beautiful cliffs of the Fluted Cape. Adventure Bay, on the east of Bruny—the place of anchorage of the famous old navigators Cook, Furneaux, and Bligh, last century—lies fully in view, separated from the nearer waters of D'Entrecasteaux Channel by the long, low, thread-like isthmus that unites the two peninsulas of Bruny Island. This singular strip of sand looks more like an artificial embankment, as seen from a distance, than a natural barrier raised to resist the heavy ocean swell of the Pacific. Within the visible horizon of these open spaces, is contained nearly all of Bruny (32 miles long) with its deep and many inlets, and a vast extent of undulating country in the east and north east, fronting on the most varied coast line in the world, forming altogether a picture which well repays the toil of a long journey to see it.