Page 127 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman’s Pen-
insula, hanging, like a huge double-dropped ear-ring, from
the mainland. Getting round under the Pillar rock through
Storm Bay to Storing Island, we sight the Italy of this minia-
ture Adriatic. Between Hobart Town and Sorrell, Pittwater
and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point of land—the
Italian boot with its toe bent upwards—projects into the bay,
and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel,
dotted with rocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes,
between its western side and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the
dangerous passage known as D’Entrecasteaux Channel. At
the southern entrance of D’Entrecasteaux Channel, a line
of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of the Ac-
taeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with
the shores of Recherche Bay; while, from the South Cape to
the jaws of Macquarie Harbour, the white water caused by
sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks of single rocks abruptly
rising in mid sea, warn the mariner off shore.
It would seem as though nature, jealous of the beau-
ties of her silver Derwent, had made the approach to it as
dangerous as possible; but once through the archipelago
of D’Entrecasteaux Channel, or the less dangerous eastern
passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river is delightful.
From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smiling
banks of New Norfolk, the river winds in a succession of
reaches, narrowing to a deep channel cleft between rug-
ged and towering cliffs. A line drawn due north from the
source of the Derwent would strike another river winding
out from the northern part of the island, as the Derwent

1 For the Term of His Natural Life