Page 128 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

winds out from the south. The force of the waves, expended,
perhaps, in destroying the isthmus which, two thousand
years ago, probably connected Van Diemen’s Land with
the continent has been here less violent. The rounding cur-
rents of the Southern Ocean, meeting at the mouth of the
Tamar, have rushed upwards over the isthmus they have
devoured, and pouring against the south coast of Victoria,
have excavated there that inland sea called Port Philip Bay.
If the waves have gnawed the south coast of Van Diemen’s
Land, they have bitten a mouthful out of the south coast
of Victoria. The Bay is a millpool, having an area of nine
hundred square miles, with a race between the heads two
miles across.
About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of this
mill-race lies Van Diemen’s Land, fertile, fair, and rich,
rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which,
attracted by the Frenchman’s Cap, Wyld’s Crag, or the
lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour
down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams.
No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the
continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south
breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and
fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which
nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot
wind, born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast
Australian continent, sweeps over the scorched and crack-
ing plains, to lick up their streams and wither the herbage
in its path, until it meets the waters of the great south bay;
but in its passage across the straits it is reft of its fire, and

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