BALLARAT

PORTLAND BAY.

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vessels drawing more than ten feet water; but this, it is thought, may be removed by dredging.

Should this be the case, the province of Victoria will enjoy the advantage of two excellent available ports, and have two great towns. In the other provinces there seems no probability of any rival competing with Sydney or Port Adelaide.

Forty miles from Geelong the Buninyong range forms part of the second series of mountains, after the termination of the Australian Alps. At Ballarat, one of the spurs of the Buninyong, the first gold-field in Victoria was worked, in the midst of plains of unequaled fertility.

In proceeding along the coast to the point where an engineering line divides Victoria from South Australia, the whole coast line of the former, being about 600 miles, the most important harbor is found in Portland Bay, 255 miles from Melbourne.

Three streams, none of them navigable, fall into this bay, which is little better than a roadstead, considered especially dangerous when the south-easterly gales, which prevail during the summer months, are blowing. The government has recently been compelled to pay one pound a ton more for vessels despatched to Portland Bay than to Hobson's Bay. The north shore is low; the western rises in bold cliffs, upwards of 150 feet.

It was at Portland Bay that one of the eariest settlements was formed by one of Messrs. Henty's whaling parties, on which the land explorers came, to their great surprise, after many

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weeks's journey through an unknown, uninhabited country.

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The Portland Bay district receives streams from the Grampians, a range running to the northward, of which Mount William, the extreme eastern point, is 4,500 feet in height. Mitchell ascended Mount Abrupt, on the south-eastern extremity of the Grampian range, and beheld from the edge of an almost perpendicular precipice, 1,700 feet in height, vast open plains bordered with forests and studded with lakes. tainly a land more favorable could not be found. Flocks might be turned out upon its hills, or the plow at once set agoing upon its plains. No primæval forests require to be first rooted out here, although there is as much timber as could be needed for utility or ornament." Australia Felix is one of the few regions in which the sanguine expectations of the discoverers have been realized.

It will be found on examining a map of the province of Victoria and of the Melbourne district,- and a most excellent one has been published by Mr. Ham, of Melbourne, that it has three natural divisions. The central division, including Australia Felix and Mount Alexander, finds its natural port and capital in Melbourne. The western division, including Portland Bay, for want of a better harbor, finds its outlet chiefly at Geelong. The eastern division, including Gipps' Land, finds partly an outlet at Western Port; but Gipps' Land must export and import through Alberton.

Victoria has many streams and rivulets, but no

DISCOVERY OF GIPPS' LAND.

301

rivers which are navigable in the European sense of the term.

Gipps' Land was discovered by Count Strzelecki, C. B., who is equally eminent as a scientific traveler and philanthropist. The honor has been claimed by Dr. Lang for a stockman, who communicated his discovery to his employers some months before the count published his report. This is probable. Stockmen have been the first explorers of most of the finest pasture districts of Australia; but it is contrary to the custom and interest of squatters to make such discoveries public.

In the count's report to Sir George Gipps, he says, "Seventeen miles S. S. E. from Lake Omeo, a beautiful stream, the first of the eastern waters, soon assumed the breadth of a river, and appeared to be a guide into a country hitherto unoccupied by white men. A hilly country closes the valley, narrows the river banks, and brings the explorer across the mountain ridges to an elevation whence there is a view of the sea on the distant horizon; to the south-east an undulating country, with mountain ridges to the north-east. Approaching or receding from the river, according to the windings of its bordering hills, the descent into a noble forest is effected. A series of rich pasture valleys, prairies, and open forests, are intersected and studded with rivers, lakes, and wooded hills; the pastures opening out and sloping towards the sea." Strzelecki describes Gipps' Land, viewed from Mount Gisborne, as resembling a semi-linear amphitheatre, walled from north-east to south-west