One Day I Took A Long Walk On The Side Of The Bay
Opposite To The Town:
I crossed in a steam-boat, two of which
are constantly plying backwards and forwards.
The machinery
of one of these vessels was entirely manufactured in
this colony, which, from its very foundation, then numbered
only three and thirty years! Another day I ascended Mount
Wellington; I took with me a guide, for I failed in a first
attempt, from the thickness of the wood. Our guide, however,
was a stupid fellow, and conducted us to the southern
and damp side of the mountain, where the vegetation was
very luxuriant; and where the labour of the ascent, from the
number of rotten trunks, was almost as great as on a mountain
in Tierra del Fuego or in Chiloe. It cost us five and a
half hours of hard climbing before we reached the summit.
In many parts the Eucalypti grew to a great size, and composed
a noble forest. In some of the dampest ravines, tree-
ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner; I saw one
which must have been at least twenty feet high to the base
of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. The fronds
forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy shade,
like that of the first hour of the night. The summit of the
mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular
masses of naked greenstone. Its elevation is 3100 feet above
the level of the sea.
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