Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and VictoriaWestgarth, William
History
Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria
Westgarth, William
Victoria -- Description and travel
Eumerella, or rather the Boyd fragment of that large, rich, and varied
cattle area, was in charge of a versatile youth of the name of Craufurd,
of a good Scotch family, whom, to the great amusement of my friend
Fennell, I re-christened as Squire Hopeless, owing to his utter
nonconformability to the monotonies of civilized life. I was
sufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me, so
we were soon off over the Stony Rises to Mount Eeles, only a few miles
away, which, like another Porndon, raised its not lofty but
mysterious-looking head to arouse our curiosity. We were guided latterly
by a well-beaten native track, for this seemed a favourite walk of the
aborigines. Our trip was not without danger, for the aboriginal
relations had been anything but of that peacefulness which characterized
the Melbourne vicinities; but we made up a station detachment under a
remarkably fine strong young fellow called Wells, of Tasmanian birth,
and equal, in an emergency, to six or a dozen natives for his own share.
We saw nothing of natives, however, and were rewarded with wonders of
geology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down into
a vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry,
unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an
extinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the
Vesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior to
the grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiian
eruption. Let the crowds of the future Pompeiis and Herculaneums of
Victoria look out, for their Vesuvius may some day play havoc, with
similar treachery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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