Ben Lomond,
the highest mountain but one in Tasmania, and the fountain head of several rivers. Here is another instance of topographical mis-nomenclature in Tasmania. If the truth were known, it probably, in no particular, resembles the Ben Lomond of Scotland. Its bold broken and rugged outline at once arrests the visitor’s attention. It, in this particular, presenting such striking contrast to the smoothly rounded hills in the neighborhood. This feature is due to the fact, that its summit consists of diorite, i. e. trap rock used as metal for the roads. The granite, as already stated, has burst through the stratified formations, and it in turn has been disrupted by the diorite which covers it with a capping, and this occurred during a far subsequent period known to geologists as the great Volcanic Epoch. Many, and diverse are the forms the outline of this mountain present as the traveller speeds along. At one time its southernmost part presents the appearance of a lion couchant. A mile or two further on, and this resemblance no longer exists, and is like anything the imagination of the spectator can supply. On the eastern escarpment, near the foot of the mountain there is coal, and also auriferous quartz lodes. The latter only is worked.
When about half the distance to Fingal is accomplished, there is another short stoppage to change horses at a roadside stable, and a little further on the visitor sees an antiquated vestige of former days in the shape of a ruined dwelling. It is known as Grenbers Haunted House. Tradition has it, that a horrible murder was committed there in the early days of the colony, and no one will live in it on account of the nightly visitations of the ghost of the murdered man. Yonder lofty hill, with the peculiar cone-shaped rock-mass rising high from the centre of the summit, is Tower Hill, where gold mining in the quartz lodes is carried on with apparently not very satisfactory results. As the traveller proceeds along the smooth and winding road, he will observe that some of the cuttings have been made to a considerable depth through very rounded pebbles and boulders of quartz, and granite, interspersed occasionally with slate, sandstone, and greenstone, while bands of gravel are frequently interstratified. These are the ancient bed of the South Esk river, rolling now more than one hundred feet below, through the valley, and they tell him that many ages ago at this height that river flowed. These exposed terraces alternate with cuttings through the Silurian beds, exposing in vertical sections quartz veins, traversing the almost vertical, and very much contorted slates and sandstones. He has now reached “Tullochgorum,” the fine property of James Grant, Esq., where the neat villa is just discernible through the foliage of willows which surround it. In half an hour more he will enter the township of