Diana’s Basin
and one can well conceive the fair and fleet goddess selecting such a spot to bathe her limbs. Yonder dwelling, partly visible through the trees, which flourish to the water’s edge, is the Summer retreat of F. Groome, Esq. of “Harefield” at St. Mary’s. This lake is like the others which we have passed—an inlet of the sea enclosed by a large and high sandbank. Wild ducks, teal, and the never-absent cormorant, haunt it in vast numbers, for it abounds in fish. Here for the first time since leaving the eastern extremity of the pass we come upon granite the prevailing rock of the stanniferous district we are about to enter. A very interesting and instructive tale of cosmical change does this same granite tell, but time and circumstance alike forbid us staying to listen to it now. It will have been observed that there is a most decided change in the character of the vegetation in these parts. The gum trees no longer have the white, smooth bark which mark them a few miles to the south-east. Instead of this the bark is rough, thick, and deeply furrowed. They are the iron bark, or redgum of the colonists, an exceedingly hard, and durable wood and it is much prized for sluice boxes by the tin miner. Five miles more, and as the sun is setting over the blue and distant mountains in the west—an abrupt turn of the road occurs, and lo! the truly magnificent