many creeks and very large swamps. Moreover, the county of Mornington has an extensive and varied coast-line where fish and molluscs are plentiful and easily procurable. These things must he borne in mind when the physical character of the colony is attentively viewed and its capability for the support of a wandering people more carefully shown. It is necessary to describe first those parts of the colony which could not of themselves support throughout the year any tribe or family of Aborigines, and some of which, if the blacks resorted to them at all, would be used by them as occasional hunting grounds only. Other parts, it is well known, would never be penetrated by them. The thick scrub, the want of water, and the fear of these untravelled wilds, would keep them as effectual barriers, separating tribes from tribes.
In the north-western parts of Victoria there is a vast tract of sands and clay-pans of Recent and Tertiary age, which is covered with Eucalyptus dumosa and E. oleosa, the nature of which none but those who have endeavoured to penetrate it can have an accurate idea. Its area is not less than 14,000 square miles. The Richardson River, the Yarriambiack Creek, and the River Wimmera flow northwards through it towards the River Murray; but the waters of those streams are lost in the sands. The lakes are large and the swamps are numerous in the southern and central parts; but the tract is hot in summer and cold in winter, and much of it cannot be regarded but as "back-country" for the tribes bordering on it, to be used only at certain times during each season, when the productions which it affords might tempt the Aboriginals to penetrate several parts of it. This great, dense eucalyptus thicket is somewhat in the form of a triangle as it appears on the map of Victoria. Its base extends from the confluence of the River Lindsay and the River Murray on the north to Mount Arapiles on the south; and its southern boundary reaches from Mount Arapiles in a north-easterly direction and in a broken line with numerous outlying patches of dense scrub to Inglewood; and other unconnected belts of Mallee are found between Inglewood and the junction of the River Murray with the River Loddon. Dense scrub again is found southwards covering the plains.
The mountain ranges, also, are not fitted to maintain an uncivilized people during all seasons of the year. The climate of the higher parts of the Cordillera, however agreeable in summer, is bitterly cold in winter. The flanks of the mountains which extend from Forest Hill to the Pyrenees are clothed with dense forests, and in places there are masses of scrub, some of which even yet have never been penetrated by man. These thickets cannot be passed by the colonists without great labor and much expense. They have to cut a track with the axe; water and provisions must be carried to the working party; and if the party is not strong in numbers, the attempt is relinquished. Aboriginals could never have searched but the margins of these areas. The mountain fastnesses, in winter covered with snow, and at times, in all seasons, shrouded in thick mists, were regarded with awe by the natives. Like the dark forests west of Mount Blackwood, they were held to be the abodes of evil spirits or of creatures—scarcely less to be dreaded—having the forms of men and the habits of beasts. It is certain that the blacks in the proper season occasionally visited the glens and ravines on both sides of the chain, but they did not live
