If, however, we are to loiter, no not loiter, but dwell on points of marvellous beauty which ravish us at every turn of the road, it will be quite twelve months before we get back to our starting point. Just cast the eye downward for a moment to the gurgling brook, its crystal waters now dashing into foam over some rocky impediment, or with calm and sullen face o'er-covering some old obstruction, which at a long antecedent date made a powerful but futile effort to stop its current. A little bend may show some laughing children disporting themselves in the shallow stream, and not far from them a waiting, watchful angler plying his art over some pool, where he knows the speckled trout love to congregate, while, as a mantle of green overhanging them, the native bush spreads its curious limbs and varied foliage to shelter from the too piercing rays of the mid-day sun. The picture is completed by those almost sheer cliffs, wherein, not whereon, trees of mighty stature have obtained a holding by simply penetrating and wedging their at first tiny rootlets into any rent or crack which unseen to mortal eye existed, and from whence these trees have for ages drawn sustenance, from which the eye rises to the clear blue vault above.
Onwards and upwards we pass, through glades or along embankments, and the vista becomes more fascinating at every turn, until at length, after a four-mile drive, "too pleasant to have expired so soon," the confluence of Nicol's Creek is gained. It is so called because a gardener of that name had bought a section, on which to graze his stock, on the hillside above, through which the creek ran. Perhaps as on his ground the burn had its source, he claimed the parentage.
Be that as it may, the visitor alighting from the vehicle may, if in season, regale himself with strawberries and cream before essaying the climb which lies before him. Now refreshed with the momentary gratifications, up the creek is the word. Devastations, irreparable and uncalled for are noticed on every side.
Let it be borne in mind that thirty years ago human foot had scarcely trod this sacred spot, where, in its deep solitudes, those gems of beauty, ferns—the exquisite Hymenophillums, Adiantums, Lomarias, Cyatheas, Dicksonias, Alsophillas, and others—were scattered in great profusion. Time would fail to
