opens to the view, with its numerous points, promontories, inlets and
emerald flats. It is justly considered to be the most picturesque bay
in the colony, and as a fishing ground is second to none. All the year
round fine flounders can be had while crayfish are a drug. There are
some very fine oyster beds which yield largely of these molluscs. The
township of St. Helens consists of about twenty houses. There are three
hotels which is just two too many. The Telegraph hotel is considered
the principal one. There is a Bank, Post Office, and Telegraph Office
in one neat building. A Police Office and Commissioner of Mines
combined. There are two general stores. The climate of George’s Bay is
unquestionably the finest in Tasmania. It is warmer than the Capital
and not subject to such sudden transitions of temperature. There are
very keen frosts in Winter, and also occasional frosts in Summer, but
the sun beams out with resplendent glory through soft blue skies,
flecked with fleecy clouds, after them. St. Helens is approached
through Jason’s Gates, spanned by a bridge at the mouth of the Golden
Fleece, an estuary which an artist would love to transfer to canvas.
Here the names again carry the memory back to the beautiful poetical
legend of the ancients. The traveller is now in the region of tin
mines. Try where he may, in the sands of the sea shore, the gravel
of the roads, he will obtain tin ore, but it exists only in payable
quantity from three to six miles from the coast.
There is a fine river the George, rich in sylvan scenery, and teeming
with fish. The chief features of the district are the hills of granite,
with their smooth rounded crests. These swell up in all directions,
giving the country a highly undulating appearance. There are some very
rare scene studies for the artist in the ravines. The LEDA FALLS on the
Saxleby tin claim is one of these. The stream is divided into two falls
at the edge of a granite precipice in a deep rock-bound gorge.
Within one mile of the Falls is a singular “weathered” granite mass
which I have named Truganini’s Throne. These spots and several others
in the neighborhood are well worth a visit, I may be excused for
quoting here a description of these two scenes which I lately published
in the _Australasian Sketcher_.