It was evening. The sky was of a deep purple, seldom seen in any part
of the northern hemisphere. There was a line of light upon the western
sky, not yellow, not red: I know not the name of the colour; it was
dying-day colour; the last gleam of the eyes of expiring light.
Everything was solemn and grand. There was a deep stillness in the
air, a vastness in the wide expanse, a profundity in the hues of every
object, a silence and a grandeur in the whole, that sank into the
soul, and filled the mind with imaginings melancholy though grand. One
might stand there, and fancy one-self the first or the last of created
beings upon earth, with the first or the last sunset before him.
It was a mountain-top, high over the flat lands around, starting up
from the scrub abrupt and precipitous, and wherever the eye turned
there was neither road, nor living thing, nor human habitation. Not an
insect was heard, there was no wind in the heavens, the trees rested
motionless, not a lizard was seen upon the rocks. Dark waves of
magnificent vegetation flowed away like a sea from the feet, and a
distant glimpse of the Austral Ocean, with the light of the sinking
sun skipping along over its vast, solitary bosom, was the only thing
that relieved the magnificent monotony; and yet it was a sea without a
sail, without an oar.
Ten steps farther, and the summit will be gained!
The ten steps were taken, and then all was changed. Another scene
broke upon the view, infinite in its variety, magnificent in its
colouring, and varied by life. But what life? Not that of man; not
that of any creature which holds familiar intercourse with him. The
savage beast and the wild bird of the wilderness were there; but
neither flocks, nor herds, nor but, nor mansion, nor anything to show
that the human foot had ever pressed before that beautiful and awful
scene.
There, in centuries long passed, had flamed the wild volcano, lifting
up its beacon-tower of flame over the untravelled seas of the far
south. There had poured the torrent of the red lava; there had heaved
and panted the earthquake ere the fire burst forth; there, perhaps,
from the depth of the ocean, had been hurled up, in the last fierce
struggle which burst the gates of the prison-house, and set free the
raging spirit of the flame, the mighty masses of rock piled upon rock,
precipice above precipice, coral and lava, limestone and basalt, the
floorwork of the waters mingling in rifted masses with the barriers
that hemmed it in, and all cemented together by a stream of manifold
materials fused in the internal fire.
Towering up in wild, irregular walls, assuming strange shapes, but
everywhere gigantic in size, the crags of lava surrounded a vast,
profound basin, the crater of the extinct volcano. Precipice upon
precipice, jagged rock rising beside jagged rock, formed the ramparts
and the embrasures of the desert fortress; and the eye of the
wanderer, as he looked down, caught suddenly a scene the most
opposite, in the hollow space below, where soft green turf, of the
richest verdure, carpeted the bosom of the cavity, till it reached the
brink of the deep dark lake that filled up half the expanse.
Opposite, and surrounding about three-quarters of the lake, rose
precipitous cliffs of pure white coral, some seventy or eighty feet in
height, looking down into, and reflected from the waters; and, as if
to make them harmonise with the solemn gloom of that still tarn, every
here and there a large white bird skimmed over the waves, and carried
a line of light along with it.
There was something which moved, too, under the nearest clump of tall
trees, which were scattered wide apart over the carpet of verdure; but
a mass of rock, which rolled down from the wanderer's foot, scared the
creature which had caught his eye, and its wild and enormous bounds
showed him in an instant that it was not, as he had fancied and
feared, a human being like himself.
He had but little cause to fear. Never had the spot been visited by
anything in the form of a man, unless it were the wildest and lowest
of the race--the Australian savage--and that but rarely, if at all.
Amidst the solitary peaks of Mount Gambier he stood alone; perhaps the
first since the creation who ever set a footstep there.
As he gazed towards the west, the sun sank, and a greenish shade
spread over the blue. He cast his eyes over the land through which he
had lately passed: it was all one gray, indistinct mass. He looked
down into the vast hollow of the hills; the colouring had suddenly
faded, and darkness filled the chasm. But then, as if in compensation,
the moment after came forth the stars, large and lustrous, bursting
forth all at once, and spangling both the bosom of the heaven and the
deep waters of the lake below.
"Here will I live or die," said the wanderer; "it matters not which."
And placing his bundle under his head, he laid himself down beneath
the edge of the rock, and gazed up towards the sky.