fruits have an excellent and well-deserved
reputation, there being an extensive demand for them on shipboard. Here
also we saw enormous trees, with a circumference of eighty feet near the
ground and a height of three hundred and fifty feet. Fern-trees, with
their graceful palm-like formation, are frequently seen thirty feet in
height. The country is well wooded, and traversed by pleasant
watercourses; is singularly fertile, and rich in good harbors,
especially upon the eastern coast. In short its hills, forests, and
plains afford a pleasing variety of scenery, while its rich pastures
invite the stock-breeder to reap a goodly harvest in the easiest and
most profitable manner. The familiar description which occurs in
Deuteronomy seems to apply exactly to this favored island: "For the Lord
thy God bringeth thee into a good land; a land of brooks of water, of
fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of
wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of
oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without
scarceness,--thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are
iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass."

Tasmania is already largely occupied for the purpose of sheep-runs and
wool-raising, and is studded with lovely homesteads carefully fenced in,
the grounds being covered with fruit and ornamental trees. There seemed
to us scarcely an acre of waste land to be seen in passing through the
country upon travelled routes. The roads in many districts are lined
with thrifty hedges symmetrically trimmed, consisting sometimes of the
brilliant yellow gorse, and often of the double, stocky species of
geranium in scarlet bloom. This species, which is not particularly
fragrant, grows almost like a wild scrub here, requiring little or no
cultivation; the more it is trimmed down the more stocky it becomes,
until a hedge of it is quite impenetrable.

The interior of Tasmania develops into a mountain range of from two to
five thousand feet in height, while its valleys and plains give support
and ample pasturage to two million five hundred thousand sheep, not to
enumerate the large herds of horned cattle which also abound. The wool
produced upon the island has long been a favorite in the market on
account of its uniformity and general excellence, always commanding the
best prices. In and about the mountain ranges, gold, tin, silver,
copper, and coal abound, so