cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar,
and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resembles
a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual
action of the ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has divided
the peninsula from the mainland of the Australasian continent--and done
for Van Diemen's Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight--the shore
line is broken and ragged. Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments
of island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Cape
and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by melted
lead spilt into water. If the supposition were not too extravagant, one
might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless
giant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen's land in the ocean. The
coast navigation is as dangerous as that of the Mediterranean. Passing
from Cape Bougainville to the east of Maria Island, and between the
numerous rocks and shoals which lie beneath the triple height of the
Three Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman's Peninsula,
hanging, like a huge double-dropped ear-ring, from the mainland. Getting
round under the Pillar rock through Storm Bay to Storing Island, we
sight the Italy of this miniature Adriatic. Between Hobart Town
and Sorrell, Pittwater and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point of
land--the Italian boot with its toe bent upwards--projects into the bay,
and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel, dotted with
rocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes, between its western
side and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the dangerous passage known as
D'Entrecasteaux Channel. At the southern entrance of D'Entrecasteaux
Channel, a line of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of the
Actaeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with the shores
of Recherche Bay; while, from the South Cape to the jaws of Macquarie
Harbour, the white water caused by sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks of
single rocks abruptly rising in mid sea, warn the mariner off shore.

It would seem as though nature, jealous of the beauties of her silver
Derwent, had made the approach to it as dangerous as possible; but
once through the archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, or the less
dangerous eastern passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river is
delightful. From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smiling
banks of New Norfolk, the riv