levee_ last week. To-day they looked like the veriest tramps, and
were most grateful for a bit of butterscotch for the baby and the
shilling apiece which we gave them after an attempt at conversation.

From Healesville we rattled merrily over an excellent road, the
scenery improving every mile, till we reached the picturesque little
village of Fernshaw, a tiny township on the river Watt. Important as
an absolutely pure water supply is to a city like Melbourne, where the
present provision is anything but satisfactory, we could not help
regretting that this hamlet and several others must be cleared away in
the course of the next two years, in order to provide space for the
gathering-ground of the city's drinking water. The increased
facilities for travel afforded by the railway, now nearly completed to
Healesville, will, however, enable people to make new settlements on
the other line of hills further from Black Spur. The memory of
Fernshaw will always linger pleasantly, and I rejoice that I have seen
it before it is swept off the face of the earth by the requirements of
the big city near it.

[Illustration: Ferns]

From Fernshaw up the Black Spur must be a perfectly ideal drive on a
hot summer's day, and even in midwinter it was enchanting. The road is
cut through a forest of high eucalyptus-trees, varying from 100 to 450
feet in height, and from twenty to fifty, and even seventy, feet in
girth. At intervals roaring torrents rush down gullies overgrown with
tree-ferns, and full of dicksonia-antarcticas and alsophilas. To-day
they looked very curious; for, instead of growing as usual, with their
fronds erect or nearly level, all were bent down by the weight of the
late heavy fall of snow, so that they resembled graceful umbrellas and
parasols. So fairy-like was the sylvan scene that I half expected to
see the curved branches open softly and disclose naiads or
wood-nymphs. I had always been told that these fern-gullies were
charming, but I never thought anything could be half so lovely as this
romantic ravine. If only the sunlight could have glanced through the
trees and thrown some shimmering sunbeams on the bright green leaves,
it would have been even more delightful. After climbing up the hill
by a steep but good road we arrived at Myrtle Gully, called after the
trees which grow there. They are quite different from our idea of
myrtles, though their dark and glossy leaves contrast finely with the
lighter green of the