( 186 )
wilds of Port Philip on our first arrival. Here Contemplation, with her musing sister Melancholy, might find an undisturbed retreat. Often at the calm hour of evening I have wandered through the woods,
Where the rude ax with heaved stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright diem from their hallowed haunts
The last hymn of the feathered choiristers to the setting sun, and the soft murmurs of the breeze, faintly broke the death-like silence that reigned around; while the lightly trodden path of the solitary savage, or the dead ashes of his fire, alone pointed out the existence of human beings. In the course of a very few weeks the scene was greatly altered; lanes were cut in the woods for the passage of the timber carriages; the huts
