necks and promontories of bronze, with forth-standing cliffs of deep purple, and roots of black rock, wreathed with white foam: uplands and downlands of velvet verdure: deep indents of blue: clear as a chart on paper, here they all lie, printed on the sea, and stretching so far away that in reality they add to the effect of boundlessness, rather than take from it. To the north-west, too, across that great blue arc of sea-water which is the Bay outside the bay, look! Yonder is another edge of Earth, but one that stands upright, instead of lying out, and, in place of a coat of colours, wears a robe of bright white—the snows, namely, the Alps, that other hold of space and strength. Vast sea, far-flung earth, great mountain peaks; and, as though these were not enough, all this consummate depth of blue above our heads! One looks, one apprehends, a little one comprehends—and instinctively one draws the long breath of the free.
We may as well pause here a little while, too, and make the breaths as long as we can, before we tackle this last and steepest lift of the track. There are plenty of seats to choose from. Bush grew thickly, once, in these upper hill paddocks, and now old black stumps stand everywhere mouldering among the flourishing grasses, and grey helter-skelter logs, smooth with weather, emerge above them at strange angles, and shine like satin in the sun. That great sea-mirror is too bright to be looked at for long—let us turn the other way, and rest our eyes upon this calm green heart of the hills. It is a convulsed heart, for all its calm. Seamed with gullies, burst through with rocks, encrusted
