Title

Plate 4: North east view from the top of Mount Kosciusko, New South Wales. [by Eugene von Guérard].

Author

Author not identified

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

1868

Type

About the work

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Plate 4: North east view from the top of Mount Kosciusko, New South Wales.

This is the grandest, the loftiest, and the most imposing of all the Mountain Crags which constitute the Australian Alps. It is situated about 300 miles from Sydney, and among its western slopes lie some of the numerous sources of the Murray, while on the opposite side of the range is the gathering ground of the waters which feed the rivers of Gipps Land. Mount Kosciusko has three principal crests running almost equilaterally from south-west to north-coast, with an elevation, as ascertained by barometric measurement, of from 7,100 to 7,200 feet; while the plateau, upon which the snow lies far into the hottest months of an Australian summer, is from four to five miles long, Its altitude, therefore, is about the same as that of Athos, Pindus, Olympus, and the most celebrated mountains of Greece, and the view from its summit sweeps over an area Of 7,000 square miles. “Standing above the adjacent mountains which could either detract from its imposing aspect or intercept the view,” writes De Strzelecki, “Mount Kosciusko is one of those few elevations, the ascent of which, far from disappointing, presents the traveller with all that can remunerate fatigue. In the north-eastward view, the eye is carried as far back as the Shoalhaven country, the ridges of all the spurs of Moneiro and Twofold Bay, as well as those which, to the westward, inclose the tributaries of the Murrumbidgee, being conspicuously delineated. Beneath the feet, looking from the very verge of the cone downwards almost perpendicularly, the eyes plunges into a fearful gorge 3,000 feet deep, in the bed of which the sources of the Murray gather their contents, and roll their united waters to the west.” In all probability, the party represented in the Engraving, and consisting of the Artist, Professor Neumayer, two Guides, and a Servant, were the first white men who had ever trodden the most northerly of the three peaks, as the chief Guide stated that even he had never penetrated so far. The mountain is composed of sienite and granite, and among its rugged and fantastically shaped crags and boulders, the adventurous traveller learns to feel the full force of the sentiment expressed by Childe Harold:---

“Not vainly did the early Persian make

His altar, the high places and the peak

Of earth o’er-gazing mountains, and thus take

A fit and unwall’d temple, there to seek

The Spirit in whose honor shrines are weak,

Uprear’d of human hands. Come, and compare

Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,

With nature's realms of worship, earth and air,

Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray’r.”

Accompanying text, 1868.