9Q AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



mid-air. The meanest mind becomes expanded in wonder, and the least 

 philosophical instinct begins to speculate and inquire. There has, indeed, 

 been much deep speculation, much zealous and competent inquiry as to the 

 phenomena of these mountains, and the startling contrast upon their 

 southern front. Tennison-Woods studied and wrote of them, and more 

 recently Dr. J. E. Taylor has, in a few graphic sentences, expressed his 

 opinions of the geological changes which have taken place, particularly of 

 the changes and causes which have produced the fertile plains and the hills, 

 whose chief present product is ozone, with the river rolling between. Having 

 touched lightly upon the facts generally known of the Hawkesbury sandstone 

 formation, overlaid on a great breadth of the county of Cumberland by the 

 Wianamatta shales, he says : — 



' But the continuity of both the Hawkesbury sandstones and the over- 

 lying and usually accompanying Wianamatta shales is interfered with on a 

 magnificent scale at Emu Plains. The entire country from this point to 

 Sydney Heads has been slowly let down by one of those great earth move- 

 ments known as a " downthrow fault." The downthrow was not the work of 

 one single act of disturbance — it went on for ages. Meantime the Wiana- 

 matta shales, which overlaid the Hawkesbury sandstones of the Blue Moun- 

 tains, were denuded off, or nearly so, for there is only a small patch now 

 remaining, right on the top, after we have ascended by the first zigzag, to 

 show that they were once continuous with those of the plains more than 

 2,000 feet below.' 



There is infinite variety in the mountains. Even though wearied of the 

 grandeur and wildness of the gorges, the vastness of the basins, whose great 

 forest carpets appear but as robes of green evenly spread, or the grotesquely 

 piled rocks, and the bold and beautiful flora of the tablelands and mountain 

 heads, the traveller need not hasten back to town, imagining he has seen 

 all. Let him find his way down from Blackheath to the entrance of a 

 valley known as the Mermaid's Cave — a great grey rock that juts out and 

 almost blocks the valley, dividing a somewhat arid gorge above from a 

 lovely dell below. He passes through a rock-cleft, and there before him is 

 a scene beautiful as new. There indeed, — 



' A vale of beauty, lovelier 

 Than all the valleys of the greater hills.' 



Yes, this is the fairy land of the mountains. Tall, feathery-foliaged, golden- 

 blossomed wattles rise side by side with the olive-green turpentines, and 

 through them runs the mountain brook in cataract after cataract. Upon the 

 edge of the wattle-grove the tree-ferns grow, and beyond them is a carpet 

 of bracken — a broad slope at the hill-foot, rich dark green with tips of pink, 

 and shadows and hollows of russet and brown, where new growths display 

 yet their dainty shades, or dead leaves have taken the rich autumnal brown- 



