NEW SOUTH WALES. 



9i 



There is deep, grateful shade here in the heat of the day, for no sunbeam 

 penetrates the roof of wattle and palm-like fern, and the water seems to 

 bring down coolness from its higher springs. 



A bolder valley, one of the great gorges of the world, is the Lithgow, 

 the road to the western slopes and the long-locked interior. It was down 

 this great ravine that the first explorers looked awe-stricken at the mar- 

 vellous road that nature had prepared for them ; and who can gaze without 

 awe and wonder and broadening conceptions of nature and nature's work as 

 he looks down that entrance way to Australia's heart, and realizes the 

 manner and the period of its making ? The ages that have clothed the 

 mountain sides with forests are but as seconds to years by comparison with 





Zigzag Railway in the Blue Mountains. 



those which have worn the world's crust away, and by comparison with 

 these stupendous results of natural forces, what pigmy work appears the 

 zigzag down which goes the inland train ! This Lithgow Vale is usually 

 considered the western limit of the Blue Mountains, though in their further 

 northward range, notably about Capertee on the Mudgee line, they rise 

 again and display forms of rugged grandeur. 



Beyond the mountains the artistic surveyor may travel fast. Branching 

 off at Walerawang, he may find the mountain scenery he has just left repeated 

 on the line to Mudgee, but there is another turn, and not by rail, which he 

 must not miss. It is at Tarana, in the Fish River Caves, newly christened 

 Jenola. The road runs off to the southward, a distance of forty miles, to the 



