1636.] GREAT VALLEYS. 319 



destroying the general effect of the view, added to the apparent depth 

 at which the forest was stretched out beneath our feet. These valleys, 

 which so long presented an insuperable barrier to the attempts of the 

 most enterprising of the colonists to reach the interior, are most remark- 

 able. Great arm-like bays, expanding at their upper ends, often branch 

 from the main valleys and penetrate the sandstone platform ; on the 

 other hand, the platform often sends promontories into the valleys, and 

 even leaves in them great, almost insulated, masses. To descend into 

 some of these valleys, it is necessary to go round twenty miles ; and 

 into others, the surveyors have only lately penetrated, and the colonists 

 have not yet been able to drive in their cattle. But the most remarkable 

 feature in their structure is, that although several miles wide at their 

 heads, they generally contract towards their mouths to such a degree 

 as to become impassable. The Surveyor-General, Sir T. Mitchell,* 

 endeavoured in vain, first walking and then by crawling between the 

 great fallen fragments of sandstone, to ascend through the gorge by 

 which the river Grose joins the Nepean ; yet the valley of the Grose in 

 its upper part, as I saw, forms a magnificent level basin some miles in 

 width, and is on all sides surrounded by cliffs, the summits of which 

 are believed to be nowhere less than 3,000 feet above the level of the 

 sea. When cattle are driven into the valley of the Wolgan by a path 

 (which I descended), partly natural and partly made by the owner of 

 the land, they cannot escape ; for this valley is in every other part 

 surrounded by perpendicular cliffs, and eight miles lower down, it con- 

 tracts from an average width of half a mile, to a mere chasm, impassable 

 to man or beast. Sir T. Mitchell states that the great valley of the Cox 

 river with all its branches, contracts, where it unites with the Nepean, 

 into a gorge 2,200 yards in width, and about 1,000 feet in depth. 

 Other similar cases might have been added. 



The first impression, on seeing the correspondence of the horizontal 

 strata on each side of these valleys and great amphitheatrical de- 

 pressions, is that they have been hollowed out, like other valleys, by 

 the action of water ; but when one reflects on the enormous amount of 

 stone, which on this view must have been removed through mere gorges 

 or chasms, one is led to ask whether these spaces may not have sub- 

 sided. But considering the form of the irregularly branching valleys, 

 and of the narrow promontories projecting into them from the platforms, 

 we are compelled to abandon this notion. To attribute these hollows 

 to the present alluvial action would be preposterous ; nor does the 

 drainage from the summit-level always fall, as I remarked near the 

 Weatherboard, into the head of these valleys, but into one side of their 

 bay-like recesses. Some of the inhabitants remarked to me that they 

 never viewed one of those bay-like recesses, with the headlands re- 

 ceding on both hands, without being struck with their resemblance to 

 a bold sea-coast. This is certainly the case ; moreover, on the present 

 coast of New South Wales, the numerous, fine, widely-branching har- 

 " Travels in Australia," vol. i., p. 154. I must express my obligation to 

 Sir T. Mitchell, for several interesting personal communications, on the 

 subject of these great valleys of New South Wale. 



