'226 NEW SOUTH WALES. 



can throw upon this enigma is by remarking, that 

 banks or the most irregular forms appear to be 

 now forming in some seas, as in parts of the West 

 Indies and in the Red Sea, and that their sides arc 

 exceedingly steep. Such banks, I have been led 

 to suppose, have been formed by sediment heaped 

 by strong curx'ents on an irregular bottom. That 

 in some cases the sea, instead of spreading out sed- 

 iment in a unifoi-m sheet, heaps it round submarine 

 rocks and islands, it is hardly possible to doubt, 

 after examining the charts of the West Indies ; and 

 that the waves have power to form high and pre- 

 cipitous clifts, even in land-locked harbours, I have 

 noticed in many parts of South America. To ap- 

 ply these ideas to the sandstone platforms of New 

 South Wales, I imagine that the strata were heap- 

 ed by the action of strong currents, and of the un- 

 dulations of an open sea, on an irregular bottom ; 

 and that the valley-like spaces thus left unfilled 

 had their steeply sloping flanks worn into cliffs du- 

 ring a slow elevation of the land ; the worn-down 

 sandstone being removed, either at the time when 

 the narrow gorges were cut by the retreating sea, 

 or subsequently by alluvial action. 



Soon after leaving the Blackheath, we descend- 

 ed from the sandstone platform by the pass of 

 Mount Victoria. To effect this pass, an enormous 

 quantity of stone has been cut through ; the design, 

 and its manner of execution, being worthy of any 

 line of road in England. We now entered upon a 

 country less elevated by nearly a thousand feet, 

 and consisting of granite. With the change of 

 rock the vegetation improved ; the trees were both 

 finer and stood farther apart ; and the pasture be- 

 tween them was a little greener and more plenti- 

 ful. At Hassan's Walls I left the high road, and 



