422 NEW SOUTH WALES. [ciur. xix. 



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 rne that they never 

 viewed one of those bay-like recesses, with the headlands receding 

 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 

 harbours, which are generally connected with the sea by a narrow 

 mouth worn through the sandstone coast-cliffs, varying from one 

 mile in width to a quarter of a mile, present a likeness, though on 

 a miniature scale, to the great valleys of the interior. But then 

 immediately occurs the startling difficulty, why has the sea worn 

 out these great, though circumscribed depressions on a wide plat- 

 form, and left mere gorges at the openings, through which the 

 whole vast amount of triturated matter must have been carried 

 away? The only light I can throw upon this enigma, is by re- 

 marking that banks of 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 are exceedingly steep. Such banks, I have 

 been led to suppose, have been formed by sediment heaped by 

 strong currents on an irregular bottom. That in some cases the 

 sea, instead of spreading out sediment in a uniform 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 precipitous cliffs, even in land-locked 

 harbours, I have noticed in many parts of South America. To 

 apply these ideas to the sandstone platforms of New South Wales, 

 I imagine that the strata were heaped by the action of strong 

 currents, and of the undulations 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, during 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 descended from the sand- 

 stone 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 



