TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALKS. 



133 



Four miles beyond Blackheath is Mount Victoria, close to which is Mount Piddington. 

 a favourite point of view with tourists. The last and some of the fairest of the water- 

 falls are about Mount Victoria, and by an easy drive beyond the peak on the northern 

 side of the line Mount York is reached, clown whose western face Blaxland, \Yent\vorth 

 and Lawson descended on their first journey. The Lithgow Valley is the western limit 



MOUNT LINDSAY, IN THE MACPHERSON RANGE. 



of the Blue Mountains proper, but the great ridge continues its northward course, the 

 branch railroad to Mudgee skirting it at some little distance inland. At Capertee the 

 view seaward is down a gorge as deep as that of the Grose, the great cavity here 

 having long ago received the name of " The Gulf." At the head of the Goulburn 

 River, the principal tributary of the Hunter, the range is at its farthest point from the 

 sea. It then trends eastward, and becomes known as the Liverpool Range, first sighted 

 by Oxley, whose name has been given to its highest peak, four thousand five hundred 

 feet above the level of the sea. At the foot of this range, near the township of Scone, 

 is the singular phenomenon of a mountain on fire. It is the one burning mountain of 

 the Continent, but its fires are not volcanic. The nether forces beneath Australia do not 

 show upon the surface, and earthquake shocks are rarely felt. Wingen is not a volcano, 

 but a mountain in whose face a coal seam has become ignited, and the flames, eating 

 into the hill, have followed the seam. Mounds of scoriee lie about its mouth, and 

 sulphurous dust is in places solidified, or formed into crystals. 



