30 8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



erroneously, they were known as the Fish River Caves, but though close to the 

 dividing \vater-shed of that River, they are not in it. They lie in a valley which drains 

 into the Cox, and so into the Nepean and Hawkesbury. 



Jenolan lies in a wide bend of the Great Western Railway, and so may be reached 

 from several points from the line. It is actually nearest to Katoomba, but the track is 

 over very rough bush-country. A coach-road from Mount Victoria leads to the top of the 

 hill looking down into the valley. There are tracks also from Hartley and Rydal, but 

 the usual travellers' route is from Tarana through Oberon. 



The Caves are in a limestone belt from two to four hundred yards wide an old 

 coral-reef. This belt runs right across the valley, but the creeks, instead of cutting 

 through it, worked subterranean channels, and so carved out the tunnels and caves. 

 The limestone is of the palaeozoic siluro-Devonian age, and the erosion of the present 

 valleys took place chiefly during the pliocene tertiary epoch. 



As the visitor approaches the valley by any of the routes, he sees a great green 

 mountain, covered at its base with grass, ferns and flowering shrubs, lightly-timbered on 

 its crown, and generally free from protruding rocks. It is in no sense a rugged 

 mountain, and seems set as in special contrast with the boulder-strewn slopes, the sheer 

 crag-faces, the bastions, ramparts and pinnacles immediately around and below. Descending, 

 all is stern and wild. Beauty of blossom and foliage vary the scene, but fail to clothe 

 it. Any patch of soil there may be on the rocks bears mountain violets, buttercups- 

 quaint golden knobs and little star-shaped- daisies. In the crannies many varieties of 

 fern are rooted, and where trees appear they are gnarled and knotted gums ; or by the 

 water's edge the dismal shea-oaks the Australian whisper trees, whose presence and 

 voice add a sentiment of weirdness to the rugged grandeur of the mountain landscape. 



The Caves explored are situated in a saddle between the two hills, from whose 

 summits descend the Mount Victoria and Tarana Roads. Limestone is seen on the 

 surface continuously for a distance of about five miles, but the underlying stratum has 

 been proved by occasional outcrops for thirty miles, and is supposed to stretch far under- 

 ground and appear again in the quarries at Marulan, on the Great Southern Railway Line. 

 There are explored, and accessible to tourists, five great caves "The Imperial" (with two 

 branches), "The Cathedral," "The Nettle," "The Arch " and "The Elder." These subterra- 

 nean halls are reached from two immense arches or grottoes piercing the mountain-saddle. 



The first of the Caves, "The Grand Arch," opens on the western side into the 

 ravine where the cave-house and buildings are, and on the east into the gorge of the 

 Mackewan Creek, the subterranean river of the Caves. This has been hollowed out 

 beneath gigantic fortress-like masses of rock. On the western side the entrance is com- 

 paratively low, roughly resembling a Moorish arch, and is fifty feet wide at the base, 

 and about thirty feet high. Excepting a narrow irregular space, through which the 

 foliage of the gully beyond is seen, the inside is blocked by huge masses -of fallen 

 rock, past which a channel about fourteen feet in width gives access to the huge-domed 

 interior and opens out the eastern entrance, which appears from within as an irregular 

 triangle, with sides of about one hundred and twenty feet in length and a base of not 

 less than two hundred feet. These sides are slightly arched the angle at the crown 

 appears almost perfect. The length across is four hundred and sixty feet, the top of 



