2 Coal Basin of New South Wales. 
miles from Sydney, and afterwards along the coast to New- 
castle, and from thence to Maitland and Stony Creek by 
railway. 
The first forty miles of the former journey is made by 
train on the Great Western line as far as Penrith, and thence 
by coach over the Blue Mountains. What I may term the 
civilized part of the road to Hartley, that is, the distance 
lying between the terminus of the railway at Sydney and 
the one at Penrith, does not arrest the attention by any very 
striking features. The country round never rises above 
nor seems to fall much beneath mere mediocrity. It is 
slightly undulating, seems moderately green and fertile, with 
neither any very wide extent of woods, of open country, of 
cultivated spots, or of barren regions. Its general appear- 
ance is of a mixed description. It is everything—that is 
everything Australian—by turns, and nothing long. Here 
a bit like the Plains of the Werribee, a mile or two remind- 
ing one of the wooded region on the line to Ballarat, a valley 
—only on a more minute scale—such as those of the Barra- 
bools, with a farm or two, a station. or two, and any quantity 
of public-houses thrown in wherever there appears a valid 
- excuse for building one ; and save that there are some orange 
groves and churches of a nondescript style of architecture at 
Parramatta, there is literally nothing else worthy of notice 
for over two score miles. 
Of course the rocks are of the carboniferous age, and 
belong so far to the WIANAMATTA Beps. According to Mr. 
Clarke these beds consist of brownish, greenish, or grey and 
yellowish nodular or ferruginous shales; lght or dark 
colored grits or sandstones, very calcareous, and charged with 
ironstone nodules. They are the uppermost beds of the 
series, and appear to contain some few, but very thin, seams 
of coal. Their outline, as seen on the map, is of an oval 
form, and their extent is about that of the county of Cum- 
berland, nearly the whole of which is occupied by them. 
From Penrith the remainder of the journey is made by . 
coach. The first few miles is over what are termed the 
Emu Plains, a flat extent of country, but whether the result 
of deposits of alluvial or of a regular planing down of the 
surface by aqueous agency, was not easily discernible during 
our passage over it in the twilight. These plains are ter- 
minated by the River Nepean, a tolerably broad stream, and, 
crossing this, one is speedily at the foot of the celebrated 
Lapstone Hill, geologically in the area of the Hawkesbury 
