450 NEW SOUTH WALES. 
sands for pre-eminence. A few agreeable exceptions to this may be 
found about some of the coves of Port Jackson; and the ride from 
Sydney to the South Head or Cape, may be recommended as offering 
strong attractions to the lover of the beautiful in nature, especially as 
the noble bay throws its own life into many of the fine views. 
Such are the prevailing features of the neighbourhood of Sydney. 
The same, if we enlarge the undulations of the surface, and deepen 
the gorges, are the predominating characters of the scenery within a 
circuit of sixty miles or more around Port Jackson, through which 
the sandstone prevails. In some parts the plains are more extended ; 
the ridges, which in the distance may seem like mountains, melt away 
when approached, into rounded elevations of gradual ascent. The 
surface, in other portions, is a succession of high rolling hills. These 
pass again into precipices, one to three thousand feet high, which front 
extensive plains, or enclose deep secluded valleys and winding defiles. 
The Blue Mountains,* running nearly north and south, forty or 
forty-five miles west of Sydney, and attaining, in some parts, an ele- 
vation of four thousand feet, are among the most remarkable examples 
of these barely accessible heights. In the distant view from Port 
Jackson Heads, this ridge skirts with a tame outline the western 
horizon. But near by, it rises abruptly before the traveller, and 
appears to discourage any attempts at farther progress towards the 
interior. Indeed, for many years it was actually an insurmountable 
barrier to migration westward. Profound gorges intersect this sand- 
stone range, impassable below, and offering scarcely a point of access 
up their mural sides. Mr. Hale of the Expedition, travelled over 
these mountains in his excursion to the Wellington Valley, and re- 
marks, in his journal, that in the fifty miles passed in crossing them, 
“there were but five or six miles of level ground, and these were 
due chiefly to the labour of the engineers. The road was constantly 
* See the map of New South Wales facing this chapter. ‘These mountains stretch 
north towards the northeast cape, and south to Van Diemen’s Land, having in general a 
north-northeast and south-southwest trend, but with several large curvings which are con- 
vex eastward. South of latitude 36° they are called the Australian Alps, and one peak, 
Mount Kosciusko, according to Strzelecki, is 6500 feet high. (N. 8. Wales, p. 52.) To 
the northward they are named the Liverpool Range, and some of the greenstone peaks 
are 4700 feet high. Among the peaks of the part called the Blue Mountains, Mount 
Adine, according to Strzelecki, is 4050 feet high, Mount Clarence, 3500 feet, Mount King 
George, 3620, Mount Tomah, 3240, Mount Hay, 2400, King’s Table Land, 2790, 
Mount York, 3440 feet. This chain of mountains has been laid down on the map from 
Strzelecki’s chart. 
