The green vales and moderate hills disappear
at the distance of about three miles from the river side, and from Knight Hill,
and Mount Twiss,* the limits which terminate our researches,
nothing but precipices, wilds and deserts, are to be seen. Even these steeps
fail to produce streams. The difficulty of penetrating this country,
joined to the dread of a sudden rise of the Hawkesbury, forbidding all return,
has hitherto prevented our reaching Carmarthen mountains.
[*Look at the Map. (There is no map accompanying this etext)]
Let the reader now cast his eye on the relative situation of Port Jackson.
He will see it cut off from communication with the northward by Broken Bay,
and with the southward by Botany Bay; and what is worse, the whole space
of intervening country yet explored, (except a narrow strip called
the Kangaroo Ground) in both directions, is so bad as to preclude cultivation.
The course of the Hawkesbury will next attract his attention.
To the southward of every part of Botany Bay we have traced this river;
but how much farther in that line it extends we know not. Hence its channel
takes a northerly direction, and finishes its course in Broken Bay,
running at the back of Port Jackson in such a manner as to form
the latter into a peninsula.
