So Unbroken Is The Line
Of Cliff, That In Order To Reach The Foot Of The Waterfall,
Formed By This Little Stream, It Is Said To Be Necessary To Go
Sixteen Miles Round.
About five miles distant in front,
another line of cliff extends, which thus appears completely
to encircle the valley; and hence the name of bay is justified,
as applied to this grand amphitheatrical depression.
If we
imagine a winding harbour, with its deep water surrounded
by bold cliff-like shores, to be laid dry, and a forest to
spring up on its sandy bottom, we should then have the
appearance and structure here exhibited. This kind of view was
to me quite novel, and extremely magnificent.
In the evening we reached the Blackheath. The sandstone
plateau has here attained the height of 3400 feet; and
is covered, as before, with the same scrubby woods. From
the road, there were occasional glimpses into a profound
valley, of the same character as the one described; but from
the steepness and depth of its sides, the bottom was scarcely
ever to be seen. The Blackheath is a very comfortable inn,
kept by an old soldier; and it reminded me of the small inns
in North Wales.
18th. - Very early in the morning, I walked about three
miles to see Govett's Leap; a view of a similar character
with that near the Weatherboard, but perhaps even more
stupendous. So early in the day the gulf was filled with a
thin blue haze, which, although destroying the general effect
of the view added to the apparent depth at which the forest
was stretched out beneath our feet. These valleys, which so
long presented an insuperable barrier to the attempts of the
most enterprising of the colonists to reach the interior, are
most remarkable. Great arm-like bays, expanding at their
upper ends, often branch from the main valleys and penetrate
the sandstone platform; on the other hand, the platform
often sends promontories into the valleys, and even
leaves in them great, almost insulated, masses. To descend
into some of these valleys, it is necessary to go round twenty
miles; and into others, the surveyors have only lately
penetrated, and the colonists have not yet been able to drive in
their cattle. But the most remarkable feature in their structure
is, that although several miles wide at their heads, they
generally contract towards their mouths to such a degree
as to become impassable. The Surveyor-General, Sir T.
Mitchell, [4] endeavoured in vain, first walking and then by
crawling between the great fallen fragments of sandstone,
to ascend through the gorge by which the river Grose joins
the Nepean, yet the valley of the Grose in its upper part,
as I saw, forms a magnificent level basin some miles in
width, and is on all sides surrounded by cliffs, the summits
of which are believed to be nowhere less than 3000 feet
above the level of the sea. When cattle are driven into the
valley of the Wolgan by a path (which I descended), partly
natural and partly made by the owner of the land, they cannot
escape; for this valley is in every other part surrounded
by perpendicular cliffs, and eight miles lower down, it
contracts from an average width of half a mile, to a mere
chasm, impassable to man or beast. Sir T. Mitchell states
that the great valley of the Cox river with all its branches,
contracts, where it unites with the Nepean, into a gorge
2200 yards in width, and about 1000 feet in depth. Other
similar cases might have been added.
The first impression, on seeing the correspondence of the
horizontal strata on each side of these valleys and great
amphitheatrical depressions, is that they have been hollowed
out, like other valleys, by the action of water; but when one
reflects on the enormous amount of stone, which on this
view must have been removed through mere gorges or
chasms, one is led to ask whether these spaces may not have
subsided. But considering the form of the irregularly
branching valleys, and of the narrow promontories projecting
into them from the platforms, we are compelled to abandon
this notion. To attribute these hollows to the present alluvial
action would be preposterous; nor does the drainage
from the summit-level always fall, as I remarked near the
Weatherboard, into the head of these valleys, but into one
side of their bay-like recesses. Some of the inhabitants
remarked to me that they never viewed one of those bay-like
recesses, with the headlands receding on both hands, without
being struck with their resemblance to a bold sea-coast. This
is certainly the case; moreover, on the present coast of New
South Wales, the numerous, fine, widely-branching harbours,
which are generally connected with the sea by a narrow
mouth worn through the sandstone coast-cliffs, varying from
one mile in width to a quarter of a mile, present a likeness,
though on a miniature scale, to the great valleys of the
interior. But then immediately occurs the startling difficulty,
why has the sea worn out these great, though circumscribed
depressions on a wide platform, and left mere gorges at the
openings, through which the whole vast amount of triturated
matter must have been carried away? The only light I can
throw upon this enigma, is by remarking that banks of the
most irregular forms appear to be now forming in some seas,
as in parts of the West Indies and in the Red Sea, and that
their sides are exceedingly steep. Such banks, I have been
led to suppose, have been formed by sediment heaped by
strong currents on an irregular bottom. That in some cases
the sea, instead of spreading out sediment in a uniform sheet,
heaps it round submarine rocks and islands, it is hardly
possible to doubt, after examining the charts of the West
Indies; and that the waves have power to form high and
precipitous cliffs, even in land-locked harbours, I have noticed
in many parts of South America.
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