lies frequently found among the mountain-ranges may testify:
One may be chosen as a specimen of many. At its northern end it was
about four miles wide, being bounded on all sides by rocky, wooded
ranges, with dark gullies from which numerous petty streams run down
into the main one in the centre. The valley gradually grows narrow
towards the south, and is bounded by steep cliffs betwixt which the
waters find an outlet. Sometimes a valley of this kind, most beautiful,
most productive, will contain from four to five thousand acres of nearly
level land, shut out from the rest of the world by the boundary of hills
that enclose it. How great a contrast to these lovely vallies does the
description, given by another traveller in a different district,
present! Nothing, according to Mr. Oxley's account, can be more
monotonous and wearying, than the dull, unvarying aspect of the level
and desolate region through which the Lachlan winds its sluggish course.
One tree, one soil, one water, and one description of bird, fish, or
animal, prevails alike for ten miles, and for a hundred. And, if we turn
from this to a third picture of desolation mingled with sublimity, the
contrast appears yet more heightened. Among the hills behind Port
Macquarrie on the eastern coast, Mr. Oxley came suddenly upon the spot
where a river, (the Apsley,) leaves the gently-rising and fine country
through which it had been passing, and falls into a deep glen. At this
spot the country seems cleft in twain, and divided to its very
foundation, a ledge of rocks separates the waters, which, falling over
a perpendicular rock, 235 feet in height, form a grand cascade. At a
distance of 300 yards, and an elevation of as many feet, the travellers
were wetted with the spray. After winding through the cleft rocks about
400 yards, the river again falls, in one single sheet, upwards of 100
feet, and continues, in a succession of smaller falls, about a quarter
of a mile lower, where the cliffs are of a perpendicular height, on each
side exceeding 1,200 feet; the width of the edges being about 200 yards.
From thence it descends, as before described, until all sight of it is
lost from the vast elevation of the rocky hills, which it divides and
runs through. The different points of this deep glen, seem as if they
would fit into the opposite openings forming the smaller glens on either
side.[6]

[6] See Oxley's Journal, p. 299.

Amid scenery like that which has now been des