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discovery of these inland regions, besides those common obstacles, to
encounter and overcome which every traveller who desires to explore
new, wild, and savage countries, must have fully made up his mind.

First among the peculiar difficulties which have opposed the Australian
explorer is the height and ruggedness of that chain of mountains,
called, in the colony of New South Wales, the Blue Mountains, which form
a mighty barrier of more or less elevation along most parts of the
eastern coast of New Holland, sometimes approaching as nearly as 30
miles to the sea, and at other places falling back to a distance of 60
or nearly 100 miles. These mountains are not so very high, the loftiest
points appearing to exceed but little the height of Snowdon in Wales, or
Ben Nevis in Scotland; but their rugged and barren nature, and the great
width to which they frequently extend, render it no very easy matter to
cross them at all. Indeed, although the settlement of New South Wales
was founded in 1788, it was not before 1813 that a route was discovered
across those vast ranges which shut in the colony to the west.
Frequently had the passage over the Blue Mountains been attempted
before, but never with any success; and the farthest point which had
been reached, called Caley's Repulse, was a spot that almost seemed
to forbid man's footsteps to advance beyond it. Nothing was to be
seen there in every direction but immense masses of weather-beaten
sandstone-rock, towering over each other in all the sublimity of
desolation; while a deep chasm, intersecting a lofty ridge covered with
blasted trees, seemed to cut off every hope of farther progress. But all
these difficulties have now long since been got over, and stage-coaches
are able to run across what were a few years ago deemed impassable
hills. Yet, when this dreary barrier of barren mountains has been
crossed, another peculiar hindrance presents itself to the exploring
traveller. In many parts of the interior of New Holland, which have
been visited, the scarcity of water is such that the most distressing
privations have been endured, and the most disagreeable substitutes
employed. And yet, strange to say, the very same country, which
sometimes affords so few springs, and of which the streams become dried
up into chains of dirty pools, and at last into dry ravines and valleys,
is, occasionally, subject to extreme floods from the overflowing of its
rivers, and then offers a new obst