Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/139

 circumscribed by lofty ranges, whose summits towered far above the height we had attained. In the course of the succeeding day, the progress of the expedition to the south was arrested by a most wild and frightful region, which obliged me at once to seek a more practicable country, by directing the course of my party to the westward, in which direction we, with difficulty, gained a lower level, and thence prosecuted our journey to the south-west, by such stages as the reduced strength of my horses was able to accomplish. On passing to the southward of the parallel of 29°, which we did in longitude 151° 32' E., we again forded Dumaresq's River about fifty miles nearer its source, or to the eastward of the point at which we had discovered it on our outward-bound journey. Here our barometer gave us an elevation of one thousand and forty feet above the level of the sea, which showed a mean fall of four feet per mile, between the two fords.

On the 9th of July, after having traversed in a south-western direction a great diversity of country, in general of broken, rocky surface, we fell in with our former track, and on the following day crossed the channel of what 1 had considered the Peel, but which I subsequently named the Gwydir, upon finding it formed by a junction of Mr. Oxley's River with another as large, to which I gave the title of Horton's River. This latter has a course parallel to the Peel, through a valley lying to the westward of it, along which I was again enabled to direct my party to the south many miles, before a series of elevated forest ridges, stretching laterally from Hardwicke's range of Mr. Oxley, once more obliged us to climb the hills. These we ascended from the head of the vale, by a steep acclivity, and, at an elevation of one thousand three hundred feet above its level, resumed our course to the south. Among these hills we again observed granite, but of a reddish appearance, in consequence of the quantity and colour of the felspar which might be seen disseminated through the rock, of which Hardwicke's range is evidently formed; the elevation, above the level of the sea, of whose curiously formed cubical and chimney-shaped summits cannot be less than three thousand five hundred feet. The vegetation of this group of hills exhibited nothing remarkable; the ridges were generally grassy, but the gramineæ, as well as the timbers, which were of Eucalyptus, were of species frequent in the colony. At the close of our second day's journey, we had traversed these lateral ranges to their southern side, which overlooked an apparently level, wooded country, extending to Liverpool Plains, the greater body of which at length appeared before us to the southw-est, at a distance of forty miles. Repeatedly, in our attempts to descend to the lower country, were we stopped by rocky ravines several hundred feet in depth; and it was not without considerable difficulty and danger to the horses that we gained the levels beneath