marked channel, Oxley determined to steer to the eastern
coast. The Castlereagh arrested him for a week, but he
reached the Arbuthnot Range, and ascended Mount Ex-
mouth on the 8th August. Passing on to what he called
Hardwick Range, he surmounted all difficulties, and reaching a beautiful and rich pastoral land on his way, called it
Liverpool Plains.
On his Lachlan journey he had seen the Myall tree, which Allan Cunningham had called the Acacia pendula. At Liverpool Plains he saw it in its most graceful forms, and most redundant growth. Crossing the Peel river, he ascended the western slope of the cordillera, attained the table-land of New England where it divides the waters of the Namoi from those of the Macleay, and reached suddenly one of the most startling sights which could confront a traveller. As he passed over an undulating country, the land terminated. An abyss was before him. The waters of various streams found their way by broken waterfalls, and reached the bottom of a gorge from one to two thousand feet in depth. The sides of the ravine were precipitous rock. Lesser clefts branched here and there to make extrication more difficult. He had reached the edge of the New England Falls. Descent was impossible. He determined to skirt the gigantic precipice till some practicable place could be found which would enable him to reach the sea. Foiled as he was by this sheer wall of rock, and gazing downwards into the distant depths, where the streams tumbled foaming among the boulders at the foot of each mountain side, Oxley could yet admire it. "It would be impossible," he said, "to form any idea of the wild magnificence of the scenery without the aid of Salvator's pencil."
After vain efforts to descend towards the sea, he found a way to the south of the falls, where he named Mount Seaview, whence he descried the coast-line. The ascent and descent were difficult. None but those who have been in a primæval mountain forest can understand how, in the absence of all path or track, the growing timber, the fallen trees, the tangled underwood, the precipices, ravines, and crags, thwart the progress of an exploring party. Oxley overcame all difficulties, and by a tributary of a river (he
