But it was not in the plain country alone, that Captain Grey found spots of great richness and fertility, as the following description of the happy vallies 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.