The coasts of New Holland are indented by very large bays, and by harbours that might give shelter to all the navies in Europe. The most distinguishing feature of the eastern side, which is chiefly occupied by the British colony of New South Wales, is a long chain of mountains which never retires far from the coast, and, with the exception of some short deviations in its southern part, maintains a meridional directing through 35 degrees of latitude. It is continued at one extremity from Torres Straits, at the north of the Gulf of Carpentaria, far into the interior of New Guinea; and at the other it traverses the whole of Van Diemen’s Land. It is low in the northern parts of New Holland, being in some places merely a high land; but about the 30th degree of south latitude it assumes the form of a regular mountain-chain, and, running in a very tortuous line from N.E. to S.W., terminates its visible course at Wilson’s Promontory, the southern extremity of the continent. It is continued, however, by a chain of mountainous islands across Bass’s Straits to Cape Portland, in Van Diemen’s Land; from thence the range proceeds in a zigzag line of high and picturesque mountains to South Cape, where it ends, having, in its course of 1500 miles, separated the drainage of both countries into eastern and western waters. The distance of the chain from the sea in New South Wales is from 50 to 100 miles, but at the 32d parallel it recedes to 150, yet soon returns, and forms the wild group of the Corecudgy Peaks, from whence, under the names of the Blue Mountains and Australian Alps, its highest part, it proceeds in a general westerly direction to the land’s end.