8
These are the only mountains in all Australia that are covered by perpetual snow; from which it follows (as a necessary consequence in that climate[1]*) that the only perpetually flowing river of the country, the River Murray, rises at their feet. The chain runs thence through the whole of New South Wales nearly parallel to the coast, or about N.N.E., its water-shed preserving a mean distance from the sea of about eighty or one hundred miles. It sends out, however, many lateral spurs, such as those which on the land side divide the head-waters of the rivers Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan and Macquarrie, the Namoy, the Gwydir, and the Karaula, and on the sea-side separate the respective basins of the districts of Gipps' Land and Twofold Bay, the Shoalhaven River, the Hawksbury and Hunter Rivers, the Port Macquarrie basin, that of the Clarence River, and that of the district of Moreton Bay. Throughout this part of its course the elevation of the highest points of the main chain varies from about 2,000 to about 4,000 feet above the sea.f[2] About Sandy Cape, or in S. lat. 25° the coast
- ↑ We might, indeed, say, in that or any other climate, as with the exception of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and possibly the Niger and Senegal, all the other great rivers of the world spring from mountains covered by perpetual snow.
- ↑ Count Strzelecki (see above) gives 3,500 feet as the mean level of the water-shed in New South Wales, which I should have thought too great by 1,000 feet, had I not known his great accuracy in observation, and the multitude of observations which he made.
