Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger.  It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it.  Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted.  It caused the memorable disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea.  The ship was a sailing vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular captain of high reputation.  She was due from England, and Sydney was waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them.  Of all the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase; only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is over.

On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of the grave.  But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on.  It was said that ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing faces, faces pathetic with disappointment.  So his sympathy moved him to try the dangerous passage in the dark.  He had entered the Heads seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground.  So he steered straight for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one.  He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too late.  There was no saving the ship.  The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice.  Not one of all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive.  The tale is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old, custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it.