Oxley now turned aside - led by Mr Evans's report of the country eastward - crossed the Arbuthnot range, and traversing the Liverpool Plains, and ascending the Peel and Cockburn rivers to the Blue Mountains, gained sight of the open sea, which he reached at Port Macquarie.
After being educated at the high school of Edinburgh and at Durham, he attended the literary and law classes at the university of Edinburgh, and becoming in 1810 a member of the Edinburgh faculty of advocates, he for some time enjoyed the intimate acquaintance of Cockburn, Jeffrey, Scott and other distinguished men whose talent then lent lustre to the Scottish bar.
In Dean cemetery, partly laid out on the banks of the Water of Leith, and considered the most beautiful in the city (opened 1845), were interred Lords Cockburn, Jeffrey and Rutherford; " Christopher North," Professor Aytoun, Edward Forbes the naturalist, John Goodsir the anatomist; Sir William Allan, L Sam Bough, George Paul Chalmers, the painters; George Combe, the phrenologist; Playfair, the architect; Alexander Russel, editor of the Scotsman; Sir Archibald Alison, the historian; Captain John Grant, the last survivor of the old Peninsular Gordon Highlanders; Captain Charles Gray, of the Royal Marines, writer of Scottish songs; Lieutenant John Irving, of the Franklin expedition, whose remains were sent home many years after his death by Lieut.
He was greatly assisted by Lord Cockburn, then Mr Henry Cockburn, and a volume of correspondence published by Kennedy in 1874 forms a curious and interesting record of the consultations of the two friends on measures which they regarded as requisite for the political regeneration of their native country.
In the construction of the Scottish Reform Act Kennedy took a prominent part; indeed he and Lord Cockburn may almost be regarded as its authors.
