Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1.djvu/289

King George's Sound.]

Sound and Princess-Royal Harbour, the granite is generally covered with a crust of calcareous stone; as it is, also, upon Michaelmas Island. Captain Vancouver mentions (Vol. I. p. 49) having found upon the top of Bald Head, branches of coral protruding through the sand, exactly like those seen in the coral beds beneath the surface of the sea; a circumstance which should seem to bespeak this country to have emerged from the ocean at no very distant period of time. This curious fact I was desirous to verify; and his description was proved to be correct. I found, also, two broken columns of stone three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees and of a thickness superior to the body of a man; but whether they were of coral, or of wood now petrified or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks, worn into that particular form by the weather, I cannot determine. Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been less than four hundred feet.

But little calcareous matter was found elsewhere than on the southern shores. In Oyster Harbour, a rather strongly impregnated iron stone prevails, but mixed with quartz and granite; and in some parts of both harbours, a brown argillaceous earth was not uncommon.

The soil of the hills is very barren, though, except near the sea coast, generally covered with wood; and that of the plains at the head of Princess-Royal Harbour, has been described as shallow, and incapable of cultivation. In the neighbourhood of Oyster Harbour the land was said to be better, especially near the rivulet which falls into the northern corner; and on the borders of a small lake, at the back of the long beach between the two harbours, the country was represented to be pleasing to the eye, and tolerably fertile.

The timber trees of the woods consist principally of different species of that extensive class called gum-tree by the colonists at Port Jackson, by botanists eucalyptus. They do not grow very large here, and the wood is heavy and seldom fit for other than common