Page:A sketch of the physical structure of Australia.djvu/41

29 On the coast indeed from Cape Upstart to Cape Melville all the points and islands on which I landed were almost entirely granite. At Endeavour River, in the hills on the south side a granular quartz rock with lines of lamination was seen resting on or abutting against the granite. Cape Melville itself and the adjacent country is composed of one huge mass of granite, jointed into very large blocks, many of which have fallen from the precipices or slid down the slopes of the hills and now lie in the wildest confusion.

Turning again to Leichhardt's account of the interior we find that after he passed the granitic district of the Cape Upstart country, and the lower part of the Burdekin River (p. 210), he came upon rough basalt, hills of horizontal limestone, sienite with bent and uplifted strata of limestone, containing many fossils and then to fields of basalt again, (p. 211, &c.) In lat. 19&deg; 30' we hear of baked sandstone and limestone full of corals. North of this we find mention made of feldspathic porphyry, sandstone, and conglomerate (p. 222), porphyry and psammite associated with talc schist (224), and then of more talc schist, porphyry, and basalt, with gneiss-like hills, and broad sheets of basalt in the valley of Lagoons (pp. 226-8, and 240), north of the valley of Lagoons is a basaltic table land,