Page:A sketch of the physical structure of Australia.djvu/85

73 balance of probabilities appears to me to be in favour of their belonging to the same palæozoic formation which is found so largely in New South Wales, and of which we have a trace in Western Australia. I have, however, left them doubtful in the accompanying map.

We have already seen Captain King's opinion of the uniformity of character of the remainder of the north coast from the indentation of Cambridge Gulf to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the land being generally low and the rocks loose sands with ferruginous concretions. We shall, however, see reason to believe that in the interior of the country, the massive sandstones of supposed palæozoic age, stretch across in a lofty range from the neighbourhood of Stokes' Victoria River to that of the Gulf of Carpentaria. I will first describe the coast formation. The only point where I saw this myself, was at Port Essington. Here it was a red and white ochreous sandstone, sometimes rather argillaceous when it was firm and compact, but generally soft and friable. The red and white colours were sometimes confined to different portions of the cliff, but at others, they were intermingled in blotches. Wherever the stratification was discernible, it was always horizontal, but sometimes a cliff of twenty or thirty feet high would consist of light powdery sandstone, without any marks of bedding. It frequently contained ferruginous concretions, and these sometimes occurred in such abundance as to occupy the entire