Page:A sketch of the physical structure of Australia.djvu/88

76 Leichhardt. At the southern part of Limmen's Bight, just south of Wickham's River, he speaks of a range of hills of "white sandstone, baked, resembling quartzite, dipping at small angles to the south, and striking east and west," (p. 426 to 434). He meets with high sandstone ranges steep to S.E., and sloping gently to N.W., rock generally white, between Wickham and Roper's Rivers, (p. 437). He then describes a continually ascending country of sandstone as he goes up Roper's River, with indurated clay and distinct stratification till near latitude 13&deg;, and longitude 132&deg; and 133&deg; he arrives at a high table land of massive sandstone horizontally stratified, which he says at one place seemed to be "literally hashed, leaving the remaining blocks in figures of every shape," (p. 475). This country seems to have been the counterpart of that traversed by Grey in penetrating to his Glenelg River, (see ante p. 70). In longitude 134&deg;, latitude 14&deg; 20' he speaks of basalt surrounded by high hills of sandstone (p. 458), and in latitude 13&deg; 50', longitude 133&deg; 33' he says the sandstone dips S.W. (p. 469). Just previously (p. 468) he speaks of a baked sandstone, in some pebbles of which he found "impressions of bivalves, ribbed like a cockle." These may have been spiriferæ or productæ,— which I have often heard spoken of as "cockles," in New South Wales and Tasmania.

From the high table land, 1800 feet, to which he attained south of Port Essington, he looked down