Page:A sketch of the physical structure of Australia.djvu/90

78 sandstone, horizontal strata deeply fissured in long. 136&deg;, lat. 16&deg; 10'; but on either side of them he only mentions red ironstone (p. 415). Near the River Van Alphen we read of white sandstone hard, flaggy, and horizontally stratified (p. 396). Thence to Van Diemen's River psammite (grains of quartz in a clayey base) is said to form the basis of the country with ironstone and iron sandstone occurring occasionally (pp. 351, 375, 379, 387).

Captain Stokes in speaking of the Wellesley Islands describes Bountiful Island as made of sand and ironstone, ferruginous sandstone, and reddish sandstone, very much honeycombed (p. 267); Bentinck Islands, ironstone cliffs (p. 277), Flinders' River red ferruginous rock (p. 299).

In Dr. Fitton's Appendix to Captain King's Voyage there is described a calcareous sandstone of recent concretionary formation as found on Sweers Island, one of the Wellesley group. The whole eastern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria has been always described by Flinders, King, and Stokes as one great flat of sand, scarcely raised above the level of the sea, of which flat I saw the extremity in the south side of Endeavour Straits. The sand there was white and appeared to be loose. The only rock mentioned is a calcareous sandstone of recent concretionary formation, said in Dr. Fitton's Appendix to King to have been brought from the mouth of Coen River, which is a little south of the Batavia River, marked in the accompanying map. That