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30 means for taking the timber brought down their tramway, to Perth, or to Fremantle for shipment. Above the islands to the East of Perth water, the river has a tortuous course, forming a succession of broad reaches to the confluence of the Helena, a small stream from the East, above which it bends to the East round the town of Guildford, and thence, ascending the stream Northward, to Ellen's Brook, a distance of about 20 miles direct from Perth, which drains the base of the range to the North, whence the valley trends North-East to Toodyay, where it is joined by the Avon from the South-East. This is, indeed, the main river, but had been so named at York before its connexion with the Swan was known. The lateral valley of the Avon, and its affluent the Dale, from the South, extend about 60 miles in a direct line, and the main river about 50 miles from Toodyay to Perth.

The upper basins of the river present, as is usual in West Australia, chains of pools, for the most part formed in rock, connected only in times of flood by water, at others by deposits of sand. Granite is largely developed in the surface of the hills about the Avon valley, which is one of the most fertile, as well as beautiful, parts of the Colony. Throughout the whole course of the river the flats on the banks are very rich with springs of fresh water from the drainage of the ground above them; some are still uncultivated, but it is occupied nearly throughout its entire length, the land having been taken up in the early days of the Colony. The banks have been throughout well wooded, and are so now in many places. The tertiary and alluvial clays and sands of marine formation, which extend along the base of the Darling Range to the South coast across the valley of the Blackwood, present an apparently level