Page:Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia, Volume 2.djvu/43

 �of course more plainly developed. The Inse is. a coarse, granular, siliceous sand-stone, in which large pebbles of quartz and jasper are imbedded: ,this stratum continues for sixteen to twenty fe .above the water: for the next ten feet there is a �horizontal stratum of black schistose rock, which was of so soft a consistence, that the weather had excavated several tiers of galleries; upon the roof .and sides of which some curious drawings were observed, which deserve to be particularly de- scribed: they were executed upon a ground of red ochre, (rubbed on the black schistus), and were delineated by dots of a white argillaceous earth, which had been worked up into a paste. They represented tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards (of which I saw vend small ones among the rocks,) trepang, star- �tsh, clubs, canoes, water-gourds, and some qua- drupeds, which were probably intended to repre- sent kangaroos and dogs. The fmres, besides being outlined by the dots, were decorated all over with the same pigment in dotted transverse bolts. Tracing a gallery round to w/ndward, it brought me to a commod/ous cave, or recess, 'overhung by a portion of the schistus, suffidently large to shelter twenty natives, whose recent fire. places appeared on the projecting area of the cave.

�