er to record my own ideas, and if I am in error in any particular, I
shall thank any one of the many who are better versed in these matters
than myself to correct me.

I have stated in a former part of this chapter, that I undertook a
journey to South Australia in 1838. I advert to the circumstance again
because it is connected with the present inquiry. After I had turned the
north-west angle of the Murray, and had proceeded southwards to latitude
34 degrees 26 minutes (Moorundi), where Mr. Eyre has built a residence, I
turned from the river to the westward, along the summit of the fossil
formation, which, at the distance of a few miles, was succeeded by
sandstone, and this rock again, as we gained the hills, by a fine slate,
and this again, as we crossed the Mount Barker and Mount Lofty ranges, by
a succession of igneous rocks, of a character and form such as could not
but betray to a less experienced geologist even than myself the abundant
mineral veins they contained. On descending to the plains of Adelaide I
again crossed sandstone, and to my surprise discovered that the city of
Adelaide stood on the same kind of fossil formation I had left behind me
on the banks of the Murray, and it was on the discovery of this fact that
the probability of the Australian continent having once been an
archipelago of islands first occurred to me.

A more intimate acquaintance with the opinions of Flinders, as to the
probable character of the interior of the continent, from the character
and appearance of the coast along the Great Australian Bight; the
information I have collected as to the extent of the fossil bed, and my
own past experience, have led me to the following general conclusions.
That the continent of Australia has been subjected to great changes from
subigneous agency, and that it has been bodily raised, if I may so
express myself, to its present level above the sea; that, as far as we
can judge, the north and N.E. portions of the continent are higher than
the southern or S.W. parts of it, and that there has consequently been a
current or rush of waters, from the one point to the other--that this
current was divided in its progress into two branches, by hills, or some
other intervening obstacle, and that one branch of it, following the line
of the Darling, discharged itself into the sea, through the opening
between the western shores of Encounter Bay and Cape Bernouilli; that the
other, taking a more westerly direction,