chain on its course westward. Mounts
Cunningham, Melville, and the small hills about them on each bank belong
to another system of ridges of similar character, but more broken up; and
the range of Kalingalungaguy with that of Bolloon form a third, also
intersected by the river.

OF THE PLAINS IN GENERAL.

The plains appear to be divided into several stages by these cross
ridges, which may have shut up the water of high floods in extensive
lakes during the existence of which the deposits formed the surface of
the present plains. Loose red sand also constantly forms low hills on the
borders of these plains; and it seems to have been derived from the
decomposition of the sandstone, and may be a diluvial or lacustrine
deposit. Blue clay appears in the lowest parts of the basin, and forms
the level parts of the plain, with concretions of marl in thin layers.
This has every appearance of a mud deposit; but its depth is greater than
the lowest part visible in the channel of the river. The parallel course
of small tributaries joining rivers, which seem to be the middle drain of
extensive plains, may have been marked out during the deposition of the
sedimentary matter as tributaries, on entering the channel of greater
streams, immediately become a portion of them; hence it is, the general
inclination being common to both, that such tributaries do not cross
these sediments of floods now termed plains in order to join the main
channel or river now remaining.

CHARACTER OF THE GOOBANG AND BOGAN.

Thus the Goobang, on entering the valley of the Lachlan, pursues a
parallel course until the ridge from Hurd's peak confines the plain on
the west and turns the Goobang into the main channel. The Bogan, on the
opposite side of the high land, may be said to belong to the basin of the
Macquarie, although it never joins that river, but merely skirts the
plains which, below Cambelego, may be all supposed to belong to the
original bed of the Macquarie. Throughout its whole course of 250 miles
the left bank of the Bogan is close to low hills, while the right adjoins
the plains of the Macquarie. The basin of the Macquarie, as shown by its
course near Mount Harris and Morrisset's ponds, falls northward, but that
of the Darling to the south-west. It is not at all surprising therefore
that the course of a tributary so much opposed, as the Macquarie is, to
that of the main stream, should spread into marshes: still less that, on
being at length ch