north of Blue-Mud Bay has furnished also specimens of ancient
sandstone; with columnar rocks, probably of clink-stone. Round Hill, near
Point Grindall, a promontory on the north of Morgan's Island, is
composed, at the base, of granite; and Mount Caledon, on the west side of
Caledon Bay, seems likewise to consist of that rock, as does also
Melville Island. This part of the coast has afforded the ferruginous
oxide of manganese: and brown hematite is found hereabouts in
considerable quantity, on the shore at the base of the cliffs; forming
the cement of a breccia, which contains fragments of sandstone, and in
which the ferruginous matter appears to be of very recent production;
resembling, perhaps, the hematite observed at Edinburgh by Professor
Jameson, around cast-iron pipes which had lain for some time in sand.*

(*Footnote. Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, July 1825 page 193.)

The general range of the coast, it will be observed, from Limmen's Bight
to Cape Arnhem, is from south-west to north-east; and three conspicuous
ranges of islands on the north-western entrance of the Gulf of
Carpentaria, the appearance of which is so remarkable as to have
attracted the attention of Captain Flinders,* have the same general
direction: a fact which is probably not unconnected with the general
structure of the country. The prevailing rock in all these islands
appears to be sandstone.

(Flinders Volume 2 page 158. See hereafter.)

The line of the main coast from Point Dale to the bottom of Castlereagh
Bay, where Captain King's survey was resumed, has also a direction from
south-west to north-east, parallel to that of the ranges of islands just
mentioned. The low land near the north coast in Castlereagh Bay, and from
thence to Goulburn Islands, is intersected by one of the few rivers yet
discovered in this part of Australia, a tortuous and shallow stream,
named Liverpool River, which has been traced inland to about forty miles
from the coast, through a country not more than three feet in general
elevation above high-water mark; the banks being low and muddy, and
thickly wooded: And this description is applicable also to the Alligator
Rivers on the south-east of Van Diemen's Gulf, and to the surrounding
country. The outline of the Wellington Hills, however, on the mainland
between the Liverpool and Alligator Rivers, is jagged and irregular; this
range being thus remarkably contrasted with the flat summits which appear
to be very num