to make it probable that primitive
rocks may form the general basis of the country in that quarter; since a
lofty chain of mountains is continued on the south of Cape Tribulation,
not far from the shore, throughout a space of more than five hundred
miles. It would carry this hypothesis too far to infer that these
primitive ranges are connected with the mountains on the west of the
English settlements near Port Jackson, etc., where Mr. Scott has
described the coal-measures as occupying the coast from Port Stevens,
about latitude 33 degrees to Cape Howe, latitude 37 degrees, and as
succeeded, on the eastern ascent of the Blue Mountains, by sandstone, and
this again by primitive strata:* But it may be noticed that Wilson's
Promontory, the most southern point of New South Wales, and the principal
islands in Bass Strait, contain granite; and that primitive rocks occur
extensively in Van Diemen's Land.

(*Footnote. Annals of Philosophy June 1824.)

The uniformity of the coastlines is remarkable also in some other
quarters of Australia; and their direction, as well as that of the
principal openings, has a general tendency to a course from the west of
south to the east of north. This, for example, is the general range of
the south-east coast, from Cape Howe, about latitude 37 degrees, to Cape
Byron, latitude 29 degrees, or even to Sandy Cape, latitude 25 degrees;
and of the western coast, from the south of the islands which enclose
Shark's Bay, latitude 26 degrees, to North-west Cape, about latitude 22
degrees. From Cape Hamelin, latitude 34 degrees 12 minutes, to Cape
Naturaliste, latitude 33 degrees 26 minutes, the coast runs nearly on the
meridian. The two great fissures of the south coast, Spencer's, and St.
Vincent's Gulfs, as well as the great northern chasm of the Gulf of
Carpentaria, have a corresponding direction; and Captain Flinders (Chart
4) represents a high ridge of rocky and barren mountains, on the east of
Spencer's Gulf, as continued, nearly from north to south, through a space
of more than one hundred geographical miles, between latitude 32 degrees
7 minutes and 34 degrees. Mount Brown, one of the summits of this ridge,
about latitude 32 degrees 30 minutes, being visible at the distance of
twenty leagues.

The tendency of all this evidence is somewhat in favour of a general
parallelism in the range of the strata, and perhaps of the existence of
primary ranges of mountains on the east of Australia in general,