BY C. S. WILKINSON, L.S., F.G.S. 461 



Easter Cavern and Grand Archway of the Binda or Fish River 

 Caves. This natural tunnel is about 200 yards in length, 20 to 

 60 yards wide, and 50 feet high. Its interior is ornamented with 

 numerous stalactites and stalagmites of most grotesque and 

 fanciful forms — from projecting ledges the pendant stalactites 

 resemble cascades, others hang in folds like curtains, while below 

 the fluted stalagmites rise to meet them. The vaulted and craggy 

 roof of the cavern is colored in places with light tints of pink and 

 green, mottled with white, caused by some minute fungoid or 

 other vegetable growth, producing a very pleasing effect ; and 

 the beauty of the whole scene is still further enhanced by the 

 admission of daylight from the upper and lower entrances of the 

 archway ; and about these entrances, and even within them, may 

 be seen different varieties of ferns, some sheltered in crevices in 

 rocks, and others clinging to the moist walls or hanging gracefully 

 from broken ledges of the white marble limestone. Through 

 this decorated and beautiful natural arch the Grove Creek flows 

 over a gravelly bed, leaving here and there a quiet pool of clear 

 water ; but the debris of drift timber left upon the craggy walls, 

 shows that a great volume of water must at times flow through 

 the tunnel. The gravel contains a little gold, but not in sufficient 

 quantity to pay for its extraction. The limestone is full of corals 

 encrinites &c, and is interbedded with Silurian shales and sand- 

 stones, which compose the high and rugged ranges rising steeply 

 on both sides of the creek, and in which occur numerous quartz 

 reefs, some of which have been worked for gold. The limestone 

 has become so crystalline in structure as almost to obliterate all 

 traces of the fossils ; but when polished (and it takes a high 

 polish) these may be plainly seen. It occurs, as it does in many 

 other parts of this Colony, in irregular lenticular masses which, 

 in places, are several hundred yards in thickness, and then in a 

 short distance they suddenly thin out : these are no doubt the 

 remains of coral reefs which once grew in the Silurian ocean, but 

 are now some 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea level. 



