522 GEOLOGY OF THE CLARENCE RIVER BASIN, 



Returning to the Orara range and taking our stand upon the 

 summit we have immediately beneath our feet the conglomerate 

 mentioned above, a more recent portion of which same formation is 

 the basis of the Clarence Carboniferous series, which extends 

 eastwards without visible break, though enormously eroded, all 

 the way to the Pacific. This capping of the hill rests upon an 

 uneven surface of slates, schists, and quartzites, vertical or nearly 

 so, and extending westwards to the greenstones and granites which 

 form the eastern buttress of the tableland. 



The range, as has been already said, forms the division between 

 the basin of the Orara or S.E. tributary of the Clarence, (which rising- 

 near the coast runs in a north-easterly direction to join the river above 

 Grafton), and that of the south-western waters, which are gathered 

 from the vast alpine mass rising to the eastward of Armidale, 

 and known in different parts by different names, as Mount Lofty, 

 Macleay Range, Chandler's Peak, &c. It is a spur of the main 

 watershed or Great Divide, starting from Ben Lomond, and 

 separating the upper waters of the Clarence and Manning Rivers. 

 Much of it is laid down in the Geological Map as volcanic ; more, 

 I venture to predict, than will be admitted bye and bye. Its 

 northern slopes are drained by the various torrents which make up 

 the Nyruboi, Guy Fawkes and Mitchell Rivers, and pass to the 

 northwards between us and the table land. The Guy Fawkes 

 takes a sudden turn to the west, nearly S. of Newton Boyd, and 

 under the name of Little River or Boyd, joins the Nymboi at 

 Buccarumbi, having been probably been diverted from its original 

 course by the elevation of the Newton Boyd greenstones and 

 granites. 



For the whole channel of the Boyd or Little River as we trace 

 it westwards and upwards from Buccarumbi, where it joins the 

 Nymboi, to Broadmeadows, where we leave it for the Henry 

 or Newton Boyd River, is a deep gutter eroded in slates and 

 quartzites, generally of intense hardness, in a direction at right 

 angles to their strike. A similar and parallel channel, about 15 

 miles to the north carries the waters of the Mitchell to the Nymboi. 

 There is no fault traversing these beds in a direction at right 



