60 ' CRATER NEAR HERBERTON. 



i ■ ' • . ■ . V ; . •: 



denudation of the rock. There is no rock such as Hmestone,. 

 soluable enough to account for the erosion of such a chasm. 

 There is no evidence that the waters of the Barron River 

 are affected. by or swallowed up even to the slightest degree 

 by the Crater. No similar vent or chasm is known to 

 exist, ip,. any other portion of the district. It is totally 

 different to Lake Eacham, which is clearly the ruined 

 volcano of the Tertiary period. But the Grater might have 

 been caused by the outburst of a period of volcanic activity, 

 Subsequent to the period of the " massive porphyries," 

 and; subsequent to the period of the elvan outbursts. The 

 only, appearance which lends a clue to the origin of the 

 Crater is, that on the north-west side and highest side 

 rounded stones of exceedingly porous and vesicular basalt 

 are fbuhd. Altered zeolite crystals are embedded in all 

 of the boulders. 



On the eastern side of the Crater and right down to 

 the edges of the rocky bed of the Barron River itself, there 

 are in places small fragments of basaltic rock, and in other 

 places up the river a few hundred yards, there is abundance 

 of red chocolate soil. Now whether these apparently 

 rounded, highly vesicular fragments of basalt have been 

 ejected with great force up the vent of the Crater, it is 

 impossible to say at present, until sometliing further is 

 known of the country further up the Barron River. This 

 is a pathless jungle at present, and it will be probably 

 many years before the country up the Barron River wilJ 

 be sufficiently opened up to speak with certainty. The 

 writer has not observed such highly vesicular basalt in any 

 other part of the district. Xot far away, on the Western 

 edge of the Hugh Nelson Range, the solid basalts of the 

 later Tertiary period have flowed down from some old 

 volcano near the head of the Beatrice, very much along 

 the course of the south branch of Nigger Creek, and finally 

 spread out over the bed of the old bed of the Wild River^ 

 and have formed what is now known as the Herberton Deep 

 Lead. The river beds were then wider thaii they are 

 to-day, and probably the ranges were higher and the rain; 

 fall greater. The basalts of these old lava flows are hard, 

 compact basalts for the most part, and have no analogy 

 with the vesicular basalts of the Crater. 



