INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 41 



•extensive seawall had been a coral reef raised by some convulsion 

 of nature, and that an inland sea or low sandy country existed 

 behind it. He had, however, not examined the rock formation, 

 which was judged '• to be calcareous, the upper third brown, the 

 lower two-thirds white, in horizontal layers," and attributed that of 

 Bald Head to the same. The calcified casts of stems of trees 

 contained in it he considered to be corals, as Vancouver did. 



OxLEY, when stopped in his westward progress by the marshes 

 ■of the Lachlan and Macquarie, was led to infer that the interior 

 was occupied by a shoal sea, an opinion participated in by Allen 

 Cunningham. 



Mitchell's exploration in 1816 yielded conclusive proof of the 

 ■desert nature of Central Australia. 



Stukt adopted the notion that the Australian continent had 

 been an archipelago, that the interior plains had been sea beds, 

 and that part of the interior was still occupied by a sea of greater 

 or less extent, and very probably by large tracts of desert country. 

 Thus the main object of tlie exploration of Central Australia 

 undertaken by him in 1844-46 was to connect Lake Torrens with 

 some more extensive and more central body of water, which he 

 expected to find at or about sea level. He thought that he had 

 found some confirmation of this in the fossiliferous beds of the 

 Kiver Murray, which he considered to have been drifted from the 

 north and accumulated against a bar of granite crossing the river 

 near to its entrance into l-ake Alexandrina. Moreover, the general 

 level of the Murray Plains — 2o0ft. to SOOft. — corresponds with 

 that at which the rivers of the western watershed of East Australia 

 lose their character as such. Arguing from the disposition and 

 extent of the sand ridges in the basin of Lake Ej-re, he concluded 

 that the winds had not formed them, though they had assisted in 

 shaping their outlines, and he attributed their formation to water 

 — supposing that originally the sand was a submarine deposition 

 and that in the course of upheaval current-action made parallel 

 breaches in the sandy floor in the direction of its flow.* He 

 appeals to the marks of floods and violent torrents as evidences 

 that the continent was at one time more humid than it now is.f 



Stokes doubted the existence of an inland sea, but suggested that 

 the central part of the continent is a vast desert, though the interior 

 ■drainage may convert a portion into a lake. 



Eyre, who had pointed out the incompatibility of the existence 

 in the interior of an extensive area of water and the occurrence of 



• Narrative Exped. Central Australia, vol. i., p. 381. i M., vol. ii., p. 124. 



