EUCALYPTUS TREES. 145 
ing spaces. But who will predict more ? May not 
the large system of salt lakes formed by the drainage 
of rain into cavities of saline flats be found limited to 
the less distant portions of the interior of Western 
Australia, and may it not thus, by a gradual rise of 
the ground (evidently manifest northerly), give place 
to a system of fresh-water lakes or lagoons, or even of 
such springs as rewarded the exertions of the keenly- 
searching explorers west of Lake Eyre ? And although 
it must be admitted that no ranges simultaneously 
lofty and wooded, and thus originating springs and 
rivulets for the formation of larger rivers, are likely 
to exist to any extent in the extra-tropical part of the 
western interior, because such rivers have not found 
their way to the coast; yet it is still possible, and 
rather probable, that mountains as high, and much 
less bare than Gawler Range, and even much more 
extensive, may give rise to interior water-courses, 
along which the dwellings of new colonists may be 
established, and to which our pasture-animals may 
flock, but which, in their sluggish progress, cannot 
force their way to the ocean, and are thus lost in nu- 
merous more or less ample inland basins. Years hence, 
on even less-favored spots, artesian borings may afford 
the means of stay for a dense population, should, as 
may be anticipated, mineral riches prove to be scat- 
tered not merely over the vicinity of the west coast 
and Spencer’s Gulf, but also over interjacent areas of 
geological similarity. York’s Peninsula, close to set- 
tlements, was long left an uninhabited and desolate 
spot until its richness of copper-ore was disclosed. 
So other unmapped parts of Australia are also likely 
to prove rich; and, although equal facilities for the 
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