396 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



mob of EXCITED NATIVES. The white men met the natives, and, 

 after some ' chattering,' neither party understanding the language 

 of the other, the natives retired, taking the little boy with them, 

 apparently amicable and satisfied that he had not been kidnapped 

 or had been an unwilling visitor, but they displayed * evident 

 signs of triumph.' ' 



Next morning (ijth September), while STEWART AND JERRY 

 were collecting the horses, they were ATTACKED by two distinct 

 parties of natives, who threw spears. Stewart drove the horses 

 towards the camp, from which the other white men sallied to his 

 rescue, firing two shots at long distance. " The effect was instanta- 

 neous ; the quick advance was immediately turned into as quick 

 a retreat." 



Having packed up after this incident, the party travelled east- 

 south-east for 7% miles, and camped (CAMP 42) at the foot of what 

 is now known as the BATTLE CAMP RANGE. The name does not, 

 as might be supposed, commemorate the skirmish of this morning, 

 but a stand made by the natives some two years later against a 

 party of native police and officials, with prospectors, on the way to 

 the PALMER GOLDFIELD. 



From this range, TAYLOR COLLECTED FOSSILS, two of them 

 identified by the late Mr. Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., of the British 

 Museum, as belonging to the genera Ostrea and Hinnites. As 

 both these genera have a wide vertical range in time, and the speci- 

 mens do not seem to have been specifically determinable, the mere 

 identification of the genera does not help in assigning a firm geolo- 

 gical horizon to the strata of the range, which Taylor claimed as 

 " Carboniferous," and to a wide-spread formation of the same 

 character, whatever its age may be. The point is of importance, 

 and I have myself searched the Battle Camp Range on four different 

 occasions without finding the fossiliferous bed. 1 I have always 

 been inclined to regard the BATTLE CAMP RANGE, and other table- 

 lands which must at one time have been continuous with it, as part 

 and parcel of Daintree's " DESERT SANDSTONE " (Upper Cretaceous). 

 In the comparatively low-lying area south of the range which is now 

 traversed by the Cooktown-Laura Railway, there are sandstones 

 and shales with thin coal seams, but they have yielded only indistinct 

 plant remains of no value for palaeontological purposes. These 

 strata are characterised by a great paucity of fossils, which is in 

 marked contrast to the undoubted Permo-Carboniferous strata at 

 Deep Creek, Oaky Creek and the Little Kennedy River.* At the 

 LITTLE KENNEDY, near Palmerville (SEE SHEET i8C, 4-MiLE MAP), 

 the Permo-Carboniferous formation, which is highly fossiliferous, 

 coal-bearing and much disturbed, is succeeded unconformably 



1 See Geology and Palceontology of Queensland and New Guinea, by Robert L. Jack 

 and R. Etheridge, Junior. Brisbane and London, 1892, p. 531. 

 Op. cit., p. 533. 



