Schouten Island. 3 



an J of a deep dark-bluish colour, with a flat couch oidal 

 fracture and ringing- sound, like that of clinkstone when 

 struck with a hammer. 



Flanking the greenstone, and girding the coast, with 

 slight intermission, from the point forming the southern 

 side of the entrance to Geographe Strait, out of Oyster 

 Bay, round to about the south-west point of the Island, 

 is sandstone rising into vertical cliffs of considerable 

 height,- — whence, however, it dips at once under the 

 greenstone, and does not any where present itself in the 

 central parts of the Island. 



From the western entrance point of the strait, a curved 

 beach of shingle and sand extends to the situation where 

 the coal is ; and there is within the bend a long shallow 

 lagoon full of reeds and bulrushes, the roots of which 

 abound in starch. This lagoon is banked out by a ridge 

 of large rounded pebbles and sand, thrown up at a time 

 when the elevation of the land must have been less by 

 several feet than it is at present. 



Immediately behind this, the land, which at the time 

 of my visit was rank and green with herbage, swells 

 easily up into rounded greenstone hills. 



Where the doal has been found, schistose sandstone 

 and shaly clays show themselves along a steep sloping- 

 bank for about 160 yards, at either extremity of which, 

 space the greenstone hems it in, down to the shingle and 

 sand on one side, and to the water's edge on the other. 



This eruptive rock seems to have been poured from 

 some central point of the Island, or more probably frona 

 a nearly meridional line of extrusion, which may be traced 

 along the western side of the Schouten main-land, form- 

 ing an irregular and occasionally interrupted line of un- 

 dulating grassy hills, with low dark head-lands, which 

 determine the limits of that side of Oyster Bay, and of 

 the extensive inland walers at the head of Swanport, ^% 



