Coast Line Formation of the Western District. 27 



and obtain truthful replies to his answers, unmodified by 

 qualifications and inventions given with a view to please. 



Shortly afterwards Mr. Goodall informed me that the old 

 blackfellow said there had been a great shooting ; that "Black- 

 fellow had been rounded up and shot by whitefellow." Mr. 

 Goodall expressed himself as perfectly satisfied that the 

 answer was given in good faith, and was true; and this will 

 account for the singular occurrence of the remains in couples, 

 which so frequently, and as far as my observations went, 

 always occurred, the perfect skeleton on the beach excepted. 



The above being true (and I think it very probable), it is 

 but a confirmation of those accounts so frequent in con- 

 nection with the early settlement of the country, of the 

 wretched natives in their ignorance interfering with the 

 white man's flocks and herds, and provoking these terrible 

 reprisals. It constitutes murder of the same class with that 

 of a Queen's ship, armed with the most perfect weapons and 

 skilled men, shelling a native village in Polynesia, and 

 destroying wholesale, in revenge for some isolated outrage 

 by one or two of the natives, who in all probability but 

 retaliated for some injury previously sustained at the hands 

 of the white man. 



To return from this digression, I beg to note_, in passing, 

 the great change which has occurred within the last twenty 

 years in the appearance of the sand dunes. When settle- 

 ment first took place in the West, and for years afterwards, 

 the coast line was clothed with verdure ; and west of Belfast 

 the honeysuckle (Banksia) and she-oak (Gasuarina) grew 

 in abundance ; whereas, now, the dunes are denuded of 

 vegetation, and the trees gone, with the exception of a few 

 very brief isolated instances ; and in many cases the material 

 of the dunes is drifting inland. In places where the action 

 of the wind has been localised, and cut gullies in the dunes, 

 the formations alluded to by Mr. Etheridge may be noted 

 in abundance — namely, the filling in the cavities formerly 

 occupied by roots of the sedge grasses, reeds, and other 

 vegetation, with calcareous concretions, preserving the 

 common appearance of pith and stem ; but the whole is 

 very brittle, and not in any way partaking of the character 

 of the older formation fossils. 



Between Belfast and Yambuk the dunes have in places 

 been converted into an indurated limestone, of so firm and 

 glassy a character that a friend one day brought me in 



