Northern District of Queensland. 195 



kind of stock. Cattle, however, would become wild. As 

 brigalow is like the Myall, it is probable if it were once 

 burned, cattle would keep down the fresh young shoots. I 

 observed many places where it seems to be perishing, and 

 there most luxuriant grass grows. 



About twenty miles up a range approaches the river, and 

 a small hill stands near to the left bank. This hill, about 

 three hundred feet high, seems entirely composed of pieces 

 of fossil wood, waterworn pieces of sandstone, and quartz, 

 held together by a sandy cement ; just as if those remains of 

 antiquity had, at some period less remote, been brought there 

 by water, and left to become a conglomerate, to be subse- 

 quently upheaved into their present position. I took the 

 liberty of naming this Mary's Hill, after Mrs. Morton. 

 The position is north by compass, from the steep western end 

 of the range before mentioned. That range is most remarkable 

 for its abrupt termination to the west, descending from a 

 great height at an angle of 75°, and when once seen, can 

 never be afterwards mistaken. 



About eight or ten miles above Mary's Hill we turned up 

 a tributary that comes from the N. W. We went up this 

 creek about twenty-five miles, and saw some beautifully 

 grassed undulating country, thinly timbered with narrow- 

 leaved ironbark. Over the whole of this country the surface 

 is strewed with fragments of fossil wood, whilst trunks of 

 trees are sometimes met with lying on the surface, but broken 

 into lengths of twelve or fifteen inches, and completely 

 changed into silica. Sometimes the sun-cracks, or what is 

 apparently such, are filled with quartz, quite white and in 

 crystals. We here came upon a tribe of blacks, who fled 

 from us in great haste, leaving every tiling behind them. 

 This fine country, just large enough for one station, seems 

 entirely encompassed by dense brigalow scrub. 



On this creek I saw in some scrub, near a waterhole, a 

 number of human vertebrae and a thigh bone; also the cannon 

 or shank bone of a horse or bullock. We looked about in order 

 to find the skull, by which to determine whether the bones 

 belonged to the remains of a white or black man, but without 

 success. Beyond this fine open country we went N.W. ten 

 miles into a dense brigalow scrub, which becoming more 

 difficult by the presence of a swamp oak scrub, we returned 

 to follow up the Mackenzie. But desirous to see what was 

 on the east of the open country, we, on our return, went 

 easterly, and soon came upon high open clowns richly grassed. 



