EUCALYPTUS TEEES. 181 



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 likfly 

 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 ia 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 



