Northern Queensland. 43 



rise very near to each other, — countenancing an idea, which 

 is not, however, yet established, that there was once a communi- 

 cation between those localities. 



A careful inspection of the chart of Australia — now gradually 

 but, nevertheless, rapidly being filled in — will show that the 

 coast lines also rudely follow the strike of the Main Cordillera, 

 and that a series of hues drawn in their direction will divide the 

 country into mathematical figures of a tolerably regular shape ; 

 in fact, no country is in this respect better defined than Aus- 

 tralia. 



Another feature of the physical conformation of Australia is 

 the persistency with which certain of the older formations follow 

 a geological strike along the meridian or within certain angular 

 deviations from it ; so that they recur in the same direction, 

 where the denudation of younger overlying deposits exposes them 

 to an outcrop, and this is most distinctly the case along the 

 extension of the Cordillera to the westward nearly throughout 

 Victoria. 



It was this and other collateral facts which very much guided 

 me in pointing out many years ago certain auriferous tracts not 

 only in New South Wales proper, but in Victoria and Queensland, 

 which both at the time belonged to this territory. 



This enabled me also, in conjunction with another geological 

 feature (viz., the undulation of the beds in the selected forma- 

 tions, the dips of which are reversed so producing synclinal 

 depressions and anticlinal ridges), to expect a recurrence of 

 similar outcrops to the eastward or westward of an assumed 

 meridian such as that which defines the position of the great 

 gold-fields north and south of Mount Alexander. 



This class of observations also induced me to infer that a gold- 

 field would be found near Peak Downs, and led me to point out 

 in 1851 a tract of country within certain definite limits of lati- 

 tude and longitude (viz., between 32 and 34° S., and 146 and 149° 

 E.), which have since been found to include not only the gold- 

 fields of Forbes and Young, but the more recently developed 

 district of Emu Creek. So, in the case of Canoona and other 

 localities at the back of Port Curtis, about Eockhampton, and 

 along the Burdekin Eiver, my indications have not failed, because 

 they were founded on the knowledge of the concurring data of 

 direction, geological age and other conditions which have success- 

 fully been brought into play elsewhere. 



These statements are not made in order to claim individual 

 credit, but merely as proofs, that any success which may have 

 attended my inspection and study of this country has been the 

 result not of mere conjecture and rash conclusions, but of a 

 careful comparison of the features of the general physical and 

 geological structure of the Continent, particularly in reference 



