NEW SOUTH WALES. 183 



posed, it is swallowed up by the caverns in the limestone rocks. 

 This is the case with the Macquarie, which has its source near 

 Bathurst. 



According to all accounts, salt is very generally diffused throughout 

 New South Wales, and even all Australia. It has been reported as 

 being found in masses in the sandstone, but no specimens of it were 

 obtained by the Expedition. Scarcely a well is dug in the interior 

 which is not brackish ; and, according to Major Mitchell, Captain 

 Start, Oxley, and others, many of the rivers are quite saline in parts 

 of their course. The northern tributaries of the Hunter and Darling 

 are instances of this. 



The lakes are also said to be saline, and in some instances suffi- 

 ciently strong to afford a large and profitable yield of salt ; but being 

 very far in the interior, and without the means of transportation, they 

 are of little value. Along the south coast of Australia, such lakes 

 are described as existing near the sea, and may possibly prove of 

 some value to that portion of New Holland. 



Lead and iron have been found in small quantities ; the deposits 

 of the former are all trifling. Those of the latter afford too impure 

 an ore, and not in sufficient abundance to be worked. 



The minerals stated to be found in Australia, specimens of which 

 were procured for the Expedition, are, chalcedony, agates, jasper, 

 quartz, augite, and stilbite, feldspar, arragonite, gypsum, chlorite, 

 mica in granite ; sulphur and alum, galena and plumbago, magnetic 

 iron, iron pyrites, and basalt. 



Fossils appear to be confined to particular localities, but are by no 

 means rare. 



Columns of basalt of great regularity are found on the coast of 

 Illawarra, but the articulations are all plane. 



The water is much impregnated with alum and iron, and its use is 

 avoided by the inhabitants. 



Deserts covered with saline plants are said to be frequently met with. 



Mitchell, in his travels in New South Wales, speaks of the 

 different heights of the ranges of mountains in this country, some of 

 them in the southern and some in the eastern portion, as being 

 covered with snow, and rising four thousand five hundred feet above 

 the sea. To the Blue Mountain range he ascribes a height of three 

 thousand four hundred feet, composed entirely of sand; beyond this 

 the granite or dividing range occurs, which is only two thousand two 



