NEW SOUTH WALES. 453 
basaltic ridges. We add only, and that from the statements of others, 
that granite appears to the west in the Clywd Valley near Mount 
Victoria, eighty miles from Sydney, and at other points north and 
south in the Blue range:—to the north, one hundred miles, and 
beyond in the Liverpool range, through the district of New England, 
where the granitic mountains present characteristic needle crests 
and sharp edges :*—to the southwest, on the Wollondilly, in the dis- 
trict of Argyle :—and farther south, granitic and syenitic rocks, and 
others allied, prevail through the Australian Alps, which are continued 
also into Van Diemen’s Land. Clay slates are said to occur beyond 
the Dividing range towards Bathurst, and at other places to the north 
and south. ‘The limestones are met with to the west in the Welling- 
ton Valley, and other regions in that direction, and also to the south- 
west about Yass Plains and beyond, and south on the Shoalhaven 
River; serpentine occurs between Bathurst and Molong, and south 
of Yass Plains. 
There is a single volcanic region on the Australian continent, south 
of the Grampians near Port Philip, where there are a number of 
volcanic cones and vast sheets of lava. 
In the preceding remarks we give no very flattering picture of the 
fertility of New South Wales: and in our excursions, we saw little 
material for such a picture. Major Mitchell, an extensive explorer of 
Australia, and for some years Surveyor-General, in speaking of the 
recurrence of the Sydney sandstone through the southwestern portion 
of the colony, says,t ‘ We again find here that ferruginous sandstone 
which desolates so large a portion of the territory of New South 
Wales, and to all appearance, New Holland, presenting in the interior 
desert plains of red sand, and on the eastern side of the Dividing range 
a world of stone quarries and sterility. It is only where trap, or 
granite, or limestone occur, that the soil is worth possessing.” Again 
he says, ‘Sandstone prevails so much more than all these (trap, lime- 
stone, or granitic rocks) as to cover about six-sevenths of the whole 
surface comprised within the boundaries of nineteen counties, (from 
Yass Plains on the south to the Liverpool range on the north.) 
Whenever this happens to be the surface rock, little besides barren 
sand is found in place of soil. Deciduous vegetation scarcely exists 
there; no turf is formed, for the trees and shrubs being very inflam- 
* Strzelecki’s New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, London, 1845, 8vo. p. 56. 
+ Expeditions into Australia, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1888, ii, 321. 
114 
