76 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



ferous series, as in the neighbourhood of Ipswich, we should expect richer 

 deposits of gold in a south-westerly direction on getting into rocks lower 

 in the Silurian series, that is supposing them still to retain their north- 

 easterly dip. Passing out of Moreton Bay, and still going northerly, 

 Tertiary sands of the Brighton series occupy low-lying country on the 

 coast, the G-lass House Peaks, said to be volcanic, raising their peaked 

 heads from the plain with sharper outline than the craters of Ascension. 

 At Double Island Point, the southern entrance of Wide Bay, Basalt un- 

 derlies the Tertiary, and hence to Inskip Point are cliffs the exact coun- 

 terpart in lithological character of the Bed Bluff series, Brighton. The 

 streets of Maryborough are metalled with soft sandstone, similar in ap- 

 pearance to the Melbourne beds, and fifteen miles in a south-westerly di- 

 rection gold of a nuggety character is being found in quantity, and about 

 a hundred diggers are employed. 



Hence to Bockhampton the sandy tertiaries prevail along the coast. 

 Under Woody Island, and at one point on Fraser's Island, Basalt is seen 

 in places cropping from under the sand. Bockhampton stands on rocks 

 which dip to the north-east at high angles. A quarry opened at the side 

 of one of the streets exposes a fine section of these. They consist chiefly 

 of altered slates with bands of impure limestone containing fossils, pro- 

 nounced by Professor M'Coy as Palaeozoic. The altered slates, almost Ly- 

 dian stone in places, resemble those of Mount Staveley, Victoria. Ts"o 

 quartz reefs were noticed in them. In the range of hills opposite Bock- 

 hampton, these same beds have a westerly dip, and splendid sections are 

 afforded of the sequence of beds in the heads of the creeks running 

 from these hills. Up the Fitzroy, about four miles above Bockhampton, 

 a marble is quarried for lime-burning ; it has a north-easterly dip, and ap- 

 pears to be nearly the uppermost stratum of the series exposed in the 

 neighbourhood. Cornelians, some of large size, are found in the gravel 

 drift of the Fitzroy at this point, probably washed from granitoid rocks 

 exposed higher up that stream. Leaving Keppel Bay and going north 

 among the islands, all is granite (Pentecost Island is one of the most re- 

 markable in form). Generally they are pine-clad, and have a most pic- 

 turesque appearance. The sail from Bockhampton to Port Denison is, in- 

 deed, one of the most charming it has yet been my fortune to undertake. 

 Bounding Gloucester Island, a precipitous granite ridge, Port Denison, is 

 reached. 



The township of Bowen stands on Tertiary sand resting on a granitoid 

 rock. The same geological feature extends along the coast northward to 

 the Burdekin river, Cape Upstart, Mount Abbot, and numerous smaller 

 peaks of granite rearing their heads above the Tertiary plains and alluvial 

 swamps at their base ; indeed, were the coast line submerged to the di- 

 viding range 200 ft. below the present level, it would present the same 

 features as now obtain from the present shore to the Barrier Beef. At the 

 lower crossing of the Burdekin, the cornelian-bearing granitoid rocks are 

 again in force, and abundance of cornelians are to be found in the river 

 sands. Following the present well-beaten track to the Valley of Lagoons 

 at the head of the Burdekin— a track which twelve months ago did not 

 exist, but is now as plain and well-worn as any in Victoria (the distances 

 in miles marked on the trees) — for twenty-nine miles from the Lower 

 Burdekin crossing, we pass over a level, sandy, Tertiary area, with large 

 patches of swampy alluvium. At the twenty-seventh milestone Kill Bul- 

 lock Creek is reached, on the east bank of which a well-defined quartz 

 reef crops out from a matrix of rotten granite. This granite is exactly 

 similar in character to that of Omeo and that of some portions of Taiubo 



