566 
PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
size, some of which contain a white substance like flour ; it is simply 
carbonate of lime, and if we had a wetter climate no doubt stalactites 
and stalagmites would be formed. Somewhere I have read a descrip- 
tion of the chalk downs of Kent and Sussex, in England, which is so 
applicable to these cliffs that I quote a portion — “ These downs are 
covered with a sweet, short herbage, forming excellent sheep pasture, 
generally bare of trees, and singularly dry, even in the valleys, which 
for miles wind and receive complicated branches, all descending in a 
regular slope, yet are left entirely dry, and, what is more singular, 
contain no channel and but little other circumstantial proof of the 
action of water, by which they were certainly excavated. ” With a 
few T modifications this is an exact description of these cliffs. For 
some miles from the face of the cliffs they are clothed with a white- 
barked, thick-leaved mallee, sufficiently thin and open to drive a team 
through without cutting a stick, and in many of the valleys — beyond 
Point Culver particularly — there are patches or “paddocks” of grass 
of excellent quality; and everywhere among the mallee, throughout 
their course, the bushes growing are good top-feed for sheep, and are, 
I am told, identical with those in South Australia ; and there is every- 
where a short, dark, wiry grass called “black grass,” which is edible 
for stock when springing up green after a fire. The one thing lacking 
is water ; otherwise here is room for many thousands of sheep. East- 
ward, the Nullabor Plains come in almost to the edge of the cliffs, 
and afford grand pasturage for sheep, but nothing has been done yet 
with them; owing to the water difficulty. The last yawl trees to be 
met with are beneath the cliffs at Point Culver; the last granite 
I know of is three or four miles eastward of Wattle Camp. The 
termination of the quowcken is about 15 miles north of Israelite, 
though there are some patches on top of the cliffs resembling them, 
but they differ in herbage, and they have no clay. 
There are yate flats scattered about on top of the cliffs 
approaching a line running north from Israelite. East of that line 
I have met none, so T believe it to be their limit; but from this line 
to Point Culver I am not sufficiently acquainted with the country to 
be positive. From Point Culver the cliffs run overhanging the sea 
for more than 100 miles ; they then recede as much as 20 miles or 
more from the present coastline, but meet it again just beyond Eucla, 
beyond which they gradually lose their hitherto almost uniform 
height of 300 feet, till finally they are lost near the head of the Bight; 
beyond Eucla I have not travelled, so I can only speak from report. 
So from their commencement near Israelite Bay, to where they meet 
the sea beyond Eucla, they extend in an unbroken uniform height for 
450 miles; and now over this route, marching to the strains of 
“ Killaloo and saturated in dreams of future golden wealth, is daily 
pouring, from all corners of Australasia, a suffering, starving crowd of 
men, a very few of whom may partially realise their golden dreams, 
but the majority, poor fellows, will meet with only greater suffering 
and hardships; and still they come. 
From Esperance Bay to Cape Paisley, and as far north as I have 
ventured— 50 or 60 miles north of Lake Lefroy— the country is 
studded with low rounded granite hills and rocks corresponding to the 
is lesand reefs of the archipelago ; from the north line from Israelite 
