174 
Similar rocks were met with to about 350 feet, when hard quartzites and fine 
hard grits were met with, divided by bedding-planes forming an angle of about 4o to 
the perpendicular course of the bore. Apparently the base of the Coal-Measures had 
been reached, and an older formation, upon which they lie unconformably, entered upon. 
In the neighbourhood of Cooktown a series of strata, presumably of the age o 
the Upper Bowen Formation, extends from the right bank of Oaky Creek, two miles 
above “ Daddy’s Camp,” southward to the tributaries of Deep Creek, between the 
Byerstown Hoad and The Bluff — a distance of about six miles — with an average breadt 
of a mile and a-half. In this area of nine square miles a very considerable thickness o 
strata must be represented, as they generally dip at high angles. Sections on Oaky 
Creek show the base of this formation to rest unconformably on the older slates an 
quartzites, and at the south-east end of The Bluff the conglomerate and sandstones o 
the Normanby Bange (Desert Sandstone) lie on the upturned edges of the strata ot 
the coal-bearing formation. The sti'ata consist for the most part of greenish-grey 
sandstones, dark-blue shales, and fireclays. 
Between Oaky Creek and the Normanby Eange, to the west, I found, in 1879, 
in Tam Creek and Coal Creek, numerous seams of coal, some of very good quality, but 
the thickest (in Cofil Creek, twenty-five miles from Cooktown) was only eight inches. 
A shaft was sunk on the eight-inch seam of coal, in 1879, by the Cooktown 
Eailway League. The shaft went through the bottom of the coal to a total dept 
of nineteen feet. A drive six feet nine inches long was then made to the dip (33°), 
when the bottom of the coal was again cut. The seam was then followed down on the 
dip for fourteen feet six inches. At the north end of the vertical shaft the section 
was as follows : — 
Black shales, with Glossopteris 
First coal (good), 9 inches at upper side, 14 inches at lower 
side of shaft, with a parting of dark shale 2| inches thick 
at lower side, thinning out to J-inch at upper side 
Dark shale 
Second coal, impure, clayey, brittle, and short, light in colon 
Fragments of anthracite can be picked from it 
Dark shale ... 
Third coal, brittle anthracite 
Grey sandy shales 
Hard grey sandstone 
Sandy shale 
Hard grey sandstone 
At the south end of the vertical shaft the section is as follows ; — 
Black shale 
First 
Coal j Clay 
k Coal, good 
Dark shale 
Second coal, brittle 
Dark shale 
Third coal, brittle, anthracitic, impure 
Dark sandy shale 
Sandstone 
Dark sandy shale 
Sandstone (bottom of shaft) 
In. 
Ft. 
in. 
17 
2 
• 
1 
2 
0 
6| 
1 
to 
0 
2| 
4 
to 
0 
5 
4i 
to 
0 
5 
2 
7 
0 
6 
1 
6 
0 
5i 
'WS ; 
In. 
rt. 
In. 
2^ 
to 
0 
3 
0 
to 
0 
1 
6 
to 
0 
9 
0 
7i 
' a 
1 
a 
to 
0 
1 
3i 
to 
0 
5 
6 
to 
0 
7 
2 
7 
0 
6 
0 10 
