540 
bottom on which the Desert Sandstone has been deposited corroborates this view. Now, 
if we admit that what was a land surface from Permian to Cretaceous times still lies 
beneath the Desert Sandstone, wo may confidently expect to find beneath it numerous 
ancient watercourses, in whicli the debris from a very much larger area of auriferous 
rocks than has been exposed since the denudation of the Sandstone must have been 
“ sluiced ” again and again, so that the gold may be in “ leads ” in a highly concentrated 
form. ■ I began to insist upon this view in 18SG, and it is satisfactory to note that since 
then payable gold has been obtained in consolidated drifts or “ cements ” between the 
base of the Desert Sandstone and the surface of the slates to the north of the Palmer. 
Mr. Daintroe, in 1872, expressed the opinion* that “ the very nature of its [the 
Desert Sandstone’s] depositian seems to preclude the idea that gold will be found in 
paying quantities, except where direct local abrasion of a rich auriferous veinstone has 
furnished the supply. It is, indeed, doubtful if any marine or extensive lacustrine beds, 
except on their shingle margins, have produced, or arc ever likely to produce, remunera- 
tive workings oifree gold, for the simple reason that the majority of the sediments of 
which they are composed are derived from formations the greater part of which were 
non-auriforous.” My own conviction is that in the Palmer district deep leads, containing 
an amount of gold which will dwarf into insignificance the four or five million pounds 
worth already obtained from the field, will yet be found beneath, if not in, the Desert 
Sandstone. Where an old hind surface composed of auriferous rocks is covered over by 
a newer deposit, it is likely that the deep leads thus preserved from denudation will 
prove rich in gold. It matters nothing whether the covering be of basalt or sandstone. 
The same remarks as to the presence of alluvial gold beneath the Desert Sand- 
stone apply to many other fields in the Colony. At the Dpper Gilbert, at Croydon, 
at the Cape, at the Hodgkiuson, at the Starcke, and at Cania, the bulk of the alluvial 
gold has been obtained from localities from which the Desert Sandstone has been 
recently denuded. In fact, when one thinks of it, the places where alluvial gold has 
been found in conspicuously large quantities are just the places whore these conditions 
prevail, and not the places where the local reefs are richest. I have seen some 
suggestive instances on the Palmer where rich gold has been obtained from gullies 
within the whole drainage area of which there was no reef whatever. This may seem 
a bold assertion, but the country was dry, the grass had been recently burnt, and every 
bed of shale and sandstone in the drainage area was laid bare. Again, north of Tambo, 
alluvial gold (I believe in small quantities) has been found in Windeyer Creek and 
gullies which rise in the Desert Sandstone and flow over the underlying Rolling Downs 
rocks. As the latter certainly contain no auriferous reefs, the probability is that the 
gold was derived from “ leads” beneath the Desert Sandstone. 
On our northward course to Cape York in 1879-80, we first struck the Desert 
Sandstone between the Lukin and Kendall rivers, in about Long. 143° E. The sand- 
stone at its eastern escarpment had a thickness of about fifty feet, and was about 200 
feet above the level of the plain. It was ferruginous and very hard, and appeared to 
bo partly composed of fine volcanic dust. It contained little pebbles of quartz and 
larger pebbles of slate and quartzite. A granite mountain attaining a higher elevation 
than the sandstone lay between it and the Lukin River. It is very probable that the 
base of the Desert Sandstone rises gradually from near the sea-level on the Lower 
Norman and Gilbert (where Daintree observed it) to the higher level near the junction 
of the Palmer and Mitchell, where it is marked on the Plan of “ Strathleven No. lY.’ 
Squatting Block, where palaeozoic rocks rise from beneath it. It would thus have 
Q. J.G.S., xxviii., p. 278. 
