611 
“Tfhat has been done already is interesting enough, hut nothing very strange, 
wonderful, or startlingly new as yet. The shells and bones locked in the stalagma and 
those found loose in the bat exuviae are identical with those of existing sj)ocies. Casts 
of fossil millipedes are among them. 
“ The first new cave is in a low mound, a few hundred yards to the left of the 
big hill. You de.scend a deep, narrow shaft by means of a rope half-way, and there is 
a further descent by leaping from one projection to another, in a slanting direction, till 
you come to the bone-bed. There is no foul air; ventilation seems to come from 
another opening, but there is the closeness of the charnel-house, and the mustiness 
of the tomb. The bones are the remains of a large Kangaroo. The leg bones are 
sixteen inches, and thigh bone ten inches. The lower jaw was originally ten inches long. 
I did not see the skull. They are very decomposed and crumbly. I think the animal 
must have fallen down the shaft, and floundered along in its uninjured state to the 
centre of the deep cave where it was lying. In the other new caves adjoining, a com- 
plete skull of a Native Cat, with its retractile teeth, and several Wallaby and Opossum 
skulls, with other remains, were found. These bones are now on view at the School of 
Arts, Rockhampton. 
“The beauty, cleanness, variety, and number of the ornaments in these new 
vaults far exceed anything to bo found in the larger caverns. These are the realisation 
of the works of the most wonderful genii of our youth, the elaborate grottos of the 
fairy tales. Ladders are to be placed so that they may be reached, and, above every- 
thing, they ought to be wire-netted. 
“ The increasing value of what was once termed ‘ the waste lands of Australia ’ 
suggests attention to her waste products. Contemplation of the vast mounds and deep 
deposits of the bat manure, mixed with the pulverulent lime marl in these caves, points 
to large sums of mmiey that may bo realised from their utilisation. Rrom what I have 
read of what is being done with this substance in other places, its value is sufiieiently 
established.”* 
Johannsen's Caves . — “ These eaves are situated contiguous to our local ‘ Mount 
Etna.’ They are in a great mountain of compact limestone — a grey, dense marble, 
exactly corresponding to the rock of Glibraltar, hard, homogeneous, and unstratified, 
but cracked and tilted in thick irregular beds. The outside weathering is of the usual 
sharp-pointed, pock-pitted nature all these formations throughout the district present to 
the eye. All round the base of the mountain are the usual fallen masses, and the 
numerous lumps of thin stratified stalagma among them tell how cave action has reduced 
the hill to half its former size. The chief entrance is greatly blocked up by the fallen 
roof of a former cave. One feature of Johannsen’s Caves is their marrow entrances, 
and their wide swelling proportions inside. You crawl and creep through a ‘ hole in the 
ground ’ that hardly admits you, and in a moment you may walk for six solid hours 
through the great squares, wide streets, intricate labyrinthian mazes, circling wynds, 
courtyards, and lanes, ‘ through -gaun closes’ of a great subterranean town with 
surrounding suburbs. The architecture is entirely gothic, of cathedral form ; and the 
strong impression besets you that you have stumbled on the ruins of a mediaeval 
city. The black gloom of these lofty corridors, of which no candle can show the roof, 
and the great groined arcades, with rear aisles, deep secret recess-arched alcoves, 
and hanging rock-flitches, must be seen to be appreciated. They beggar description. 
“ One of the geological points is a black bed-crack circling round all the central 
caves, about the height of a man’s head, showing that in former times the whole 
* Hookhampton .Butten'a, 12th October, 1886. Mr. Banda, whoj has since visited the caves, does not 
think that the bat manure can be j)rofitably worked. 
