23 
soft nature, but still traversed by numerous quartz and iron veins, and diorite 
dykes. 
Along- this line of country many of the Rivers run North and South over 
large alluvial flats, which are the principal agricultural tracts of land. 
The rivers in this district, for the most part, bear different names, as when 
discovered by the early explorers they were named differently from the coastal 
portions, owing to their flowing in a different direction. 
At the North bend of the Avon, where it turns abruptly to the West, and 
cuts through the hard belt, the rocks are gneiss and mica schist, and contain 
quartz veins and several rich lodes of magnetic i ron, which ore has been tested and 
proved to be very rich, and to yield iron of great purity. 
To the Eastward the country is chiefly a large undulating plain of sand, 
which sometimes contains a large percentage of clay, and sometimes small nodules 
of ferruginous clavstone, while the hills are mostly capped with ferruginous sand¬ 
stones. Out of this plain rise isolated hills of metamorphic and granitic rocks, the 
former often forming bold ridges or hill masses, sometimes capped with horizon¬ 
tally bedded sandstones and conglomerates, while the latter only just appear 
above the surface in some of the higher parts of this rolling plain. 
More to the East the sand plains are interspersed here and there by large 
clay and loam flats with bold bare red granite hills and extensive red clay alluvial 
plains, with salt flats and gypsum deposits, which continue to the Yilgarn gold¬ 
field, when a line of low ranges makes its appearance containing numerous quartz 
reefs and ferruginous lodes, Some of which have proved very rich iu gold. The 
country here is a good deal broken and of comparatively slight elevation, unlike 
most of the interior, which is a high table-land, and this may be the result of 
extensive denudation, arising from the fact that most of the drainage of a large 
portion of the interior passes over this area, which would also account for the 
ridges of the older rocks beneath being exposed. 
About the interior itself very little is as yet known, but from the accounts of 
the explorers, it is very similar to this, but almost waterless, except in very 
exceptional seasons. 
GEOLOGY. 
The science of Geology naturally appears very complicated to persons who 
have spent all their lives in this Colony, or to those who have not studied the 
subject until they came here, as they have no opportunity of observing the sequence 
of the more modern rocks, which places them in a somewhat analogous position to 
a person starting to study the most complicated rules of arithmetic before master¬ 
ing the simple ones. True we have a few of the most modern beds exposed 
along the coast, but formations of intermediate age between these and the Meta- 
morphie rocks are rarely met with, as their outcrop, where they do exist are mostly 
covered by surface deposits, and even in the beds of the streams no good sections 
are to be obtained, so that when they are exposed in patches they are of no assist¬ 
ance to the student. It being perfectly impossible, therefore, for one to study 
the gradual changes from the most recent to the oldest rock, the science can only 
be taken up in a purely theoretical way, hence very erroneous ideas are as a lule 
conceived regarding the formation of the older rocks which contain veins and 
dykes. As this formation is the only one of any interest to the prospector and 
uiiner, and as this book has been written especially for them, we shall coniine 
