New South Wales . 
59 
be hoped that now the Government lias made up its mind 
to undertake the work from its own resources, pecuniary and 
official, more will be accomplished than has hitherto been done 
to work out the intricacies of Australian geology, to accomplish 
which in minute and thorough detail, will probably require the 
united exertions of many a worker in the field aud the cabinet 
to the middle of the next century at least. In the preceding 
pages it has been my lot to mention many of my own discoveries; 
but it has not been with any desire to overrate my endeavours or 
exertions ; and some I have altogether omitted. 
In the first Edition of this paper mention was merely made of 
the Cape York Peninsula, where ferruginous deposits occur on 
the lower slopes and bases of porphyry hills. I may repeat 
here what was added in the second Edition. Those deposits 
were examined at the Mint, and no gold was detected ; but on a 
recent comparison of their lithological character with that of 
Tertiary beds from Elemington (iu Victoria), I believe them to 
be, if not Tertiary, of similar origin to the Jaterite of India, and 
of the Islands in the intermediate sea. 
Dr. Rattray, of II.M.S. “Salamander,” who furnished me with 
a map, and a collection to illustrate it, from the neighbourhood 
of Cape York, and whose paper was read by me, in his absence, 
before the Royal Society of New South Wales, more recently 
published his views in extenso before the Geological Society of 
London. lie therein attributes to me an opinion that the thick 
sandstones of the Peninsula are of the age of the Ilawkesburv 
rocks of New South Wales. 
I do not remember that 1 have expressed any opinion on this 
sandstone ; what was submitted to me was considered by me far 
younger. That such sandstone, and even older deposits between 
Cape York and the Gilbert River, may exist in the interior of 
the Peninsula, is far from improbable. The data at present are 
insufficient for further comment. It may belong to the Desert 
sandstone of Daintreo. 
But this inference may be permitted that, as Cape York is so 
short a distance from the gold-bearing deposits of New Guinea, 
and as is now proved, all the rivors running to the Gulf of Carpen¬ 
taria, from the Mitchell to the Nicholson inclusive, rise in 
auriferous ranges, gold will probably be found in some parts of 
the country, along the back-bone of the Peninsula; and although 
my past examination of the rocks in the Louisiade Archipelago 
has not proved gold to exist there, yet I agree with Mr. Dain- 
tree, in his last Report to the Queensland Government, that the 
strike of the older formations justifies the belief that that Archi¬ 
pelago, and, I may add, other portions of the lands insulated in 
that part of the Pacific, will eventually furnish their quota of the 
precious metal. 
