(Footnote.  Freycinet page 195.)

It is on the bank of the channel which separates Bathurst and Melville Islands, near the north-western extremity of New Holland, that a new colony has recently been established:  (see Captain King’s Narrative volume 2.) A permanent station under the superintendence of a British officer, in a country so very little known, and in a situation so remote from any other English settlement, affords an opportunity of collecting objects of natural history, and of illustrating various points of great interest to physical geography and meteorology, which it is to be hoped will not be neglected.  And as a very instructive collection, for the general purposes of geology, can readily be obtained in such situations, by attending to a few precautions, I have thought that some brief directions on this subject would not be out of place in the present publication; and have subjoined them to the list of specimens at the close of this paper.*

(Footnote.  See hereafter.)

In the vicinity of Cambridge Gulf, Captain King states, the character of the country is entirely changed; and irregular ranges of detached rocky hills composed of sandstone, rising abruptly from extensive plains of low level land, supersede the low and woody coast, that occupies almost uninterruptedly the space between this inlet and Cape Wessel, a distance of more than six hundred miles.  Cambridge Gulf, which is nothing more than a swampy arm of the sea, extends to about eighty miles inland, in a southern direction:  and all the specimens from its vicinity precisely resemble the older sandstones of the confines of England and Wales.* The View (volume 1 plate) represents in the distance Mount Cockburn, at the head of Cambridge Gulf; the flat rocky top of which was supposed to consist of sandstone, but has also the aspect of the trap-formation.  The strata in Lacrosse Island, at the entrance of the Gulf, rise toward the north-west, at an angle of about 30 degrees with the horizon:  their direction consequently being from north-east to south-west.

(Footnote.  I use the term Old Red Sand Stone, in the acceptation of Messrs. Buckland and Conybeare, Observations on the South Western Coal District of England.  Geological Transactions Second Series volume 1.  Captain King’s specimens from Lacrosse Island are not to be distinguished from the slaty strata of that formation, in the banks of the Avon, about two miles below Clifton.)

From hence to Cape Londonderry, towards the south, is an uniform coast of moderate elevation; and from that point to Cape Leveque, although the outline may be in a general view considered as ranging from north-east to south-west,* the coast is remarkably indented, and the adjoining sea irregularly studded with very numerous islands.  The specimens from this tract consist almost entirely of sandstone, resembling that of Cambridge Gulf, Goulburn Island, and the Gulf of Carpentaria; with which the trap-formation appears to be associated.