Page:Handbook of Western Australia.djvu/32

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20
Western Australia.

coast of the Great Bight extending at the foot of a limestone range of perpendicular cliffs, named after Governor Hampton. The limestones here found are of various qualities and have never been sufficiently examined, but, from the fossils they contain, which in all are numerous, and of which some entirely consist, they may probably be classed as approximating to the Great oolite of England. They are too dense to contain water, unless in fissures or caverns which are common in them. Their surface is grassed but waterless, though water, fit for stock, is found in Roe's Plains, at their base near the sea. Their Northern limit has not been observed. They present materials for building, for lime burning, and for such ornamental uses as marble is applied to. A similar line drawn from N. W. Cape, S.S.E., would exclude the projecting mass to the East of King's Sound, which has aim its own characteristic difference.

The Desert District, which had only been entered from the East and West until it was in the present decade crossed by Warburton, Forrest, and Giles, appears, so far as our present knowledge extends, to be a level expanse of sandstone, with some granitic elevations and depressions forming hills and pools, the surface covered by what is locally known as spinifex, thinly wooded with belts of mulga and other shrubs, and with scattered white gum trees near the pools of water. To the South, Giles found it waterless, but Forrest found water nearly throughout his whole route across the centre. It is therefore probable that water may exist in many places, but the district, so far as is known, offers no inducement even to further exploration; yet Forrest, in 1853, found a sandstone range extending into it under the parallel 28-30 South Latitude, and reports many natives, and much game in its interior; it may