Page:Handbook of Western Australia.djvu/50

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38
Western Australia.

which rise to more than 1000 feet above the sea, and on the Greenough River, and forms the surface of the greater portion of what is known as the Mines district, to the North of Champion Bay; it also appears in the Victoria Plains, where the Moore and Arrowsmith rivers take their rise about 50 miles from the coast. The rivers of this district are therefore mere watercourses, with occasional deep pools in the rocks, but in rainy seasons are filled with broad, deep, and rapid torrents. On and about their banks occasional flats of rich land are found, but the country is obviously more fitted for pastoral than agricultural pursuits. To this there are, however, two marked exceptions; one in the plains along the base of the hills below the upper valleys of the rivers, and the other in the lacustrine basins between the Irwin and Greenough, in which there is a large extent of rich alluvium, in the latter mostly under cultivation. The Moore, Arrowsmith, and Irwin have their sources in the Western slopes of the Northern spurs of the Darling Range, but the sources of the Greenough are in the North-West angle of the Lake district, and overlap those of the Irwin. The Chapman has its sources in the outer slopes of the basins of the Greenough, as the smaller rivers of the coast, the Buller, Oakagee, and Bowes, have from without the valley of the Chapman. The Greenough may have a direct course of more than 150 miles, and its lateral valleys may extend 100, but this part of the Colony has not been surveyed, although triangulations have been carried from Perth to the Weld Range, beyond the Murchison, under the direction of the Surveyor General, from which it appears that the principal elevations are Mt. Dalgeranger, to the East of the sources of the Greenough, 2100 feet, and Mt. Lulworth, the culminating point of Weld Range, 2330 feet above the sea.