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Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume I by Charles Sturt
page 27 of 247 (10%)
at ShoalHaven; but this river is hardly perceptible, from the summit of
the cliffs forming the sides of the Gully, which are of the boldest and
most precipitous character. The ground on the summit is full of caves of
great depth, but there has been a difficulty in examining them, in
consequence of the violent wind that rushes up them, and extinguishes
every torch.

The open and grassy forests of Argyle are terminated by another of those
abrupt sand-stone passes I have just described, and the traveller again
falls considerably from his former level, previously to his entering on
Yass Plains, to which this pass is the only inlet.

From Yass Plains the view to the S. and S.W. is over a lofty and broken
country: mountains with rounded summits, others with towering peaks, and
others again of lengthened form but sharp spine, characterise the various
rocks of which they are composed. The ranges decline rapidly from east to
west, and while on the one hand the country has all the appearance of
increasing height, on the other it sinks to a dead level; nor on the
distant horizon to the N. W. is there a hill or an inequality to be seen.

From Yass Plains to the very commencement of the level interior, every
range I crossed presented a new rock-formation; serpentine quartz in
huge white masses, granite, chlorite, micaceous schist, sandstone,
chalcedony, quartz, and red jasper, and conglomerate rocks.

It was however, out of my power, in so hurried a journey as that which I
performed down the banks of the Morumbidgee River, to examine with the
accuracy I could have wished, either the immediate connection between
these rocks or their gradual change from the one to the other. I was
content to ascertain their actual succession, and to note the general
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