will be found in the South-West and North-West; in the former about the middle of the river basins, and in the latter near the sources of the rivers.
As the basins of the larger rivers naturally divide the Coast Districts into areas having characteristic differences, they may be best considered separately, and, as the principal settlements are on the West Coast, it may claim priority in description. A line of about 300 miles, from the sources of the Blackwood to those of the Irwin, may represent the South-Western watershed of the Colony. This great mass of granitic rock,—the Western escarpment of which is known as the Stirling Range, which forms the watershed of the rivers of the South as well as West, and the spurs from which separate their basins—,has its greatest elevations to the South and West. The height of but few of these has been correctly ascertained, but Mt. William, at the source of Meares River, to the South of the Murray, rises 1685 feet above the level of the sea.
To the West and South another range has been thrown up, forming a sort of terrace below the main range, and this is marked by Roe's Range, of which Mt. Lennard on the Collie is the culminating point; beneath this, as has been noted, on the coast, both to the West and South, basaltic columns have been protruded at Bunbury and at Cape Beaufort; and beyond, about thirty miles to the West, the Coast Range, some points of which are nearly 800 feet above the sea, has by its elevation directed the course of the Blackwood to the South. This is also granitic, but has deposits of limestone and saliferous sandstones upon it. The former, probably of the same formation as the Coast limestone, are hollowed into numerous caverns containing fossils and fossiliferous deposits, while, in the lowlands at the
