The Latter, However, Were Very Limited.
The Ant-Hills Were Intimately Connected With The Rock, As The Ants
Derived Their Materials For Building From The Minute Particles Of Clay
Among The Sand.
The primitive rock was cut with deep gullies and ravines,
and several tributary creeks joined Big Ant-hill Creek from the primitive
side.
The basaltic table land, which extended all along the right side of
the creek, formed steep slopes into its valley, and were generally topped
with loose basaltic boulders. The table land was highest near the creek,
and its drainage was not towards the creek, but to the south-west, into
the valley of lagoons. White quartz rock was observed in a few places on
the right side of the creek, where the primitive rock seemed to encroach
into the territory of the basalt; and felspathic porphyry formed probably
a dyke in the pegmatite, but was most evidently broken by the basalt.
Where the upper part of the creek formed a shallow watercourse, and
turned altogether into the primitive formation, a plain came down from
the west-north-west with a shallow watercourse, which continued the
separation of the two formations; the right side of the plain being
basaltic, the soil of the Box and Ironbark forest loamy, with sharp
pieces of the rock; the left side being sandy, and covered with a very
pleasing poplar gum forest, in which the grotesque ant-hills were
exceedingly numerous. About two miles higher up the plain, separated into
several distinct plains, the largest of which was from twelve to fifteen
miles long, and from two to three miles broad, and came from Mount Lang;
another plain came from an isolated razorback hill, and a third continued
on the line of contact of the basaltic and primitive rocks.
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