Thus If The Intervening Extent Of Desert Lying Between Any Of The Known Portions Of Australia, And What May Be

Considered as having been the next island, can be ascertained and crossed over, new and valuable regions may yet be

Offered for the extension of the pastoral interest of our Colonies, and for the general spread of civilization and improvement.

[Note 34: "An hundred miles above this, I passed a curious feature, called the "Square Hills" (plate 123 ). I landed my canoe and went ashore, and to their tops to examine them. Though they appeared to be near the river, I found it half a day's journey to travel to and from them; they being several miles from the river. On ascending them I found them to be two or three hundred feet high, and rising on their sides at an angle of 45 deg. and on their tops, in some places for half a mile in length perfectly level, with a green turf, and corresponding exactly with the tabular hills spoken of above the Mandans, in plate 39, vol. 1. I therein said that I should visit these hills on my way down the river; and I am fully convinced from close examination, that they are a part of the same original superstratum, which I therein described, though 7 or 800 miles separated from them. They agree exactly in character, and also in the materials of which they are composed; and I believe that some unaccountable gorge of waters has swept away the intervening earth, leaving these solitary and isolated, though incontrovertible evidences, that the summit level of all this great valley, has at one time been where the level surface of these hills now is, two or three hundred feet above what is now denominated the summit level." - Catlin's American Indians, Vol.

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