a warm welcome.  The greater part of Point Torment is deeply intersected with deep narrow creeks, and is almost entirely flooded at high-water:  it extends low and swampy for nearly three miles in breadth, and then rises gradually, the slope being well wooded with the white Eucalypti.  Here also I remarked the gouty-stem tree, figured by Captain Grey, and described by Captain King, as of the Nat.  Ord.  Capparides, and thought to be a Capparis; it also bears a resemblance to the Adansonia described in Captain Tuckey’s Congo.  This was but a small specimen in fruit, of which the following brief description may convey a tolerably clear idea.  In shape it something resembled the coconut, with a gourd-like outside, of a brown and yellow colour.  Its length was five inches, and diameter three.  The shell was exceedingly thin, and when opened it was found to be full of seeds, imbedded in a whitish pulp, and of a not ungrateful taste.

This place, latitude 17 degrees 5 minutes South, may be considered the limit of its growth in that direction, and the Victoria River, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, in latitude 14 degrees 55 minutes, the northern boundary of its indigenous empire.

We saw no traces of inhabitants, not even the thin rising smoke, which so often greeted our eyes near the coast we had recently surveyed.  I climbed the highest tree we could find, and from the elevation it afforded looked southwards over a wide prospect of nothing but mangroves and mudbanks; still interesting from the fact that upon them the wondering gaze of the curious European had never yet been bent!

THE MOSQUITOES.

Procuring the necessary observations completed the duties of the day; but, alas! the sleep all could have enjoyed so much after our work, was rendered impossible by the swarms of mosquitoes, who at sunset relieved those of their tribe upon whom the day duty had devolved, and commenced a most unsparing attack upon us:  all devices to escape them were tried in vain, and some of the men were really half mad with the insufferable annoyance:  at last, about eight o’clock, when all patience seemed exhausted, a welcome peal of thunder, and bright flashes of lightning announced the expected and much desired squall.  It served to blow away some of our persecutors; but our rest was of very short duration, and I was at length compelled to order the people to take to the boats, fairly driven from the shore by our diminutive but invincible assailants.  The tide set past the boats at the rate of four knots per hour, and it fell 33 feet, being 6 feet more than we had as yet found it.  The only rock seen here was a block, visible at low-water; it was a conglomerate, and the most southerly formation of the kind we met with.

THE FLOOD-TIDE.

February 26.