Six miles from our last night’s bivouac, still keeping our southerly direction, brought us to some low, grassy islets, extending almost across the river, and leaving only confined and shallow channels; through one of which we had, at half tide, some difficulty in finding a passage for the boats.  The river now widened out a little, and we found the deep water near the western bank, the appearance of the country remaining unaltered.  We landed to pass the night at a rocky point on the east side of the river, one mile south from the most western islet of the chain just described as almost preventing our ascent.  The depth of the river at this point was about twelve feet at low-water; and its breadth some four or five hundred yards.  We found the water fresh at all times of tide, which here rose only eight feet; being ten feet less than its greatest rise eight miles nearer the mouth, where the time of high-water at the full and change of the moon occurs at 4 hours 10 minutes P.M.

This was the first rock formation we had noticed since leaving Point Torment, a distance of nearly thirty miles; it was a very fine-grained red sandstone, darkened and rendered heavy by the presence of ferruginous particles.  The appearance of the country now began to improve, the eastern bank was thickly wooded, and a mile higher up, the western appeared clothed in verdure.  I noticed here the same kind of tree, seen for the first time behind our last night’s bivouac; it was small and shrubby-looking, with a rough bark, not unlike that of the common elm, and its little pointed leaf, of a deep, dark green, contrasted with the evergreen Eucalypti by which it was surrounded, reminded me of the various tints that give the charm of constant variety to our English woods, and lend to each succeeding season a distinctive and characteristic beauty.*

(Footnote.  The diameter of the largest tree of this kind was only eight inches:  it was exceedingly hard, and of a very dark red colour, except a white rim about an inch in thickness.  This wood worked and looked the best, in a table I had made out of various specimens of woods collected on the North-west coast of Australia.)

SUFFERINGS FROM MOSQUITOES.

I must be pardoned for again alluding to our old enemies the mosquitoes, but the reception they gave us this night is too deeply engraven on my memory to be ever quite forgotten.

NIGHT OF TORMENT.

They swarmed around us, and by the light of the fire, the blanket bags in which the men sought to protect themselves, seemed literally black with their crawling and stinging persecutors.  Woe to the unhappy wretch who had left unclosed the least hole in his bag; the persevering mosquitoes surely found it out, and as surely drove the luckless occupant out of his retreat.  I noticed one man dressed as if in the frozen north, hold his bag over the fire till it was quite full of smoke, and then get into it, a companion securing the mouth over his head at the apparent risk of suffocation; he obtained three hours of what he gratefully termed comfortable sleep, but when he emerged from his shelter, where he had been stewed up with the thermometer at 87 degrees, his appearance may be easily imagined.