The yawl grounding repeatedly, occasioned so much delay, that after proceeding seven miles I pushed on with the gig alone.  Our course was still South by East and the reaches were less crooked.  Four miles further we were delighted to find our progress rendered hazardous by sunken trees, so much so indeed, that I was most reluctantly obliged to wait a few hours for daylight.  There could now no longer be a doubt that we were in a river, and I immediately embraced the opportunity of gratifying my earnest and heartfelt desire of paying the promised tribute to our scientific predecessor; and accordingly named this, our first discovery, after him, The Flinders.

As soon as the blackened heads of the fallen trees, evidences of how fierce a torrent had borne them hither, could be discerned, we proceeded.  The reaches became again tortuous, but we still made some progress.  The mangroves were no longer to be seen fringing the banks with their garden shrubbery appearance.  In a broad easterly reach, some natives were burning the country close to the west bank, but they did not show themselves.  At the end of it the river expanded into a beautiful sheet of water a quarter of a mile in width, though only three feet deep.

ACCIDENT TO THE BOAT.

Some low grassy islets were scattered here and there, reposing in emerald verdure on the surface of the stream, which was reverting under the influence of the tide, towards its source, and now hurried the boat so rapidly through a narrow channel between the west side of a large island and a low line of earthy cliffs, as to carry her foul of a submerged tree and half fill and almost capsize her.  In order to ascertain the extent of the damage, we landed on a small sandy beach, in which was the fresh print of a native’s foot; but we neither heard nor saw him or his companions, although columns of smoke from their fires stole upwards through the calm still air on all sides.  A fine sheet of water now lay before us, trending southwards for upwards of two miles, with a width of about a quarter; and it was with increasing interest and anxiety that we pulled up it.

APPEARANCE OF THE RIVER.

Passing a line of cliffs, twenty feet high, the banks became green and grassy, descending with an almost imperceptible slope into the stream, and blending with their vivid reflections so as to render it difficult to determine where was the point of contact.  It seemed as if we were gliding through an indefinite expanse of limpid water reposing between two vast plains, that here rose higher than we had before seen the land on this part of the continent.

Hurrying on with a still favourable tide, but at a rate much too slow for our impatience, we passed two other small grassy islets, and a third was before us.  The eastern bank had become steep, overhanging, and clothed with a mass of luxuriant creepers; whilst on the opposite side was a low woody patch, partly immersed by the lake-like glassy water of the river, into which one slender tree dipped its feathery crest, appearing like another Narcissus, to admire its own beauty in the stream.  In front, the eye could penetrate far down the reach hemmed in as it was by trees that clustered thick on the water’s brink.