This point being set at rest, we proceeded with a large armed party at daylight on the morning of the 15th, to examine the country.  Landing, we took an East by South direction for Mount Fairfax, the nearest and most commanding point.  About one mile and a half from the beach, we crossed the dry bed of a stream, trending South by East about twenty yards wide, with banks from twenty to thirty feet high, composed of reddish earth and sand, having considerable portions of ironstone in it.  A few small tea-trees of the colonists grew in the sand that formed the dry bed of the stream.  Our course continued afterwards uninterrupted, over a gradually rising plain, of a sandy scrubby nature, until reaching the foot of Mount Fairfax, when we crossed another small watercourse, trending South by West where, for the first time, we noticed a solitary stunted casuarina.  Mount Fairfax is the southern and most elevated part of an isolated block, forming Moresby’s Flat-topped Range.  It rests on a reddish, sandy, sloping plain, on which were occasionally noticed fragments of quartz and ironstone, which latter formation is the character of Mount Fairfax, and apparently of the neighbouring heights.  Having completed our observations, which place Mount Fairfax 582 feet above the level of the sea, we continued our journey to the south-east, in the direction of Wizard Peak.  Two miles, over a scrubby sandy plain, brought us again to the Chapman or Greenough.  Here, for the first time, there was an appearance of fertility; but only in the valley of the river, which was about a quarter of a mile wide.

With the exception of a few brackish pools, the bed, as where we before crossed it, was dry, and formed of white sand, growing in which was a small crooked kind of drooping gum, besides a species of wattle and tea-tree.  Its course was about South by West and appeared to come from the valleys, formed by the ranges in the rear of Mount Fairfax, and north of Wizard Peak.  Continuing our journey, we proceeded over an undulating plain, on the higher parts of which a reddish sand and ironstone gravel universally prevailed; in the lower parts, and near the watercourses, the soil approached a light mould, and produced the warran, so much sought after by the natives.  In all this district the vegetation was of the worst description—­the trees, which grew only in the valleys, were small kinds of banksia, wattles, and drooping gums—­not large enough to furnish building materials.

ASCEND WIZARD PEAK.

In the course of the afternoon we reached the summit of that remarkable and almost solitary pyramidal hill, Wizard Peak,* which we found composed of large blocks of ironstone, having a most powerful effect on the needle, and changing its direction in different places ten degrees.  Here we noticed two or three stunted xanthorrhoeas growing on the South-West side of the hill; and a few small casuarinas, and wattles were thinly scattered on its summit, which, by barometric