COURSE OF THE VICTORIA.

I have thus detailed the circumstances attending the discovery and partial exploration of the Victoria, that new and important addition to our geographical knowledge of one of the least known and most interesting portions of the globe.  Its peculiar characteristics—­for, like all Australian rivers, it has distinctive habits and scenery of its own—­the nature of the country through which it flows—­its present condition, its future destiny, are all subjects, to which, though I may have cursorily alluded before, I am under promise to the reader of returning.  Of that promise, therefore, I now tender this in fulfilment.

The Victoria falls into the Indian Ocean in latitude 14 degrees 40 minutes South and longitude 129 degrees 21 minutes East, being at its confluence with the sea, between Turtle and Pearce Points, twenty-six miles wide.  The land upon either side as you enter the river is bold and well defined, but from the margin of the western shore, an extensive mud and mangrove flat, not entirely above the level of high-water, and reaching to the base of a range of hills, about seventeen miles from the water’s edge, seems to indicate that at one time the waters of the Victoria washed the high land on either side.

For the first thirty miles of the upward course, the character of the river undergoes but little change.  The left side continues bold, with the exception of a few extensive flats, sometimes overflowed, and a remarkable rocky elevation, about twenty-five miles up, to which we gave the name of The Fort, as suggested by its bastion-like appearance, though now called Table Hill in the chart.  To the right the shore remains low, studded with mangroves, and still, from appearance, subject to not unfrequent inundations:  towards the mouth, indeed, it is partially flooded by each returning tide.  Thirty-five miles from its mouth its whole appearance undergoes the most striking alteration.  We now enter the narrow defile of a precipitous rocky range of compact sandstone, rising from 4 to 500 feet in height, and coming down to the river, in some places nearly two miles wide, in others not less than twenty fathoms deep, and hurrying through, as if to force a passage, with a velocity sometimes not less than six miles an hour.

NATURE OF THE COUNTRY.

It continues a rapid stream during its passage through this defile, an extent of some thirty miles, and beyond it is found slowly winding its way towards the sea across a rich alluvial plain, fifteen miles in width.  Above this plain is found a second range of similar character and formation to that before mentioned; the stream, however, having of course somewhat less both of width and depth, and flowing with a decreased rapidity.  The elevation of the hills on either side was at first entering considerably less than in the former range; they had also lost much of their steep and precipitous appearance; but as we gradually