June 27.

We proceeded about five miles in a westerly direction, passing over two small creeks running to the south-east.  The country here appeared to be gradually rising, and the land to be growing drier; and we now hoped to be enabled to prosecute our journey without any great obstruction from the swamps.

June 28.

Proceeding on the same course as on the previous day, we crossed two small creeks, running rapidly to the eastward.  The bottoms of these creeks were covered with granite pebbles, of various sizes.  The first creek we crossed at the entrance, and the other near the middle of a thick scrub, extending nearly three miles, and through which we had to cut a road.  The various plants of which this scrub was composed corresponded with those described as forming the scrub near our first camp in the Bay.  The greatest obstacles to our progress through these scrubs were the long shoots of the Flagellaria, and climbing palm.  We camped in an open patch of forest land, covered with grass, and the trees consisted principally of Moreton Bay ash, (a species of eucalyptus), Casuarina, and a rather large-growing Acacia, with broad, rhomboidal, sericeous phyllodia, and very broad, flat legumes.

Luff and Douglas were this day taken very ill with the ague.

June 29.

We found that some of our horses had strayed into the scrub, and we did not succeed in finding them until nearly twelve o’clock, and Luff and Douglas being no better, Mr. Kennedy with three others proceeded to examine the country in advance of us.

June 30.

This morning Luff was a little better, but Douglas was able to eat but little.  In the scrub near our camp I found a species of Musa, with leaves as large, and the plants as high, as the common banana (M. paradisiaca) with blossoms and fruit, but the fruit was not eatable.  I also found a beautiful tree belonging to the natural order Myrtaceae, producing on the trunk and large branches only abundance of white, sweet-scented flowers, larger than those of the common rose-apple (Jambosa vulgaris), with long stamens, a very short style, slightly two-cleft stigma, five very small semi-orbicular petals, alternate with the thick fleshy segments of the calyx, broad lanceolate leaves, the fruit four to six inches in circumference, consisting of a white fleshy, slightly acid substance, with one large round seed (perhaps sometimes more), the foot-stalk about one inch long.  This is a most beautiful and curious tree.  Some specimens which I saw measured five feet in circumference, and were sixty feet high, the straight trunks rising twenty or thirty feet from the ground to the branches, being covered with blossoms, with which not a leaf mingled.  There were ripe and unripe fruit mingled with the blossoms, the scent of the latter being delightful, spreading perfume over a great distance around; I had frequently noticed the fragrance of these blossoms while passing through the scrub, but could not before make out from whence it arose.  It resembles the scent of a ripe pineapple, but is much more powerful.  There are not many of these trees to be found, and those only in the scrub, in a stiff loamy soil.  The small animals eat the fruit, and I tasted some, but it was not so good as the rose-apple; we called it the white-apple.  It is a species of Eugenia.