before, and which were by far the finest palms I had ever seen; the trunks were not very high, from fifteen to thirty feet in height, but very large in bulk, varying from six to eight feet in circumference:  they had large fan-shaped leaves, with slightly curved spines on the footstalk.  It is a dioecious palm, the female plants bearing an immense quantity of round fruit, about the size of a greengage plum, of a purple colour, and rather disagreeable flavour; the pulp covering the seed was very oily, and not a leaf to be seen on any of the fruit-bearing plants; the whole top consists of branches full of ripe and unripe seeds.  Bushels of seeds were lying beneath some of the trees, it seeming that but few were eaten by birds or small animals.  One of our party suffered severely from eating too freely of them as they brought on diarrhoea.  I measured two or three of the leaves of the male plants, and those not of the largest size, and found them to measure six feet in the widest part, and four feet and half in the narrowest.  These leaves were split by the wind into segments of various widths.  The grass growing to the westward of our camp was not so high as that to the eastward, and appeared to consist of a larger proportion of annual grasses, the perennial grass growing only in tufts; near the river it was covered with an annual Ipomoea, of very strong growth; the leaves and blossoms were withered, but I obtained seeds.  We shot three ducks to-day, and Wall killed a wallaby of a light grey colour, long soft fur, and rather bushy tail; he thought it new, and preserved the skin.  I also obtained specimens of a beautiful plant, a shrub about two feet high, with white sweet-scented blossoms, belonging to the natural order Rubiaceae, and several other interesting plants.  Lately, however, my specimens had been very much spoiled, being torn from the horse’s back so frequently, that I grew disheartened to see all the efforts I had made, made in vain, although I still took every method to preserve them from injury.

October 2.

This morning we proceeded across the plain, and when we had advanced about two miles upon it, we discovered that the natives had set the grass on fire behind us, and the wind blowing from the eastward, and the grass growing thick and high, it rapidly gained upon us; we made all possible haste to some burned ground which we had seen on Saturday, and reached it only a few minutes before the fire.  We were enveloped in smoke and ashes, but fortunately no one was burned.  The natives did not come near us, although no doubt they watched us, and saw us proceeding to the part of the plain that was burned.  The plain extended a great distance to the westward, and in crossing it one of our horses knocked up and could travel no longer; Mr. Kennedy ordered him to be bled, and we not liking to lose the blood, boiled it as a blood-pudding with a little flour, and in the situation we were, we enjoyed it very much.

October 3.