It is unnecessary here to dwell on the mortification I felt at being obliged thus to abandon my long-cherished projects.  The delays I had already experienced were sufficiently vexatious, but I had endeavoured to turn the time thus lost to some profit by endeavouring to acquaint myself with the resources of the country, as well as in acquiring information of a scientific nature, and I had attained such a knowledge of the language of the natives as enabled me to form a vocabulary of the different dialects spoken in these parts, which was printed and forwarded to England at the close of the year.

My excursions into the country from Perth whilst awaiting the arrival and fitting out of the Champion were necessarily short, but the journal of one to the northward, made in company with my young friend Mr. Frederick Smith, who afterwards fell a sacrifice in the expedition to Shark Bay, will I think be interesting enough to be inserted here.

EXCURSION TO THE NORTH OF PERTH.

November 30.

Mr. Smith and myself started at noon this day, accompanied by Corporal Auger and two natives, upon a trip in a northerly direction; about 5 P.M. we reached a lake distant about fifteen miles from Perth, and called by the natives Mooloore:  we halted here for the night.

The horses were scarcely tethered and our fire made when four more natives joined the party; their names were Noogongoo, Kurral, Jeebar, and Dudemurry; they brought us a present of twenty-seven freshwater tortoises, the average weight of each of which was half a pound.  They said that, although the lake was called Mooloore, the name of the land we were sitting on was Doondalup.

STORY-TELLING.

As soon as supper was finished they became very talkative, and, in a sort of recitative, recounted various adventures; and, when they conceived that they had sufficiently entertained me, they requested me to give them an account of my adventures in the northern part of the country, where they had heard from other natives that I had been for some time.

Having now acquired some knowledge of their language, I was able to make myself tolerably intelligible to them, and they listened with the greatest anxiety and interest to the various misfortunes that befel me.  When they heard that I had been wounded by the natives to the north no persuasions or protestations upon my part could convince them that my object in now proceeding in that direction again was merely to gratify curiosity, and not from motives of revenge; but they kept continually requesting me not to attempt to kill anybody until I had passed a spot named Yalgarrin, about ten days journey to the north, and they then advised me indiscriminately to shoot everybody I saw; and were the more urgent in pressing the adoption of this course upon me from the fact of a quarrel existing between some of their relatives and the tribe dwelling there.