No sooner was breakfast despatched than I set off to see Mr. Elliott in order to hear the history of his adventures, which were not a little surprising.  He had, as I before related, started on the 17th of December from the Williams, with only three days’ provisions and, owing to some mistake, had taken a south-south-west course and gone off in the direction where we first saw his tracks, and had pursued this route for three days, when, seeing nothing of the coast, he suspected he must be wrong, and endeavoured to make a due west course; but from the impassable nature of the mountain range at this point was unable to do so.  About this period also, owing to his powder-horn having been placed too near the fire, it was accidentally blown away, and he was thus left totally without protection in the event of any attack being made on them by the natives.  His own courage and resolution however never failed, and he still made the best of his way to the southward, seizing every opportunity of making westing.  For twelve days he pursued this course, subsisting on native roots and boiled tops of grass trees.  About the sixth day he fell in with some natives; but they ran away, being frightened at the appearance of white men, and he thus could obtain no assistance from them.  At this period the filly strayed away from the mare and was lost.  His men behaved admirably; and on the fourteenth day the party succeeded in reaching Augusta, having previously made the coast at the remarkable white-sand patch about fifty miles to the eastward of it.

Notwithstanding the hardships and sufferings they had undergone this party were but very little reduced in strength and, after recruiting for a few days at Augusta, returned along the coast to Leschenault, where I had the pleasure of seeing them all in good health and spirits.

THE VASSE DISTRICT.

January 21.

Whilst the party reposed themselves this day at Leschenault I hired a horse and rode along the shores of Geographe Bay for the purpose of seeing the Vasse district.  The country between Leschenault and the Vasse differs from those other parts of Western Australia that I have yet seen in the circumstance that in several parts, between the sea and the recent limestone formation, basaltic rocks are developed.  A long chain of marshy lakes lie between the usual coast sandhills and the ordinary sand formations, about which there is some good land and good feed.  About the river Capel also there is a great deal of good land.  The mouths of two estuaries that occur between the inlet of Leschenault and the bottom of Geographe Bay are both fordable.  The district near the bottom of Geographe Bay contains much good land, consisting of level plains thickly covered with wattle trees; there are also at this season of the year extensive plains of dry sand, which bear exactly the appearance of a desert.

I passed the night at the house of Mr. Bussel, a settler who has the best and most comfortable establishment I have seen in the colony, and returned the next day to Leschenault with the intention of starting the following one for Perth.