I mention this singular contraction, because a similar peculiarity was observed to occur at almost every junction of considerable channels, as that of the Suttor and Burdekin, and of the Lynd and the Mitchell.  I named the river, which here joins the Suttor, after Mr. Cape, the obliging commander of the Shamrock steamer.  The bed of the united rivers is very broad, with several channels separated by high sandy bergues.  The country back from the river is formed by flats alternating with undulations, and is lightly timbered with silver-leaved Ironbark, rusty gum, Moreton Bay ash, and water box.  The trees are generally stunted, and unfit for building; but the drooping tea trees and the flooded-gum will supply sufficient timber for such a purpose.

At our camp, at the bed of the river, granite crops out, and the sands sparkle with leaflets of gold-coloured mica.  The morning was clear and hot; the afternoon cloudy; a thunder-storm to the north-east.  We have observed nothing of the sea-breeze of the Mackenzie and of Peak Range, along the Suttor; but a light breeze generally sets in about nine o’clock P.M.

Charley met with a flock of twenty emus, and hunted down one of them.

March 28.—­We travelled down the river to latitude 20 degrees 41 minutes 35 seconds.  The country was improving, beautifully grassed, openly timbered, flat, or ridgy, or hilly; the ridges were covered with pebbles, the hills rocky.  The rocks were baked sandstone, decomposed granite, and a dark, very hard conglomerate:  the latter cropped out in the bed of the river where we encamped.  Pebbles of felspathic porphyry were found in the river’s bed.  At some old camping places of the natives, we found the seed-vessels of Pandanus, a plant which I had never seen far from the sea coast; and also the empty shells of the seeds of a Cycas.  Mr. Calvert, John Murphy, and Brown, whom I had sent to collect marjoram, told me, at their return, that they had seen whole groves of Pandanus trees; and brought home the seed-vessel of a new Proteaceous tree.  I went to examine the locality, and found, on a sandy and rather rotten soil, the Pandanus abundant, growing from sixteen to twenty feet high, either with a simple stem and crown, or with a few branches at the top.  The Proteaceous tree was small, from twelve to fifteen feet high, of stunted and irregular habit, with dark, fissured bark, and large medullary rays in its red wood:  its leaves were of a silvery colour, about two inches and a half long, and three-quarters broad; its seed-vessels woody and orbicular, like the single seed-vessels of the Banksia conchifera; the seeds were surrounded by a broad transparent membrane.  This tree, which I afterwards found every where in the neighbourhood of the gulf of Carpentaria, was in blossom from the middle of May to that of June.  The poplar-gum, the bloodwood, the melaleuca of Mt.  Stewart, the Moreton Bay ash, the little Severn tree, and a second species of the same genus with smooth leaves, were growing on the same soil.  The grasses were very various, particularly in the hollows:  and the fine bearded grass of the Isaacs grew from nine to twelve feet in height.  Charley brought me a branch of a Cassia with a thyrse of showy yellow blossoms, which he said he had plucked from a shrub about fifteen feet high.