In passing this gap, on a previous reconnoitring ride with Brown, I met with several natives with their wives and children, encamped at the north entrance of it.  When they saw us, the men poised their spears, and shook their waddis to frighten us, but when, notwithstanding their menaces, we approached them, they left all their goods, and with their weapons only hurried up the rocks with wonderful agility.  Three koolimans (vessels of stringy bark) were full of honey water, from one of which I took a hearty draught, and left a brass button for payment.  Dillis, fish spears, a roasted bandicoot, a species of potatoe, wax, a bundle of tea-tree bark with dry shavings; several flints fastened with human hair to the ends of sticks, and which are used as knives to cut their skin and food; a spindle to make strings of opossum wool; and several other small utensils, were in their camp.  One of my Blackfellows found a fine rock-crystal [Note at end of para.] in one of their bags, when we passed the place next day with our bullocks.  The poor people had evidently not yet ventured to return.  The natives we had formerly met, had generally watched our movements from a distance, and had returned to their camp as soon as we had fairly left it; but these seemed too much frightened; and I should not be surprised to find that the mountainous nature of their country had given them a greater share of superstition.

[Note:  This shows how far the custom extends throughout the continent, of considering the rock-crystal as sacred; whether it be that it has been transmitted from tribe to tribe, or that the native was everywhere inclined to pick up a shining stone, and to consider it endowed with peculiar virtues.  From the absence of brilliant ores, or precious stones, in the bags and dillis of the natives, I concluded, that neither precious stones nor brilliant metallic substances existed in the country where they lived.  Those with whom we came in contact, generally admired our gold and silver chains and watches very much, but had nothing to show in return except broken shells from the sea-coast]

Among the new and interesting scrubs and trees which we met with at almost every step, I shall only mention a small Grevillea, from one to two feet in height, with pubescent pinnatifid leaves, and a simple or compound thyrsus of scarlet flowers; Cochlospermum gossypium, the native cotton tree of Port Essington, whose bright showy yellow blossoms and large capsules full of silky cotton, attracted our attention; its leaves are deciduous, and the trees were entirely leafless; a fine species of Calytrix on the rocks, and two of Loranthus on the drooping tea tree, the drooping foliage of which one of them imitated, whilst the other belonged to the group I mentioned as found at the Suttor, with its flowers inserted on a leafy bract.