Volume II Part 34 (2/2)

journey, was of a sandy nature; and the gunarled Isolated cluhter, and smoother character, were met with in the dried watercourses Near Wizard Peak, the warran, or native yareat abundance, and to some considerable depth There the soil could be pretty well judged of; and the deeper the holes had been dug by the natives to obtain the root, the more pure was the sand; it was only the surface soil that held decayed vegetablethe trip, near the bases of cliffs, I saw a few acres of alluvial deposit, two very circumscribed beds, which were lost in the bottoradually under the sand Near Moresby's Range, where the soil becaetation wasprincipally of a prickly bush,the whole tiaroos, and five emus; and in some parts of the tall scrub allaby tracks”)

Descending, we found the party left below in the dry bed of a watercourse had failed in their endeavour to procure water by digging; we, therefore, as we supposed, had no resource but to return, exhausted as ere, to the brackish water-pools we had seen in the Chaph

NATIVE WELL AND BURIAL PLACE

Happily, however, our dog discovered a deep hole under a drooping gu and digging deeper, afforded our thirst relief The soil through which this as sunk was a light alluvial deposit, based on sand six feet below the surface

Numerous native paths and deep holes, from which the warran root had been extracted, encircle this spot; so quarters for the night; Wizard Peak bearing South 50 seconds East about a mile distant

At break of dae resu was dull and cloudy, therht had been 85 degrees Two rave--a circular pit three yards in diameter, filled within a foot of the surface with sand, carefully smoothed over Small sticks, some with red horizontal s tastefully twisted round, ornae sehbourhood bore evidence, in the shape of several destroyed huts, of its having been deserted by the coain h, above a mile south of the point at which we beforeits usual course between South and South-South-West The bed was still dry sand, but we found a s, we continued our west direction, and were surprised to find ourselves again on the river; a line of red cliffs thirty feet high, fored its course to the northward We subsequently again crossed two dry parts of it; from an elevation on the South-West side of the last, Mount Fairfax bore North 50 degrees East and Wizard Peak South 58 degrees East

RECOGNITION BEND

Hitherto I had been in doubt whether this was the Chap that a branch trended southwards, I was convinced it was the latter, and gave this part the na that Captain Grey had 's chart, and that, therefore, his description of the country refers to another portion; and it is only justice to hi for his life, and the great hardshi+ps he endured, it is surprising how the information collected was obtained

(Footnote This error Captain Grey candidly acknowledged in the following letter to me, afterwards published by his authority in the South Australian Register

Government House, Adelaide, January 28th, 1842

My dear Sir,

I have attentively read your letter to the Honourable the Surveyor-General of Western Australia; I have also considered the observations made by you to me, relative to the error you suppose I have fallen into infor the hill named by him Mount Fairfax; and I find that I have certainly fallen into this error, a by nothe very siroup of hills, called Moresby's Flat-topped Range, and the circu Consequently the country I have described as lying near Mount Fairfax, lies near some other hill to the north of Mount Fairfax, and the country I have described as lying near Wizard Hill lies near Mount Fairfax, being placed from ten to twelve miles south of its true latitude

Theonly a Kater's co what I considered to be Mount Fairfax, I assumed the latitude of that hill as laid down on the chart to be ly

On substituting the name of Mount Fairfax for Wizard Hill, the description of the small portions of the country traversed by us in common, will be found to coincide almost exactlyI am, my dear Sir, yours faithfully, G GREY

I need scarcely add, that Captain Grey having been obliged to assu this harassing journey, can be expected to be accurate)

MOUTH OF THE GREENOUGH

From this point we proceeded one mile west over a dry, arid plain, covered with yellow and white everlasting flowers of s of a species of wattle and a very sround beneath these trees was entirely barren of vegetation; but erass of a useful nature seen in the route; it was, however, quite parched, and occupied a space only of three or four acres From thence to the coast dunes, to reach which weover about six e, lying ie of sandhills, li, we proceeded in a boat to examine a small estuary, seen from Mount Fairfax, at the northern part of the bay This we found to be separated froh, over which the sea appeared in gales to enter; but from the manner in which the sandhills overlapped at the mouth, it was not possible to detect the entrance from seawards We landed and traced it for a mile in an east direction, until we proved it to be the h; the water was entirely salt, and the banks, in soh, were composed of limestone Near the head of this estuary we discovered the place where Captain Grey crossed it, as described in the following extract from his notes communicated to Lord John Russell, then Secretary for the Colonies

CHARACTER OF COUNTRY

”The character of the country again changed, and for the next two miles and a half the plains were sandy, and covered with scrub At the end of another mile we reached a river, about twenty-five yards wide; it was salt where we made it, and it was so shallow, that we soon found a place where, by ju froed itself into a bay; it ran rather from the South of East

[East of South?] Four miles further, South by East, were sandy plains, with scrub, etc”

(Footnote This was doubtless Champion Bay; but in our exa of the bay or harbour which Captain Grey speaks of in his work (voluh, and which he supposed to be Champion Bay, ”since deno to the true latitude of Charees 38 minutes South or nearly twenty-two ned to Port Grey in Arrowsmith's map, before alluded to)

Thus terminated our exploration of this part of the country, called, by Captain Grey, the Province of Victoria; and certainly all we had seen of it deserved the character of sterility, which in some measure it appears to retain further northward, as we learn from the report of Lieutenant Helpman, who has recently visited it in the colonial schooner Champion

We did not, on our route, fall in with any native, but on reaching the boat, found that a party of five men had approached the beach, and held friendly coe for a handkerchief or two, had obtained fro stick, and a nose-piece of kangaroo bone They were entirely naked, and slightly scarred, but were not sy, and had their hair knotted upon the crown of their head, like the natives of the neighbourhood of King's Sound

SAIL FROM CHAMPION BAY

On the ain on our way southwards, with, strange to say at that season of the year, westerly winds, which prevailed for the three succeeding days