 38 minutes 41 seconds.
A foot-path of the natives led us through an intricate tea-tree swamp, in which the rush of waters had uprooted the trees, and left them strewed in every direction, which rendered the passage exceedingly difficult. In the middle of the swamp we saw a fine camp of oven like huts, covered with tea-tree bark. After crossing some scrubby sandstone ridges, we came to a sandy creek, up which we proceeded until we found a small water-hole, which had been filled by the late thunder-storms, where we encamped.
The weather had been very favourable since we left the upper South Alligator River. It was evident from the appearance of the creek and the swamps, that the rains had been less abundant here. Cumuli formed here regularly during the afternoon, with the setting in of the north-west sea breeze, but dispersed at sunset, and during the first part of the night. Thunder clouds were seen in the distance, but none reached us. The clear nights were generally dewy.
The country was most beautifully grassed: and a new species of Crinum, and several leguminous plants, diversified with their pretty blossoms the pleasing green of the flats and the forest.
Since the 23rd of November, not a night had passed without long files and phalanxes of geese taking their flight up and down the river, and they often passed so low, that the heavy flapping of their wings was distinctly heard. Whistling ducks, in close flocks, flew generally much higher, and with great rapidity. No part of the country we had passed, was so well provided with game as this; and of which we could have easily obtained an abundance, had not our shot been all expended. The cackling of geese, the quacking of ducks, the sonorous note of the native companion, and the noises of black and white cockatoos, and a great variety of other birds, gave to the country, both night and day, an extraordinary appearance of animation. We started two large native dogs, from the small pool at which we encamped; a flock of kites indicated to me the presence of a larger pool which I chose for our use; and here we should have been tolerably comfortable, but for a large green-eyed horse-fly, which was extremely troublesome to us, and which scarcely allowed our poor animals to feed.
We had a heavy thunder-storm from the north-east, which, however, soon passed off.
Nov. 29. — We travelled about twelve miles to the northward to lat. 12 degrees 26 minutes 41 seconds, over ironstone and baked sandstone ridges, densely wooded and often scrubby. The first part of the stage was more hilly, and intersected by a greater number of creeks, going down to west and north-west, than the latter part, which was a sandy, level forest of stringy-bark and Melaleuca gum. The little gooseberry-tree (Coniogeton arborescens, D.C.) the leguminous Ironbark, a smooth, broad-leaved Terminalia, Calythrix, and the apple-gum, were plentiful. Livistona inermis, R. Br. grew from twenty to thirty feet high, with a very slender stem and small crown, and formed large groves in the stringy-bark forest. A grass, well known at the Hunter by its scent resembling that of crushed ants, was here scentless; a little plant, with large, white, tubular, sweet-scented flowers, grew sociably in the forest, and received the name of “native primrose;” a species of Commelyna, and a prostrate malvaceous plant with red flowers, and a species of Oxystelma, contributed by their beauty and variety to render the country interesting.
Nov. 30. — The lower part of the creek on which we were encamped was covered with a thicket of Pandanus; but its upper part was surrounded by groves of the Livistona palm. As our horses had been driven far from the camp by the grey horse-fly and by a large brown fly with green eyes, which annoyed us particularly before sunset, and shortly after sunrise, we had to wait a long time for them, and employed ourselves, in the meanwhile, with cutting and eating the tops of Livistona. Many were in blossom, others were in fruit; the latter is an oblong little stone fruit of very bitter taste. Only the lowest part of 