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.
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