From twenty to twenty-five feet high, grew on a
sandy loam, with many ant-hills between them; the little Severn tree and
the glaucous Terminalia preferred the light sandy soil with small
ironstone pebbles, on which the ant-hills were rare, or entirely wanting;
the raspberry-jam tree crowded round water-holes, which were frequently
rocky; and the bloodwood, the leguminous Iron-bark, the box, and
apple-gum, formed patches of open forest.
We collected a great quantity of Terminalia gum, and prepared it in
different ways to render it more palatable. The natives, whose tracks we
saw everywhere in the scrub, with frequent marks where they had collected
gum - seemed to roast it. It dissolved with difficulty in water: added to
gelatine soup, it was a great improvement; a little ginger, which John
had still kept, and a little salt, would improve it very much. But it
acted as a good lenient purgative on all of us.
We found the days, when travelling in the scrub, excessively hot, for the
surrounding vegetation prevented us from feeling the sea-breeze; very
cold easterly and south-easterly winds prevailed during the night.
August 24. - Mr. Calvert and Brown, whom I had sent to reconnoitre the
country, returned with the sad intelligence that they had found no water.
They had crossed a great number of creeks of different sizes, with fine
rocky water-holes, which seemed all to rise in scrubby ironstone hills,
and had a course from S. W. to N. E. and E. N. E.; but towards their
heads they were dry, and lower down they contained salt water.
