King's River Appeared Equally Deep, And Was About One Hundred Yards Broad; The Water At This Time Of The Tide Brackish:

The country covered with brush, the soil very rich; and a few ceder trees were scattered among the other timber.

The vines were of enormous size, and in many instances had entirely enveloped the trees to which they had attached themselves, a small part of their trunks only being here and there visible.

October 5. - Sent a party to cut the road up King's River. After advancing between four and five miles, a small piece of forest ground was discovered, which determined me to remove the horses and baggage thither, since the distance which the people had to go to their work occasioned much delay. A great many natives' canoes were seen on the river to-day fishing, and as the use of these canoes to cross King's River would have been very desirable, we endeavoured to tempt their owners to visit us, but without success; it being out of our power to make them understand our meaning.

October 6. - We set out this morning with an intention of proceeding up the west bank of King's River by the road already cut, but before we had arrived at it, two natives in a canoe were induced to cross over to us. Their vessel we detained, making them a present of a tomahawk. The moment they saw one of the horses (which happened to be a white one), descending the bank for the purpose of being unladen, they made signs expressive of their idea, that we were going to put the horses in the canoe, which they immediately quitted and swam to the opposite shore. As it was extremely probable that many smaller branches would fall into King's River, I determined to cross it at its mouth, and so proceed along the banks of the main river. It was two o'clock before we had got every thing over, when, upon examining the road which we had to travel, we found that about half a mile lower down another small stream joined the river. To this latter stream we therefore cut a road, keeping the canoe for farther use. By its means we found that after we should cross this last stream, we should get into an open forest country, with good grass: and we hoped that we should meet with no farther obstructions in our progress, which the thickness of the country and the intersection of streams rendered extremely tedious. The river at low-water was sufficiently fresh for us to drink. From the limited observations I was enabled to make, the depth at that time of tide was from two to three fathoms, and the rise of tide was five feet: but the tides appeared very irregular, being evidently influenced by the great body of fresh water in the river. What land we saw or passed over was a rich vegetable mould; the brush extremely thick on both sides, with fine timber of various kinds.

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