The View From
It By No Means Repaid Us For Our Trouble; The Same Everlasting Flats Met
Our Eye In Every Direction Westerly Round Nearly To North, In Which
Quarter The Horizon Was Occasionally Studded With Hills, At Too Great A
Distance To Render Them Objects Of Interest To Us.
The immediate
vicinity of the river was free from timber or brush in various places;
and these tracts have hitherto received the particular denomination of
PLAINS, which might with equal propriety be extended to the whole
country.
The bases of the hills and ranges were invariably a barren red
sand, affording nourishment to a few miserable cypresses and eucalypti
dumosa; between which, and filling up all the intermediate spaces, grows
a variety of acacia and dwarf shrubs, rendering those parts nearly a
thicket. Within one hundred yards of the bank of the river, and there
alone, were seen the only timber trees we had met with in the country;
if huge unshapen eucalypti, which would not afford a straight plank ten
feet long, may be so denominated.
June 25, - Proceeded down the river, and at three o'clock halted for the
night, having performed about eleven miles; the country barren, even to
the very verge of the stream, which continues to run nearly west. We
were obliged to keep at a small distance from the river, owing to large
lagoons, partly full of water, which would have otherwise interrupted
our course, or rather our multitude of courses; for I never saw a stream
with such opposite windings, and no one reach was a quarter of a mile
long, so that it may be said to resemble a collar of SS.
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