Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/191

( 166 ) found in many places, but the search for coal was fruitless. Several kinds of clay fit for pottery, bricks, &c. were found in abundance, but always, more or less, mixed with sand; indeed, after displacing a thin covering of sand and ashes, the bottom, in most places, was found to be a soft friable sand-stone of a yellowish colour.

With respect to climate, we had not sufficient time to judge of its effects on the human constitution; the vicissitudes of heat and cold are very great, the thermometer varying from 50° to 96°, between sun-rise and noon of the same day; and on the 19th and 21st of October it froze pretty smartly at the head of the port. The N.W. winds, which come on in violent squalls, have all the disagreeable effects of the sirocco of the Levant, but