Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/238

 212 the public. I have transmitted to you my only journal in notes, rude, unfinished, and disjointed, as transactions occurred. In your letters you inquire with respect to the new colony in South Australia; your arguments about it are mere theory. You wonder at our difficulty in crossing the hills, and attribute it to their height; I have explained that also:—suppose it not one hill, but a continuation of hilly country for 45 or 50 miles; and you will see that it required great perseverance to penetrate beyond them; there appeared no end to them; Dale was the first who succeeded; after repeated excursions he got a glimpse of Mount Bakewell at a distance—a remarkable mountain, and higher than the rest; he pressed for it as a land-mark, and was rewarded by finding the Avon at its base; this river was then in its flooded state, which naturally led him to believe it much more important than it is; indeed all were disappointed with respect to the river, but the country has stood the test of examination, and fulfilled the expectations of the most sanguine.

You write "of snows melting from a mountain ten thousand feet high to the south; there is no such elevation here, you might strike a cipher off the number. However, the hills are higher there than with us. At King George's Sound they have very little frost; but I am not certain about snow. I do not think there is as much good soil there as here; but I must not decry it, not having been there,