Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/259

 Rh and cloaks, and with the aid of a good fire made ourselves very comfortable.

The weather, during the whole period of our excursion, was about the temperature of an English spring; indeed, it is said that the thermometer at King George's Sound seldom rises above 82°.

March 1st.—We advanced up the Blackwood, and got fast on the flats, which we had some trouble to push over; there is a passage, but we missed it. On these flats we saw numbers of ducks, and upwards of a hundred swans—a good classical omen. The river above is deep and wide, the banks on either side rich and thickly covered with timber, principally red gum and mahogany. We ascended about twenty-two miles, returned to the same point next morning, and slept at Mr. Russel's. From this we walked to the settlement, about four miles, through thick forest, with a dense luxuriance of underwood, through which a pathway leading to the Vasse river has been recently cut. Most of the colonists here speak of going to settle at the Vasse when they can procure sheep, the land there being described as open and grassy, on a substratum of limestone. If this be so, it must be a fine tract of pasture land, continuing, in all probability, of