Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/114

 year the river had assumed the appearance of a chain of ponds, from twelve to twenty yards in lengthy and four or five deep, contained between banks of clay and rocks eight or ten yards apart. Here we found numerous traces of natives, and plenty of large muscles; but the latter not being quite good tasted, and our provisions not totally expended, they were not much eaten. At noon we set out again at westward, occasionally coming on the left bank of the river, as it wound through an open forest country. Finding, at the distance of a mile, it crossed our course, we passed over to the right bank, just above the spot where the river becomes full between its banks. Two miles further, over a fertile country, brought us to a navigable part of the Preston, fifteen or eighteen yards wide, where the water is brackish, and runs slowly to the northward. From this place we followed a native path, about four miles towards the entrance of the river, where we arrived about three o'clock, and finally rejoined our friends at the encampment, loaded with wild ducks, cockatoos, and other game, the produce of our sportsmen's exertions.

It is somewhat remarkable, that throughout this excursion we saw nothing of the natives, although the traces of them were evident and numerous in many places; and we passed several of their old habitations, which were of the usual temporary construction of boughs and grass. The country passed over, during our first day's journey from the Collie River, was decidedly superior to any which afterwards came under our observation, and appearances left no ground for supposing that it diminished at all in fertility of soil, as far as the eye could penetrate to the eastward of that journey's eastern limit. The country in the neighbourhood,