Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/163

 and a quarter, although the direct distance cannot be more than one mile and a quarter, to the farthest part a boat can go. The breadth diminishes a little, and the channel is almost blocked up in several places, by small islands, and rocks under water.

The former aspect of the banks continues, except on the left, (the right hand going up) nearly half a mile beyond the fresh streamlet already mentioned, where there is a very pleasing and gentle declivity, thickly covered with dried kangaroo grass, some green wattle (the broomlike), and distant (by distant, I mean eight yards apart) trees of good size, of red gum. It is needless to tell those conversant with this colony, that the soil producing such vegetation, is of the best description. It extends 350 yards from the river, and about 700 along it.

Fresh streamlets become more frequent, but the river itself continues, at present, brackish, to the stopping place.

The stoppage is occasioned by the bed of the river being elevated by rocks, over which the water flows, in a small and rapid stream. A few yards farther on, the channel is again capacious,—the water deep,—and continues in this state, occasionally obstructed by fallen trees, for nearly a mile, when a like impediment to the former presents itself; and, although it is of short space, and the river widens and deepens above it, I consider all hope of rendering the navigation farther up available, to be finally destroyed, by a third and longer similar stoppage to the two first, about half a mile beyond the second.

Leaving the boat, and also the river, at the first of these obstacles, I took a direction N.E., which led me on the eastern side of the river, and almost immediately within sight of its bed. At the