Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/172

 We crossed the channel and proceeded W. ½ N. one mile, and W.S.W. one mile and a half, through a generally open forest country, good towards the hollows, gravelly on the heights, but on both grassy, although on the latter the grass was thin, and on both much dried; to the river again, at a place called Moor-illup, much frequented by the natives of King George's Sound and Will tribe, and apparently quite as much by the natives of the two elements of earth and air. Here Mokare expected to find some of his neighbours, the Wills, whose place of resort this, he gave me to understand, is in a more especial manner, and from whom he expected further information respecting the cattle.

Not only at Moor-illup, but at every pond of the river where we stopped, the traces of man, beast, and bird, are strongly marked; and the great numbers of kangaroo, and several emu, not to mention a fair proportion of ducks, cockatoos, pigeons, &c. seen daily at this place, shew that both the hunter and sportsman would find abundant amusement, and the settler no slight acquisition to his larder. I ascended a very gentle elevation three-quarters of a mile W. from the ponds of Moor-illup, covered so thickly with white gums that I could not obtain any distant view (except a continued uniformity of country to the westward.) Its surface northward is gravelly and stoney, but on the south inclination, which is tolerably open, the soil at the bottom is good, and a hollow, not very wide beyond it, is filled with long grass and still green small rushes, affording even now tolerable feed. The river seems to run over this in the winter time, but I found no water above the ponds last mentioned, and Mokare maintained there was none.

May 1st.—I commenced S.E. by S. and soon