Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/180

 whales (black) were observed at a short distance ofF.

June 6th.— I ascended Mount Gardener, although the weather was highly unfavourable for a distant view, unwilling to detain the boat another day. The lower hills on the foot of Mount Gardener are, like itself, destitute of large timber, exposing a not- unfrequently bare rock of granite, but for the most part, a clothing of short shrubbery, and occa- sionally, a dense thicket of taller brushwood. The soil is generally sandy, and only in a few patches interrupted by brown loam, into one of which, at the top of the mountain, I put some almond nuts. I had previously sown several, and castor oil, and other seeds ; and one of the men had sown a variety of flower seeds on Coffin Island.

On the lower part of the mountain, looking to Coffin Island, and nearly in a line from the island to the Peak, the usual calcareous formation of the S.W. coast makes its appearance, rising seemingly in a vertical stratum of little thickness, to the sur- face on the south margin of a deep ravine. The same formation is also apparent a little N.E. of this, forming a superficial recumbent incrustation.

Mount Gardener, under which is to be included the lower hills, resting on the base of the most conspicuous, is joined to the mainland by a low and level neck containing several lakes, the nearest and apparently largest communicating by a winding channel with the bay to the N. and N.E. It is said to be brackish.

This bay I endeavoured to examine on the 6th, but the weather would not permit, and on the 7th, the whole party, tired of bivouacing, and a