Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/230

 and clothes kept constantly wet by the bush, inclined us to halt for the night, that we might prepare a hut better than usual, against the inclemency of the weather. "The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon;" at her approach the sky wore a new and pleasant aspect, the clouds vanished, the winds were hushed, and by the time we had dressed for supper the ducks I had shot at the Vasse, we had every prospect of a dry night and bed. This evening, my feet, which had been blistered since the second day of our march, from a defect in my shoes, were very painful, having been irritated by perpetual friction on the affected part, for above a week.

Little variety gratified our curiosity the next day; the country was still the same, rocky, woody, abrupt and precipitous here, as in the places where rock and wood prevail together. I observed that the vegetative principle in the roots of large trees, seems, by a gradual but resistless process, to have had the power of thrusting or wedging up large masses, the fissures of which were suficiently capacious for their first exigencies, and early growth; hence, each trunk has the appearance of being planted on a heap of huge stones, as if some gigantic gardener had been employed in hoeing up the nurselings of the forest.

I fell in with a large lagoon this morning, about thirty yards across, and perhaps four times that length; it seemed very deep, and from all circumstances, I should say it was never dry. A continual succession of hill and ravine after this crossed our path; the water in the bottom all tending to the west. About 12, we passed some high land, with a stunted growth of the oak, from which, towards the N.W., we could see the tops of trees on some high land, but nothing familiar presented itself.