Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/94

 Swan. At the conclusion of fifteen miles we entered a dense forest of gum trees and brushwood which we penetrated with difficulty; after walking nearly five miles through it, we came to a tea tree and samphire swamp, the water of which was brackish; at the eastern extremity of it, we reached the base of two remarkable isolated hills, for which we had been steering; we found each of them to be composed of one mass of granite; they appeared to be detached from some high land stretching away to the southward; we gave the northern one the name of Mount Caroline, and the southern was called Mount Stirling, after my fellow traveller, Mr. W. Stirling. We encamped to night on a flat between a salt water marsh and the latter mount, and obtained a scanty supply of muddy water by digging wells; we estimated this day's journey at nearly twenty miles.

October 31st.—We all started this morning at sunrise, to take a bird's-eye view of the country from the rock; after climbing on our hands and knees, we reached an elevated part, from which nothing of consequence was seen. After breakfast, Mr. W. Stirling and myself proceeded to examine a sheet of water we had observed in the morning; we found it to be a salt marsh, on which were several ducks. Three miles N.E. of our bivouac, we ascended Mount Caroline, from which we made the following observations. In the distance, about thirty miles S.E. we observed a low range of hills lying nearly N. and S., on the western side of which was a broad valley, over which a bluish vapour was hanging. In the same direction as the valley, were several round hills, one of which had a tabular summit. We traced the course of the salt water marsh a few miles to the eastward, when it trended