sight it possessed a greater charm than it may, probably, in that of
others; as every fresh mile of coast that disclosed itself, rewarding our
enterprise whilst it disappointed our expectations, was so much added to
the domains of geography. That such an extent of the Australian continent
should have been left to be added to the portion of the globe discovered
by the Beagle was remarkable; and although day by day our hopes of
accomplishing any important discovery declined, a certain degree of
excitement was kept alive throughout.

It was the 13th before we had made good the distance I have above
mentioned, when a reddish hillock, of fifty-six feet in elevation, in
latitude 19 degrees 48 minutes South, and longitude 120 degrees 36
minutes East, promising a view of the interior, we went to visit it.
There was less surf on the beach than we expected, and we landed without
much difficulty. Our old friend, the black and white red-bill, or
oyster-catcher, was in readiness to greet us, accompanied by a few
families of sanderlings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a
couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line of reddish sandstone
cliffs, twelve feet in height, was ascended, and found to face a bank of
sand, held together by a sort of coarse spinifex. This bank, which ran
parallel to the coast, was narrow, subsiding into a valley three quarters
of a mile wide, on the opposite side of which rose a hummocky ridge of
coarse ferruginous sandstone formation. The valley was covered with brown
grass and detached stunted bushes. Water had recently lodged in it, as
appeared from the saucer-like cakes of earth broken and curled up over
the whole surface. The nature of the soil was shown by the heaps of earth
thrown out at the entrances of the holes of iguanas, and other burrowing
creatures; it was a mixture of sand, clay, and vegetable matter.

VIEW OF INTERIOR.