I saw their fires not far off in the hills to the south-west. It is a
ridge covered with blocks of sandstone, with a few trees here and there.
From its summit I had an extensive view of the low land stretching away
to the northward, and forming the western side of the channel. It
appeared so cut up with creeks as to form a mass of islands and mud
flats, which appeared from the quantity of drift timber, to be frequently
overflowed, and partially so apparently at high spring tides. The
farthest high land I saw bore west about twelve miles.

MEMORIAL ON INDIAN HILL.

I left here a paper in a bottle, giving an account of our proceedings,
and should have been sorry to think, as Wallis did when he left a similar
document on a mountain in the Strait of Magellan, that I was leaving a
memorial that would remain untouched as long as the world lasts. No, I
would fain hope that ere the sand of my life-glass has run out, other
feet than mine will have trod these distant banks; that colonization
will, ere many years have passed, have extended itself in this quarter;
that cities and hamlets will have risen on the banks of the new-found
river, that commerce will have directed her track thither, and that smoke
may rise from Christian hearths where now alone the prowling heathen
lights his fire. There is an inevitable tendency in man to create; and
there is nothing which he contemplates with so much complacency as the
work of his own hands. To civilize the world, to subdue the wilderness,
is the proudest achievement to which he can look forward; and to share in
this great work by opening new fields of enterprise, and leading, as it
were, the van of civilisation, fills the heart with inexpressible
delight. It is natural, therefore, as I traced the record of our visit
and deposited it on Indian Hill, that I should look forward in a mood
very far different from that of Wallis, to the speedy fruition of my