Mention has been made of the ridge of hills by which the low land on the
south side of the bay is bounded. The upper parts of it are steep and
rocky, and may be a thousand, or perhaps fifteen hundred feet high, but
the lower sloping sides are covered with wood; Mount Larcom and the hills
within the ridge, are clothed with trees nearly to the top; yet the
aspect of the whole is sterile. The high land near the western arm,
though stony and shallow in soil, is covered with grass, and trees of
moderate growth; but the best part of the country was that near Cape
Keppel; hill and valley are there well proportioned, the grass is of a
better kind and more abundant, the trees are thinly scattered, and there
is very little underwood. The lowest parts are not mangrove swamps, as
elsewhere, but pleasant looking vallies, at the bottom of which are ponds
of fresh water frequented by flocks of ducks. Cattle would find here a
tolerable abundance of nutritive food, though the soil may perhaps be no
where sufficiently deep and good to afford a productive return to the
husbandman.

After the mangrove, the most common trees round Keppel Bay are different
kinds of _eucalyptus_, fit for the ordinary purposes of building. A
species of _Cycas_, described by captain Cook (Hawkesworth, III. 220,
221) as a third kind of palm found by him on this coast, and bearing
poisonous nuts, was not scarce in the neighbourhood of West-arm Hill. We
found three kinds of stone here: a greyish slate, quartz and various
granitic combinations, and a soft, whitish stone, saponaceous to the
touch; the two first were often found intermixed, and the last generally,
if not always lying above them. The quartz was of various colours, and
sometimes pure; but never in a state of crystallisation.

Wherever we landed there had been Indians; but it was near the ship only,
that any of them made their appearance. They were described by the