To The South The Broken Land And Water, Forming
Many Intricate Bays, Was Mapped With Clearness Before
Us.
After staying some hours on the summit, we found a
better way to descend, but did not reach the Beagle till eight
o'clock, after a severe day's work.
February 7th. - The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, and,
on the 6th of the ensuing month, reached King George's
Sound, situated close to the S. W. corner of Australia. We
stayed there eight days; and we did not during our voyage
pass a more dull and uninteresting time. The country,
viewed from an eminence, appears a woody plain, with here
and there rounded and partly bare hills of granite protruding.
One day I went out with a party, in hopes of seeing a
kangaroo hunt, and walked over a good many miles of country.
Everywhere we found the soil sandy, and very poor;
it supported either a coarse vegetation of thin, low brushwood
and wiry grass, or a forest of stunted trees. The
scenery resembled that of the high sandstone platform of the
Blue Mountains; the Casuarina (a tree somewhat resembling
a Scotch fir) is, however, here in greater number, and
the Eucalyptus in rather less. In the open parts there were
many grass-trees, - a plant which, in appearance, has some
affinity with the palm; but, instead of being surmounted by
a crown of noble fronds, it can boast merely of a tuft of
very coarse grass-like leaves. The general bright green colour
of the brushwood and other plants, viewed from a distance,
seemed to promise fertility. A single walk, however, was enough
to dispel such an illusion; and he who thinks with me will never
wish to walk again in so uninviting a country.
One day I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to Bald Head;
the place mentioned by so many navigators, where some imagined
that they saw corals, and others that they saw petrified
trees, standing in the position in which they had grown.
According to our view, the beds have been formed by the
wind having heaped up fine sand, composed of minute rounded
particles of shells and corals, during which process
branches and roots of trees, together with many land-shells,
became enclosed. The whole then became consolidated by
the percolation of calcareous matter; and the cylindrical
cavities left by the decaying of the wood, were thus also
filled up with a hard pseudo-stalactical stone. The weather
is now wearing away the softer parts, and in consequence
the hard casts of the roots and branches of the trees project
above the surface, and, in a singularly deceptive manner,
resemble the stumps of a dead thicket.
A large tribe of natives, called the White Cockatoo men
happened to pay the settlement a visit while we were there.
These men, as well as those of the tribe belonging to King
George's Sound, being tempted by the offer of some tubs of
rice and sugar, were persuaded to hold a "corrobery," or
great dancing-party.
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