August 6.

At daylight, begrimed with dirt and smoke, we re-embarked, and pulled five miles further up the river, when its further examination was given up; at this place its breadth was about twenty yards, and being high water the greatest depth was twelve feet; at low water the channel must be nearly dry.  We did not reach the cutter until six o’clock in the evening, much exhausted for want of rest, and from exposure to a powerful sun, and a hot land wind that prevailed all day.

This river, which I have named the Liverpool, runs up from a well-formed port about forty miles, taking in its way a very serpentine course; its breadth at Entrance Island is about four miles; ten miles from the mouth its width is about half a mile, after which it very gradually decreases; at about fourteen miles from our anchorage the water is fresh at half tide but at low water it might probably be obtained four or five miles lower down.  The bottom is muddy as are also the banks; and in consequence the latter are only accessible at high tide, at which time they are seldom more than two or three feet above the water’s edge.  The country within is very level, and appeared during the wet season to be occasionally inundated:  the soil where we landed is a sour stiff clay on which grew an arundinaceous grass.

At one place where the bank was about fifteen feet high and formed of red clay Mr. Cunningham landed, and collected a variety of interesting plants.  The open banks of the river were covered with salicorniae and other common chenopodeae; and, in the midst of the usual assemblage of rhizophoreae, the Avicennia tomentosa, Linn. was observed of remarkable growth, being in many parts from fifty to sixty feet high, three feet in diameter at the base, and of a straight tapering poplar shape.

Fish was plentiful and on the muddy banks, as the water fell, we saw myriads of small amphibious fishes skipping about:  they are probably of the same kind as those seen by Captain Cook at Thirsty Sound and by Captain Flinders at Keppel Bay,* on the east coast.  Captain Cook describes the species he saw to be a small fish, about the size of a minnow, furnished with two very strong breast fins, by the assistance of which it leaped away upon being approached, as nimbly as a frog.  The fish I have just noticed appeared to be of a very similar description, excepting that it did not seem to avoid the water as that of Thirsty Sound; for Captain Cook says in a subsequent paragraph that it preferred the land to water; for it frequently leaped out of the sea, and pursued its way upon dry ground, and chose rather to leap from stone to stone than pass through the puddles of water in its way.**

(Footnote.  Flinders Terra Australis volume 2 page 26.)

(**Footnote.  Hawkesworth volume 3 page 125.)