These people appeared to repose the most perfect confidence in us—­they repeatedly visited the ship in their own canoes or the watering-boats, and were always well treated; nor did any circumstance occur during our intimacy to give either party cause of complaint.  We saw few weapons among them.  The islanders had their bows and arrows, and the others their spears and throwing-sticks.  As the weather was fine, at least as regarded the absence of rain, no huts of any kind were constructed; at night the natives slept round their fires without any covering.  During our stay the food of the natives consisted chiefly of two kinds of fruit, the first (a Wallrothia) like a large yellow plum, mealy and insipid; the second, the produce of a kind of mangrove (Candelia) the vegetating sprouts of which are prepared for food by a process between baking and steaming.  At low-water the women usually dispersed in search of shellfish on the mudflats and among the mangroves, and the men occasionally went out to fish, either with the spear, or the hook and line.

THE COUNTRY.  ITS PRODUCTIONS.

The country in the immediate vicinity of Evans and Cape York Bays consists of low wooded hills alternating with small valleys and plains of greater extent.  The coastline, when not consisting of rocky headlands, is either a sandy beach, or is fringed with mangroves.  Behind this, where the country is flat, there is usually a narrow belt of dense brush or jungle.  In the valleys, one finds what in the colony of New South Wales would be termed open forest land, characterised by scattered eucalypti and other trees, and a scanty covering of coarse sedge-like grass growing in tufts on a red clayey soil, covered with nodules of ironstone and coarse quartzose sand.  As characteristics of this poor soil, the first objects to attract the attention are the enormous pinnacled anthills of red clay and sand, often with supporting buttresses.  These singular structures, which are sometimes twelve feet in height, are of great strength and toughness—­on breaking off a piece, they appear to be honeycombed inside, the numerous galleries being then displayed.  The ants themselves are of a pale brown colour, a quarter of an inch in length.  In sailing along the coast, these anthills may be distinctly seen from the distance of two or three miles.

The rock in the immediate neighbourhood of Cape York is a porphyry with soft felspathic base, containing numerous moderately-sized crystals of amber-coloured quartz, and a few larger ones of flesh-coloured felspar.  It often appears in large tabular masses split horizontally and vertically into blocks of all sizes.  At times when the vertical fissures predominate and run chiefly in one direction, the porphyry assumes a slaty character, and large thin masses may be detached.