In the camping place of the natives, I found a large round stone of porphyry, upon which the natives were accustomed to break the seed-vessels of Pandanus.  I could discover no indications of this rock in the creek, not even the smallest pebble; and I am consequently inclined to think that this stone was brought by the natives from a considerable distance to the south-west.  But, from the broken pieces of granite of our last camp, it became evident that a rocky primitive country, like that of the upper Lynd, could not be very distant.  Even the vegetation agreed well with that of the same locality; as the dwarf Grevillea, G. chrysodendrum, and the falcate Grevillea of the upper Lynd, were here again observed.  The tea-trees along the banks of the creek, as far as the salt-water extended, were leafless and dead.  This may be accounted for by a succession of dry years in which usual freshes have not taken place; and by the supposition that the drooping tea-tree cannot live on water entirely salt.

Sept. 6.—­We travelled twelve miles north-west, through Pandanus and bloodwood forest, alternating with scrub, stringy-bark forest, and tea-tree thickets; and, in the latter part of the stage, through broad-leaved tea-tree forest.  We encamped at a fine river, with a bed three hundred yards broad from bank to bank, but with a narrow channel of running water.  This channel was fringed with the water Pandanus, which we first observed at Beames’s Brook; the sandy bed was covered with drooping tea-trees and Grevillea chrysodendrum.  Charley shot a bustard, the stomach of which was filled with seeds of Grewia, with small yellow seeds, and some beetles.  On this stage, we again passed some of those remarkable dry tea-tree swamps—­surrounded with heaps of very large mussel shells—­evidently showing that they had been a long time under water, though they were now overgrown with small tea-trees, perhaps five or six years old; and which proved, like the drooping tea-trees on the banks of the creek, that the last few years had been exceedingly dry.  I supposed the river to be the Van Alphen of the Dutch navigators, as its latitude, where I crossed it, was about 16 degrees 41 minutes, and its longitude I calculated to be 137 degrees 48 minutes.

Sept. 7.—­We travelled about nine miles N. N. W. to latitude 16 degrees 35 minutes; the first part of the stage was scrubby, the latter part undulating with a fine open stringy-bark forest.  The trees were tall, but rarely more than a foot in diameter.  Here we met with hard baked sandstone, of a whitish grey colour.  About seven miles from our camp, we saw a low blue range to the westward; and, soon after, passed a sandy Pandanus creek, with scrubby broken banks:  this was joined by a second, and both together entered a broad tea-tree creek, coming from the south-west, in which we found a fine pool of water covered with white and yellow Villarsias and yellow Utricularias.

The rose-coloured Sterculia, and a smooth broad-leaved Terminalia, were observed on the sandy flats of the creek; and a small fan-leaved palm (Livistona humilis, R. Br.), a small insignificant trunkless plant, growing between sandstone rocks, was here first observed.  A taller species of this palm, as we subsequently found, formed large tracts of forest on the Cobourg Peninsula, and near the Alligator rivers.