This was the first rock formation we had noticed since leaving Point Torment, a distance of nearly thirty miles; it was a very fine-grained red sandstone, darkened and rendered heavy by the presence of ferruginous particles. The appearance of the country now began to improve, the eastern bank was thickly wooded, and a mile higher up, the western appeared clothed in verdure. I noticed here the same kind of tree, seen for the first time behind our last night's bivouac; it was small and shrubby-looking, with a rough bark, not unlike that of the common elm, and its little pointed leaf, of a deep, dark green, contrasted with the evergreen Eucalypti by which it was surrounded, reminded me of the various tints that give the charm of constant variety to our English woods, and lend to each succeeding season a distinctive and characteristic beauty.*
(*Footnote. The diameter of the largest tree of this kind was only eight inches: it was exceedingly hard, and of a very dark red colour, except a white rim about an inch in thickness. This wood worked and looked the best, in a table I had made out of various specimens of woods collected on the North-west coast of Australia.)
SUFFERINGS FROM MOSQUITOES.
I must be pardoned for again alluding to our old enemies the mosquitoes, but the reception they gave us this night is too deeply engraven on my memory to be ever quite forgotten.
NIGHT OF TORMENT.
They swarmed around us, and by the light of the fire, the blanket bags in which the men sought to protect themselves, seemed literally black with their crawling and stinging persecutors. Woe to the unhappy wretch who had left unclosed the least hole in his bag; the persevering mosquitoes surely found it out, and as surely drove the luckless occupant out of his retreat. I noticed one man dressed as if in the frozen north, hold his bag over the fire till it was quite full of smoke, and then get into it, a companion securing the mouth over his head at the apparent risk of suffocation; he obtained three hours of what he gratefully termed comfortable sleep, but when he emerged from his shelter, where he had been stewed up with the thermometer at 87 degrees, his appearance may be easily imagined.
Our hands were in constant requisition to keep the tormentors from the face and ears, which often received a hearty whack, aimed in the fruitless irritation of the moment at our assailants, and which sometimes ended in adding headache to the list of annoyances. Strike as you please, the ceaseless humming of the invincible mosquito close to your ear seems to mock his unhappy victim!
One poor fellow, whose patience was quite exhausted, fairly jumped into the river to escape further persecution.
We had the wind from South-West to South-East during the afternoon, but at 6 P.M. it veered round to North-North-West.
While getting the observations for time and latitude, some of us were compelled to remain quiet, an opportunity our tiny assailants instantly availed themselves of, covering our faces and hands. To listen quietly to their hum, and feel their long stings darting into your flesh, might put the patience of Job himself to a severe trial.