I need scarcely add, that Captain Grey having been obliged to assume his latitude, none of his positions, during this harassing journey, can be expected to be accurate.)
MOUTH OF THE GREENOUGH.
From this point we proceeded one mile west over a dry, arid plain, covered with yellow and white everlasting flowers of small growth: a little patch of woodland, consisting of a species of wattle and a very small kind of gum, here delayed our progress. The ground beneath these trees was entirely barren of vegetation; but emerging from them, we came upon the only piece of grass of a useful nature seen in the route; it was, however, quite parched, and occupied a space only of three or four acres. From thence to the coast dunes, to reach which we made a detour to the South-West walking over about six miles of country, all was scrub and sand. On the low ridge, lying immediately behind the coast range of sandhills, limestone occasionally cropped out. Embarking, we proceeded in a boat to examine a small estuary, seen from Mount Fairfax, at the northern part of the bay. This we found to be separated from the sea by a low bank of sand, thirty feet wide and five high, over which the sea appeared in gales to enter; but from the manner in which the sandhills overlapped at the mouth, it was not possible to detect the entrance from seawards. We landed and traced it for a mile in an east direction, until we proved it to be the mouth of the Greenough; the water was entirely salt, and the banks, in some places seventy feet high, were composed of limestone. Near the head of this estuary we discovered the place where Captain Grey crossed it, as described in the following extract from his notes communicated to Lord John Russell, then Secretary for the Colonies.
CHARACTER OF COUNTRY.
"The character of the country again changed, and for the next two miles and a half the plains were sandy, and covered with scrub. At the end of another mile we reached a river, about twenty-five yards wide; it was salt where we made it, and it was so shallow, that we soon found a place where, by jumping from rock to rock, we could cross it. This river discharged itself into a bay;* it ran rather from the South of East. [East of South?] Four miles further, South by East, were sandy plains, with scrub, etc."
(*Footnote. This was doubtless Champion Bay; but in our examination of the coast, we did not see anything of the bay or harbour which Captain Grey speaks of in his work (volume 2 page 35) about nine miles north of the Greenough, and which he supposed to be Champion Bay, "since denominated," he says, "Port Grey." According to the true latitude of Champion Bay, the bay in question would be in about 28 degrees 38 minutes South or nearly twenty-two miles north of the position assigned to Port Grey in Arrowsmith's map, before alluded to.)
Thus terminated our exploration of this part of the country, called, by Captain Grey, the Province of Victoria; and certainly all we had seen of it deserved the character of sterility, which in some measure it appears to retain further northward, as we learn from the report of Lieutenant Helpman, who has recently visited it in the colonial schooner Champion. We did not, on our route, fall in with any native, but on reaching the boat, found that a party of five men had approached the beach, and held friendly communication with Mr. Pasco, who, in exchange for a handkerchief or two, had obtained from them a hunger belt, composed of wallaby furs, a throwing stick, and a nose-piece of kangaroo bone. They were entirely naked, and slightly scarred, but were not smeared with the red pigment called wilgy, and had their hair knotted upon the crown of their head, like the natives of the neighbourhood of King's Sound.
SAIL FROM CHAMPION BAY.
On the morning of the 16th we were again on our way southwards, with, strange to say at that season of the year, westerly winds, which prevailed for the three succeeding days.
KOOMBANAH BAY.