United States or Rwanda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The observations with the barometers were speedily taken, which gave the height of Banajao as six thousand five hundred feet. The trees on the summit were twenty or thirty feet high, and a species of fir was very common. Gaultheria, attached to the trunks of trees, Rhododendrons, and Polygonums, also abounded.
Talc-schiste cropped out at the latter part of the journey; its strata were perpendicular, and their direction from north-west to south-east; its character was the same as that of Moreton Bay and New England; numerous veins of quartz intersected the rock. The water-holes were surrounded by high Polygonums; blue Nymphaeas were observed in several of them; and ducks were very numerous.
We came at last to the steep banks of a salt-water creek densely covered with Cypress pine scrub, and followed it for several miles up to its head, when two kites betrayed to us a fine lagoon, surrounded with Polygonums and good pasture.
Many lagoons were on the flats, surrounded by Polygonums, and frequented by ducks, spoonbills, and various aquatic birds. They had shot, however, only one teal and a spoonbill. In travelling down the creek, we frequently started wallabies. Geophaps plumifera was very frequent on the Ironbark ridges.
Charley went forward to examine a belt of trees visible in the distance; and John Murphy followed a hollow in the plain, and succeeded in finding a fine lagoon, about half a mile long, partly rocky and partly muddy, surrounded by Polygonums, and fields of Salicornia.
The river has a broad bed, at times dividing into several channels, lined with stately Melaleucas and flooded-gum, and again uniting into one deep channel, with long reaches of water surrounded by Polygonums, and overgrown with blue Nymphaeas, Damasoniums, and Utricularias, and inhabited by large flights of ducks. Rock occasionally enters into the bed of the river.
The sun shines freely into its mouth, and graceful bunches of grass and eriogonums and sage grow about it, doing what they can toward its redemption from degrading associations and making it beautiful. Where the lava meets the lake there are some fine curving bays, beautifully embroidered with rushes and polygonums, a favorite resort of waterfowl.
Reeds, similar to those of Europe, and Polygonums almost identical as to species, surround the water, the surface of which is covered with the broad leaves of Villarsia, exactly resembling those of Nymphaea alba, and with several species of Potomogeton.
Two miles farther we came to a fine large water-hole, surrounded by Polygonums and young water-grass, and, at two miles farther, to another, and in about the same distance to a third. Recent camps of the natives were on each of them, and a beaten path led from one to the other. One of these holes was crossed by a weir made of sticks for catching fish.
At last, I observed some trees, of a fresher appearance than usual, beyond a small rise; and, riding up to it, found a small water-hole surrounded by Polygonums: on examination, it was found to contain only a very small quantity of water, yet what remained was good.
Word Of The Day