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In travelling down to the water-hole, where we had met the Blackfellow and his family, we kept a little too much to the westward, in hope of finding a more open country; instead, however, of an improvement, we encountered sandy hills covered with a dense low scrub and cypress-pine. The latter almost invariably grows on the slight sandstone elevations in a scrubby country.
The range was openly timbered with white-gum, spotted-gum, Ironbark, rusty-gum, and the cypress-pine near the gullies; and with a little dioecious tree belonging to the Euphorbiaceae, which I first met with at the Severn River, and which was known amongst us under the name of the "Severn Tree:" it had a yellow or red three-capsular fruit, with a thin fleshy pericarp, of an exceedingly bitter taste; the capsules were one-seeded.
The Melaleuca gum was very frequent in the stringy-bark forest: the Cypress-pine formed either small thickets or occurred scattered. Sterculia, which at the time was particularly valuable to us, was rare. Red ironstone cropped out every where, and formed large shallow basins, surrounded by tea-tree thickets; like those swamps I have mentioned on several occasions.
We travelled down the creek in a south-west course, for about nine miles. Low sandstone ranges bounded its valley to the southward and south-east; stony ridges with stunted trees and Cypress-pine extended to the north-west. The banks of the creek, which I called "Snowdrop's Creek," after the bullock we had killed, were grassy and open; it was well provided with water.
We found it afterwards all over Arnheim's Land, especially on the table land and on the rocky heads of the South Alligator River, where it grew on sandy flats surrounding the rocks, and particularly round sandy swamps. The Cypress-pine and Pandanus were frequent, but Sterculia was rare. We remarked that the little finches generally anticipated us in the harvest of the ripe fruit of the latter.
For the past week, the heat was very oppressive during the day, whilst, at night, it was often exceedingly cold; for two or three hours before dawn, and for an hour after sunset, it was generally delightful, particularly within the influence of a cheerful cypress-pine fire, which perfumes the air with the sweet scent of the burning resin.
A natural opening, which had recently been enlarged by a bush fire, enabled us to pass into a dense Ironbark and cypress-pine forest; and then, bearing a little to the right, we came on a slight watercourse to the northward, which rapidly enlarged as it descended between ranges, which seemed to be the spurs of the table land we had just left. Nov. 5. We observed the tomb of a native near our camp.
The rocky ridges were occupied by the stringy-bark, fine Cypress-pine trees, the stunted silver-leaved Ironbark, a Eucalyptus, with very scanty foliage, orange-coloured blossoms, seed-vessels longitudinally ribbed, and as large as the egg of a fowl; its butt was covered with a lamellar bark, but the upper part and the branches were white and smooth; also by another Eucalyptus, with a scaly butt like the Moreton Bay ash, but with smooth upper trunk and cordate ovate leaves, which was also new to me; we called it the Apple-gum.
After having ascended the gullies, and passed the low scrub and cypress-pine thicket which surrounds them, I came into the open forest, and soon found our tracks, and the little creek for which I had steered the day before. This creek, however, soon became a rocky gully, and joined a large creek, trending to the east and south-east.
Instead of the cypress-pine scrub, the Corypha-palm and the Casuarina grew here, and invited us to cool shaded waters; the Corypha-palm promised a good supply of cabbage. We had a thunder-storm from the southward, which turned from the range to the eastward. The two last days were cloudless and very hot; but, on the ranges, a cool breeze was stirring from the northward. Nov. 30.
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