Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.Stokes, John Lort
History
Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.
Stokes, John Lort
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Natural history -- Australia
William Town, the seaport town of Australia Felix, named after his
Majesty King William IV., stands on a very low piece of land forming the
southern shore of Hobson's Bay, called Point Gellibrand, after a
gentleman from Hobart, one of the first who brought stock to Port
Phillip. He was lost in the bush in a very mysterious manner in 1834. No
trace of him or his horse was found till 1842, when some of the natives
showed where his mouldering bones lay. The point that bears his name
scarcely projects sufficiently to afford large ships shelter from south
winds in Hobson's Bay. In the North-West corner of the latter is the
mouth of the Yarra-yarra river; but although only one mile and a half
from the general anchorage, it is very difficult to be made out. The
following anecdote will illustrate the difficulty of detecting the mouths
of rivers in Australia. Soon after we anchored in Hobson's Bay, a small
schooner passed, going to Melbourne. Several of the officers were at the
time standing on the poop, and each selected a spot at which the schooner
was to enter the river; and although, as I have before stated, we were
only one mile and a half from it, none of us was right. A single tall
bushy-topped tree, about a mile inland, rose over the schooner as she
left the waters of Hobson's Bay.
William Town consisted, at that time, of only a few houses. One
disadvantage under which this place labours is badness of water, while
the country around it is a dead level, with clumps of very open woodland.
The formation is whinstone, but the soil's fertile quality shows an
absence of sandstone.
RIVER YARRA-YARRA.
Proceeding up the Yarra-yarra, we found that about two miles from the
mouth, the river divides, one branch continuing in a northerly direction,
and the other, a narrow sluggish stream, turning suddenly off to the
eastward. The banks are so densely wooded, that it is seldom if ever that
its surface is ruffled by a breeze.
MELBOURNE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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