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
Fortune too seemed now resolved to favour us, the deep channel most
opportunely lying along the eastern shore, which we reached soon after
noon, and landed on the only beach of sand hereabouts left uncovered at
high-water. Here, for better security against the squalls we had
experienced for the last two nights, we hauled up the boats. A name was
soon found for our new territory, upon which we with rueful unanimity
conferred that of Point Torment, from the incessant and vindictive
attacks of swarms of mosquitoes, by whom it had evidently been resolved
to give the newcomers a warm welcome. The greater part of Point Torment
is deeply intersected with deep narrow creeks, and is almost entirely
flooded at high-water: it extends low and swampy for nearly three miles
in breadth, and then rises gradually, the slope being well wooded with
the white Eucalypti. Here also I remarked the gouty-stem tree, figured by
Captain Grey, and described by Captain King, as of the Nat. Ord.
Capparides, and thought to be a Capparis; it also bears a resemblance to
the Adansonia described in Captain Tuckey's Congo. This was but a small
specimen in fruit, of which the following brief description may convey a
tolerably clear idea. In shape it something resembled the coconut, with a
gourd-like outside, of a brown and yellow colour. Its length was five
inches, and diameter three. The shell was exceedingly thin, and when
opened it was found to be full of seeds, imbedded in a whitish pulp, and
of a not ungrateful taste.
This place, latitude 17 degrees 5 minutes South, may be considered the
limit of its growth in that direction, and the Victoria River, of which I
shall have occasion to speak hereafter, in latitude 14 degrees 55
minutes, the northern boundary of its indigenous empire.
We saw no traces of inhabitants, not even the thin rising smoke, which so
often greeted our eyes near the coast we had recently surveyed. I climbed
the highest tree we could find, and from the elevation it afforded looked
southwards over a wide prospect of nothing but mangroves and mudbanks;
still interesting from the fact that upon them the wondering gaze of the
curious European had never yet been bent!
THE MOSQUITOES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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