Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; 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 SeaStokes, John Lort
History
Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; 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
end of Samow Island in the morning; but the high peaks of Timor were not
seen till near noon. The eager eyes of the native whom we had brought
with us from Swan River were the first to descry them; and he exclaimed
in tones of rapturous astonishment, "Land! big fella! all the same
cloud!" I shall not easily forget the amazement of this savage,
accustomed as he was to behold the level plains of his native land, when
he saw, towering in alpine grandeur to the sky, the pinnacled heights of
Timor. He seemed scarcely able to conceive, even when assured by the
evidence of his own senses, that it was possible for mountains to be so
high and ranges so vast as those that now developed themselves before
him.
REACH TIMOR.
In crossing the mouth of Coepang Bay towards Samow, in the evening, the
appearance was truly grand. A vast heap of vapour was slowly moving
across the mountains, disclosing at intervals their jagged summits
towering towards the sky, and occasionally allowing the eye to penetrate
for a moment into the depths of mysterious valleys that seemed to stretch
for unknown distances into the recesses of the great Timoree Range. Some
wild flying clouds that rapidly traversed the heavens imparted a curious
alternation of light and shadow to the lowlands that presented themselves
to our view--chequering the whole with gloomy patches and light spots,
and revealing or hiding in rapid succession the extensive woods and the
patches of cultivation that lay within the bosom of the Bay. The dazzling
white sand beaches, too, strongly marked by the dark blue sea, heightened
the beauty of the scene; which to us, who had for some months seen
nothing but the monotonous north-west coast of Australia, appeared truly
enchanting.
During the first watch we beat up the bay, and at midnight anchored; the
barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, and the tolling of bells assuring
us that we were once again in the vicinity of civilization. In the
morning we found ourselves off the town of Coepang, when we shifted our
berth farther in; the flagstaff of Fort Concordia bearing south a quarter
of a mile.
SWAN RIVER NATIVE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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