Several excursions were made during our stay in search of the natives, but without success. An encampment was found in the neighbourhood, near a small freshwater swamp, and by the things that were left behind it was evident that a hasty retreat had been made. It would have been as well if we could have punished these people in some way for their unprovoked attack; but to have followed them far into the bush would have been quite useless. A comparison of their conduct with that of the natives of Shoal Bay, confirms what I have before stated of the extraordinary contrast presented by the dispositions of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia; for in both instances we were the first Europeans they had ever encountered. TREACHERY BAY. The observations, which nearly cost me my life in endeavouring to obtain, placed Point Pearce in latitude 14 degrees 25 minutes 50 seconds, South longitude 2 degrees 49 minutes West of Port Essington. The time of high-water, at the full and change, was seven o'clock, when the tides rose from twenty to twenty-six feet. The cliffs forming it are of a reddish hue, from the quantity of iron the rocks in the neighbourhood contain. To commemorate the accident which befell me, the bay within Point Pearce was called Treachery Bay, and a high hill over it Providence Hill. In the nights of the 10th and 11th we had sharp squalls from the eastward, being early in the season for their repeated appearance. There was the usual gathering of clouds, the hard edges of which were lit up by the constant flashing of lightning. It is singular that all these squalls, wherever we have met them, should happen within five hours of the same time, between nine at night and two in the morning. COURSE OF THE VICTORIA. I have thus detailed the circumstances attending the discovery and partial exploration of the Victoria, that new and important addition to our geographical knowledge of one of the least known and most interesting portions of the globe. Its peculiar characteristics--for, like all Australian rivers, it has distinctive habits and scenery of its own--the nature of the country through which it flows--its present condition, its future destiny, are all subjects, to which, though I may have cursorily alluded before, I am under promise to the reader of returning. Of that promise, therefore, I now tender this in fulfilment. The Victoria falls into the Indian Ocean in latitude 14 degrees 40 minutes South and longitude 129 degrees 21 minutes East, being at its confluence with the sea, between Turtle and Pearce Points, twenty-six miles wide. The land upon either side as you enter the river is bold and well defined, but from the margin of the western shore, an extensive mud and mangrove flat, not entirely above the level of high-water, and reaching to the base of a range of hills, about seventeen miles from the water's edge, seems to indicate that at one time the waters of the Victoria washed the high land on either side.