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
For the first thirty miles of the upward course, the character of the
river undergoes but little change. The left side continues bold, with the
exception of a few extensive flats, sometimes overflowed, and a
remarkable rocky elevation, about twenty-five miles up, to which we gave
the name of The Fort, as suggested by its bastion-like appearance, though
now called Table Hill in the chart. To the right the shore remains low,
studded with mangroves, and still, from appearance, subject to not
unfrequent inundations: towards the mouth, indeed, it is partially
flooded by each returning tide. Thirty-five miles from its mouth its
whole appearance undergoes the most striking alteration. We now enter the
narrow defile of a precipitous rocky range of compact sandstone, rising
from 4 to 500 feet in height, and coming down to the river, in some
places nearly two miles wide, in others not less than twenty fathoms
deep, and hurrying through, as if to force a passage, with a velocity
sometimes not less than six miles an hour.
NATURE OF THE COUNTRY.
It continues a rapid stream during its passage through this defile, an
extent of some thirty miles, and beyond it is found slowly winding its
way towards the sea across a rich alluvial plain, fifteen miles in width.
Above this plain is found a second range of similar character and
formation to that before mentioned; the stream, however, having of course
somewhat less both of width and depth, and flowing with a decreased
rapidity. The elevation of the hills on either side was at first entering
considerably less than in the former range; they had also lost much of
their steep and precipitous appearance; but as we gradually proceeded up,
the former distinctive characteristics returned: the hills rose higher
and more boldly, almost immediately from the water's edge, and continued
each mile to present a loftier and more rugged front; never however
attaining the extreme altitude of the former or Sea Range. Above Reach
Hopeless the width of the alluvial land, lying between the immediate
margin of the river and the hills which bound its valley, considerably
increased; and just in proportion as the high bold land approached the
channel on one shore, it receded from it on the opposite, and left an
extensive alluvial flat between that bank and the retreating hills; the
whole valley, too, widened out, so that, supposing the stream at one time
to have filled it from the bases of the high land on either side, it must
have had a breadth above Reach Hopeless of from three to five miles, and
this still increased when I last traced its presumed course beyond Mount
Regret.
The extreme altitude of Sea Range is from 7 to 800 feet, and of the hills
last seen, near Mount Regret, from 4 to 500. The distinctive formation
common to both consists in their level summits, within twenty feet of
which a precipitous wall of rock, of a reddish hue, runs along the
hillside.
VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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