Three extensive districts of good country were also found in the course of this expedition, the Province of Victoria, before alluded to, the district of Babbage, and another adjacent to Perth, to which I have not affixed a name. The district of Babbage is situated on and near the river Gascoyne, which stream discharges itself in the central part of the main that fronts Shark Bay, and may indeed almost be recorded as the central point of the western coast of Australia; thus at once occupying the most commanding position in Shark Bay and one of the most interesting points on that coast; it is moreover the key to a very fine district which is the only one in that vast inlet that appears well adapted to the purposes of colonization. COAST OF SHARK BAY. Immediately to the south of the southern mouth of this river commences a line of shoals which at low-water are nearly dry, extending to a distance of from two to four miles from the coast and running with scarcely any intermission round the bay: except at high-water it is therefore impossible to approach the greater part of the coast, even in the smallest boat, unless by tracking it over those flats, which proceeding is not unattended with danger, for, if it comes on to blow at all hard, owing to the shoalness of the water, the whole of them becomes a mass of broken billows. I feel convinced it was owing to this circumstance that the navigators who had previously visited this bay left so large a portion of its coast unexplored. The shoals in the vicinity of the mouth of this river, as well as those in the river itself, have many snags upon them; and on the coast of Bernier Island, opposite to the main, we found the remains of large trees which had been washed down the river and had then been drifted across the bay. It was that circumstance which first convinced me that a large river existed hereabouts, and induced me so minutely to examine the coast. This occurrence of driftwood in the neighbourhood of large rivers is a circumstance unknown upon the south-western shores of this continent. I however observed it in Prince Regent's River and other rivers to the north, as well as in the Arrowsmith. This latter however is the most southern river in which I have remarked it, and it certainly is an evidence of the existence of timber of a much lighter description than has hitherto been known in this part of the continent. MOUTHS OF THE GASCOYNE. The southern mouth of the Gascoyne is however completely free from shoals, and has seven feet water on the bar at low tide. There is also a channel in it which has never less than this depth of water for about four miles from its mouth, after which it is only navigable for small boats in the dry season, and that merely for a short distance.