344 JOUKNEY OF DISCOVERY INTO 



however appeared, aud a mile further the estuary was seen^ its mouth 

 being about four miles distant to the eastward. The natives call the 

 country around this sheet of water Yoor-de-lupj and the land about the 

 Fitzgerald Inlet, Gnang-meip. Our rirer now assumed a more bold 

 and decided character, sweeping in fine open reaches forty to sixty yards 

 wide in the space of a mile, when it joined the estuary near a red clifiF 

 of considerable elevation on the left bank. The country around had 

 nothing to recommend it ; but the estuary appeared, through the trees 

 which buried its southern shore, to be open and navigable for boats. 

 §.everal long points projected into it along its entire length of three 

 miles, forming on either side deep bays or coves, in which were ob- 



i 



served many ducks, teal, and black swans. From a dry sand-bar at the 

 mouth of this estuaiy, Point Hood, which forms Doubtful Island Bay, 

 bore S.E. by S. four or five leagues distant, and the shore abreast was 

 observed to be free of rocks, but without any headland or bay to aiford 

 shelter for boats or small craft. The anchorage in the southern part 

 of Doubtful Island Bay, being however only nine or ten miles distant, 

 would always aiford a ready and valuable resort for vessels, should this 

 estuary ever be brought into requisition for the transport of coal by 

 water* Outside the bar the beach is very broad and level, and good 

 fresh water is procurable by scratching to the depth of nine inches in 

 the little sandy hollows behind high-water margin. 



Naming this inlet the Gordon, and its river the Gairdner, we quitted 

 both, and proceeded five miles along the beach to the south, where the 

 travelling was good, and enabled us to avoid much rocky and rugged 

 country. 



After crossing the dry sandy mouths of several small watercourses 

 in pools, some fresh and others salt, which discharge themselves upon 

 the western side of this Bay, we quitted its sandy shore at the com- 

 mencement of the granite formation, and proceeded for six miles south- 

 westward, over very uneven gi-assy laud, bare of timber, except clumps . 

 of Tea-trees and Peppermint in numerous small hollows, and abounding 

 in kangaroo. This space would afford cattle or horses a good run, but 

 is in some parts too much covered with low scrub to answer for sheep. 

 Coming out then on the shore of Bremer Bay, we made use of its soft 

 sandy beach for three miles more, a heavy sea rolling in with a strong 

 southerly wind, and breaking high at the distance of 150 yards from 

 the steep sandy beach. At 50 to 100 yards behind the shore, high 



