[Um Port E ssington before the setting in of the rainy season, ? 
_ there was good reason to believe that the peninsula was imr 
|. swamps, which would have been rendered impassable by any 
352 DR. LEICHARDT'S OVERLAND JOURNEY 
been broken through by basalt, near the divisions of the 
waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the north-west coast. 
VIII. The Alligator River, and the Cobourg Peninsula, 
13? 40/—11° 21' S. latitude. 
- The leading features of this district are large swampy 
lagoons, extensive plains at the lower part of their course, 
densely wooded ironstone ridges, and a great number of 
ereeks in the Coburg Peninsula, with limited flats of light 
alluvial soil, which are richly clothed with herbs and grasses - 
during and immediately after the rainy season. These creeks 
generally enlarge into swamps called “ Mariars” by the 
natives, before they are lost in the mangrove thickets, which 
covers their junction with the sea. Along the Roper the sea 
breeze continued strong and regular from the eastward, but 
the night breeze became indistinct, probably in consequence - 
of a great number of parallel ranges, which intercepted its 
course. At the head of the river, however, they again felta — — 
strong but warm wind from north-north-west to north-north- gee 
east, about nine o'clock at night. This was considered to be — 
the sea-breeze from the north coast of Australia, flowing — 
probably up to the high land along the valley of the Liver- — 
pool River. 'The 14th November, when on the high land of 
Arnheim land, and on western waters, they experienced the 
first thunderstorm since they had left the east ‘coast; similar 
ones rose almost every day to the 23rd of November, and. 
veered invariably from south-west, to north-east. inr 
when the north-west monsoon sets in, and these 
_ thunderstorms appeared to be the first indications of the 
ange. Dr. Leichardt had been extremely anxious to reach 
nected with the main by a neck of low land and 
mc continuance of rain. Though he afterwards found that con- 
. necting ridges run from the main land into the peninsula, ! 
US would notwithstanding have been extremely difficult to cross 
