242 THE PORT DARWIN DISTRICT 



moderate depth between. Few had less than three or four 

 feet of water at any parts of their course, and all were very 

 full, so that it was often a dangerous thing to cross them. 

 Once the horse was swept off his legs ; but he very 

 cleverly recovered himself, so that a good ducking was the 

 worst I suffered from the mishap. 



The banks of these streams were not steep, most of 

 them being nearly level with the surrounding country. 

 But there was much mud about, consisting of a mixture of 

 sand and clay, and this in places was very slippery. All 

 the streams contained abundance of fish, consisting of the 

 spotted kind referred to previously, a kind of bream, cat- 

 fish, and eels ; and one of the largest, which may be styled 

 a river, had a party of eight crocodiles (Crocodilus porosus) 

 floating slowly in mid-stream. I do not know what river 

 this may be, nor how far I was from the sea-coast ; but 

 these reptiles are seldom found above the lower reaches of 

 a stream. These could not have been less than one 

 hundred and twenty miles from the mouth of the river. 

 Their presence made me hesitate to cross the river 

 though I found a ford with not more than four feet of 

 water on it. 



Turning therefore to the east, I rode along the bank of 

 this stream, and soon found myself bearing round to the 

 north-east, and approaching a country where there were a 

 greater number of hills than I had hitherto seen in this 

 district. These hills had a singular appearance, being strewn 

 with masses of loose rock of various sizes, but mostly 

 small. The ridges often looked from a distance as if they 

 were covered with large flocks of recumbent sheep. 



On the plain there were a number of gouty-stem trees 

 — one of the strangest vegetable growths of Australia. 

 It looks like a monstrous production, being usually a 

 pyramidal mass of wood springing from the earth to a 

 height of twelve to twenty feet. From the top of this 

 sprout a number of straggling branches which bear but a 

 scanty crop of leaves ; but the flower is a star-shaped, sweet- 

 smelling blossom, and the fruit, large and egg-shaped, is a 

 solid white mass, in which are embedded a quantity of flat 



