370 VIEW OF INTERIOR. 



white red-bill, or oyster-catcher, was in readiness 

 to greet us, accompanied by a few families of sander- 

 lings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a 

 couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line 

 of reddish sandstone cliffs, twelve feet in height, 

 was ascended, and found to face a bank of sand, 

 held together by a sort of coarse spinifex. This 

 bank, which ran parallel to the coast, was narrow, 

 subsiding into a valley three quarters of a mile wide, 

 on the opposite side of which rose a hummocky 

 ridge of coarse ferruginous sandstone formation. 

 The valley was covered with brown grass and de- 

 tached stunted bushes. Water had recently lodged 

 in it, as appeared from the saucer-like cakes of 

 earth broken and curled up over the whole surface. 

 The nature of the soil was shewn by the heaps of 

 earth thrown out at the entrances of the holes of 

 iguanas, and other burrowing creatures ; it was a 

 mixture of sand, clay, and vegetable matter. From 

 the highest hillock beyond the valley a view of the 

 interior was obtained : it presents, like most of the 

 portions of the continent we had discovered, the 

 aspect of a dreary plain, clothed with grass and 

 detached clumps of green brushwood. " What a 

 strange country !" was the exclamation that naturally 

 burst from us all, on beholding this immense and ap- 

 parently interminable expanse, with no rise to relieve 

 the tired eye. As we gazed, our imaginations trans- 

 ported us to the Pampas of South America, which 

 this vast level greatly resembled, except that the 



