394 CHARACTER OF COUNTRY. 



we proved it to be the mouth of the Greenough ; 

 the water was enth'ely salt, and the banks, in some 

 places seventy feet high, were composed of limestone. 

 Near the head of this estuary we discovered the 

 place where Captain Grey crossed it, as described 

 in the following extract from his notes communi- 

 cated to Lord John Russell, then Secretary for the 

 Colonies. " The character of the country again 

 changed, and for the next two miles and a half the 

 plains were sandy, and covered with scrub. At the 

 end of another mile we reached a river, about 

 twenty-five yards wide ; it was salt where we made it, 

 and it was so shallow, that we soon found a place 

 where, by jumping from rock to rock, we could cross 

 it. This river discharged itself into a bay ;* it ran 

 rather from the S. of E. [E. of S.?] Four miles 

 further, S.by E., were sandy plains, with scrub, &c." 

 Thus terminated our exploration of this part of 

 the country, called, by Captain Grey, the Province 

 of Victoria ; and certainly all we had seen of it de- 

 served the character of sterility, which in some 

 measure it appears to retain further northward, as 

 we learn from the report of Lieut. Helpman, who 



* This was doubtless Cliampion Bay ; but in our examination 

 of the coast, we did not see anything of the bay or harbour which 

 Captain Grey speaks of in his work (vol. ii. p. 35), about nine 

 miles north of the Greenough, and which he supposed to be 

 Champion Bay, " since denominated," he says, " Port Grey." 

 According to the true latitude of Champion Bay, the bay in ques- 

 tion would be in about 28° 38' S. or nearly twenty-two miles 

 north of the position assigned to Port Grey in Arrowsmith's map, 

 before alluded to. 



