DISCOVERY OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA 445 



country, as you sail along it, and, indeed, the greater part 

 even after penetrating inland as far as our situation would 

 allow us to do. The banks of the bays were generally 

 clothed with thick mangroves, sometimes for a mile or more 

 in breadth. The soil under these is rank, and always 

 overflowed every spring tide. Inland, you sometimes 

 meet with a bog, upon which the grass grows rank and 

 thick, so that no doubt the soil is sufficiently fertile. 1 

 The valleys also between the hills, where runs of water 

 come down, are thickly clothed with underwood ; but they 

 are generally very steep and narrow, so that, upon the 

 whole, the fertile soil bears no kind of proportion to that 

 which seems by nature doomed to everlasting barrenness. 

 Water is a scarce article, or at least was so when we were 

 there (April to August), which I believe to have been the 

 very height of the dry season. At some places we saw 

 not a drop, and at the two places where we filled for the 

 ship's use (Botany Bay and Bustard Bay) it was done 

 from pools not brooks. 2 This drought is probably owing 

 to the dryness of a soil entirely composed of sand in which 

 high hills are scarce. 



" A soil so barren, and at the same time entirely void No fruit, 

 of the help derived from cultivation, could not be supposed 

 to yield much to the support of man. We had been 

 so long at sea, with but a scanty supply of fresh provisions, 

 that we had long been used to eat everything we could 

 lay our hands upon, fish, flesh, or vegetables, if only they 

 were not poisonous, yet we could only now and then 

 procure a dish of bad greens for our own table, and never, 

 except in the place where the ship was careened, did 

 we meet with a sufficient quantity to supply the ship " ; 

 and Banks gives a list of the " bad greens " they had 

 managed to eat. They had found no eatable fruits, 



1 See note, p. 418. 



2 This statement does not seem consistent with the previous statement 

 about " the hills where runs of water come down." But the hills and 

 runs of water must have been at the Endeavour River, where Cook 

 says there were " several fine rivulets." The " two places where we 

 filled for the ship's use " must be Botany Bay and Bustard Bay. But 

 Cook writes of " a small stream " at both those places. 



