TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
29 
Keppel Bay.] 
Almost all the borders of the bay, and of the several arms into 
which it branches, are of this latter description ; so that there are 
few places where it was not necessary to wade some distance in soft 
mud, and afterwards to cut through a barrier of mangroves, before 
reaching the solid land. 
Mention has been made of the ridge of hills by which the 
low land on the south side of the bay is bounded. The upper parts 
of it are steep and rocky, and may be a thousand, or perhaps fifteen 
hundred feet high, but the lower sloping sides are covered with 
wood ; Mount Larcom and the hills within the ridge, are clothed 
with trees nearly to the top ; yet the aspect of the whole is sterile. 
The high land near the western arm, though stony and shallow in 
soil, is covered with grass, and trees of moderate growth ; but the 
best part of the country was that near Cape Keppel ; hill and valley 
are there well proportioned, the grass is of a better kind and more 
abundant, the trees are thinly scattered, and there is veiy little 
underwood. The lowest parts are not mangrove swamps, as else- 
where, but pleasant looking vallies, at the bottom of which are ponds 
of fresh water frequented by flocks of ducks. Cattle would find 
here a tolerable abundance of nutritive food, though the soil may 
perhaps be no where sufficiently deep and good to afford a pro- 
ductive return to the husbandman. 
After the mangrove, the most common trees round Keppel 
Bay are different kinds of eucalyptus, fit for the ordinary purposes of 
building. A species of Cycas, described by captain Cook ( Hawkes- 
worth, III. 220, 221) as a third kind of palm found by him on this 
coast, and bearing poisonous nuts, was not scarce in the neighbour- 
hood of West-arm Hill. We found three kinds of stone here : a 
greyish slate, quartz and various granitic combinations, and a soft, 
whitish stone, saponaceous to the touch ; the two first were often 
found intermixed, and the last generally, if not always lying above 
them. The quartz was of various colours, and sometimes pure; but 
never in a state of crystallisation. 
1802. 
August. 
