FINAL REPORT. 
303 
composed ; and immediately below these again is a narrow stripe 
of a whitish, or rather a cream-coloured substance, lying in 
horizontal strata, but which the impracticable nature of the 
cliffs did not permit me to examine. After riding for forty-five 
miles along their summits, I was in no instance able to descend ; 
their brinks were perfectly steep and overhanging, and in many 
places enormous masses appeared severed by deep cracks from 
the main land, and requiring but a slight touch to plunge them 
into the abyss below. As far as I have yet been along these 
cliffs, I have seen nothing in their appearance to lead me to suppose 
that any portion of them is composed of chalk. Immediately 
along their summits, and for a few hundred yards back, very 
numerous pieces of pure flint are lying loosely scattered upon 
the surface of the limestone. How they obtained so elevated a 
position, or whence they are from, may admit, perhaps, of some 
speculation. Back from the sea, and as far as the eye could 
reach, the country was level and generally open, with some low 
prickly bushes and salsolaceous plants growing upon it ; here 
and there patches of the gum scrub shewed themselves, and 
among which a few small grassy openings were interspersed. 
The whole of this tract was thickly covered by small land shells, 
about the size of snail shells— and some of them somewhat 
resembling those in shape. There were no sudden depressions 
or abrupt elevations anywhere ; neither hills, trees, or water were 
to be observed ; nor was there the least indication of improve- 
ment or change in the general character of this desolate and 
forbidding region. The natives we met with at the head of the 
Bight were very friendly, and readily afforded us every infor- 
mation we required — as far as we could make them comprehend 
our wishes. 
“We most distinctly understood from them, that there was 
no water along the coast, westerly, for ten of their days’ journeys ; 
and that inland, there was neither fresh nor salt water, hills or 
timber, as far as they had ever been ; an account which but too 
well agreed with the opinion I had myself formed, upon ascer- 
taining that the same dreary, barren region I had been traversing 
