COASTS OP AUSTRAIAA* 
187 
above ; and seemed to have been very recently 
inhabited. The rocks that formed its base Jan. 24. 
were ornamented with a prostrate capparis, or 
calyptranthusy {calyptranthus orbicularis, Cunn. 
MS.), which afforded me good flowering speci- 
mens. In my walk I started a small black kan- 
garoo : it was feeding upon the seeds of a small 
acacia, and, upon perceiving my approach, fled 
across the down without reaching a single bush 
or rock large enough to conceal itself as far as 
the eye could discern it, so bare and destitute of 
vegetation are these arid, sandy plains The 
heat of the weather was so great as not to allow 
of any communication with the shore, excepting 
between daybreak and eight o’clock. Mr. Cun- 
ningham’s visits were, therefore, necessarily 
much confined : this precaution I found it abso- 
lutely requisite to take, to prevent the people 
from being exposed to the very great heat of the 
sun, which on shore must have been at least 
twenty degrees more powerful than on board, 
where the thermometer ranged between '71|° at 
midnight, and 85° and 87° at noon. The baro- 
meter ranged between 29.76 and 29.99 inches, 
and stood highest when the wind was to the 
eastward of south, with which winds the horizon 
Cunningham MS, 
