Macquarie Harbour. 
29 
Here the river becomes narrow, and the rapids begin 
to render navigation difficult, and even dangerous. One 
of these rapids was named by Captain Butler Lempriere’s 
Falls, from the circumstance we are about to relate. 
An exploring party, consisting of the Commandant, 
Mr. Kinghorn, commanding Her Majesty’s Colonial 
Brig Cyprus, and the Commissariat Officer in the Com¬ 
mandant’s gig, and a small dingy with four soldiers as an 
escort, proceeded up the Gordon. In their progress, 
Kinghorn’s River, Butler’s Island, the Pyramid, were 
named by them. After passing several of the rapids, 
they came to one, down which apparently the water 
came with great force: they attempted to stem it, and 
were making some progress, but the force of the water 
soon drove them back, and they encountered some little 
danger in consequence of a point of rock hooked down¬ 
wards catching the stern of the boat. This, however, 
was conquered, and the party landed on a flat point of 
land. 
This took place in autumn when the river was low,— 
for during the winter and spring, after the rains, the 
water rises considerably, (we have seen marine weeds 
hanging on the projecting branches of the trees, at least 
twenty or twenty-five feet above the summer level of the 
river), and the rapids are scarcely perceptible. They are 
formed by tongues of land running from one bank to 
within forty and fifty feet of the other. The water, thus 
contracted into a narrow channel, rushes with such 
violence that no boat can stand it. Even a fifty-six 
pound weight will not sink in a right perpendicular line. 
Ihe difficulty is in general surmounted by the parties 
landing on the tongue and dragging the boat round the 
point where the water is very shallow : once round the 
point you are in smooth water until you reach the next, 
rapid. On the occasion above mentioned, after erecting 
