Country between Morelon Bay and Port Essington. 93 
I had been extremely anxious to reacli Port Essington before 
the setting in of the rainy season, as there was good reason to 
believe that the peninsula was connected with the main land by a 
neck of low land and mangrove swamps, which would have been 
rendered impassable by any continuance of rain. Though I after¬ 
wards found that connecting ridges run from the main land into 
the peninsula, it would notwithstanding have been extremely diffi¬ 
cult to cross the plains and flats, which were large and numerous 
along the Alligator Rivers and Van Diemen Gulf. We were again 
favoured with fine weather until we were fairly on the peninsula, 
when the thunder-storms recommenced ; and the day we arrived 
in Victoria heavy rains set in, which rendered the flats boggy and 
flooded the creeks. 
Captain Macarthur gave the following description of the setting 
in of the north-west monsoon. At sunset, a low body of clouds 
is seen to the southward and south-west, which draws off to the 
westward between the main land and Melville Island. These 
clouds approach nearer and nearer to the zenith every succeeding 
day. At first they just skirt the settlement, accompanied by 
brief showers, but at length the whole body passes fairly over the 
peninsula, and the regular rains commence. 
The body of clouds before mentioned forms and rests very pro¬ 
bably on the high land, at the head of the Alligator rivers, and 
is produced by the moist warm north-west wind flowing up the 
valley to the elevated cooler country, and meeting perhaps cold 
winds from the west side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and from 
the high lands to the southward. 
I will here mention that the sea-breeze at Victoria is extremely 
weak, and I think that Captain Macarthur is right in attributing 
partly to this fact the fever, from which the garrison has several 
times severely suffered. It is extremely difficult to assign any 
other reason for the want of salubrity. The country is undulating 
and hilly ; the soil is sandy, and absorbs rapidly the heaviest 
showers ; the forest is open ; the mangrove thickets which cover 
the mouth of the creeks scarcely deserve the name of swamps, as 
they are washed by the tide, and form no accumulation of vege¬ 
table matter which might produce the miasma or malaria which 
