Country between Moreton Bay and Port Essington. 99 
noble trees of it were on the patches of brush along the Alligator 
Rivers, and formed groves and even a whole tract of forest between 
Raffles Bay and Port Essington. 
It is generally believed that Australia is poor in edible fruits 
and vegetables. There is no doubt that very few are good, but it 
will be seen by the subjoined catalogue, that the number of the 
edible productions of the vegetable kingdom was by no means 
small. 
We boiled the young shoots of native spinach (mesembrian- 
themum), the goose-foot (chenopodium), portulacca, and the sow¬ 
thistle (sonchus), as vegetables. The seaforthia, coryplia, and 
livistona palms, yielded young edible shoots; but the two latter 
were either bitter or gave only a small supply, whilst the seaforthia 
shoots (myroin of the natives of Port Essington) afforded most 
excellent eating. Salicornia, a small plant with articulate fleshy 
stem, which grows always on soil impregnated with salt, tasted 
well when boiled with our stewed meat, particularly when we were 
without salt. The youngest leaves of typha (bullrush) and the 
lower part of the leaf-stalks of nelumbium were good to eat. The 
stem of a species of cymbidium was edible, but very glutinous 
and insipid. 
A small round tuber, about three quarters of an inch in diame¬ 
ter, of a sweet agreeable taste, was found in a camp of natives at 
Comet River, and belongs probably to a water-plant, with floating 
leaves like potamogeton. In the scrubs between the Mackenzie 
and Peak Range and along the Isaacks, we found large watery 
slightly pungent tubers of a vine, which bore blue berries of a 
still more pungent nature. 
At the head of the Lynd, two sorts of potatoes were found in 
■Teat abundance in a camp of the natives; but they were exces¬ 
sively bitter, and neither roasting nor boiling would render them 
palatable; at last I pounded them carefully, washed the pounded 
pulp, and obtained a tasteless starch, which very much resembled 
arrowroot. 
The seed-vessels, the stems (ombelborro), and tubers (toon) of 
nymphsea were eaten by the natives of the Upper Buidekin, and 
of the east coast of the gulf, and gave us some hearty meals. 
h 2 
