ied up beds of three shallow
lagoons (one of which I had seen half filled four years before) we found
native wells, one dug to the depth of six feet, but the water had
disappeared.

PORT MOLLE.

Port Molle, besides being a well sheltered harbour from all prevailing
winds, has a much more pleasing aspect than almost any place I have seen
on the north-east coast of Australia. To ourselves the change was
agreeable; instead of the monotonous gumtrees and mangroves of Port
Curtis and the scantily wooded stony hills of the Percy Isles, we had
here many varieties of woodland vegetation, including some large patches
of dense brush or jungle, in which one might observe every shade of green
from the sombre hue of the pine, to the pale green of the cabbage-palm.

Some rare birds were procured in the brushes--two of them appear here to
attain their southern limits of distribution upon the north-east coast of
Australia; they are the Australian sunbird (Cinnyris australis) reminding
one of the humming birds from its rich metallic colouring, and the
Megapodius tumulus, a rasorial bird, the size of a fowl, which constructs
great mounds of earth, leaves, sticks, stones, and coral, in which the
eggs are deposited at a depth of several feet from the surface, and left
there to be hatched by the heat of the fermenting mass of vegetable
matter. In addition to these, our sportsmen were successful in procuring
numbers of the pheasant-tailed pigeon, and the brush-turkey (Talegalla
lathami) the latter much esteemed, from the goodness of its flesh. Many
plants and insects as well as several landshells, new to science, which
will elsewhere be alluded to, were added to the collection. Doubtless
fish are also plentiful here, but we were prevented from hauling the
seine by the remains of a wreck in the centre of a flat of muddy sand at
the head of the bay where we were anchored; the vessel, I have since
heard, had come in contact with a coral reef, and been run on shore here,
in order to save a portion of her stores.

CAPE UPSTART. FIND NO WATER.

December 10th.

In company with the Asp we ran up to the northward to Cape Upstart, a
distance of about ninety miles, and anchored in five fathoms off the
sandy beach inside the point. Two boats were immediately sent to search
for water, but we found the pools where the Fly had watered, in 1844,
completely empty; and it was not until the deep rocky bed of the torrent
had been traced upwards of a mile