rom attack was, that every man, with
the exception of Mr. Kennedy, should take his turn to watch through the
night--two hours being the duration of each man's watch--the watch
extending from 8 P.M. till 6 A.M. During the night the kangaroo-dogs were
kept chained up, but the sheepdog was at large.

The position of this our first encampment was near the northern extremity
of Rockingham Bay, being in latitude 17 degrees 58 minutes 10 seconds
south, longitude 146 degrees 8 minutes east. The soil, where our cattle
and sheep were feeding, was sandy and very wet. The land, from the beach
to the scrub in the swamp beyond, was slightly undulating, and very
thickly strewed with shells, principally bivalves.

On the morning of the 25th May, a party commenced landing the remainder
of our stores; and it being a fine morning, I went out to collect
specimens and seeds of any new and interesting plants I might find. On
leaving the camp I proceeded through a small belt of scrub to the rocks
on the north; the scrub was composed of the genera Flagellaria, Kennedya,
Bambusa (bamboo), Smilax, Cissus, Mucuna, and various climbing plants
unknown to me: the trees consisted principally of Eugenia, Anacardium,
Castanospermum (Moreton Bay chestnut), a fine species of Sarcocephalus,
and a large spreading tree belonging to the natural order Rutaceae, with
ternate leaves, axillary panicles of white flowers, about the size of
those of Boronia pinnata. At the edge of the rocks were some fine
treeferns (Dicksonia) with the genera Xiphopteris, and Polypodium; also
some beautiful epiphytal Orchideae; among others a beautiful Dendrobium
(rock lily,) with the habit of D. speciosum, but of stronger growth,
bearing long spikes of bright yellow flowers, the sepals spotted with
rich purple. I found also another species with smaller leaves, and more
slender habit, with spikes of dull green flowers, the column and tips of
the sepals purple: and a very fine Cymbidium, much larger than C. suave,
with brown blossoms, having a yellow column.

I proceeded along the edge of a mangrove swamp for a short distance, and
entered a freshwater swamp about a mile from the beach, covered with very
thick scrub, composed of large trees of the genus Melaleuca, running for
the most part from forty to fifty feet high. Here also I first found a
strong-growing climbing palm (Calamus australis) throwing up a number of
shoots from its roots, many of them 100 feet long, and about the