seven fathoms. This narrow entrance of the river, he thinks,
might be made navigable by ships of burthen, without difficulty or
great expense.

When the town begins to rise, and substantial buildings are required,
the blocks of stone procured by quarrying this entrance will go far
towards paying the expense of excavation.

Into this expansive sheet of water fall two rivers; one from the
north-east, which is properly the Swan River; the other from the
south-east, called Canning's River. Captain Stirling examined them both:
the former to its source, the latter beyond the point where the water
ceased to be brackish. They are both sufficiently convenient for boat
navigation, even at the end of the dry season; and any obstruction might
easily be removed to make them more so, by which the productions of an
immense extent of country might be transported by water-carriage.

Mr. Fraser remarks that nothing of the mangrove appears along the banks
of the Swan River, the usual situation of this plant being here occupied
by the genus Metrosideros. The first plain, or flat, as it is called,
contiguous to the river, commencing at Point Fraser, is formed of a rich
soil, and appears, by a deposit of wreck, to be occasionally flooded to
a certain extent. Here are several extensive salt marshes, which Mr.
Fraser thinks are admirably adapted for the growth of cotton. The hills,
though scanty of soil, are covered with an immense variety of plants;
among others, a magnificent species of Angophera occupied the usual
place of the Eucalyptus, which, however, here as on the eastern side,
generally forms the principal feature in the botany of the country,
accompanied by Mimosa, Correa, Melaleuca, Casuarina, Banksia, and
Xanthorea. The brome, or kangaroo glass, was most abundant. On a more
elevated flat, a little further up the river, the botanist observes that
the "magnificence of the Banksia and arborescent Zamia, which was here
seen thirty feet in height, added to the immense size of the Xanthorea
near this spot, impart to the forest a character truly tropical." He
says that about five miles to the eastward of the river, there is an
evident change in the character of the country: extensive plains of the
richest description, consisting of an alluvial deposit, equalling in
fertility those of the banks of the River Hawkesbury in New South Wales,
and covered with the most luxuriant brome grass. The Casuarina, so
common near the limestone ridge of