overing. During our stay the
food of the natives consisted chiefly of two kinds of fruit, the first (a
Wallrothia) like a large yellow plum, mealy and insipid; the second, the
produce of a kind of mangrove (Candelia) the vegetating sprouts of which
are prepared for food by a process between baking and steaming. At
low-water the women usually dispersed in search of shellfish on the
mudflats and among the mangroves, and the men occasionally went out to
fish, either with the spear, or the hook and line.

THE COUNTRY. ITS PRODUCTIONS.

The country in the immediate vicinity of Evans and Cape York Bays
consists of low wooded hills alternating with small valleys and plains of
greater extent. The coastline, when not consisting of rocky headlands, is
either a sandy beach, or is fringed with mangroves. Behind this, where
the country is flat, there is usually a narrow belt of dense brush or
jungle. In the valleys, one finds what in the colony of New South Wales
would be termed open forest land, characterised by scattered eucalypti
and other trees, and a scanty covering of coarse sedge-like grass growing
in tufts on a red clayey soil, covered with nodules of ironstone and
coarse quartzose sand. As characteristics of this poor soil, the first
objects to attract the attention are the enormous pinnacled anthills of
red clay and sand, often with supporting buttresses. These singular
structures, which are sometimes twelve feet in height, are of great
strength and toughness--on breaking off a piece, they appear to be
honeycombed inside, the numerous galleries being then displayed. The ants
themselves are of a pale brown colour, a quarter of an inch in length. In
sailing along the coast, these anthills may be distinctly seen from the
distance of two or three miles.

The rock in the immediate neighbourhood of Cape York is a porphyry with
soft felspathic base, containing numerous moderately-sized crystals of
amber-coloured quartz, and a few larger ones of flesh-coloured felspar.
It often appears in large tabular masses split horizontally and
vertically into blocks of all sizes. At times when the vertical fissures
predominate and run chiefly in one direction, the porphyry assumes a
slaty character, and large thin masses may be detached.

One of the most interesting features in the botany of Cape York, is the
occurrence of a palm, not hitherto mentioned as Australian. It is the
Caryota urens (found also in India and the Indian archipelago)