e its breadth was about twenty yards, and being high
water the greatest depth was twelve feet; at low water the channel must
be nearly dry. We did not reach the cutter until six o'clock in the
evening, much exhausted for want of rest, and from exposure to a powerful
sun, and a hot land wind that prevailed all day.

This river, which I have named the Liverpool, runs up from a well-formed
port about forty miles, taking in its way a very serpentine course; its
breadth at Entrance Island is about four miles; ten miles from the mouth
its width is about half a mile, after which it very gradually decreases;
at about fourteen miles from our anchorage the water is fresh at half
tide but at low water it might probably be obtained four or five miles
lower down. The bottom is muddy as are also the banks; and in consequence
the latter are only accessible at high tide, at which time they are
seldom more than two or three feet above the water's edge. The country
within is very level, and appeared during the wet season to be
occasionally inundated: the soil where we landed is a sour stiff clay on
which grew an arundinaceous grass.

At one place where the bank was about fifteen feet high and formed of red
clay Mr. Cunningham landed, and collected a variety of interesting
plants. The open banks of the river were covered with salicorniae and
other common chenopodeae; and, in the midst of the usual assemblage of
rhizophoreae, the Avicennia tomentosa, Linn. was observed of remarkable
growth, being in many parts from fifty to sixty feet high, three feet in
diameter at the base, and of a straight tapering poplar shape.

Fish was plentiful and on the muddy banks, as the water fell, we saw
myriads of small amphibious fishes skipping about: they are probably of
the same kind as those seen by Captain Cook at Thirsty Sound and by
Captain Flinders at Keppel Bay,* on the east coast. Captain Cook
describes the species he saw to be a small fish, about the size of a
minnow, furnished with two very strong breast fins, by the assistance of
which it leaped away upon being approached, as nimbly as a frog. The fish
I have just noticed appeared to be of a very similar description,
excepting that it did not seem to avoid the water as that of Thirsty
Sound; for Captain Cook says in a subsequent paragraph that it preferred
the land to water; for it frequently leaped out of the sea, and pursued
its way upon dry ground, and chose rather to leap from stone to sto