ich we had rarely any respite. The large flies were
also very numerous, troublesome and irritating tormentors. They literally
assailed us by hundreds at a time, biting through our clothes, and
causing us constant employment in endeavouring to keep them off. I have
counted twenty-three of these blood-suckers at one time upon a patch of
my trousers eight inches square.

Being now at a part of the cliffs where they receded from the sea, and
where they had a last become accessible, I devoted some time to an
examination of their geological character. The part that I selected was
high, steep, and bluff towards the sea, which washed its base; presenting
the appearance described by Captain Flinders, as noted before. By
crawling and scrambling among the crags, I managed, at some risk, to get
at these singular cliffs. The brown or upper portion consisted of an
exceedingly hard, coarse grey limestone, among which some few shells were
embedded, but which, from the hard nature of the rock, I could not break
out; the lower or white part consisted of a gritty chalk, full of broken
shells and marine productions, and having a somewhat saline taste: parts
of it exactly resembled the formation that I had found up to the north,
among the fragments of table-land; the chalk was soft and friable at the
surface, and easily cut out with a tomahawk, it was traversed
horizontally by strata of flint, ranging in depth from six to eighteen
inches, and having varying thicknesses of chalk between the several
strata. The chalk had worn away from beneath the harder rock above,
leaving the latter most frightfully overhanging and threatening instant
annihilation to the intruder. Huge mis-shapen masses were lying with
their rugged pinnacles above the water, in every direction at the foot of
the cliffs, plainly indicated the frequency of a falling crag, and I felt
quite a relief when my examination was completed, and I got away from so
dangerous a post.

I have remarked that the natives at the head of the Great Bight had
intimated to us, that there were two places where water might be found in
this neighbourhood, not far apart, and as with all our efforts we had
only succeeded in discovering one, I concluded that the other must be a
little further along the coast to the westward; in this supposition I was
strengthened, by observing that all the native tracks we had met with
apparently took this direction. Under this impression I determined to
move slowly a