1802.
March.
Tuesday 30.
provided with a harpoon, a boat load might have been caught. One black swan and several shags and gulls were seen.
I found the grass upon these pleasant-looking hills to be thinly set, the trees small, and the land poor in vegetable soil. The mountainous ridge on the east side of the inlet passes within a few miles of Hummock Mount, and appeared to be more sandy; but the wood upon it was abundant, and of a larger growth. Between the two ranges is a broad valley, swampy at the bottom; and into it the water runs down from both sides in rainy weather, and is discharged into the gulph, which may be considered as the lower and wider part of the valley.
This eastern ridge is the same which rises at Cape Jervis; from whence it extends northward towards Barn Hill and the ridge of mountains on the east side of Spencer's Gulph. If it join that ridge, as I strongly suspect, its length, taking it only from Cape Jervis to Mount Arden, will be more than seventy leagues in a straight line. There are some considerable elevations on the southern part; Mount Lofty is one of them, and its height appeared nearly equal to that of Mount Brown to the north, or about three thousand feet. Another lies six or seven miles to the north-by-east of the Hummock Mount, near the head of this inlet; and seems to have been the hill set from Spencer's Gulph, at the anchorage of March 14, in the evening, when it was distant ten or eleven leagues and appeared above the lower range in front of Barn Hill.
From my station on the western hills of the new inlet, across to Spencer's Gulph, the distance was not more than thirty miles; but as I did not ascend the highest part of the range, the water to the westward could not be seen. Had the Hummock Mount been within my reach, its elevation of near fifteen hundred feet would probably have afforded an extensive view, both across the peninsula, and of the country to the northward.
In honour of the noble admiral who presided at the Board of Admiralty when I sailed from England, and had continued to the