54 NATURAL FEATURES OF
deep. Not being able to return on board the same night, we slept near the entrance of the lagoon."
Mr. Westall corroborates the reports of Captains Sutherland and Flinders. He says that the land of Kangaroo Island is decidedly fertile; the trees are large, but a number of them had been thrown down by some inexplicable cause. Young ones were growing up between the fallen trunks, and the grass was thick and short. A number of very large kangaroos were found there. The appearance of the land there, says Mr. Westall, was decidedly better than that at Port Lincoln, and that again is better than the soil at King George's Sound.
Of the western shore of Yorke's Peninsula nothing is known, but we are now approaching a spot which has been explored, though not so completely as could be wished, by Captain Sturt, (a most enterprising traveller now in England,) who was employed by the Government of New South Wales to conduct an expedition of discovery into the interior. The following extract from the official report of that expedition relates to the country visited by Captain Sturt, after he had got within the limits of the new Colony.
Extracts from "Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, during the years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831; with Observations on the soil, climate, and general resources of the Colony of New South Wales," by Captain Charles Sturt, 39th Regiment, &c.
Vol. II. p. 180.— "The valley of the Murray, at its entrance, cannot be less than four miles in breadth. The river does not occupy the centre, but inclines to either side, according to its windings, and thus the flats are of greater or less extent, according to the distance of the river from the base of the hills. It is to be remarked, that the bottom of the valley is extremely level, and extensively covered with reeds. From the latter circumstance, one would be led to infer that these flats are
