Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/213

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SPECULATIONS ON THE COUNTRY.
187

King George's Sound, when he and his party lost their reckoning and their way, and did not arrive there till after seven weeks and three days. The place at which they bivouacked (about the 25th December, 1831) is deemed the best description of country which has been yet discovered. Galway, a man who is splitting timber here now, was of the party: he says, "all the country looked like a great field of oats before harvest;"—(kangaroo grass has very much that appearance). This was upon a river of pools, nearly in the line of a contemplated road between this and King George's Sound; but it is also very far inland. I doubt whether an extensive grazing tract may be found nearer to water-carriage, or more convenient, that at York, where part of my ground is. It seems likely that a settlement may be established there shortly; for already the nucleus of it is formed; therefore, after having relinquished the grant which I had further to the south of the Avon, I was glad to get hold of any near York.—That which I have, of 5000 acres, belonged to one who has abandoned the colony; the remaining part I took on a river, supposed to be the issuing of the Avon from the hills on the western plain: I chose this lot because the ground is good, which is more than I knew of any other place at that time; it is not above forty miles from this, and may be reached without either crossing or touching upon the mountains. Time