covered this opening, and says in his account of his third voyage:—“For half our voyage the river appeared to be of the same breadth, but after we had passed a large opening, which occurs on the right bank, in a north-easterly direction, and which I must confess I do not remember observing last year, it becomes much narrower, and runs between two banks covered with grass. I think the opening we saw to-day may be the river Alice, which, after leaving the Fly River at Snake Point, returns here. I intend on our return to explore it” (which, however, he never did). I may here say that, on our return, we ascended the Fly for two and a half hours twelve minutes, and found the country above the junction much as D’Albertis describes it, and the Fly taking a westerly, and even a west-south-westerly direction; and even the country on the south side of the Fly and that on the east side of the Strickland River differ greatly in my opinion. Ascending the Strickland River we stopped one day for collecting and cutting fire-wood; and proceeding upwards found the current getting much stronger, and at first we saw no signs of natives. The sand-spits became more numerous, and the sand is of a darker colour. A little higher up we again began to pass native shelters, and some small canoes. In the bends of the river there were many large logs of drift timber stranded; also many large snags stationary in the middle of the channel, now easily kept clear of as they were in sight. But they would have proved very dangerous if the river had been a few feet higher. Still higher up, the banks began to rise a little, and the trees and vegetation changed. The river is constantly changing its channel; one side continually being washed away, while a bank is forming on the other; and in places the water appears to have cut a new channel, and formed comparatively large islands in the middle of the river, with the stream running on both sides. The newly-formed land is covered in some places with a short bright green grass; in others with long reeds. The red cliffs also occur again in small hillocks, 25 to 40 feet high. They are formed of red and yellow ochre; the side facing the river generally being steep, and almost perpendicular; and it appears as if the water had literally cut its way through them. The other side presents the usual flat bank, with brown alluvial soil, and is thickly wooded with forest trees. These hills occur very frequently, and wherever found the river makes a broad circuit and comes up with them again after some distance has been traversed. We now found the native shelters and abandoned houses becoming more plentiful; and, though we saw no natives we heard them, and also heard their dogs howling. The level of the river we found to be rapidly rising, the current getting stronger, and its direction more circuitous. We continued to ascend the river, stopping in the forenoon to collect and take observations, still passing the same scenery;
