Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Volume II Part 9

Head : Maka : Kaat.

A porpoise : Nordock.

Woman : Paydgero, or coman (doubtful).

Hair of the head : Kaat : Kaat jou.

Come here : Bulloco.

Shoulder : Djadan.

Musket : Puelar (doubtful).

Gum : Perin.

Tomorrow : Manioc (doubtful.) Surprise or admiration : Caicaicaicaicaigh. The last word lengthened out with the breath.

A hawk : Barlerot.

A shark, or shark's tail : Margit.

Belt worn round the stomach : Noodlebul.

Back : Goong.

A particular fish : Wallar, or wallat.

NAMES OF THE NATIVES.

Yallapool (a little boy).

Ureeton, Wytumba : boys.

Marinbibba.

Coolbun.

Nakinna.

Malka.

Uderra.

Kynoora.

Hanbarrah.

Bawarrang.

Monga.

Flooreena.

Coolyarong.

Mogril (a young man).*

(*Footnote. The above names were obtained at a subsequent visit on our return to England the following year.)

The winds during our stay performed two or three revolutions of the compa.s.s but they partook chiefly of the character of sea and land-breezes: during the night and early part of the morning the wind was usually light from the northward and at ten o'clock, gradually dying away, was succeeded by a wind from the sea, generally from South-West or South-East; this sea-breeze occasionally blew fresh until four o'clock in the evening when it would gradually diminish with the setting sun to a light air.

The barometrical column ranged between 29.75 and 30.22 inches; a fall of the mercury preceded a westerly wind, and a rise predicted it from the South-East: when it stood at thirty inches we had sea-breezes from south with fine weather. The easterly winds were dry; westerly ones the reverse. The moisture of the atmosphere, for want of a better hygrometer, was ascertained with tolerable precision by the state of a small piece of sea-weed, the weight of which varied according to the dryness or moisture of the atmosphere between one and three scruples. I found it on all occasions extremely sensible, and very often to predict a change of wind much sooner than the barometer.

Fahrenheit's thermometer ranged between 64 and 74 degrees, but the usual extremes were between 66 and 70 degrees.

1822. January 1.

During the day of the 1st of January the depth of the bar was frequently sounded but as there was not more than ten feet and a half water upon it we were necessarily detained at the anchorage.

January 2.

On the following morning also at four o'clock the depth was the same; but at ten o'clock the water rose suddenly eighteen inches, upon which the anchors were lifted and the brig warped over the bar to an anchorage in three and a half fathoms off the outer watering-place, to await a favourable opportunity of going over to Seal Island; near which it was intended to anchor in order to refit the rigging and otherwise prepare the vessel for our voyage up the west coast.

In the afternoon we procured a load of water and permitted the natives, thirteen of whom were a.s.sembled, to pay us another visit. On their coming on board it was noticed that many of them belonged to the tribe that lived on the opposite sh.o.r.e, but how they had crossed over was not satisfactorily ascertained. Their wonder on this their last visit was much raised by our firing off a nine-pounder loaded with shot, the splash of which in the water caused the greatest astonishment, and one of them was extremely vehement and noisy in explaining it to his companions. Upon repeating this exhibition they paid particular attention to the operation of loading the gun, and expressed the greatest surprise at the weight of the ball, upon which, after they had all severally examined it, they held a long and wordy argument as to what it possibly could be. At the splash of the ball, for which they were all looking out, they expressed their delight by shouting in full chorus the words Cai, cai, cai, cai, caigh.

After this they were sent on sh.o.r.e.

January 3.

At daybreak the next morning an opportunity offered to cross the sound, and by eight o'clock the brig was anch.o.r.ed under Seal Island; upon which we commenced the repair of the rigging, and in the course of the day shifted the main topmast. We had left the anchorage on the other side of the sound too early for our friends the natives, who had promised last evening to bring us a hawk's nest that was built upon a rock near the watering-place; at ten o'clock a very large fire was perceived close to the nest; it was no doubt kindled by them, and meant to show that they were not inattentive to their promise.

January 4.

The following day some natives were seen about a mile off upon the beach but did not come near the vessel. Mr. Cunningham botanised upon the summit of Bald Head. Of this excursion he gave me the following account: "Upon reaching the summit of the ridge, and clearing a rocky gully which intersected our track, we instantly entered an elevated valley of pure white sand, bounded on either side by ridges forty feet high, that were in themselves totally bare, excepting on the tops, where a thin clothing of shrubs was remarked; the whole surface reflected a heat scarcely supportable, and the air was so stagnant as scarcely to be respired, although we were at a considerable elevation, and in the vicinity of a constant current of pure atmospheric air on the ridge. After traversing the whole length of this sandy vale, which is one-third of a mile in extent, in our route towards Bald Head, with scarcely a plant to attract our attention, we perceived at its extremity some remarkably fine specimens of Candollea cuneiformis, Labil., which had, in spite of the poverty and looseness of the drifting sand, risen to large spreading trees, sixteen feet high, of robust growth and habit; they were at this time covered with flowers and ripe fruit; but so painful was it to the eyes and senses to remain for a moment stationary in this heated valley, that whilst I gathered a quant.i.ty of the seeds of this truly rich plant, my servant was obliged to hurry away to a cooler air on the ridge, which we had again nearly reached; and but for this fine plant, and the no less conspicuous blue-flowered Scaevola nitida, Br. The whole scene would have deeply impressed us with all the horrors that such extremes of aridity are naturally calculated to excite.

"Upon again reaching the ridge, whose moderated temperature required our care to avoid suffering from the sudden transition, we came to the granite, on whose bare surface I found a prostrate specimen of baeckea, remarkable for the regularity of its decussate leaves, which I have designated in my list as Baeckea saxicola. Continuing to the extremity of the ridge, I was much surprised to find we had already attained the highest point of the range, and to observe another expanse, or extensive cavity, of bare white sand below us, to the South-East, the termination of which we afterwards found to be the Bald Head, of Captain Vancouver.

This part is of remarkable appearance from seaward, having on either side of its bare sandy summit a contrasting brushy vegetation: from the sea however a very small part only of its extensive surface of sand can be perceived, the greater part being only observable from the commanding hillocks we had with much exertion arrived at. A calcareous rock (affording evidently a very considerable portion of pure lime) was seen in a decomposing state piercing the sandy surface of all parts of the ridge about Bald Head which, however, is itself a pure granite; the dense low brushy wood in its vicinity is chiefly composed of the delicate baeckea."*

(*Footnote. Cunningham ma.n.u.scripts.)

In the evening we visited Seal Island, and killed five seals for the sake of their skins, which were serviceable for the rigging; the boat's crew also found some penguins (Aptenodytes minor) and a nest of iguanas. The bottle deposited here at our last visit in 1818 was found suspended where it had been left and brought on board, when another memorandum was enclosed in it, containing a notification of our present visit, of the friendly and communicative disposition of the natives, and a copy of the vocabulary of their language.

January 5.

On the 5th in the afternoon on our return to the vessel, after visiting the sh.o.r.e and landing upon the flat rock, which is merely a bare ma.s.s of granite, of about thirty yards in diameter, some natives were heard calling to us, and upon our pulling to the part whence the sound came, we found two men and a boy. After some time they were discovered to be three of our Oyster-Harbour friends, and therefore we made no hesitation of communicating with them, and of taking them on board, where they were regaled upon the flesh of the seals we had killed at the island.

Notwithstanding the friendly disposition of the inhabitants of this sound, I felt it necessary to act very cautiously in our communication with them, in order to avoid any misunderstanding. And that this might not even be accidentally done, I requested Mr. Cunningham to confine his walks to the vicinity of the vessel, and particularly to avoid any route that would take him towards their encampment. He was therefore prevented from visiting many parts near which he had promised himself much amus.e.m.e.nt and information in botanizing, particularly the neighbourhood of Bayonet Head, and the distant parts of Oyster Harbour. At our former visit to this place he had searched in vain for that curious little plant Cephalotus follicularis, Br.,* but on this occasion he was more fortunate, for he found it in the greatest profusion in the vicinity of the stream that empties itself over the beach of the outer bay where we watered. Of this he says: "The plants of cephalotus were all in a very weak state, and none in any stage of fructification: the ascidia, or pitchers, which are inserted on strong foot-stalks, and intermixed about the root with the leaves, all contained a quant.i.ty of discoloured water, and, in some, the drowned bodies of ants and other small insects. Whether this fluid can be considered a secretion of the plant, as appears really to be the fact with reference to the nepenthes, or pitcher-plant of India,** deposited by it through its vessels into the pitchers; or even a secretion of the ascidia themselves; or whether it is not simply rainwater lodged in these reservoirs, as a provision from which the plant might derive support in seasons of protracted drought, when those marshy lands (in which this vegetable is alone to be found) are partially dried of the moisture that is indispensable to its existence, may perhaps be presumed by the following observations. The opercula, shaped like some species of oyster, or escalop-sh.e.l.ls, I found in some pitchers to be very closely shut upon their orifices, although their cavities, upon examination, contained but very little water, and the state of the weather was exceedingly cloudy, and at intervals showery; if, therefore, the appendages are really cisterns, to receive an elemental fluid for the nourishment of the plant in times of drought, it is natural to suppose that this circ.u.mstance would operate upon the ramified vessels of the lids, so as to draw them up, and allow the rain to replenish the pitchers. Mr. Brown also, who had an opportunity in 1801 of examining plants fully grown, supposes it probable that the vertical or horizontal positions in which the opercula were remarked, are determined by the state of the atmosphere, at the same time that he thinks it possible that the fluid may be a secretion of the plant. The several dead insects that were observed within the vases of cephalotus were very possibly deposited there by an insect of prey, since I detected a slender-bodied fly (ichneumon) within a closed pitcher, having evidently forced its pa.s.sage under the lid to the interior, where an abundant store of putrescent insects were collected. Whilst, therefore, these pitchers are answering the double purpose, of being a reservoir to retain a fluid, however produced, for the nourishment of the plant in the exigency of a dry season, as also a repository of food for rapacious insects, as in sarracenia, or the American pitcher-plant; it is also probable that the air, disengaged by these drowned ants, may be important and beneficial to the life of the Australian plant, as Sir James E. Smith has suggested, in respect to the last-mentioned genus, wild in the swamp of Georgia and Carolina.

(*Footnote. Flinders volume 1 page 64 and Brown's General Remarks in Flinders volume 2 page 601 et seq.)

(**Footnote. Smith's Introduction to Botany page 150.)

"I spent much time in a fruitless search for flowering specimens of cephalotus; all the plants were very small and weak, and showed no disposition to produce flowers at the season, and none had more than three or four ascidia."*

(*Footnote. Cunningham ma.n.u.scripts.)

The only edible plants that Mr. Cunningham found were a creeping parsley (Apium prostratum, Labil.) and a species of orach (Atriplex halimus, Brown) the latter was used by us every day, boiled with salt provisions, and proved a tolerable subst.i.tute for spinach or greens. During our visit we caught but very few fish, and only a few oysters were obtained, on account of the banks being seldom uncovered, and the presence of the natives which prevented my trusting the people out of my sight for fear of a quarrel. Sh.e.l.lfish of other sorts were obtained at Mistaken Island in abundance, of which the most common were a patella and an haliotis; the inhabitant of the former made a coa.r.s.e, although a savoury dish.

There were also varieties of the following genera: namely, lepas, chiton, cardium, pinna, nerita, two or three species of ostrea, a small mytilus, and a small buccinum of great beauty; that covered the rocks and at low water might be collected in abundance.

CHAPTER 4.

Leave King George the Third's Sound, and commence the survey of the West Coast at Rottnest Island.

Another remarkable effect of mirage.

Anchor under, and land upon Rottnest Island.

Break an anchor.

Examine the coast to the northward.

Cape Leschenault.

Lancelin Island.

Jurien Bay.

Houtman's Abrolhos.

Moresby's Flat-topped Range.

Red Point.

Anchor in Dirk Hartog's Road, at the entrance of Shark's Bay.

Occurrences there.

Examination of the coast to the North-west Cape.