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very large of loose sand constitutes the general face of the countrey as you sail along it, and indeed of the greatest part even after you have penetrated inland as far as our situation would allow us to do. The Banks of Bays indeed are generaly clothd with thick mangroves sometimes for a mile or more in breadth; the soil under these is rank mud always overflowd every spring tide. Inland you sometimes meet with a bog upon which the grass grows rank and thick so that no doubt the soil is sufficiently fertile. The Valleys also between the hills where runs of water come down are thick clothd with underwood, but they are generaly very steep and narrow, so that upon the Whole the fertile soil Bears no kind of Proportion to that which seems by nature doomed to everlasting Barrenness.
Water is here a scarce article or at least was so while we were there, which I beleive to have been in the very hight of the Dry season; some places we were in where we saw not a drop, and at the two places where we filld for the ships use it was done from pools not brooks. This drought is probably owing to the dryness of a soil almost intirely
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) *257, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-261.html