I had been several times on the point of inquiring on this subject; but fearing an unfavourable reply, hesitated.

Now my hopes were at their highest pitch, and I was quite impatient to start on an expedition up the river.
On the 29th the ship was taken under my guidance up the river, as far as the commencement of the long southerly reach.

As the shoals in that part had not been sufficiently examined, we proceeded to do so in the evening, and two channels were discovered; one between a bank, dry at low-water, and a covered patch of one and a half and two fathoms, and the other between the covered bank and the east shore; the latter, although the narrower, I found to be the better.

The tides set direct through it, and to keep close to the bank is a simple and sure guide.

The least water is four fathoms, half a fathom more than was found in the other, the direction of which crossed the set of the tide when the bank on the west side became covered.
THE BEAGLE TAKEN UP THE VICTORIA.
Next morning we moved the ship three miles further up into a bight on the east side from which Endeavour Hill bore West 13 South two miles and a half.
The Beagle was now nearly fifty miles up the Victoria, and might have gone seven miles further, but a valley holding out a hope that we might find water by digging, and the distance at which the river was fresh being too great for us to think of completing our stock from it, we anchored abreast of it.