On rising ground it is often bordered by a thicket of creeping and climbing plants mixed up with bushes and patches of Hellenia coerulea.

The low wooded hills are covered with tall grass growing on very poor soil--of partially decomposed mica-slate with lumps of quartz.
It being considered practicable to water the ship at this place, we returned on board.

In the afternoon the first load of water was brought off, and in the course of the week we procured 78 tons with less trouble than had been anticipated.

I afterwards repeatedly visited the watering-creek, and a brief account of the productions of its neighbourhood may here be given as a popular contribution to the natural history of the little-known Louisiade Archipelago.
The rock is scarcely ever exposed on the banks of the river except at the rapid before alluded to.

Though still mica-slate, it is there of much greater hardness and denser texture than on Pig and Round Islands, and stretches across the stream like a dyke, running nearly north and south with a westerly dip of about 60 degrees.