and tempestuous day, I found myself storm-staid at Mr. Scott's, but it was impossible that I could have been in better quarters.
The next morning I started for the Vasse, but found the road very indistinctly tracked. In fifteen miles I reached the Capel River, the property of Sir James Stirling, and having heard a description of a highly beautiful Convolvulus, growing near the fording place, and forming lovely festoons from tree to tree, I looked out for it, but could find nothing of the kind. Soon after crossing the Capel, I observed the elegant Beaufortia decussata and Johnsonia lupulina, which I had never seen before, except near King George's Sound.
Five miles farther on, I crossed some hills of secondary limestone, covered with immense trees of Eucalyptus (I think E. occidentalis, Hugel); but whatever be the species, this was by far the largest tree in Western Australia; the footstalks of this gigantic species are united, several together, flat, nearly a quarter of an inch broad. It surpasses all the other inhabitants of the forest, both in height and breadth, and thickness. Some miles before reaching this forest, I met with a remarkable plant, whose foliage bore some similitude to the European Yew, but rather longer, more pointed and glaucous; it is a low growing diœcious shrub, forming patches, several yards in extent. The male flowers resemble a compound of many blossoms of the Yew, but I must state that I only observed them remaining on the plant in a withered and dry state; the female flowers I did not see, but they had been succeeded by ripe fruits, about the size of a middling plum, and of a beautiful purple colour, covered with rich glaucous bloom. It is impossible to present a more tempting appearance to the eye than does this fruit, and when I showed it, and specimens of the shrub which bore it, to Mrs. Molloy, she assured me that it was equally good to the palate, and when she had resided at Augusta, that a soldier had brought it to her from somewhere on the Blackwood River. To me, this small tree appears more closely allied to the Yew, than anything else with which I am
