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INTRODUCTION.
The western side of Australia is traversed for some hundred miles by a chain of mountains, called the Darling, running from north to south nearly parallel with the coast. A fine tract of country, ornamented by large forest trees and flowering shrubs, extends itself to their base, a distance varying from thirty to fifty miles, and continues to their termination near Cape Chatham, the southern extremity of the continent.
From these mountains flow the Swan and Canning Rivers, whose united waters discharge themselves into an estuary nine miles long, and tween three and four miles broad, called Melville Water. The entrance to the estuary is over
