eyes, they had been for some time soliciting; and, taking advantage of the first change of wind, set sail, and shaped our course for Yorke’s Peninsula, which we reached the following afternoon, at a point much further to the north than we expected. We had been drifted by a strong tide-current towards the head of the gulf, where a con stant accumulation of sand has rendered the water so shallow as scarcely to be navigable for small boats at the distance of five miles from the shore. As we ran to the southward along the coast of the peninsula, we counted seven or eight smokes in the inte rior, and could in some places observe the natives eyeing us fixedly from the cliffs. The coast, as far as we could discern it to the north and south, presented a precipice one hundred feet in height, formed by horizontal sand stone strata, the superior layers of which had a calcareous appearance. From thence the country sloped gradually upwards, as it receded from the coast; but we could per ceive no elevation of a greater height than three hundred feet. The country appeared, on the whole, verdant and inviting, and well covered with the smaller acacias and the lesser forms of eucalyptus, which are found through out New Holland in those inferior soils which rest upon arenecaous strata. A distant observer, unac quainted with the nature of Australian scenery, would have pronounced the country to be extremely beautiful and fertile; but we have learned from experience to dis trust the distant appearance of land. It has been asserted that there are no volcanoes, active or extinct, in Australia.* That no volcanoes in a state of • See Quarterly Review, July, 1841.