29th December 1833

Port Desire
By the middle of the day the Yawl could not get any higher, from the shoalness of the water & the number of mud-banks. One of the party happening to taste the water found it only brackish. Mr Chaffers, directly after dinner started in the dingy, & after proceeding two or three miles found himself in a small fresh water river. Small as it is, it appears to me probable, that it flows from the Cordilleras, the water is muddy as if flooded, & this is the time of year for the snow freshes of the Colorado, Sauce &c. — Mr Chaffers saw in a little valley a lame horse, with his back marked by the saddle; so that the Indians must have left him there or were then in the neighbourhead. The views here were very fine & rude; the red porphyry rock rises from the water in perpendicular cliffs, or forms spires & pinnacles in its very course. Excepting in this respect the country is the same. At night we were all well pleased at our discovery of the little river; which, however, was no discovery as a Sealer had said some years ago that he had been up it.