At 6.35 a.m. steered south-east through an open melaleuca scrub, the soil sandy loam, thinly grassed; acacia, bloodwood, silver-leafed ironbark, and grevillia forming open patches of wood at intervals.  At noon turned south, and at 1.35 p.m. camped at a small lagoon nearly dry and half a mile from the bank of the river; a few hills rose close to the south-west of the river opposite our camp, the lower ridges grassy, the higher hills wooded, but not exceeding 500 feet above the plain.  The bed of the river is broad, dry, and sandy, and the box-flats much reduced in width, seldom exceeding a mile.  At 5.0 p.m. there was a heavy squall with rain and lightning, followed by a cloudy night and moderate breeze from the south.

26th September.

At 6.45 a.m. resumed our route, and, following up the right bank of the river in a south-east direction till 2.0 p.m., when we camped in the sandy bed of the river, procuring water from a small hole in the sand.  The country on the banks of the river consisted of box flats, some parts well grassed, but usually very poor; this extended about half a mile, and then changed gradually to a poor country with little grass and small eucalypti and melaleuca, the soil gravel and sand.  The bed of the river continues to be about 300 yards wide, dry, and sandy; a line of melaleuca, morinda, flooded-gum and fig trees, grow along it and mark its course.

Latitude by a Aquilae 18 degrees 10 minutes 10 seconds; variation of compass 5 degrees 20 minutes east.

27th September.

Steered an average south-east course up the river from 6.40 a.m. till 1.0 p.m., when we camped at some pools of water in a side channel of the river, where it was divided by a hillock of slate-rock.  The country is inferior in quality, the flats narrowing to an average of half a mile with very dry and thinly scattered tufts of grass.  The bed of the river is better defined, and formed at times a single channel 250 yards wide, dry and sandy, as water was only once seen during the day.  Low rocky ridges of sandstone gradually approached its banks, and near the camp porphyry, slate, and coarse granite formed detached hills 50 to 100 feet high, seeming to indicate an approach to the ranges in which the stream takes its rise.

Latitude by a Cygni 18 degrees 15 minutes 21 seconds.

Granite, porphyry, and slate.

28th September (Sunday).

Walked out from the camp to a low hill about one mile south-south-east.  It was composed of granite at the base and capped with horizontal strata of sandstone, some of the beds containing large water-worn pebbles, and the superstratum highly ferruginous.  To the south-west of this hill the rock was slate, the strata nearly vertical; the strike north and south, but much contorted, and large pebbles of porphyry, quartz, slate, granite, sandstone, and agate formed banks in the bed of the river.  The country, as seen from the hill,