Latitude by a Pegasi 19 degrees 14 minutes 2 seconds.

Friendly natives.

21st October.

6.15 a.m., resumed our journey and traversed an inferior country of sandstone and porphyry; box, silver-leafed ironbark, and triodia characterized the vegetation; in crossing one of these gullies, in which were some pools of water, Bowman’s horse fell over the bank into the pool, and he got some severe bruises; at 10.15 came on the river, where it ran over a ledge of rocks forming a succession of rapids, below which it spread out into a broad sheet of sand a quarter of a mile wide, and turned to the south.  As Bowman had fallen some distance in the rear, I selected the first suitable spot, and at 11.0 encamped, and shortly after Mr. H. Gregory came in with Bowman to camp.  On the bank of the river we saw two black gins, who climbed a tree on our approach, and in the afternoon came to the camp with an old man, and after some unintelligible conversation departed; they had neither clothes or weapons, except a throwing-stick of the same form as those used by the blacks of the southern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria.  The geological character of the country has been sandstone, much altered by contact with porphyry which has been forced through it; both dip and strike are confused, and could not be ascertained to have any general angle or direction, except in the bed of the river, where the strata dipped 10 degrees to the north, but in the hills, on the left bank below the camp, the strata was horizontal; the river is now 150 yards wide at the narrowest parts, a small stream of water, one foot deep and ten to twenty yards wide, running in a winding course through the sand, and sometimes expanding into sheets of water occupying the whole breadth of the channel.

Latitude by a Pegasi 19 degrees 16 minutes 22 seconds.

22nd October.

At 6.15 a.m. steered south and followed the right bank of the river; for the first hour the country was hilly on both banks, with deep gullies; it then became more level, and opened into flats, well grassed; the timber box, ironbark, and Moreton-Bay ash; the soil a light brown loam in some parts, sandy and very soft from the numerous excavations of the funnel ant.  These flats extended one to two miles back and then rose into low ridges of poor land, timbered with box and ironbark; crossed a sandy creek coming from the west, and at 1.30 p.m. camped on the right bank of the river.  A short distance from the camp surprised a black and his gin and a child; the man climbed a tree and the woman ran off with the child, leaving a small water vessel, hollowed out of a piece of wood, and a calabash full of water.  The rocks near the last camp were sandstone or porphyry; in the only exposed section the sandstone dipped to the north 5 degrees to 15 degrees.  We also crossed a hill of porphyry which was remarkable for the regularity of cleavage into thick lamina, which were vertical, with a north and south strike; but though it had the appearance of a stratified rock, its structure was perfectly crystalline.  About noon, granite, containing large plates of mica, was observed in some of the gullies.