good understanding, and after an exchange of presents they followed us for many miles down the river before quitting us.  Towards nightfall several of our friends of the morning again made their appearance with a number of strange natives, dodging us among the deep muddy ravines which abound at this part of the river; their manoeuvres being equivocal and unsatisfactory, we kept well on our guard; they, however, ran off at night, on my facing about on horseback to drive them away.

Our course during the day had been nearly west twenty-two miles, one large tributary having joined the river from the northward, which was afterwards named the Lyons, in honour of the gallant admiral of that name; this accession had increased the breadth of the channel to 400 yards.  As we drew towards our evening’s bivouac the river entered a gorge formed by the river cutting through the south end of a flat-topped sandstone range of about 1,200 feet elevation above the sea, presenting many bold and picturesque outlines and detached summits, terminating in abrupt and almost precipitous faces; to this we gave the name of the Kennedy Range, in honour of our present Governor.

To the south a detached mass of broken sandstone hills gradually falls away in the distance, apparently into a barren scrub similar to those on the banks of the lower Murchison, while to the west lay before us an extensive plain, unbroken by a single object save a few long ridges of red drift sand, clothed with a stunted scrub of melaleuca and acacia.  The bottom of the gorge we found to be 480 feet above the sea.

13th May.

From this morning to noon of the 15th the country passed over was similar to that first described, the sand ridges running north-west and south-east at about a quarter of a mile apart; the river keeping a general course of west-north-west, its channel deepening to sixty feet, and maintaining an average width of 400 yards.  Grass was only to be found in small patches along the margin of the river; the accumulated waters of the late inundations having been confined to one channel, had risen to the height of forty-eight feet, carrying away many of the largest timber trees, as also much of the soil from the banks, leaving a scene of devastation exceeding anything of the kind I had hitherto witnessed.

A small description of Spanish reed was here first observed to grow on the margin of the pools.  Deep muddy creeks, having only short courses, were very numerous, rendering travelling both tedious and intricate.

From noon of the 15th the country gradually opened out to a thinly-grassed plain of light alluvial soil, atriplex bushes and acacia widely scattered forming almost the entire vegetation; the ground, with the exception of the bed of the river, being parched and dry, no rain having fallen during the summer to the west of the Lyons River, in longitude 115 degrees 30 minutes east.

16th May.

Being Sunday, we only moved four miles lower down the river for better feed, the channel widening out to 600 yards.