The country being very hilly, it was found best to follow down the stream upon which we had encamped, although it trended to the north of east.  In a few miles the valley opened out with fine pools of permanent water, covered with numerous flights of ducks, and at eight miles it joined a wide valley from the south, down which flowed a river, divided into several channels, containing many fine pools from 50 to 200 yards wide, which were still running gently from one to another.  The banks, although well grassed, were very rocky, rendering travelling excessively fatiguing to our heavily-loaded pack-horses, several of them being bruised and strained while jumping from rock to rock, the clefts being too deep and narrow for them to walk between, and the ranges bordering the valley were too steep to admit of our leaving the river, which we were compelled to follow down to latitude 21 degrees 26 minutes 52 seconds.  Camp 62.

20th August.

The river, which had been named the Strelley, continued to hold a northerly course; we therefore availed ourselves of a smoother valley coming in from the east to resume our old course.  At nine miles we met with a stream 100 yards wide coming from the south-east, evidently tributary to the Strelley, and taking its rise in elevated granite ranges with black volcanic ridges protruding through them, but not to any considerable height above the general level of the country.  After a few hours’ scramble over these ridges we came upon a small stream trending east, containing several springs, surrounded by high grass and flags, gradually leading us by sunset into a deep pass, walled in by cliffs and bluffs from 100 to 300 feet high; the stream, having joined several larger ones from the southward, now occupying nearly the whole width of the valley.  We encamped in one of the wildest and most romantic-looking spots to be found in this part of Australia, to which we gave the name of Glen Herring, from a fish bearing a resemblance to a herring being found in the stream.  Camp 63.

Latitude 21 degrees 20 minutes 35 seconds.

The Shaw river.  Norton plains.

21st August.

With some difficulty we wended our way down the intricate windings of the glen for six miles in a north-east direction, when it opened out into grassy flats, turning to the northward.  Leaving it at this point, a mile east brought us to the bank of a fine open river-bed 200 yards wide, down which a little water was still flowing, the country on its banks becoming much more promising and grass plentiful.  This river I named the Shaw, and some beautiful grassy plains through which it came for twenty or thirty miles to the southward Norton Plains, after the talented Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.  In the afternoon a large tributary from the south-east was followed up for some miles, when, turning to the south, we quitted it to follow an open valley leading east towards a bold granite and schistose range, under which we encamped late without finding water.  Camp 64.