Mussel bend.

The bend above where we slept we called Mussel Bend, from our finding several there:  they appeared similar to those found by Oxley in the Macquarie.  The country over which we travelled the first part of the day was exceedingly stony, and wore a most uninviting appearance.

While the party halted to skin a kangaroo I had been so fortunate as to shoot; I ascended the top of a neighbouring hill to make a sketch, and get some bearings.  From this elevation I traced the river in a north-west direction for three miles, and I gazed with rapture, only known to the discoverer, upon a clear and magnificent expanse of water, yet greatly dismayed at its northerly direction.  To the north-east was an extensive and apparently alluvial flat; while to the westward, the high land approached the river.  It is worthy of remark, that so far as our observation extended, wherever the hills approach the river on one side they recede from it on the other.

Discovered by natives.

Continuing in a more easterly direction in order to avoid the deep watercourses near the banks, we found the country wore a much less arid appearance, and changing our direction to North-North-West in order to ascend some high ranges distant two miles and a half, overlooking the east bank of the river, we came suddenly upon some native tracks, and presently surprised two children, who scampered down the bank in very natural alarm, and were soon lost among the tall reeds.  A little further on we passed within 200 yards of three women carrying bundles of bark at their backs; their anxiety for their children had allowed us to approach thus close unseen; but no sooner were we discovered, than they raised a shout which was answered from the heights on our right, and from the banks of the river on our left, by parties evidently too numerous to render it prudent to attempt a nearer meeting.  We therefore held on our way without appearing to notice them.  They were quite naked, with the exception of a slight covering of bark round their waists.  We halted at half-past ten A.M. in an open spot in the dry bed of the river, overlooked by a high table hill.  Our party looked very much distressed from their half-day’s work.  The weather had been very close, and a good deal of the walking over broken ground; and these circumstances, coupled with the fact that the thermometer stood at 107 degrees in the shade, and that all had been for a long time cooped up in a small vessel, will fully explain and account for the general fatigue.

Successful fishing.

In a pool of the river near our resting place, I caught, within an hour, some dozen good-sized fish:  using a bait of kangaroo flesh.  There were two sorts, one of the shape of a trout, and ten inches long; it had a dirty orange-yellow belly, and a muddy bronze back; the lower hole of the nose had a raised margin.  The other measured seven inches, and resembled in shape a small fish at home, known to all schoolboys as the prickle-back; it was curiously marked, having five spots nearly black on each side, near the ridge of the back; the ground around them was a dark glossy brown; the belly was a slightly shining white, reaching as far up as the lower line of the eye and the margin of the spots.