All these natives (with the exception of the boy) had lost the right front tooth.  They had a very singular mode of expressing surprise, making a curious short whistle by joining the tongue and lips.  The gins were hideous notwithstanding they were rouged with red ochre, by way, no doubt, of setting off their charms.  I gave to one man a piece of my sword blade, and to another a tomahawk, which he carefully wrapped in the paper in which I had kept it, and he seemed much pleased with his present.  They pointed to the west as the general course of the river.

RESULTS OF THE JOURNEY.

The results of our journey thus far were, first, the survey of the Bogan, nearly from its sources to its junction with the Darling.  This I considered no trifling addition to Australian geography; for the knowledge of the actual course of a long river, however diminutive the channel, may often determine to a great extent the character of the country through which it passes.  In the present instance it may be remarked that, had Captain Sturt considered the course of this river when he named the lower part of it New Year’s Creek, the idea that the plains which he saw to the southward of New Year’s range formed the “channel of a broad and rapid river” never could have occurred to him; for the basin of the Bogan being bounded on the west by a succession of low hills, no other river could have been reasonably looked for in such a direction.  Again, the connection of that chain of low hills with the higher lands of the colony, being thus indicated by the course of the Bogan, it is not probable that this traveller, had he been aware of the fact, would have described New Year’s range, which is about the last of these hills, as “the FIRST elevation in the interior of Eastern Australia, to the westward of Mount Harris.”  On the contrary, the divergent lines of the Bogan and the Lachlan might rather have been supposed to include a hilly country which, increasing in height in proportion as its breadth thus became greater, would naturally form that high ground so likely to separate the Upper Darling from the valley of the Murray.

Secondly.  The continuous course of the Bogan into the Darling being thus at length determined, Duck creek, a deeper chain of ponds in the level country nearer to the Macquarie, could only be considered the final channel for the waters of that river in their course towards the Darling; and it only remained to be ascertained on our return at what point these waters of the Macquarie separated during its floods from the main stream.

Thirdly.  The non-existence of any swamp under Oxley’s Tableland furnished another proof of the extreme vicissitudes of climate to which that part of Australia is subject.  This spot had been specially recommended to government by Captain Sturt as the best place for my depot, on account of the water to be found there, whereas we had found that vicinity so dry that had I relied too implicitly on the suggestion I must, as already observed, in all probability, have lost the cattle.