August 2.

We proceeded in a direction by which we reached our former route after four miles travelling; and at a distance of five miles more we came to a spot near the river where we encamped with the intention of avoiding next morning the detour we made on approaching the camp, when we formerly occupied the spot in the bend of the river.

THE OCCA TRIBE AGAIN.

As soon as our people approached the bank we met with a gin and two young girls, upon which they called to an old man, who soon came up.  He appeared no way alarmed, and seemed to have seen us before.  The fatal tea-kettle again attracted the attention of a gin, and she pointed it out to her grey lord and master who, pronouncing the well-known word “Occa” (give) reminded us of the greedy tribe in whose precincts we had now arrived, and which was in fact distinguished by the name of the Occa boys, from their constant use of the word, and coveting everything they saw.  The old man however continued his journey down the river without obtaining the kettle, or yet a knife which he also demanded from one of our men whom he saw cutting tobacco.

August 3.

We continued in a northern direction till we cut upon the route to our last camp, and we thus avoided two bad miles without lengthening the journey to the next of our former encampments, which we reached in good time to allow the cattle to feed.

August 4.

We set off about eight this morning and reached by five P.M. our encampment of the 12th and 13th of June.  On the way the ranges on our right, as they rose in view, afforded some relief to our eyes, so long accustomed to a horizon as flat as the ocean; and a gentle cooling breeze from the east felt very different from the parching west winds to which we had been exposed.  This day and the one before were warm, and breathed most gratefully of spring.  We recrossed a gravel bed of irregular fragments of quartz and flint at the base of some slight hills which reach from the range to the river.  Between these undulations were soft plains the surface of which was cracked and full of holes; and it seemed that the torrents which fall from the hills are imbibed by this thirsty earth.  As we approached our camp the dogs were sent after two emus, and at dusk one of them returned having killed his bird, though we did not find it until early next morning.  The emu came to hand however in good time even then, for the men had been long living on salt provisions.  Our former lagoon had become a quagmire of mud and we were forced to send for water from the river.  The pigeons and parrots which swarmed about this hole at dusk, the quantity of feathers, and the tracks of emus and kangaroos around it, showed how scarce this essential element had become in the back country.  At such small pools water becomes an object of desire and contest and, so long as it lasts, these spots in times of scarcity are invariably haunted by that omnivorous biped man, to whom both birds and quadrupeds fall an easy prey.  We however during a sojourn of more than two months in the Australian wilderness had been abundantly supplied with the finest water from that extraordinary river which we had been tracing, and without which those regions would be deserts, inaccessible to and uninhabitable by either man or beast.