Acacia pendula.  BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY.

August 23.

The weather again quite serene.  We continued our march and, passing our former camp of the 14th, reached that of May 13 by two P.M.  The ponds in which we had before found water were now dried up; but we fortunately discovered others a little distance higher.  At two miles onward from the camp of May 14 we saw bushes of Acacia pendula for the first time since we had previously passed that place.  The locality of that beautiful shrub is very peculiar, being always near but never within, the limits of inundations.  Never far from hills yet never upon them.  These bushes, blended with a variety of other acacias and crowned here and there with casuarinae, form very picturesque groups, especially when relieved with much open ground.  Indeed the beauty of the sylvan scenery on the lower Bogan may be cited as an exception to the general want of pictorial effect in the woods of New South Wales.  The poverty of the foliage of the eucalyptus, the prevailing tree, affords little of mass or shadow; and indeed seldom has that tree, either in the trunk or branches, anything ornamental to landscape.  On these plains, where all surrounding trees and shrubs seemed different from those of other countries, the Agrostis virginica of Linnaeus, a grass common throughout Asia and America, but new to me in Australia, grew near the scrubs.  Here also grows a new species of Eleusine, being a very tall nutritious grass.*

(Footnote.  E. marginata, Lindley manuscripts; culmo tereti glabro, foliis glabris, ligula nulla, spicis digitatis strictis, spiculis subsexfloris, palea inferiore carinata mucronata marginata.)

August 24.

Retracing still our former steps, we reached a pond on the Bogan 3 1/2 miles short of our camp of May 12.  There I fixed the camp in open ground and near good grass, with the intention of resting for two days; this repose having become absolutely necessary for the purpose of refreshing our exhausted cattle.

MR. LARMER TRACES DUCK CREEK UP TO THE MACQUARIE.

August 25.

Being near the route of Mr. Hume when he proceeded westward from Mount Harris and crossed two creeks, of which the Bogan was one; I was desirous of ascertaining the source of the other, whose channel he had found intermediate between this river and the Macquarie.  Being occupied in completing my plans of the Darling preparatory to my immediate return to the colony, I instructed Mr. Larmer to proceed on a survey of that creek by tracing from our next camp (that of May 12) on a bearing of 102 degrees East of North, until he reached it, and then to follow it up.  Mr. Larmer took with him five men and a week’s provisions, also a copy of our recent survey of the Bogan, with Mr. Oxley’s Macquarie; and I instructed him to rejoin the main party at Cudduldury, the camp where I calculated we should arrive about the probable time of his return.