quite dry; the total want of water there being chiefly owing to the absorbent nature of the subsoil.  We were now drawing towards its sources amongst the hills, and the same scarcity no longer prevailed.  The height and girt of some of the callitris trees were very considerable.  Thus we found that Australia contains some extensive forests of a very good substitute for the cedar of the colony (Cedrela toona, R. Br.) which is to be found only in some rocky gullies of the Coast range and is likely to be exhausted in a short time.  The Acacia pendula adorned the immediate banks of the Bogan, but the grass was old and dry, being a crop of two years’ growth; the cattle consequently did not feed well on it, and at last grew so weak that they could not be worked more than four hours, and thus our progress was limited to about eight miles a day.

HERVEY’S RANGE IN SIGHT.

September 7.

We followed the bearing of 139 1/2 degrees as the direction in which we were most likely to find the Bogan, considering its general course and the position of the hills to the southward.  After travelling eight miles a sight of the highest point of Hervey’s range enabled me at once to determine my place on the map.

IMPROVED APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY.

We then proceeded on the bearing of 103 degrees, and made the Bogan at a spot where its banks were beautiful, and the grass of better quality than any we had seen for some time.  The Acacia pendula grew there in company with the pine (or callitris) the casuarina and eucalyptus, besides many smaller trees in graceful groups, the surface being very smooth and park-like.

September 8.

Proceeding in a south-south-east direction we crossed, at seven miles, a creek, which I took for that of Tandogo, and thereupon turned towards the south-east.  After a journey of eleven miles we encamped about three-quarters of a mile from the Bogan on a spot where we found excellent grass.  We had now arrived where the pasturage was so much better than any we had seen that we could not doubt that a greater quantity of rain had fallen here than in the regions where we had been.  The improvement was obvious, not alone in the quality of the grass, but in the birds, the woods, the clouds, and distant horizon, which all bespoke our approach to a more habitable region than that in which we had so long been wandering.  We crossed some fine sloping hills and found on the Bogan a rich flat, somewhat resembling those tracts of black soil which are so much prized on some of the larger rivers of the colony.  A hot wind blew from the north and now brought with it smoke and an overcast sky, which in the evening turned to nimbus clouds.  A south-west wind (the usual antidote to the hot winds of Sydney) came in the evening, and some genial showers fell during the night.

September 9.