This morning Fahrenheit’s thermometer stood at 23 degrees, and the pond was frozen three-quarters of an inch thick.  There was however so little water left that only three of the bullocks could be supplied before starting.  The natives who had promised to go on with us nevertheless remained behind; but we proceeded by our old route to Goobang creek, and encamped on its left bank nearly a mile above where we had crossed it formerly.  Here the grass was superior to any we had seen lower down; numerous fresh tracks of cattle were visible on the ground, and the water lay deep and clear in ponds, surrounded by reeds.  There were no reeds about the waterholes of the Bogan; and we had in fact this day left that river, and reached the sources of the Lachlan, to which stream the Goobang must sometimes be an important tributary.  The ground separating these waters, which must travel towards the distant channels of such spacious basins as those of the Lachlan and Darling, consists here only of some low hills of trap-rock, connected with gently sloping ridges of mica schist.  The country on the Goobang or Lachlan side appears to be the best; for the grass grows there much more abundantly, and the beds of the streams appear to be much more retentive.

CHARACTER OF THE RIVER BOGAN.

All the water which we had used during five months belonged to the basin of the Darling, but today we again tasted of that from channels which led towards the Lachlan.  The chief sources of the Bogan arise in Hervey’s range, and also in that much less elevated country situated between the Lachlan and the Macquarie.  The uniformity of the little river Bogan from its spring to its junction with the Darling is very remarkable.  In a course of 250 miles no change is observable in the character of its banks, or the breadth of its bed, neither are the ponds near its source less numerous or of less magnitude than those near its junction with the principal stream.  Mr. Dixon estimated the velocity of the current at four miles per hour where its course is most westerly.  There are few or no pebbles in its bed, and no reeds grow upon the banks, which are generally sloping and of naked earth but marked with lines of flood similar to those of the Darling.  It has often second banks and, as near that river, a belt of dwarf eucalypti, box, or rough gum encloses the more stately flooded-gumtrees with the shining white bark which grow on the immediate borders of the river.  It has also its plains along the banks, some of them being very extensive; but the soil of these is not only much firmer, but is also clothed with grass and fringed with a finer variety of trees and bushes than those of the Darling.  Yet in the grasses there is not such wonderful variety as I found in those on the banks of that river.  Of twenty-six different kinds gathered by me there I found only four on the Bogan, and not more than four other varieties throughout the whole course.  It appeared that where land was best and grass most abundant the latter consisted of one or two kinds only, and on the contrary that where the surface was nearly bare the greatest variety of grasses appeared, as if nature allowed more plants to struggle for existence where fewest were actually thriving.