MITRE LAKE.

The water of Mitre Lake was also salt,* but there were numbers of ducks and black swans upon it.  The western shore was low, and the soil where it had been thrown up in the roots of fallen trees was nearly as white as chalk.  A gray rather fine quartzose sand occurred in some places; and along the water’s edge a very minute shell had been cast up in considerable quantities by the waves.** The hills to the eastward of this lake were arranged in a crescent around the basin, but this being composed of a number of hills almost separate from each other had a less regular or uncommon appearance, although they were apparently the remains of a curve equally as symmetrical as the others.  The basin of this lake was very extensive but partly filled on the side next the low hills by a level tract of dry land covered with a brown bush (Salicornia arbuscula of Brown); and the concentric curves in which it grew, as if closing on the lake, seemed to record its progressive diminution.  The breadth of this heathy-looking flat between the water and the crescent of low hills was nearly half a mile.  A small rill of fresh water oozed into the lake from the sides of Mount Arapiles.  The bed of this watercourse was soft and boggy near the lake, so that I could cross only by going up its channel much nearer to the hill and at a point where some rocks protruded and prevented our horses from sinking.

(Footnote.  For Professor Faraday’s analysis of these waters see below.)

(**Footnote.  This was a truncatella, a saltwater shell of which there are several species on the English and French coasts.  The one found here has been named by Mr. J. De Carl Sowerby T. filosa.)

Mr. Stapylton, in his search for the Wimmera, rode about six miles to the northward without reaching the river, although he saw the valley through which he thought it flowed; and where the river seemed likely to resume a course to the southward of west.  Upon the whole I think that the estuary of the Wimmera will most probably be found either between Cape Bernouilli and Cape Jaffa, or at some of the sandy inlets laid down by Captain Flinders to the northward of the first of these capes.  The country which Mr. Stapylton crossed assumed the barren character of the lower parts of the Murray.  He actually passed through a low scrub of the Eucalyptus dumosa; but I have no doubt that the country on the immediate banks of the Wimmera continues good, whatever its course may be, even to the sea-coast.

RELINQUISH THE PURSUIT OF THE WIMMERA.

At all events I here abandoned the pursuit of that river and determined to turn towards the south-west that we might ascertain what streams fell in that direction from the Grampians; and also the nature of the country between these mountains and the shores of the Southern Ocean.

THE PARTY TRAVELS TO THE SOUTH-WEST.

July 25.