(Footnote.  Didimeria aemula, Lindley manuscripts; undique pilis stellatis lutescentibus furfuracea.  Rami stricti.  Folia subrotunda cordata obtusa opposita brevi petiolata, pellucido-punctata.  Pedunculi axillares, filiformes, uniflori, supra medium bracteolis 2 subulatis acuti.  Calyx conicus, membranaceus, 4-partitus:  laciniis acuminatis.  Petala 4, longissima, distincta, linearia, convoluta circa staminum paria, extus tomentosa intus glabra.  Stamina 8, hypogyna; filamentis liberis, lineari-lanceolatis, membranaceis, alternis brevioribus; antheris sagittatis inappendiculatis.  Stylus filiformis glaber.  Discus 0.  Capsula 4-cocca, villosissima, coccis dispermis, endocarpio solubili; seminibus uno supra alterum positis.)

MORE LAKES OF BRACKISH WATER.

July 30.

By pursuing a course towards the base of the friendly mountains I hoped that we should at length intercept some stream, channel, or valley where we might find a drier soil and so escape, if possible, from the region of lakes.  We could but follow such a course however only as far as the ground permitted and, after travelling over the hardest that we could this day find for a mile and a half, I discovered a spacious lake on the left, bounded on the east by some fine-looking green hills.  These separated it from a plain where I found the ground firm, and also from several smaller lakes to the right of my intended route.  I accordingly proceeded along the ground between them, and I found that it bore the wheels much better than any we had recently crossed.  The lakes were however still precisely similar in character to those of which we had already seen so many.  The water in them was rather too brackish to be fit for use, and the ridges were all still on the eastern shores.  From the highest of these ridges the pinnacled summits of the Victoria range presented an outline of the grandest character.  The noble coronet of rocks was indeed a cheering object to us after having been so long half immersed in mud.  We had passed between the lakes and were proceeding as lightly as we could across the plain when down went the wheel of a cart, sinking to the axle, and the usual noise of flogging (cruelty which I had repeatedly forbidden) and a consequent delay of several hours followed.

ESCAPE AT LAST FROM THE MUD.

In the meantime I rode to some grassy hills on the right, and found behind them on the south-west another extensive lake on which I saw a great number of ducks.  Its bed consisted of dark-coloured mud and the water was also salt.  The green hills before mentioned were curiously broken and scooped out into small cavities much resembling those on Green-hill Lake near Mount Arapiles.  The plain rose gradually towards the east to some scrubby ground nearly as high as these hills and, in a fall beyond this scrub, I found at length to my great delight a small hollow sloping to the south-east and a little water running in it.