then hastened to overtake the party, which I did after they had travelled about nine miles.  At fourteen miles we made the banks of the Lachlan, and encamped by the side of it on the edge of a plain in latitude 33 degrees 4 minutes 38 seconds South, longitude 147 degrees East.  Judging by the relative position of Hurd’s peak etc., I supposed it might have been about this place that Oxley’s party crossed to the right bank of the river on his return towards Wellington valley.  No traces however were discovered by us here of the first explorers of the Lachlan.

April 6.

The night had been mild and clear and the sun rose in a cloudless sky.  We traversed plains of firmer surface than those crossed on the previous day.  So early even as nine o’clock the heat was oppressive.

SNAKE AND BIRD.

On one of these plains I witnessed an instance of the peculiar fascination attributed to the serpent race.  A large snake, lying at full length, attracted our attention and I wished to take it alive, but as Roach, the collector, was at a distance, some time elapsed before preparations were made for that purpose.  The ground was soft and full of holes, into one of which it would doubtless have disappeared as soon as it was alarmed.  The rest of the party came up yet, unlike snakes in general, who glide rapidly off, this creature lay apparently regardless of noise, or even of the approach of the man, who went slowly behind it and seized its head.  At that moment a little bird fluttered from beside a small tuft within a few feet of the snake and, it seemed, as the men believed, scarcely able to make its escape.

When we were near the spot on which we intended to encamp a native pointed out to me a small hill beyond the river where, as he informed me, Mr. Oxley and his party had encamped before he crossed the Lachlan.  It was called by this native Gobberguyn.  We pitched our tents a little higher than that hill where a favourable bend of the river met my line of route.  The cattle were much fatigued with the day’s work although the distance did not exceed eleven miles.  It was in my power however to give them rest for a day or two as the grass was tolerably good on that part of the riverbank, and I was within reach of Mount Granard, a height which I had long been anxious to examine, as well as the country to be seen from it.  Among the usual grasses we found one which I had not previously seen and which proved to be a new species of Danthonia.*

(Footnote.  Danthonia pectinata, Lindley manuscripts; spica simplici secunda pleiostachya pectinata foliis multo longiore, palea inferiore villosissima; laciniis lateralibus membranaceis aristae aequalibus.)

RIDE TO MOUNT GRANARD.

April 7.

I set off early for Mount Granard, followed by six men on horseback and a native named Barney who was also mounted.  We rode at a smart pace on a bearing of 280 degrees across thirty miles of soft red sand in which the horses sank up to their fetlocks, and we reached the foot of the hill a little before sunset.