Dew had providentially fallen during the night and it proved in some measure a substitute for the want of water to our horses.  It was also highly favourable to the object of our tour in affording a refraction when the sun rose, so that Coccaparra (Macquarie’s range) appeared above the horizon and enabled me to determine our distance from it to be sixty miles.  Still even this refractive state of the air brought no hills in view to the north or north-west, a circumstance which surprised me and afforded additional reason for supposing that the Lachlan might not unite so soon as had been imagined with the Murrumbidgee.

CONTINUE WESTWARD, AND SOUTH-WEST.

This may require explanation.  The course of rivers is in general conformable to the direction of ranges or the position of those hills which bound the valley or basin, however extensive, in which they flow.  As this range fell off to the north-west, opposite to where the course of the Murrumbidgee had continued south-west, it was less probable that the Lachlan would unite with the main stream there than if the range had approached, or had even continued parallel to it.

I was disappointed in not finding sufficient water for our use remaining on the surface after the late rain; and although the country appeared declining to the westward, and we saw more pigeons and recent marks of natives, I was reluctantly obliged at length to bend my steps south-westward and afterwards south.  The country we traversed was one level plain whose extent westward we neither knew nor could discover, and for some hours during this day’s ride scarcely a bush was visible.

SAND HILLS.

Clumps of trees of the flooded box, or marura of the natives, appeared occasionally in and about the many hollows in the surface; and, on the isolated eminences of red sand, callitris trees grew, always hopeless objects to persons in want of water.  These patches of sand however were not numerous, and never rose more than a few feet above the common surface, which in general consisted of clay more or less tenacious.  Parts of it were quite naked; but others bore a crop of grass about three years old which probably sprang up after the last thorough drenching of the surface.

DEEP CRACKS IN THE EARTH.

So parched however was the ground now, especially in those parts which bore no vegetation, that it yawned in cracks too deep to be fathomed by the length of my sabre and arm together.

ATRIPLEX.

The best ground for travelling was of a reddish colour, glossy and firm with tufts of a species of atriplex upon it; a dwarf grass with large seeds not seen elsewhere by me was springing up, apparently in consequence of the late rains.  This new vegetation did not grow near the old grass, and was too thin and low to tinge the surface.* The dreary look of the old grass in other parts, decayed and of the colour of lead, could not be exceeded; roots and stalks being all dead and decayed like rotten timber.