Barney the native however soon set me right by taking up the root of a large reed or bulrush which grew in a dry lagoon hard by, and by showing me how the natives extracted from the rhizoma a quantity of gluten; and this was what they eat, obtaining it by chewing the fibre.  They take up the root of the bulrush in lengths of about eight or ten inches, peel off the outer rind and lay it a little before the fire; then they twist and loosen the fibres, when a quantity of gluten, exactly resembling wheaten flour, may be shaken out, affording at all times a ready and wholesome food.  It struck me that this gluten, which they call Balyan, must be the staff of life to the tribes inhabiting these morasses, where tumuli and other traces of human beings were more abundant than at any part of the Lachlan that I had visited.

HORSES KNOCK UP.

April 25.

We continued our route upwards along the right bank of the Lachlan on a bearing of 36 degrees East of North taken from Mr. Oxley’s map:  and coming to the river at nine miles we again watered our horses, and rested them for they were very weak.  After travelling fifteen miles one of them rode by Woods, who carried the theodolite, knocked up when we were far from the Lachlan.  With some difficulty we however got it on until we reached the river and, finding water, we halted for the day after a ride of twenty-one miles.

SCENERY ON THE LACHLAN.

The scenery was highly picturesque at that part of the banks of the Lachlan notwithstanding the dreary level of the naked plains back from them.

CHARACTER OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF TREES.

The yarra grew here, as on the Darling, to a gigantic size, the height sometimes exceeding 100 feet; and its huge gnarled trunks, wild romantic-formed branches often twisting in coils, shining white or light red bark, and dark masses of foliage, with consequent streaks of shadow below, frequently produced effects fully equal to the wildest forest scenery of Ruysdael or Waterloo.  Often as I hurried along did I take my last look with reluctance of scenes forming the most captivating studies.  The yarra is certainly a pleasing object in various respects; its shining bark and lofty height inform the traveller of a distant probability of water, or at least of the bed of a river or lake; and being visible over all other trees it usually marks the course of rivers so well that, in travelling along the Darling and Lachlan, I could with ease trace the general course of the river without approaching its banks until I wished to encamp.  The nature and character of several other species of the genus eucalyptus were nevertheless very different and peculiar.  The small kind, covered with a rough bark and never exceeding the size of fruit trees in an orchard and called, I believe, by Mr. Oxley, the dwarf-box, but by the natives goborro, grows only on plains subject to inundation, and it usually bears on the lower part of the trunk the mark of the water