REACH THE DARLING AND SURPRISE A NUMEROUS TRIBE OF NATIVES.

May 30.

We heard our new acquaintance cooeying in the bush but we gave no attention to them and proceeded on our journey.  The smooth and verdant escarp of the river-berg guided us, while the river itself was sometimes at hand and sometimes four miles off.  This day I recognised several shrubs which I had seen before only on the Darling.  At length the berg terminated altogether in a smooth round hill beyond which lay a low woody country, intersected by lines of yarra trees in almost every direction.  I thought I perceived in one of these lines the course of the Darling coming into the extensive valley from the northward; and the old hands exclaimed, when they saw the bare plains to the north-west of our camp, that we had got upon the Darling at last.  Beyond this valley to the south-westward I perceived that the bergs of the opposite bank of the Murray were continuous and advanced to a point about west-south-west.  Upon the whole I was satisfied that we were near the junction of the two rivers; and we encamped on the lower extremity of the point, already mentioned, which overlooked a small lagoon and was not above three hundred yards from an angle of the Murray.

May 31.

I now ventured to take a north-west course in expectation of falling in with the supposed Darling.  We crossed first a plain about two miles in breadth, when we came to a line of yarra trees which enveloped a dry creek from the north-east, and very like Clover-creek.  We next travelled over ground chiefly open, and at four miles crossed a sandhill on which was a covered tomb, after the fashion of those on the Murray.  On descending from the sand-ridge we approached a line of yarra trees which overhung a reach of green and stagnant water.  I had scarcely arrived at the bank when my attention was drawn to a fire about a hundred yards before us and from beside which immediately sprung up a numerous tribe of blacks who began to jump, wring their hands, and shriek, as if in a state of utter madness or despair.

PIPER AND HIS GIN EXPLAIN.

These savages rapidly retired towards others who were at a fire on a further part of the bank, but Piper and his gin, going boldly forward, succeeded at length in getting within hail and in allaying their fears.

SEARCH FOR THE JUNCTION WITH THE MURRAY.

While he was with these natives I had again leisure to examine the watercourse upon which we had arrived.  I could not consider it the Darling as seen by me above, and so little did it seem the sister stream to the Murray as described by Sturt that I at first thought it nothing but an ana-branch of that river.  Neither did these natives satisfy me about Oolawambiloa, by which I had supposed the Darling was meant but respecting which they still pointed westward.  They however told Piper that the channel we had reached contained all the waters of Wambool (the Macquarie)