At length, just as my patience began to wear out, we ascended, out of a dry watercourse, a rise rather more elevated than the others we had met with in crossing the valley; and from the summit of this a curious sight met our view:  beneath us lay the dry bed of a large river, its depth at this point being between forty and fifty feet, and its breadth upwards of three hundred yards; it was at times subject to terrific inundations; for along its banks lay the trunks of immense trees, giants of the forest which had been washed down from the interior in the season of the floods; yet nothing now met our craving eyes but a vast sandy channel which scorched our eyeballs as the rays of the sun were reflected back from its white glistening bed.

Water found in it by digging.

I picked out the most shady spot I could for the men to halt at, then descended into the bed of the river to search, with the native, for water; and immediately on scraping a hole a few inches deep in the bed of the river the water came streaming into it, for the sand composing the bottom of the watercourse was completely saturated, and I afterwards found that there were large pools of it immediately above and below where we were.

The wants of the men having been thus supplied I determined, as it was intensely hot, to halt for an hour or two; we each of us therefore ate a little doughboy, or piece of damper, and the men then lay down to rest.  As I sat musing alone the first thought that struck me was how providentially it happened that we had not fallen in with this river in the season of the floods, as our crossing it then would have been utterly impossible.

Approach of natives to the river.

But my reveries were soon disturbed by hearing the call of a native from the opposite bank, and I roused up poor Kaiber from his sleep that he might ascertain what was going on upon the other side.  His quick eyes soon detected natives moving about amongst the bushes; but on farther examination he ascertained that there was only one man, who walked as if he had been wounded, the rest of the party being made up of women and children, who were digging for roots.  They were quite unconscious of our presence, and we lay snugly behind a bush, watching all their movements.  As soon as they had dug a sufficient quantity of roots for their purpose they descended to the bed of the river and walked up to a pool about one hundred yards above our position, where they all drank and then sat down to cook their roots.  I ordered the men to keep themselves as quiet as possible so that we in no way disturbed these poor creatures; and when at length the party moved off we passed them in a diagonal direction so as to give them an opportunity of seeing us without frightening them.  When first we emerged into view they began to run away; but when they saw that we still moved steadily on without noticing them they were no longer alarmed, but stood still, gazing at us with the greatest wonder and amazement; the youngest children standing behind their mothers, peeping cautiously out at us; and many a strange thought must have passed through the breasts of these natives as they saw us wind in regular order up the opposite hill.  This tribe was the most northern one that I had seen wear the kangaroo-skin cloak.