been on one of that officer’s encampments, and that the hills to the north of us were those to the opposite base of which he had penetrated.  I was determined, therefore, if practicable, to reach these hills, deeming it a matter of great importance to connect the surveys, but I deferred my journey for a day or two, in hopes, from the continued northerly course of the river, that we should have approached them nearer.

In the evening we fell in with some more blacks, among whom were two brothers, of those who were acting as our guides.  One had a very pretty girl as a wife, and all the four brothers were very good-looking young men.  There cannot, I should think, be a numerous population on the banks of the Morumbidgee, from the fact of our having seen not more than fifty in an extent of more than 180 miles.  They are apparently scattered along it in families.  I was rather surprised that my boy understood their language well, since it certainly differed from that of the Macquarie tribes, but nevertheless as these people do not wander far, our information as to what was before us was very gradually arrived at, and only as we fell in with the successive families.  Moreover, as my boy was very young, it may be that he was more eager in communicating to those who had no idea of them, the wonders he had seen, than in making inquiries on points that were indifferent to him.

Character of the country.

We passed a very large plain in the course of the day, which was bounded by forests of box, cypress, and the acacia pendula, of red sandy soil and parched appearance.  The Morumbidgee evidently overflows a part of the lands we crossed, to a greater extent than heretofore, though the alluvial deposits beyond its influence were still both rich and extensive.  The crested pigeon made its appearance on the acacias, which I took to be a sure sign of our approach to a country more than ordinarily subject to overflow; since on the Macquarie and the Darling, those birds were found only to inhabit the regions of marshes, or spaces covered by the acacia pendula, or the polygonum.  We had not, however, yet seen any of the latter plant, although we were shortly destined to be almost lost amidst fields of it.

Change in the country.

We were now approaching that parallel of longitude in which the other known rivers of New Holland had been found to exhaust themselves; the least change therefore, for the worse was sufficient to raise my apprehensions; yet, although the Morumbidgee had received no tributary from the Dumot downwards, and was leading us into an apparently endless level, I saw no indication of its decreasing in size, or in the rapidity of its current.  Certainly, however, I had, from the character of the country around us, an anticipation that a change was about to take place in it, and this anticipation was verified in the course of the following day.