It may appear strange to some of my readers, that I should have laid down the windings of the river so minutely.  It may therefore be necessary for me to state that every bend of it was laid down by compass, and that the bearings of the angles as they opened were regularly marked by me, so that not a single winding or curve of the Murray is omitted in the large chart.  The length of some of the reaches may be erroneous, but their direction is strictly correct.  I always had a sheet of paper and the compass before me, and not only marked down the river line, but also the description of country nearest; its most minute changes, its cliffs, its flats, the kind of country back from it, its lagoons, the places at which the tribes assembled, its junctions, tributaries and creeks, together with our several positions, were all regularly noted, so that on our return up the river we had no difficulty in ascertaining upon what part of it we were, by a reference to the chart; and it proved of infinite service to us, since we were enabled to judge of our distance from our several camps, as we gained them day by day with the current against us; and we should often have stopped short of them, weary and exhausted, had we not known that two or three reaches more would terminate our labour for the day.

Remarkable cliffs.

From the spot last spoken of, the river held on a due south course for the remainder of the day; and at the same time changed its character.  It lost its sandy bed and its current together, and became deep, still, and turbid, with a muddy bottom.  It increased considerably in breadth, and stretched away before us in magnificent reaches of from three to six miles in length.  The cliffs under which we passed towered above us, like maritime cliffs, and the water dashed against their base like the waves of the sea.  They became brighter and brighter in colour, looking like dead gold in the sun’s rays; and formed an unbroken wall of a mile or two in length.  The natives on their summits showed as small as crows; and the cockatoos, the eagles, and other birds, were as specks above us; the former made the valley reverberate with their harsh and discordant notes.  The reader may form some idea of the height of these cliffs, when informed that the king of the feathered race made them his sanctuary.  They were continuous on both sides of the river, but retired, more or less, from it, according to the extent of the alluvial flats.  The river held a serpentine course down the valley through which it passed, striking the precipices alternately on each side.

The soil on the flats was better, and less mixed with sand than it had been, but the flats were generally covered with reeds, though certainly not wholly subject to flood at any time.  The polygonum still prevailed upon them in places, and the blue-gum tree alone occupied their outskirts.  From the several elevations we ascended, the country to the N.W. appeared undulating and well wooded; that to the eastward, seemed to be brushy and low.  Certainly there was a great difference in the country, both to the eastward and to the westward.  We had frequent views of the mountains we had seen, or, I should have said, of a continuation of them.  They bore nearly west from us at a very great distance all day.