There was a considerable rapid just below our position, which I examined before dark.  Not seeing any danger, I requested M’Leay to proceed down it in the boat as soon as he had breakfasted, and to wait for me at the bottom of it.  As I wished to ascertain the nature and height of the elevations which Fraser had magnified into something grand, Fraser and I proceeded to the centre of a large plain, stretching from the left bank of the river to the southward.  It was bounded to the S.E. by a low scrub; to the S. a thickly wooded ridge appeared to break the level of the country.  It extended from east to west for four or five miles, and then gradually declined.  At its termination, the country seemed to dip, and a dense fog, as from an extensive sheet of water, enveloped the landscape.  The plain was crowded with cockatoos, that were making their morning’s repast on the berries of the salsolae and rhagodia, with which it was covered.

Distant ranges seen.

M’Leay had got safely down the rapid, so that as soon as I joined him, we proceeded on our journey.  We fell in with the tribe we had already seen, but increased in numbers, and we had hardly left them, when we found another tribe most anxiously awaiting our arrival.  We stayed with the last for some time, and exhausted our vocabulary, and exerted our ingenuity to gain some information from them.  I directed Hopkinson to pile up some clay, to enquire if we were near any hills, when two or three of the blacks caught the meaning, and pointed to the N.W.  Mulholland climbed up a tree in consequence of this, and reported to me that he saw lofty ranges in the direction to which the blacks pointed; that there were two apparently, the one stretching to the N.E., the other to the N.W.  He stated their distance to be about forty miles, and added that he thought he could observe other ranges, through the gap, which, according to the alignment of two sticks, that I placed according to Mulholland’s directions, bore S. 130 W.

We had landed upon the right bank of the river, and there was a large lagoon immediately behind us.  The current in the river did not run so strong as it had been.  Its banks were much lower, and were generally covered with reeds.  The spaces subject to flood were broader than heretofore, and the country for more than twenty miles was extremely depressed.  Our view from the highest ground near the camp was very confined, since we were apparently in a hollow, and were unable to obtain a second sight of the ranges we had noticed.

Pass three creeks.

Three creeks fell into the Murray hereabouts.  One from the north, another from the N.E., and the third from the south.  The two first were almost choked up with the trunks of trees, but the last had a clear channel.  Our tents stood on ground high above the reach of flood.  The soil was excellent, and the brushes behind us abounded with a new species of melaleuca.