We were sadly disappointed in the appearance of the lake, which the natives call the Buddah.  It is a serpentine sheet of fresh water, of rather more than a mile in length, and from three to four hundred yards in breadth.  Its depth was four fathoms; but it seemed as if it were now five or six feet below the ordinary level.  No stream either runs into it or flows from it; yet it abounds in fish; from which circumstance I should imagine that it originally owed its supply to the river during some extensive inundation.  Notwithstanding that we had crossed some rich tracts of land in our way to it, the neighbourhood of the lake was by no means fertile.  The trees around it were in rapid decay, and the little vegetation to be seen appeared to derive but little advantage from its proximity to water.

Extreme heat of the weather.

We had started at early dawn; and the heat had become intolerable long ere the sun had gained the meridian.  It was rendered still more oppressive from the want of air in the dense bushes through which we occasionally moved.  At 2 p.m. the thermometer stood at 129 degrees of Fahrenheit, in the shade; and at 149 degrees in the sun; the difference being exactly 20 degrees.  It is not to be wondered at that the cattle suffered, although the journey was so short.  The sun’s rays were too powerful even for the natives, who kept as much as possible in the shade.  In the evening, when the atmosphere was somewhat cooler, we launched the boat upon the lake, in order to get some wild fowl and fish; but although we were tolerably successful with our guns, we did not take anything with our hooks.

The natives had, in the course of the afternoon, been joined by the rest of the tribe, and they now numbered about three and twenty.  They were rather distant in their manner, and gazed with apparent astonishment at the scene that was passing before them.

If there had been other proof wanting, of the lamentably parched and exhausted state of the interior, we had on this occasion ample evidence of it, and of the fearful severity of the drought under which the country was suffering.  As soon as the sun dipped under the horizon, hundreds of birds came crowding to the border of the lake, to quench the thirst they had been unable to allay in the forest.  Some were gasping, others almost too weak to avoid us, and all were indifferent to the reports of our guns.

Cataract of the Macquarie.

On leaving the Buddah, eleven only of the natives accompanied us.  We reached the river again about noon, on a north-half-east course, where it had a rocky bed, and continued to journey along it, until we reached the cataract at which we halted.  We travelled over soil generally inferior to that which we had seen on the preceding day, but rich in many places.  The same kind of timber was observed, but the acacia pendula was more prevalent than any other, although near the river the flooded gum and Australian apple-tree were of beautiful growth.