horse for one animal, and as long as Mr. Hume kept his seat, the native remained upon his guard; but when he saw him dismount, after the first astonishment had subsided, he stuck his spear into the ground, and walked fearlessly up to him.  We easily made him comprehend that we were in search of water; when he pointed to the west, as indicating that we should supply our wants there.  He gave his information in a frank and manly way, without the least embarrassment, and when the party passed, he stepped back to avoid the animals, without the smallest confusion.  I am sure he was a very brave man; and I left him with the most favourable impressions, and not without hope that he would follow us.

From a more open forest, we entered a dense scrub, the soil in which was of a bright-red colour and extremely sandy, and the timber of various kinds.  A leafless species of stenochylus aphylta, which, from the resemblance, I at first thought one of the polygonum tribe, was very abundant in the open spaces, and the young cypresses were occasionally so close as to turn us from the direction in which we had been moving.  In the scrub we crossed Mr. Hume’s tract, and, from the appearance of the ground, I was led to believe mine could not be very distant.

Fate of the Macquarie.

We struck upon a creek late in the afternoon, at which we stopped; New Year’s Range bearing nearly due west at about four miles’ distance.  Had we struck upon my track, the question about which we were so anxious would still have been undecided; but the circumstance of our having crossed Mr. Hume’s, which, from its direction, could not be mistaken, convinced me of the fate of the Macquarie, and I felt assured that, whatever channels it might have for the distribution of its waters, to the north of our line of route, the equality of surface of the interior would never permit it again to form a river; and that it only required an examination of the lower parts of the marshes to confirm the theory of the ultimate evaporation and absorption of its waters, instead of their contributing to the permanence of an inland sea, as Mr. Oxley had supposed.

New year’s range.

On the 17th of January we encamped under New Year’s Range, which is the first elevation in the interior of Eastern Australia to the westward of Mount Harris.  Yet when at its base, I do not think that we had ascended above forty feet higher than the plains in the neighbourhood of that last mentioned eminence.  There certainly is a partial rise of country, where the change of soil takes place from the alluvial deposits of the marshes, to the sandy loam so prevalent on the plains we had lately traversed; but I had to regret that I was unable to decide so interesting a question by other than bare conjecture.

Notwithstanding that Mr. Hume had already been on them, I encouraged hopes that a second survey of the country from the highest point of New Year’s Range would enable us to form some opinion of it, by which to direct our future movements; but I was disappointed.