pool, into which we drove a brood of very young ducks, and might, if we had pleased, shot the mother; but although a roast duck would have been very acceptable, we spared her for her children’s sake.  This was a nice pond, but small.  It was shaded by gum-trees, and there was a cavernous clay bank on the west side of it, in which gravel stones were embedded.  Here we staid but for a short time, as it was early in the day.  We had flushed numerous pigeons as we rode along, and flights came to the water while we stopped, but were not treated with the same forbearance as the duck.  We shot two or three, and capital eating they were.  About 3, we had left the creek, as it apparently turned to the eastward, and was lost on the plain, and crossing some stony ground, passed between two little ranges.  We then found ourselves on the brow of a deep valley that separated us from the little cones we purposed ascending.  The side of it which trended to the north-west was very abrupt and stony, and it was with some difficulty we descended into it; but that done, we left Morgan and Flood with the cart, and ascended the nearer peak.

From the summit of the highest of the cones we had a clear view round more than one half of the horizon.  Immediately at the base of the ranges northwards, there was a long strip of plain, and beyond it a dark and gloomy scrub, that swept round from S.W. to E., keeping equi-distant from the hills, excepting at the latter point where it closed in upon them.  On the N.W. horizon there was a small low undulating range, apparently unconnected with any other, and distant about 40 miles.  No change had taken place in the geological formations of the main range.  The same abrupt points, and detached flat-topped hills, characterised their northern as well as the southern extremity.  We had now however reached their termination northwards, but they continued in an easterly direction until they were totally lost in the dark mass of scrub that covered and surrounded them, not one being of sufficient height to break the line of the horizon.  To the S.W. a column of smoke was rising in the midst of the scrub, otherwise that desolate region appeared to be uninhabited.  On descending from the peak, we turned to the N.W. along the line of a water-course at the bottom of the valley, tracing it for about four miles with every hope of finding the element we were in search of in its green bed, but we gained the point where the valley opened out upon the plains, and halted under disappointment, yet with good grass for the horses.  Our little bivouac was in lat. 29 degrees 2 minutes 14 seconds S. The above outline will enable the reader to judge of the character of the hills, that still existed to the eastward of us, and the probability of their continuance or cessation.  I must confess that they looked to me as if they had been so many small islands, off the point of a larger one.  They rose in detached groups from the midst of the plains, as such islands from the midst of the sea, and their aspect altogether bore such a striking resemblance to many of the flat-topped islands round the Australian continent described by other travellers, that I could not but think they had once been similarly situated.