The tract we passed over on this day was certainly more subject to overflow than usual.  Large flats of polygonum, and plains having rents and fissures in them, succeeded those I have already described.  At ten miles we intersected a creek of considerable size, but without any water; just below where we crossed its channel it spreads over a large flat and is lost.  Proceeding onwards, at a mile and a half, we ascended a line of sand hills, and from them descended to firmer ground than that on which we had previously travelled.  At six miles we struck another creek with a broad and grassy bed, on the banks of which we halted, at a small and muddy pool of water.  The trees on this creek were larger than usual and beautifully umbrageous.  It appeared as if coming from the N.E., and falling to the N.W.  There were many huts both above and below our bivouac, and well-trodden paths from one angle of the creek to the other.  All around us, indeed, there were traces of natives, nor can there be any doubt, but that at one season of the year or other, it is frequented by them in great numbers.  From a small contiguous elevation our view extended over an apparently interminable plain in the line of our course.  That of the creek was marked by gum-trees, and I was not without hopes that we should again have halted on it on the 21st, but we did not, for shortly after we started it turned suddenly to the west, and we were obliged to leave it, and crossed successive plains of a description similar to those we had left behind, but with little or no vegetation upon them.  At about five miles we intersected a branch creek coming from the E.N.E., in which there was a large but shallow pool of water.  About a mile to the westward of this channel we ascended some hills, in the composition of which there was more clay than sand, and descended from them to a firm and grassy plain of about three and a half miles in breadth.  At the farther extremity we crossed a line of sand hills, and at a mile and a half again descended to lower ground, and made for some gum-trees at the western extremity of the succeeding plain, on our old bearing of 55 degrees to the west of north.  There we intersected another creek with two pools of water in it, and as there was also a sufficiency of grass we halted on its banks.

The singular and rapid succession of these watercourses exceedingly perplexed me, for we were in a country remote from any high lands, and consequently in one not likely to give birth to such features, yet their existence was a most fortunate circumstance for us.  There can be no doubt but that the rain, which enabled us to break up the old Depot and resume our operations, had extended thus far, but all the surface water had dried up, and if we had not found these creeks our progress into the interior would have been checked.  In considering their probable origin, it struck me that they might have been formed by the rush of floods from the extensive plains we had lately crossed.  The whole country indeed over which we had passed from the first creek, was without doubt very low, and must sometimes be almost entirely under water, but what, it may be asked, causes such inundation?  Such indeed was the question I asked myself, but I must say I could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion.