muddy water-holes, and at length stopped at a small clear deep pond.  The colour of the water, a light green, at once betrayed its quality; but fortunately for us, though brackish it was still tolerable, much better than the gritty water we had passed.  There was however but little vegetation in its neighbourhood, the grass being coarse and wiry.  Both on this creek and some others we had passed, we observed that the graves of the natives were made longitudinally from north to south, and not as they usually are from east to west.

The evening we stopped at this place was very fine.  We had descended into the bed of the creek, and Mr. Browne and I were reclining on the ground, looking at the little pond, in which the bank above was clearly reflected.  On a sudden my companion asked me if I had brought a small hook with me, as he had taken it into his head that there were fish in the pond.  Being unable to supply his wants, he got a pin, and soon had a rough kind of apparatus prepared, with which he went to the water; and, having cast in his bait, almost immediately pulled out a white and glittering fish, and held it up to me in triumph.  I must confess that I was exceedingly astonished, for the first idea that occurred to my mind was—­How could fish get into so isolated a spot?  In the water-holes above us no animals of the kind could have lived.  How then were we to account for their being where we found them, and for the no less singular phenomenon of brackish waters in the bed of a fresh water creek?  These were exceedingly puzzling questions to me at the time, but, as the reader will find, were afterwards explained.  Mr. Browne succeeded in taking no less than thirteen fish, and seemed to think that they were identical with the silver perch of the Murray, but they appeared to me to be a deeper and a thinner fish.  Although none of them exceeded six inches in length, they were very acceptable to men who were living on five pounds of flour only a-week.

The night we stayed here was very dark, and about 11 p.m. the horses which had been turned down the creek by Flood, rushed violently past our fire, as if they had been suddenly alarmed.  They were found at a distance of five miles above us the next morning, but we could never discover why they had taken fright.  Their recovery detained us longer than our usual hour, but at nine we mounted, and, crossing the creek at three-quarters of a mile, ascended a hill, connected with several others by sandy valleys, and saw that the creek, a little below where we crossed it, turned to the west.  We could trace its course, by the trees on its bank, for several miles.  From the hills we descended to a country of a very different character from that which I have been describing.  As we overlooked it from the higher ground it was dark, with a snow-white patch of sand in the centre; on traversing it we found that its productions were almost entirely samphire-bushes growing on a salty soil.