who were to be rewarded for their trouble.  For this service our messengers were to receive two blankets and two tomahawks, and the bag being closed they started off with it.  I had proposed to Mr. Browne to be himself the bearer of it, but he would not leave me, even now.  In order, therefore, to encourage the messengers, I gave them in advance the tomahawks they were to have received on their return.  Our tent was generally full of natives; some of them very fine young men, especially the two sons of the Boocolo.  Topar made his appearance two or three days after our arrival, but Toonda was absent on the Murray:  the former, however, having been detected in attempting a theft, I had him turned out of the tent and banished the camp.  The old Boocolo came daily to see us, and as invariably laid down on the lower part of my mattrass.

On the 23rd I sent Mr. Stuart to verify his former bearings on Scrope’s Range, and Mr. Browne kindly superintended the chaining of the distance between a tree I had marked on the banks of the Darling and Sir Thomas Mitchell’s last camp.  This tree was about a quarter of a mile below the junction of the Williorara, and had cut on it, (G.  A. E., Dec. 24, 1843,) the distance between the two points was three miles and 20 chains.

The 25th being Christmas Day, I issued a double allowance to the men, and ordered that preparations should be made for pushing down the river on the following morning.  About 2 p.m. we were surprised at the return of our two messengers, who insisted that they had taken the letter-bag to the point agreed upon, although it was an evident impossibility that they could have done so.  I therefore evinced my displeasure and refused to give them the blankets—­for which, nevertheless, they greatly importuned me.  Mr. Browne, however, explained to the Boocolo why I refused, and charged the natives with having secreted it somewhere or other.  On this there was a long consultation with the natives, which terminated in the Boocolo’s two sons separating from the others, and talking together for a long time in a corner of my hut; they then came forward and said, that my decision was perfectly just, for that the men had not been to the place agreed upon, but had left the bag of letters with a tribe on the Darling, and therefore, that they had been fully rewarded by the present of the tomahawks.  This decided opinion settled the dispute at once, and the parties quietly acquiesced.

I had, as stated, been obliged to turn Topar out of my tent, and expel him the camp for theft, but at the same time Mr. Browne explained to the natives why I did so, and told them that I should in like manner expel any other who so transgressed, and they appeared fully to concur in the justice of my conduct.  There is no doubt indeed but that they punish each other for similar offences, although perhaps the moral turpitude of the action is not understood by them.