valley of the Murray, but it may be said, that there is an open space varying in breadth from half a-mile to three miles between the Murray belt and the river.  It is a flat table land about 250 or 300 feet above the level of the sea, the substratum being of the tertiary fossil formation.  The surface is a mixture of red sand and clay, mixed with calcareous limestone in small rounded nodules.  The very nature of this soil is heating, and the consequence is that it has little herbage at any one time.  There is however a succession of vegetation, especially during the spring months, which, from the fact of the cattle being particularly fond of it, must I should imagine be both sweet and nutritious.

Any one who has ever been on the banks of the Murray will admit that it is a noble river.  The description I have already given supersedes the necessity of my dwelling on it here.  In another place I shall have to speak of it, not in a commercial point of view, but as a line of communication between two distant colonies, and the important part it has acted in the advancement of the province of South Australia.  As a commercial river, I fear it will not be of practical utility.  To prove this, it may be necessary for me to observe that the Murray runs for more than five degrees of latitude through a desert.  That it is tortuous in its course, and is in many places encumbered with timber, and its depth entirely depends on the seasons.  The difficulties, therefore, that present themselves to the navigation of the central Murray are such as to preclude the hope of its ever being made available for such a purpose, even admitting that its banks were located at every available point.  Moorundi, the property of Mr. Eyre, the present Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, is ninety miles from Adelaide, and twenty-six from the N.W. bend of the Murray.  It is part of a special survey of four thousand acres taken by Mr. Eyre and Mr. Gilles on the banks of the river, and in consequence of its appropriate position, was selected by Captain Grey, the then Governor of South Australia, as a station for a Resident Magistrate and Protector of the Aborigines, to fill both which appointments he nominated Mr. Eyre.  There can be no doubt, either as to the foresight which dictated the establishment of this post on the banks of the Murray, or the selection of Mr. Eyre as the Resident.  At the time this measure was decided on, the feelings of the natives on the river were hostile to the settlers.  The repeated collisions between them and the Overlanders had kindled a deep spirit of revenge in their breasts, and although they suffered severely in every contest, they would not allow any party with stock to pass along the line of the river without attempting to stop their progress; and there can be no doubt but that, in this frame of mind, they would have attacked the station next the river if they had been left to themselves, and with their stealthy habits and daring, would have been no mean enemy on the boundaries of