us with Kenny and Tenbury, leaving Nadbuck and Camboli to shew us the most direct line to the mouth of the little channel which connects Lake Bonney with the Murray, at which I purposed halting.  The greater part of our way was through deep sandy cypress brushes, so that the cattle had a heavy pull of it.  We reached our destination at 1 p.m., where we found Mr. Eyre, with eight or nine natives, all, who were then in the neighbourhood.

The back-water of the Murray was fast flowing into the lake, which already presented a broad expanse of water to the eye.  It was covered with wild fowl of various kinds, and there were several patches of reeds in which they were feeding.

As I purposed stopping for a day or two, to rest the bullocks, I directed Mr. Poole to survey the lake, whilst I undertook to lay down the creek or channel connecting it with the river, in which service I enlisted Mr. Hawker, who had formerly been on the survey, and whose name I gave to the creek on the completion of our work.

Lake Bonney is a shallow sandy basin, which is annually filled by the Murray; and as it rises, so, to a certain extent, it falls with the river, until at length, being left very shallow, it is soon dried up.  The Hawker being too small to discharge the water equally with the fall of the river, has a current in it after the river has lowered considerably, for which reason I thought, when I passed it on my second expedition, that it had been a tributary; but such is not the case—­Lake Bonney receiving no water save from the Murray.  To the south of it, or next the river, the ground is low, grassy, and wooded; but on every other side the lake is confined by a low sand hill, of about fifteen feet in height, behind which there is a barren flat covered with salsolaceous plants, and exactly resembling a dry sea marsh, if I may say so.  The more distant interior is alternate brush and plain, and exceedingly barren.  The day after we arrived, however, Tenbury, with the dogs, killed four large kangaroos and as he saw many more, it is to be presumed that thereabouts they are pretty numerous.  The lake is ten miles in circumference.  Hawker’s Creek, taking its windings, is nearly six in length.  The latitude of our camp was 34 degrees 13 minutes 42 seconds S.; its longitude 140 degrees 26 minutes 16 seconds.  On September 1st. the thermometer, at 8 A. M. and at noon, stood at 48 degrees and 60 degrees respectively; the barometer at 29.750, and the boiling point was 212 degrees nearly, thus indicating that we had risen but a few feet above the level of the sea.  We left Lake Bonney on the 3rd of September, and crossing the bank of sand by which it is confined, traversed the flat behind it for about three miles, when we ascended some feet, and entered a low brush that continued for nearly nine miles, with occasional openings in it to that angle of the river which is opposite to the one at the end of the fossil formation.