With the Murray we lost its fine trees and grassy flats.  The Ana-branch had a broad channel and long reaches of water; but was wholly wanting in pasture or timber of any size.  The plains of the interior formed the banks, and nothing but salsolae grew on them.  We encamped at eight miles from the junction, where there happened to be a little grass, but were obliged to keep the cattle in yoke and the horses tethered to prevent their wandering.  As we advanced up the Ana-branch on the following day, its channel sensibly diminished in breadth, and at eleven miles we reached a hollow, beyond which the floods had not worked their way.  Here we found a tribe of natives, thirty-seven in number, by whom the account we had heard of the massacre of the over-landers at the lagoons of the Darling was confirmed.  Nadbuck now informed me that we should have to cross the Ana-branch and go to the eastward, and that it would be necessary to start by dawn, as we should not reach the Darling before sunset.  Nadbuck had now become a great favourite, and there was a dry kind of humour about him that was exceedingly amusing, at the same time that his services were really valuable.

Toonda, on the other hand, was a man of singular temperament.  He was good-looking and more intelligent than any native I had ever before seen.  His habit was spare, but his muscles were firm, and his sinews like whipcord He must indeed have had great confidence in his own powers to have undertaken a journey of more than 200 miles from his own home.  He was very taciturn, and would rather remain at the officers’ fire than join his fellows.

The country we had passed through during the day had been miserable.  Plains of great extent flanked the Ana-branch on either side, on which there were sandy undulations covered with stunted cypress trees or low brush.

Flood had from the time of his accident suffered great pain; but as he did not otherwise complain, Mr. Browne did not entertain any apprehension as to his having any attack of fever.

On the morning of the 24th, the natives paid us an early visit with their boys, and remained at the camp until we started.  At the head of the water they had made a weir, through the boughs of which the current was running like a sluice; but the further progress of the floods was stopped by a bank that had been gradually thrown up athwart the channel.  Crossing the Ana-branch at this point, we struck across barren sandy plains, on a N.N.E. course.  From them we entered a low brush, in which there were more dead than living trees.  At four miles this brush terminated, and we had again to traverse open barren plains.  At their termination we had to force our way through a second brush, consisting for the most part of fusani, acaciae, hakeae, and other low shrubs, but there were no cypresses here as in the first brush.  On gaining more open ground, the country gradually rose before us, and a ferruginous conglomerate cropped out in