several bush trees, found that it came down a valley deeply cut into the table land.  The floor of the valley was of basaltic rock, and its steep slopes were covered with boulders of the same formation.  The water ran in two distinct beds through the fissures, hollows, and caves of the rock.  As our horses could not travel over the sharp edges of the rock without injuring their feet, we ascended the table land, and rode to the northward about four miles, and then came on plains, in which we distinguished a meandering band of green verdure, which proved to be the same brook we had left, or one of its head waters.  We followed it through a series of plains, from one of which a blue mountain was visible to the north-west.  I called it “Mount Lang,” after Dr. Lang, the distinguished historiographer of New South Wales.  Smoke was seen to the westward.  At the right side of the brook, a stream of lava bounded the plains, and was, as usual, covered with dense scrub.  Box, with occasional patches of narrow-leaved tea trees, grew along the plains.  The forest was very open, and principally consisted of narrow-leaved Ironbark; the grass in the forest and on the plains, was of the best description.  Finer stations for the squatter cannot exist.

May 6.—­Following the brook about four miles farther, I came to its source at a gentle slope of basalt.  Plains stretched along both sides of its course, and even beyond it.  Luxuriant reeds, Plothos, and several deep green trees, crowded round its head.  Kangaroos, which abounded particularly along the scrub, had formed numerous paths through the high grass to the water’s edge.  I now directed my course to the W.N.W., but soon found myself checked by a dyke or wall of basaltic lava, composed of boulders and tabular blocks heaped over each other in wild confusion, and covered by scrub; it stretched from N.W. to S.E.  I travelled round its edge to the southward, after having made a vain attempt to cross it.  The outlines of the stream ran out in low heads into the flat table land, and there we met occasionally with springs and chains of water-holes which united lower down into a water-course, which, after following alternately the outline of the scrub, and turning into the stream of lava, became lost among its loose rocks.  The lava was very cellular; the basalt of the table land solid.  The whole appearance of this interesting locality showed that the stream of lava was of much more recent date than the rock of the table land, and that the latter was probably formed under water, whilst the cellular scorified lava was poured out into the open air.  The stream of lava enlarged so much, and descended into so broad a valley, that I considered it to be the head of the Burdekin.  I walked across it, in order to ascertain the presence of water, but found nothing but deep dry hollows surrounded with drooping tea trees, and the black basaltic rocks covered with wild bottle-tree scrub.  It joined the valley of lagoons very much