About two miles and a half from our camp, we came to the Caron River (Corners Inlet), which deserved rather the name of a large creek.  Its sandy and occasionally rocky bed, was dry; but parallel lines of Nymphaea lagoons extended on both sides.  The drooping tea-tree was, as usual, very beautiful.  We skirted a tea-tree scrub, without a watercourse, about two miles and a half south of the “Caron,” and passed some undulations, with Grevillea forest.  To the south-west of these undulations, we came to a chain of lagoons; from which several white cranes and a flight of the black Ibis rose.  Brown shot one of the latter, which, when picked and cleaned for cooking, weighed three pounds and a half; it was very fat, and proved to be excellent eating.  Cytherea shells were again found, which showed that the salt water was not very far off.

Charley gave a characteristic description of this country, when he returned from a ride in search of game:  “It is a miserable country! nothing to shoot at, nothing to look at, but box trees and anthills.”  The box-forest was, however, very open and the grass was good; and the squatter would probably form a very different opinion of its merits.  When we were preparing to start in the morning some natives came to look at us; but they kept within the scrub, and at a respectable distance.

July 18.—­We travelled south-west by west, over a succession of plains, and of undulating Grevillea forest, which changed into tea-tree thickets, and stunted tea-tree scrubs, on a sandy soil with Salicornia, Binoe’s Trichinium, and several other salt plants.  At about five miles from the camp, we came to salt-water inlets, densely surrounded by mangroves, and with sandy flats extending along their banks, encrusted with salt.  Charley rode through the dry mangrove scrub, and came on a sandy beach with the broad Ocean before him.  We had a long way to go to the east and S.S.E. to get out of the reach of the brackish water, and came at last to grassy swamps, with a good supply of fresh water.  We encamped in lat. 17 degrees 41 minutes 52 seconds; about ten miles south by west from our last camp.  Charley was remarkably lucky to-day, in catching an emu, and shooting six teals, a brown wallabi of the Mitchell, and a kangaroo with a broad nail at the end of its tail.  Brown also shot a sheldrake and a Malacorhynchus membranaceus.  During the time that we were travelling to the southward, we had a north-east wind during the forenoon, which in the afternoon veered round to the east and south.  Such a change, in a locality like ours, was very remarkable; because, in the neighbourhood of the sea, it was natural to expect a sea breeze, instead of which, however, the breeze was off the land.  The cause can only be attributed to a peculiar formation of the country south and south-east of the gulf.