August 3.—­We travelled, for the first two miles, N. 60 degrees W. over scrubby ironstone ridges, and then entered upon a fine plain, from which smoke was seen to the west and north-west.  I chose the latter direction, and passed over ironstone ridges covered with stunted silver-leaved Ironbark; and a species of Terminalia, a small tree, with long spathulate glaucous leaves, slightly winged seed-vessels, and with an abundance of fine transparent eatable gum; of which John and Brown gathered a great quantity.  Some of the ridges were openly timbered with a rather stunted white-gum tree, and were well grassed; but the grass was wiry and stiff.  At the end of our stage, about sixteen miles distant from our last camp, we crossed some rusty-gum forest; and encamped at a fine water-hole in the bed of a rocky creek, shaded by the white drooping gum, which seemed to have taken the place of the flooded gum.  Groves of Pandanus spiralis grew along the creek, which ran to the north by east.  All the small watercourses we passed, inclined to the eastward.  Charley found the shell of a Cytherea on an old camping-place of the natives, which indicated our approach to the salt water.

A native had carved a representation of the foot of an emu in the bark of a gum-tree; and he had performed it with all the exactness of a good observer.  It was the first specimen of the fine arts we had witnessed in our journey.

August 4.—­We travelled about ten miles west-north-west, over scrubby ridges, plains, and box-flats.  In a patch of rusty-gum forest we found Acacia equisetifolia, and the dwarf Grevillea of the upper Lynd in blossom; the thyrsi of scarlet flowers of the latter were particularly beautiful.  As we entered into the plains, Binoe’s Trichinium and Salicornia re-appeared.

I steered towards the smoke of a Blackfellow’s fire, which we saw rising on the plains; the fire was attended to by a gin.  Charley went forward to examine a belt of trees visible in the distance; and John Murphy followed a hollow in the plain, and succeeded in finding a fine lagoon, about half a mile long, partly rocky and partly muddy, surrounded by Polygonums, and fields of Salicornia.  A few gum trees, and raspberry-jam trees grew straggling around it; but no dry timber was to be found, and we had to make a fire with a broken down half dried raspberry-jam tree.  Our meat bags were now empty, and it was necessary to kill another bullock, although the spot was by no means favourable for the purpose.  Natives were around us, and we saw them climbing the neighbouring trees to observe our proceedings.  When Charley joined us, he stated that a fine broad salt-water river was scarcely a quarter of a mile from the lagoon; that he had seen a tribe of natives fishing, who had been polite enough to make a sign that the water was not drinkable, when he stooped down to taste it, but that freshwater was to be found in the direction of the lagoon, at which we were encamped.  No time